The Cartesiarillion 5 & 6
Apr. 11th, 2011 04:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jackTHE SECOND DEMON
This was also the time when the demon Kharadoth came to be known. He was the second eldest of the demons in the world, although there were others older than he who had not come into the world. And he was mighty both in understanding and malice. Like the eldest demon he envied the gods' creation of the world, but where she envied their creation, he envied the substance of the world itself. He looked around at the forms taken by the new lesser demons, and saw that they embodied something that he lacked.
And rather than striving to create more beings, as had the eldest demon and many of the other demons, he strove to wrap the substance of the world about himself. And so, he took on a form which seemed to him to embody and surpass the best of the forms the lesser demons and the other things of the world had taken. He took the form of a toweringly tall young man, with two arms on the right, and one arm on the left, carrying a horn, and with majestic knarled antlers rising from his head, and covering the whole top and back of his head like twisted tree-roots. His face seemed always stern, but sometimes man-ish and sometimes elf-ish, yet sometimes stag-ish and sometimes wolf-ish. In his feet and lower legs, he retained some of the formless fluidity of the elder demons, seeming sometimes like the shaggy hooved legs of goats, and sometimes like a swirling consuming black mist parted vaguely into two columns.
And he fashioned new beings too, but he scorned the efforts of creativity the gods and other demons had made, and fashioned them only from the emptiest places in the world that would most let him impose his own will on how they would be formed. And thus he never made anything which approached himself in stature, but since he eschewed the creativity others had expressed, when he had created something pleasing to him, he would freely copy it, and make a multitude more therof.
Thus he fashioned the hell-hounds, beastlike forms of darkness, which even more than the other demons were made of a lust to rend and destroy. And many he turned loose on the world to roam and destroy where they would, yet many others he bade follow him in a great train, and when it amused him (in his wry, brittle way), he would lead them in a hunt whatever caught his eye, a thing of the world, or a lesser demon, or later if he could, a demigod, and woe betide the quarry if he could catch them.
He also fashioned thousands of dark birds, little more than shaped wreaths of smoke, but that fulfilled his wry nihilism. And singly he would send some forth to scout for him, spying on the doings of other beings in the world, or spotting prey for his evil hunts. And yet many more he bade follow him, and when he directed they would all take to the sky at once and form a roiling cloud of smoke covering a part of the world from horizon to horizon, blotting out both the light of the sun and the clean sparkling emptiness of Nara's night sky.
And in the early days of the world there was only one creation he didn't fashion alone, that of his dark riding mare, Skereweld Darkflame. She was formed by Kharadoth and by a lesser demon, though the story of how they came together so briefly is too long to tell here. But thus Skereweld was the only of Kharadoth's creations to reflect anything other than him, and contained a wilful reckless malice inspired from the lesser demon. But though more independent than the hounds and the birds, Skereweld loved him for his own sake, and would bear him htiher and thither on the hunts, trampling the pleasant things of the world beneath her hooves of frozen flame.
After he had worn his new form for a while, he found himself wrapping himself tighter and tighter in it, until it became an essential part of his nature. And he was not displeased, for even though he now found it difficult or impossible to adopt a new form without irrevocably changing himself, and did not think he would be able to leave the world to return to the emptiness outside, he no longer had any great wish to do so. And indeed, he could no longer be driven from this world with any great ease, and also, his form was not just in how he appeared, but in how it imposed his will on the world around him, so when he took on himself the full persona of the wild hunt, he was nigh irressistable, and there were none who could stand against him, not even the mightiest of the gods, if he came upon them unprepared. Saving only Nara who was his original progenitor, but could as little easily come into the world as he could leave it, so they were not to see each other face to face until nigh to the end of time.
THE FIRST DEMI-GODS
During this time, the gods had been watching the creations of the demons. They had always intended the world to bring forth new beings within it, and were pleased by the vibrant variety of beings the demons had produced in their experiments. And yet, they were concerned, because disturbed by the prior problems in Nara's creation of the demons, they had intended the world to bring forth new beings only slowly, but instead it was overrun with lesser demons. And they liked many aspects of the varied third generation, but worried that they would fall again into the errors of their elders and the world would be quickly consumed.
The gods had intended to wait longer before fashioning more self-willed beings in the world, but now they quickly decided that they could not afford to stand by, and resolved to drive the worst of the demons from the world, in order that the subtle beings they envisioned would have the freedom to come to be.
