It all began a million, million years ago, beyond even that, the Nil – silent and shadowy, but as such things go, its shadow after a year grew its own consciousness, resentful for its dependence upon the Nil for its existence and bored with the Nil’s silence, and it called itself Chaos. It wrapped itself in its own darkness and by so doing, brought the spark of consciousness also to the Nil, and light was created around the Nil, forming it into the second of the realms, Convah, heaven of all heavens. And the resonance between Nil’s light and Chaos’ darkness, an eternal low drone that was both sound and source of everything that was afterward brought into existence, and it came to be called the Song of Terra.

The sparks – the electra – did not only multiply around Convah and Chaos, creating other vast, empty realms and further, into stars and moons, but they themselves, gifted with the consciousness of the heavenly realms, changed. It is still not certain even among the gods whether this was whence came the Man of Many Pockets who preceded them: What is certain is that the realms had begun to align with either Convah and the light realms, or Chaos and Terr’des, which as outermost and coldest realm – for it was the darkest, most resentful part of Nil’s shadow – had wrought fire to warm itself.

And then the electra did something wonderful: they created magic. Or rather, as they created time and space and then multiplied across them, their offspring did until there were so many – with so many different aspects – some became powerful and others consorted themselves to these consolidations. The light electra became spirits and gods, the dark called by Elves the d’row, and their leaders called demons.

Ten in all, the gods and the demons were the Decadei, and some whose stories were more renown: Andromed, Houle and Popol; Zeus and Cromagna; Gelfar; Demogorgon; and Grovuna, Rangi and Anemone. Each of the Decadei dwelt in their own realm for most of time and it is sometimes in their conversations how truly long they had with their spirits coexisted, even pairing or by themselves bringing new gods into being.

As it came, however, Zeus learned the power of using magic to wield the Song of Terra to his own advantage, but so did Demogorgon and Gelfar, the three of them becoming rivals. Zeus’ host of spirits had become impatient with infinity, and asked to be given a new form and so Zeus used magic and the elements to satisfy them. Upon Terra he made a hundred million different creatures and plants, eliminated most of them and chose the rest to hold his spirits. When his task complete, he took respite and looked away and so Demogorgon replaced half of Zeus’ spirits with his own.

Zeus was so angry that the Decadei met to arrange a truce between Convah and Terr’des and so, time and space were evenly divided between the gods and demons, and with it Terra and its creatures. The creatures were weaker, perishable, and so the gods and the demons arranged for the spirits to return between Terra and the heavens in cycles.

But this was still not enough: Demogorgon and his scions were greedy and desirous; and Gelfar and Romera who had been the brightest star in his realm, Gemini, suffered constantly the complaints of their covetous children. "Zeus’ daughters have been gifted with the elements," heard Gelfar, "and their children the jewels of Terra – the wind, lightning and heated rock!"

Eventually the gods took to warring. Three brothers – Andromed, Houle and Popol – were entombed within Terra until their eyes became the oceans, their bones the mountains – they became the Terra’meds, Terra itself. Grovuna, Rangi and Anemone were allowed to govern the fates of those on Terra whose form had been given such comely qualities that they had received the gods’ language and the capacity to create fire, and this was the beginning of wisdom.

Gelfar lost badly, so heated did his house become from their humiliating loss that they were called the Heated House. All of the spirits were now within the houses of Convah and Terr’des, traveling between them under the Destinies’ exclusive guidance. His children yelled and one of them even joined Convah: his eldest and most favored son, Juaellin, God of Sound, had mated with Zeus and Cromagna’s firstborn, Ashley who was Goddess of Water, their union creating the goddess of the seas and the rain.

Demogorgon stoked the fires of powerless Heated House until the venomous mixture hardened and became hatred. But like Nil, hatred cast light that was love, and Demogorgon’s oldest child, hideous and deformed Igar, renounced his darkness and fallen in love with Fenra, Goddess of Air and second eldest of Zeus and Cromagna’s three daughters.

Not only was Demogorgon outraged – Zeus was beside himself, banishing his daughter away with Igar to a small silvery heaven called Argentum. And without telling even Cromagna, he took love and magic – which had been negotiated among the demons and gods their exclusive province – and took himself to Terra, walking among the mortals in consideration of who was worthy of wielding these divine powers.

The gods in order to communicate with each other had created light and d’row messengers, Didapruvnefe and Aentfroghe, who could traverse Terra and the realms and so upon the demon Aentfroghe’s back went Loki, second son to Demogorgon and God of Trickery. He took with him hate, and spied upon Zeus as he gifted his chosen races with love and magic.

In the end, love and hate only were sprung into all manner of beasts: Zeus rounded Terra and saw what Loki had done, so he for once and ever closed off Terra to all but the messengers – even himself – retreated back to Convah and to only a sliver of the furred, feathered, finned and leafed, left the gift of magic. This was the year that time began.

It was naught, Terr’Uproar or the Nil Year, and Zeus crafted the House of Saints for those races, should and whence they perish, whose spirits were bound for divinity. The races were these: Cyclops, tall and peaceful ancestors of Giants and, on the d’row, Trolls; Nymphs, in light of his daughters’ visage, mothers to the Vixens, Dryads, Nyads and half-beasts stripped by Zeus of their intelligence, d’row sirens and harpies; Humans and Dwarves, who came from the underneath to commingle and mate with the Humans; and Elves.

Though Nymphs, Cyclops and the wisest of the Human race, wizards, were given magic and long life, it was the Elves, closest to his own image, who were blessed with eternal life, unique lights and powers, warrior spirits, the Women unbloodied, the Men unbearded, and all in three sizes: tiny, sparkling Faielves, their hair as yellow as daylight, their offspring the Sprites, the Pixies, Brownies and the Human loving lar’pinnits; Short Elves, who came to live and mate among Humans and Dwarves; and the tall Elves, shy and reticent with their spellcraft who hid in the woods.

But just as Zeus was about to forever close the heavens to all but the messengers, others stole into Terra – from Cromagna to Demogorgon, who had conjured all manner of demons that he carried with him into Terr’des – and passed along their enchantments to such a plethora of beings that Zeus brought down punishments upon all of them: the ice-dwelling Cromags Zeus poxed to their demise, the Trolls’ spirits were sundered forever from them.

But the effect was done – and marvelously inventive were the demons and gods: With the Trolls spiritless, Demogorgon used his love of serpents and mated them to produce Dragons, and when he experimented similarly upon Zeus’ beloved Cyclops to produce ogres, Zeus withdrew his children from Terra to one of his more pastoral heavens. And Demogorgon was not the namesake of his Terran and Terr’dean antecedents: When the self-proclaimed Prince of Demons finished making Dragons in that short space of time, his daughter Medusa coupled with a sea-serpent, bringing Gorgons, whom Zeus made infertile, and the medusa, whose intelligence Zeus struck, whose beauty he made hideous.

But so the tesseract was forever brought between the gods, the demons and the mortals of Terra. Gelfar’s son Oflomemnon had stuck the gifted races with the Emotions; Zeus’ daughters, seeking the patronage of the Elves and the mortal races, produced the djinn Mercurius, so capriciously destructive that Zeus snapped him out of Terra just as the Convahan gate closed.

Before he was consigned to a lamp, Mercurius had favored the goddesses and took the great races and elements of water, air, fire and land to insist a whole new family of beings, the elementals who fed upon the limitless energy of the Song. There were light and dark among these: those whose goodness led them included airy Sylph and Terran Gnomes; the d’row that plagued aquan lemures and larvae, fire salamanders, Gremlins and Sylvia corrupted by malcraft into a variety of singing and seducing she-breeds.

Mercurius was done with, but not the gods and goddess, who petitioned the Destinies to reopen the gateway between their world and the mortals who had come not only to please them, but to patronize and pray to them in vast numbers. The Destinies allowed each of the gods an empath – a beast, a being of his or her choosing – to dwell in the Terran realm, delivering to and for them messages, spells and bindings, but who must feed upon ten spirits to continue their existence; for the Chaotic, Terr’dean and their kindred realms, a special price – though it pleased the demons: to feed upon a chaste spirit every twenty-four days. Many of the gods chose no empath and many of the demons chose one (or more). The Destinies reviewed the gods’ powers and allowed, based upon various measures – conjuration, willpower, patronage – the gods, goddesses and demons to influence both their decisions about the fates of everyone in Terra and much more: feelings and dreams, through the separator realm called Limbo; birds and beasts; oceans, mountains and the weather.