And yet, there was a problem. For as Nara and the emptiness had in many ways been one and the same, the world itself was fashioned in a large part from the substances of gods. All of it was the subtance of Nara, which meant that although Nara revelled in the forms of the world, she could enter into the world only at the expense of wreaking vast changes to its substance, and was unable to take on a fixed form in the world, for to do so would be to give up the rest of the world which yet relied on her for its existence.
Materre could enter the world more easily than Nara, for she was the substance of the earth, and if she took on a form in air, the earth could yet remain unchanged. And yet, she did so only cautiously, for where she walked the earth bubbled in turmoil, and new mountains rose and valleys sank.
And as for Los, his essence was light and brightness and change, which was by far the most embodied in the sun, and his presence in the world wrought worse upheavals than Materre's. But since the sun was so fluxion anyway, and the other beings, and the earth itself, were kept well away from it, Los could walk on the world easily, and when he grew filled with passion, which was often, for he was a man of bright emotions, the sun churned and spat, but far away on the world, the danger was not great, and the beauty of its pyrotechnic displays was great.
Materre and Los were of the second generation, as were the elder demons. And the gods were much greater, for though the demons had come first, Materre and Los had all manner of experience and knowledge imparted to them from Nara, and discovered in making the world, which the demons as yet had almost completely lacked. But now many of the demons lived in the world, and learned from it, and Materre and Los knew they would not necessarily be greater forever.
At first they were prepared to drive the demons from the world with great violence, but though they still had much power to make great changes to the world as they willed, they could not easily make lesser changes without disrupting the rest of the fabric of the world.
And so, they came together with many of the greatest things of the world, the bright lights and loud sounds, the blowing skies, and tumbling water, and constant rocks and the flowing sand. And they brought forth many more beings, like unto the lesser demons, but formed mostly from the bright strong things of the world, rather than from the darkness.
And they did not have the subtlety of the beings the gods had intended to be brought forth from the world later, for each embodied mostly one large aspect of the world, but because they were less divided, they were strong and mighty, and encompassed that aspect in totality.
Thus came Donner thunderfist, and Blitz brightface into the world, and Olva Foamdrinker, and Thos-skudding-with-the-clouds, and the other of the first demigods, who were greatest, and the young races have simply called "gods", never having known the faces of Materre and Los, or of Nara.
This was also the time when the demon Kharadoth came to be known. He was the second eldest of the demons in the world, although there were others older than he who had not come into the world. And he was mighty both in understanding and malice. Like the eldest demon he envied the gods' creation of the world, but where she envied their creation, he envied the substance of the world itself. He looked around at the forms taken by the new lesser demons, and saw that they embodied something that he lacked.
And rather than striving to create more beings, as had the eldest demon and many of the other demons, he strove to wrap the substance of the world about himself. And so, he took on a form which seemed to him to embody and surpass the best of the forms the lesser demons and the other things of the world had taken. He took the form of a toweringly tall young man, with two arms on the right, and one arm on the left, carrying a horn, and with majestic knarled antlers rising from his head, and covering the whole top and back of his head like twisted tree-roots. His face seemed always stern, but sometimes man-ish and sometimes elf-ish, yet sometimes stag-ish and sometimes wolf-ish. In his feet and lower legs, he retained some of the formless fluidity of the elder demons, seeming sometimes like the shaggy hooved legs of goats, and sometimes like a swirling consuming black mist parted vaguely into two columns.
And he fashioned new beings too, but he scorned the efforts of creativity the gods and other demons had made, and fashioned them only from the emptiest places in the world that would most let him impose his own will on how they would be formed. And thus he never made anything which approached himself in stature, but since he eschewed the creativity others had expressed, when he had created something pleasing to him, he would freely copy it, and make a multitude more therof.
Thus he fashioned the hell-hounds, beastlike forms of darkness, which even more than the other demons were made of a lust to rend and destroy. And many he turned loose on the world to roam and destroy where they would, yet many others he bade follow him in a great train, and when it amused him (in his wry, brittle way), he would lead them in a hunt whatever caught his eye, a thing of the world, or a lesser demon, or later if he could, a demigod, and woe betide the quarry if he could catch them.
He also fashioned thousands of dark birds, little more than shaped wreaths of smoke, but that fulfilled his wry nihilism. And singly he would send some forth to scout for him, spying on the doings of other beings in the world, or spotting prey for his evil hunts. And yet many more he bade follow him, and when he directed they would all take to the sky at once and form a roiling cloud of smoke covering a part of the world from horizon to horizon, blotting out both the light of the sun and the clean sparkling emptiness of Nara's night sky.