Armed with their demon-messenger’s versatility, their chosen empaths and the gods’ lack thereof, no less the ability to influence, infect and inflict, the demons set to war against the gods, both on Terra and between the realms. From their place in time which has no realm, the Destinies, alert and intuitive, had sensed such was coming and themselves visited Terra before Zeus sealed it, taking back with them stones and gems of every variety – carnelian and garnet to diamonds and pearls – and assigned one each to every god, Elf and sentient mortal. Thus came about birthstones and the road to Convah, portal stones: for Terrans, their spirit took up their rock upon entering Convah, or fell through to Terr’des if they had been wicked; for gods and demons, any successful conjuration now needed their birthstones to effect their own physical entry and manifestation. When war was sprung, the Destinies threw the stones back into Terra in places where it would take millennia for them to be found.

Thus Terr’Uproar, the year time began, entered the Terran realm, allegiances forged – and forced, wizards creating the first spells, hexes, bindings, weapons and magickal beasts. They had also learned quickly to use Terra’s offerings, and so herbs and blood and many other things were mixed into powders, potions and poultices. In the naught year, an Elf named Bylikros – the first ever to have magic coursing through her blood, eldest of all the Elves and whose children had merged with Humans and brought and taught about the first wizards – communed mind to mind with the leaders of the other Elven clans spread throughout Terra, warning them of the demonic insurgency.

Many of the other clans concurred with her assessment, citing the dark temptation that stirred in their dreams. The Volcans, a clan of half-Elves who had renounced their Human side, and the Si’koyans rallied to the side of the Bylikrans; others, smaller and weary of the bestial Human and Dwarf tribes, most barely scratching their lives out of the mud, began the millennial retreat from the Terran realm, into hidden places that shared the same space, but not, called pocket-realms.

But there were a quarter of the Elven clans d’row, who renounced the gods who had given them so much and made patronage to Prince Demogorgon and the House of Terr’des. The War of the Elves was begun.

The Dark Elves banded altogether and took their occupation in the great forest just north of the Si’koyan Elves. They created the pocket-realm Darkwood and declared – in arrogation of even Demogorgon – honorifics superior to mere princes: King Orcus and Queen Axorn invaded the Bylikran wood with swords and arrows, slaughtering half of them and bringing Bylikros to shroud her clan in a pocket of mist during a truce to gather their dead. The Bylikran Elves declared Bylikros their Queen and namesaked the pocket-realm for her.

That is not to say Bylikros retreated: Only to protect their citizens and their city, the most advanced in the Terran world, did they do so and when they did, the Bylikran army and the armies of Elves from other clans chased Orcus across vast stretches of land to the ocean, where lived the Short Elves, half-Elves and Gelfar’s Gelflings, as well as the warrior Vixens and their mates, the Nixies, aquan sons of the Nymphs.

The Vixens and the Nixies had made many children, and had been taught by the Bylikrans to use magic and the forge. They were ready for Orcus and Axorn, their leader Zibtwill being a communing wizard and student of Queen Bylikros. With light forces led by Bylikros’ son Prince Ma’rhechu on their flank and Zibtwill ready at their fore, the Darkwooders were crushed with sword and sorcery.

Against the enlightened two hundred and fifty years prior to the War of the Elves – when the Chest of Rainbows, first ever among magickal treasures, was made by the gods of Argentum in honor of Fenra and Igar’s oath of trust to one another – the period of Re-Enlightenment that followed the defeat of Darkwood and the end of the Dark Elves was pocked with relative disappointments from the perspective of the light gods.

The Volcans retreated into Volcan, renouncing all forms of godly patronage in addition to their banishment of Human feeling; newly thriving Bylikros, Si’koya and the other of the tall Elven clans chose in unison to hide for wont of the demons’ next foray into the Terran world, as much as for their experience behind the pocket veils, where their dreams went undisturbed.

The other magickal races too mostly migrated into their own interests, leaving only scattered Dwarves, Short Elves and halflings. All over the world they went, without the power to make their own pockets, so they opted for islands large and small. Even along the west coast where Orcus had met his defeat, where Humans had barely begun to arrive, the Vixens and Nixies; half of the Short Elves on the first white-oak Elven ships; Dryads, Leprechauns, Brownies and Gelflings; Sprites and Pixies, Faielves and Sylph made their voyage across the ocean to a land they named in honor of Sylvania, Queen of the Sylvia and bringing the term sylvan to describe both the woodland so loved by the Sylph and also the tall Elven races who veiled themselves there.

The race of Human ascended in the first millennium, enough wizards teaching others that witchcraft – spellcraft, mostly with herbs and potions, by those without magickal blood – came into being, and through the Song of Terra and emissaries from Bylikros, thaumaturgy, metallurgy, writing and laws, the arts, the kiln, the wheel, woodworking, cement and steel. Dwarves, whose populations had begun to dwindle, not grow, learned well and, since most of their interest was in mining, smithing, gemcraft and the like, the ten great clans – the Verdish, the Azim, the Qua Haadrin and Fomorian among them – went underground and into mountains. But enough participated with Humans that their gifts were integral to the building of their towns and the creation of merchantry and trade, and kingdoms would come to be built upon their shoulders.

Prince Demogorgon was livid with the failure and hubris of King Orcus and Queen Axorn. He trapped the Queen’s spirit in a bottle and named Orcus the Prince of the Undead, his army the spirits of the d’row Elves who had fought under his command: half were thrown into the deepest, hottest pits of Terr’des for eternity, the others sent back without bodies, wandering and haunting. Called the Cursed, they were ghosts, ghasts and willowisps, wraiths and poltergeists. As for Axorn and Orcus’ birthstones, he obtained them from Zeus and cast them randomly through the Song, where they were lost in the Terran realm.

Various punishments awaited those left on Terra, whether from Zeus or Demogorgon’s hand even the gods did not say. Sylvan d’row, already doomed to eternal banishment by the rest of mortal and Elfkind, grew gnarled and rotted. Their magic flowed away, their brows grew thick until they resembled monstrous Igar, and they ended Terr’Sol-despising orcs, hobgoblins and bugbears; the most powerful were altered into double-walking doppelgangers.

Little better fated were the Short Elves, who kept their intelligence and could even spend limited time in the daylight – Short Orcs, or Goblins, they became known, and they were further transmuted and altered into dumber imps, kobold and the like. The Trolls were punished entirely, their existence shunted toward the night and, since Zeus had already taken their spirits, altered into spirit-feeding, corpse-eating ghouls.

The d’row Humans were called, like the spirits of the Dark Elves, the Cursed, and they were sacrificed; transmogrified with other beasts and demons, some permanently like the ser’folk, others – the wer’betes – only at night; grafted with parts from animals, even plants; and turned into undead ghouls and vampires.

The dreams that had been used to seduce them became neverending nightmares for these misguided in all their permutations, whom never again withstood day’s light, lost all capacity for love and happiness and retreated to the underparts of the world they shared with the light races.

The first millennium came and went, and with it Queen Bylikros. Ma’rhechu was made King of Bylikros, and he traveled readily across the years between his realm and the main. Humans impressed him and he loved them despite their crudeness, greed and drinking themselves with berries. Still, they enlightened from their insolence and learned to govern wisely, even make treaties with their enemies, and within a year of the founding of the first permanent settlement – still the largest in Terra, called Zehdr City – by the House of Hafer’ty in 1367, Matriarch Endora and Patriarch Ascher summoned all the leaders west of the Verdish Elf Mountains to form the first accords of Hafer’ty – and the first kingdom, Asch’endra, and they its first Queen and King.

The year 1369 was the first year of Pax Hafer’ty, during which the d’row were suppressed – though the new rituals of burying and preserving corpses brought multiplication to the numbers of Cursed, undead and those that feed upon them. The Destinies in concert with their trapped Terra’med brothers, prevented the entire host of gods and demons from interfering with Terra – even kicking out the messenger-gods for 631 years from their sky-palaces – and though the empaths who remained in the mortal realm – beasts of all size and variety – tried to prevent civilization from fostering, encourage conflict and use the elements for their mayhem, they were thwarted as much as their demonic masters and could not even communicate through the tesseract with them.