And in the early days of the world there was only one creation he didn't fashion alone, that of his dark riding mare, Skereweld Darkflame. She was formed by Kharadoth and by a lesser demon, though the story of how they came together so briefly is too long to tell here. But thus Skereweld was the only of Kharadoth's creations to reflect anything other than him, and contained a wilful reckless malice inspired from the lesser demon. But though more independent than the hounds and the birds, Skereweld loved him for his own sake, and would bear him htiher and thither on the hunts, trampling the pleasant things of the world beneath her hooves of frozen flame.
After he had worn his new form for a while, he found himself wrapping himself tighter and tighter in it, until it became an essential part of his nature. And he was not displeased, for even though he now found it difficult or impossible to adopt a new form without irrevocably changing himself, and did not think he would be able to leave the world to return to the emptiness outside, he no longer had any great wish to do so. And indeed, he could no longer be driven from this world with any great ease, and also, his form was not just in how he appeared, but in how it imposed his will on the world around him, so when he took on himself the full persona of the wild hunt, he was nigh irressistable, and there were none who could stand against him, not even the mightiest of the gods, if he came upon them unprepared. Saving only Nara who was his original progenitor, but could as little easily come into the world as he could leave it, so they were not to see each other face to face until nigh to the end of time.
THE FIRST DEMI-GODS
During this time, the gods had been watching the creations of the demons. They had always intended the world to bring forth new beings within it, and were pleased by the vibrant variety of beings the demons had produced in their experiments. And yet, they were concerned, because disturbed by the prior problems in Nara's creation of the demons, they had intended the world to bring forth new beings only slowly, but instead it was overrun with lesser demons. And they liked many aspects of the varied third generation, but worried that they would fall again into the errors of their elders and the world would be quickly consumed.
The gods had intended to wait longer before fashioning more self-willed beings in the world, but now they quickly decided that they could not afford to stand by, and resolved to drive the worst of the demons from the world, in order that the subtle beings they envisioned would have the freedom to come to be.
And yet, there was a problem. For as Nara and the emptiness had in many ways been one and the same, the world itself was fashioned in a large part from the substances of gods. All of it was the subtance of Nara, which meant that although Nara revelled in the forms of the world, she could enter into the world only at the expense of wreaking vast changes to its substance, and was unable to take on a fixed form in the world, for to do so would be to give up the rest of the world which yet relied on her for its existence.
Materre could enter the world more easily than Nara, for she was the substance of the earth, and if she took on a form in air, the earth could yet remain unchanged. And yet, she did so only cautiously, for where she walked the earth bubbled in turmoil, and new mountains rose and valleys sank.
And as for Los, his essence was light and brightness and change, which was by far the most embodied in the sun, and his presence in the world wrought worse upheavals than Materre's. But since the sun was so fluxion anyway, and the other beings, and the earth itself, were kept well away from it, Los could walk on the world easily, and when he grew filled with passion, which was often, for he was a man of bright emotions, the sun churned and spat, but far away on the world, the danger was not great, and the beauty of its pyrotechnic displays was great.
Materre and Los were of the second generation, as were the elder demons. And the gods were much greater, for though the demons had come first, Materre and Los had all manner of experience and knowledge imparted to them from Nara, and discovered in making the world, which the demons as yet had almost completely lacked. But now many of the demons lived in the world, and learned from it, and Materre and Los knew they would not necessarily be greater forever.
At first they were prepared to drive the demons from the world with great violence, but though they still had much power to make great changes to the world as they willed, they could not easily make lesser changes without disrupting the rest of the fabric of the world.
And so, they came together with many of the greatest things of the world, the bright lights and loud sounds, the blowing skies, and tumbling water, and constant rocks and the flowing sand. And they brought forth many more beings, like unto the lesser demons, but formed mostly from the bright strong things of the world, rather than from the darkness.
And they did not have the subtlety of the beings the gods had intended to be brought forth from the world later, for each embodied mostly one large aspect of the world, but because they were less divided, they were strong and mighty, and encompassed that aspect in totality.
Thus came Donner thunderfist, and Blitz brightface into the world, and Olva Foamdrinker, and Thos-skudding-with-the-clouds, and the other of the first demigods, who were greatest, and the young races have simply called "gods", never having known the faces of Materre and Los, or of Nara.