As the second millennium approached, gods and demons alike either complained relentlessly to the God-king and the God-queen, exhorted amongst themselves, pined away or dwindled into to constant pleasure-seeking, even adapting the Humans’ wine, sprinkled with their divinity, into ambrosia. Zeus and Cromagna watched in futility as the heavens declined into listless gossip, hedonism, pettiness and finally, fighting among themselves, even as they became forgotten in the stories and dreams of Terrans.

Meanwhile without the gods, kingdoms had spread across the newly civilized lands called Hafer’ty: Asch’endra and, east of the Verdish Mountains, Conschala and Joh’oprinia; across the sea and in it, Mibwaze, Zcembrota and Azimq’haadrin, Liechtan.

Unfortunately for Terra, there was a weakness in the Destinies’ spell, found by Loki the trickster-god but soon, too, by Igar the wind-god. Both of them sneaked into dreams and aided the messenger-gods back to their lairs. And Loki, who had never declared his empath, did so with a flying sea serpent, the Lokicouatl. He could not sneak through the hole he had found, so he met his empath at the aperture to receive two Terr’dean beasts into the world of Elves and mortals, a wolf who ever seeks to swallow the stars, whose coat is black and blue of fallen night and can appear as anything it wishes; and a tiny worm from the coldest depths of the oceans, wretched and coiled in the icy mud and found by Loki when gods could roam there. He gave the worm a growth potion and by 2000’s turning, it stretched along the bottom of Terra enough to meet its own tail.

Igar and Demogorgon returned to the opening with their allies, which included every god and goddess but Convah, Heated House and the still-empty Saintshouse, as well as the demonic host. The opening was on the island of Sylvania, and the gods and demons both used the magickal races who lived their to play out their enmity and vengeance against one another, some of the gods even taking thrill of the bloodsport.

**

By the end of two millennia, Sylvania – chosen, fatally, for its resonance with the Song of Terra – was bustling with commerce and interaction: Giants from Carouva’env, new Azimq’haadrin arrivals to the north islands, and hardy folk from Asch’endra and Conschala’s west coastlines. The ground became blessed and the animals – deer, fox, birds – as well. The she-races adapted themselves into all the local elements: the Nymphs birth a colony of Nixies; Queen Sylvania and King Ariel, dominion in the airspace over Sylvania’s far shore; the Dryads into the island’s oaktrees, from whom they learned to charm the wood away for building and manufacture; the Vixens who preferred the woodland creatures took to the sky on the winged deer; and the Nyads of the water began seducing the Men in the nearby wer’mere tribe.

The small people had prospered too: Pixies and Faielves occupied the sky not claimed by the Sylph, Sprites adapted to riding dragonflies. The Short Elves, dominant among the lesser populations of Brownies, Gelfling and Leprechauns, even called it their homeland after the Gnomes moved away.

And so if anything could be said of the Sylvanians at the turning of 1999 into 2000, it is that they were complacent and arrogant, since most of them were either immortal or blessed with long centuries of life. Those whose spirits were open to the d’row were filled with all the demons’ villainy, and overnight they spread across the island to kill their lovers, their neighbors, their kin. Pax Hafer’ty was done and the island turned red.

It took the Terra-goddess Sigrid from Heated House, who spied upon her fellow gods, to betray Gelfar and tell Zeus of the infighting, but Zeus, far from angry with Igar and his followers, was mollified and in fact demanded that Sigrid show him wear the tear in the tesseract was. There he found his daughter and her halforc lover with all the lesser gods, and across from them every demon but Demogorgon. He dispatched all of them and set himself there, pulling away the veil as he watched the ruination below and bore witness to how his blessed magickal offspring used their powers against one another.

Supremely disaffected, he conferred with the Prince of Terr’des to end the war and together, they split the island with lightning, and with it every living thing on Sylvania. For his part, Zeus allowed the chastened races of the western island to continue as they had, although they did not trust one another and chose a Human wizard named Claus to govern them. Sylvania died, Ariel fled far beyond Joh’oprinia to distant mountains with his daughters, and the island became known as West Catastrophe for all that had transpired there.

The east islanders were twisted by Demogorgon: tiny folk became willowisps, the she-races mutilated into his shapeshifting Bullwomen, the Gorgons; the Short Elves into Goblins; and the others into kobolds and Gnolls. Most of the woodland creatures died out after he corrupted two of them into wer’betes, but two adapted well and fed therefrom upon the west island prey: the bats Demogorgon grew into vampiresses and the foxes into wer’wolves.

The House of Terr’des made a pact with Convah and the Destinies, Igar was forced to declare fealty to Zeus and Fenra rejoined his house. The gods and the demons were forbidden forever from bringing such open wrath and conflict into the world as had happened in the Catastrophic War.

So the gods and the demons resorted to secrecy.

**

Marvelously for the gods, the demons stayed quiet throughout the centuries after the Catastrophic split and Ariel’s exile. That is not to say evil did not occur: Enough d’row wizards and darkness-drawn magickals were influenced and influential that wars broke out even as nations like Igretav and Peshwabro were hewn: The white-skinned Liechtans, for instance, aggressed and invaded the kingdom of Azimq’haadrin from 1983 to the signing of the Waz’im Armistice that led to their withdrawal the declaration of victory by both sides. In the War of Torches, the island nation of Mibwaze split north and south; Azimq’haadrin’s own white-skinned occupied the westfold and seceded after the War of Taryn into the Zientian Republic, a new populist form that replaced royalty with empire, senators and regional governors.

Despite all this, in 2646 the eleven nations established a commonwealth: for safe passage over Lakesea and the outer oceans; exchanging goods and ambassadors; rights to new lands and unclaimed islands; and for Joh’oprinia, fortification against the marauding Outland and Darkwood north. It was also the year that the Great North Wall of Joh’oprinia, the largest structure in the world, began its three-century construction. Little was the first Treaty of Hafer’ty to do with embassy, much for the powerful merchants and the mayoral councils they generally ran.

Religions had sprung up too, each given to patronage of the three great houses of gods: the Zeusan Church, led by the Pope in Zehdr City, Asch’endra’s capital, honored Convah and the seven new saints; the Matriarch-led Clerickal Church spurned saints and demons for the light-gods, particularly Gelfar’s Heated House, though they did not deny Zeus’ supremacy; and in the Church of Terr’des, loose bands of dark witches met for carnal covens.

The existence of the religions, the organized masses of prayer and blessing for their gifts, might have been why the gods of light and dark were bequieted for the stretch of history that came to 2650, where the last conflagration between the countries of Hafer’ty was settled and peace once more held fast hearts crowned and common.

Another period began, the years of the Pax Zehdr. The gods of Argentum, their realm spread across Lakesea, loved and admired the Terrans, their mirth, ingenuity and pluck against such powers as gods and Dragons. Igar gave the Chest of Rainbows to a lad named Chlymadco, from the city founded in 1367 and renamed for his powerful, beloved father, Mayor Christopher Zehdr. Chlymadco was a young wizard, and wise beyond his sixteen years, and when he heard his father confide to a fellow councilor about a swarm of Goblin ships from East Catastrophe, eager for maidens to ravage and youth to fill their bellies. He took the Chest of Rainbows out to the capital harbor, releasing thousands of rainbows across the night sky, over the incoming fleet. The Goblins laid their anchors well offshore and ran below-deck to escape the brightness; when daylight truly did come, they stayed thus and the next night the whole sequence repeated, and again, until the Goblins abandoned their effort for all time.

Pax Zehdr ended with Chlymadco’s death in 2729, just shy of eighty years; his father had long passed into sainthood, and the city was in other hands and host to an annual summit of fellow mayors from Asch’endra and Conschala. Ambassador Zehdr had made powerful allies in Zcembrota for Fan O’chovin, then the seat of Asch’endra’s Queen Mystinium; he vanished for years in the wilderness, forging bonds with the magickal races that had largely abandoned contact with mortals and establishing, from Vixens to Giants, the beginning of the common language – even as he wrote vast tracts of translation, Nixies and Gold Dragons among them, using their own stories and words.

During all this time and after Zehdr’s death and the end of the Pax Zehdr, Prince Ma’hadrin journeyed from Bylikros at his father King Ma’rhechu’s behest, his troth Chext’a, or Chamberlain Gregarcantz sometimes at his side during audiences with Mystinium – whose Val Tress house, arisen to Queendom in 2698 to serve an astonishing fourscore of her ninety-six years when she died, only for the matriarchy to last another generation in power, leaving them with only a barony on the Asch’endra-Conschalan border. Ma’hadrin had prepared well for Queen Physte’s abdication and when her consort King Paul took his life, knew that the next monarch of Asch’endra would be her mother’s younger sister, Archduchess Moncrovia of Carias, who held Asch’endra in regency from 2792 until just before her death in 2848, and whose passion for blue roses named her successor dynasty. Her fostered daughter, Moncrovia II, betrothed King Gygar and named theirs the Moncrovian dynasty, from 2848 until 2989, the longest of any ever, anywhere.

In 2793 Dimatox, Goddess of Theft, stole the bottle from Demogorgon that contained Axorn, the d’row Queen who had attacked Bylikros and declared herself superior to the demon-prince. Dimatox released the spirit through the tesseract into birth, naming the child-to-be Xorus, so evil he grew quickly and slew his mother from within her womb, clawed his way into the world and ate her until, in three days, he was fully grown. He fled to the Darkwood of Joh’oprinia and there learned a plethora of the dark arts: he raised the dead and enslaved them, and in his dreams learned from his demon mother how to corrupt and manipulate the Song of Terra itself. He grew especially fond of emanating vast amounts of opaline fog to surround his corpses, and marked the day for his return to Asch’endra.

**

In 2849 the Moncrovian dynasty was only a year old when Queen Moncrovia and King Gygar, despite the importance of their castle’s location in Fan O’chovin, commissioned for a new castle to be built around the city and foothill of Carias, just west of the Val Tress barony, home of Moncrovia’s cousins and more importantly, situated near the Conschalan border.

In Conschala, brothers Beast and Khal Trodome from the House of Trodome, a lusty family who reembraced their emotions, had emerged adventurously from Volcan for Beast to steal Queen Physte in 2792 from King Paul and end the Val Tress’ rule of Asch’endra, taking her to his home-realm, where they became monarchs.

Khal joined his brother, but left his daughter Lemoya Trodome in the prime Terran realm: saint, locksmith, thief and inventress of architecture, she was also mother of Conschala’s King Lineil Trodome. And she was teacher of her "disproportionate" style of architecture to many, including he who King Lineil had commissioned in the construction of his own palace at the foot of the river, all of it bearing his name. King Lineil was flattered when Queen Moncrovia requested the recommendation of a proper architect, and thus came one of Lemoya’s apprentices, Ohrt, to review sites around Carias to build the new Castle Moncrovia.

But Ohrt was a Terr’dean as well, who worshipped Eeegh, Goddess of Destruction; he chose a hexed valley that he dreamed would give his mistress access into the Terran world, received Moncrovia and Gygar’s approval for both site and layout, and brought in slaves to start construction. He laid the stairs and the first story, began the wall and upon the gateway placed two gargoyles – Eeegh’s empaths.

Dimatox was watching her sister’s patron as well, and when she discovered that Axorn’s birthstone – lost during Demogorgon’s punishment of the d’row Elf-queen – lay beneath the new Castle Moncrovia just north of Carias City. Against Eeegh’s protestations, Dimatox allured her Terran son from Denlineil, where he had set himself and grown an affection for a local slavetrader’s daughter, to Ohrt’s valley.

Dimatox charmed the dark architect Ohrt as well, and he had his diggers dig beneath the construction until a tunnel had been hollowed from one end of Castle Moncrovia to the other, in search of Axorn – now Xorus’ – birthstone. Eeegh took vengeance and plied her destruction when Ohrt found and gave the stone – an opal – to the dark wizard and after Xorus left, all manner of accidents befell the site of the palace-building.

King, queens and emperors alike had discovered the wisdom of ruling with wisdom, and so High Wizarders had been brought about to give counsel and assistance in battle. Gygar and Moncrovia selected a young communing wizard named Oromasus, who upon the moment he crossed the gargoyle gates of the future Castle Moncrovia, was almost thrown off his feet by the valley’s malefic resonance, the residue of the demoness’ presence, and Ohrt’s possession. He raced across the courtyard where Queen Moncrovia was smelling her newly planted blue rose bushes, and alerted her to his intuition. Construction was stopped and Castle Moncrovia built some distance away, but while he was hung, Ohrt cast a pox upon the Moncrovian dynasty and forecast its end, and then he died.

By 2850 Castle Moncrovia was completed. The citizens of Carias – the elders grateful for the safety of the growing Moncrovian army, the merchants for the draw of the monarchy, families for the employment – renamed their city Moncrovia, dissolved their council and ceded authority to Queen Moncrovia and King Gygar.

By this time also, Crown Prince Ma’hadrin of Bylikros and his father’s Chamberlain Gregarcantz had established seven years of official relations with Moncrovia, five before she was sovereign. Ma’hadrin concentrated upon Asch’endra and Gregarcantz upon Lineil’s Conschala, growing fond of the Conschalans until in 2846 he resigned his commission to King Ma’rhechu and became Lineil’s High Wizarder.

Ma’hadrin too was close to those in his embassy – Oromasus and Moncrovia especially – but missed his troth, Chext’a, who no longer left the Bylikran realm. He convinced Ma’rhechu – who grieved the length of his son’s absence, no less his former chamberlain and centuries-long friend – to reopen that portion of Bylikros to Terra where he could visit Chext’a more often, for access to pocket-realms required not only wisdom, magickal ability and knowledge of the unique intricacies of each passage, but they depended upon fluctuations in the Song of Terra, making the passages hard to predict and harder still to ford. Bylikros remained open until 2879.

**

During 2849 and 2850, Xorus had wrought petty hexes upon those he disdained – merchants with heavy thumbs, an innkeeper who glared too long at him, his fire-tongued landlady – in Lineil City. He longed for his Darkwood lair, stroked his opal until he fell asleep every night, and grew angry each morning when his goddess did not contact him about how to wield it. At the port of Lineil he corrupted the Song, setting a lightning storm upon the dock and setting two oarcraft afire. He visited the local graveyard, could not necromance its corpses for his experiment due to its blessed ground and so dug one up, dragged it past the cemetery wall and did it anyway.

And he wooed Ursela, the daughter of a local dealer in slave laborers who was intended to Lord Sipsids, in possession of a large island in Lakesea called the Isle of Sipsids where he made his home. Xorus stormed their betrothal upon the island and hexed them: They did not survive their first night together and over the next six years, Xorus took occupation of the Sipsids manor, enshrouded the Isle of Sipsids in mist and set about mining a prison deep enough for the spirits of Lord and Lady Sipsids, whom he had captured in their fresh graves, to be forever together and forgotten – using the corpses of all Lord Sipsids’ kin and ancestors to do so.

Gygar, who was in the audience and witness to the curse, stayed the night and found the dead lovers in each other’s arms. He returned to Moncrovia, declared an end to all slavery in their honor and had King Lineil do the same, and within a fortnight was himself dead, victim of Ohrt’s pox.

Queen Moncrovia betrothed one of Gygar’s cousins, Oliver, but he too – in 2855 – succumbed to Ohrt’s curse, and Moncrovia never fell in love again, creating the role of High Advisor to the Queen in honor of a throne half filled. That is not to say theirs was not fruitful: on the last day of 2851, Prince Fraher was born; in 2852, Princess Zilog; in 2854, Prince Leeds; and twins Barry and Sindy in 2856 after Oliver had joined Gygar in the royal catacombs beneath Castle Moncrovia.

Ma’hadrin killed Xorus in 2856. During a visit with Chext’a, Ma’hadrin discovered that at Chext’a’s invitation King Ma’rhechu had arrived with his new chamberlain, who was an oracle with a vision to tell: Xorus was not only the demon-seed of Dimatox, but his spirit that of Axorn, the d’row Bylikran who had rent the sylvan Elves into war against Ma’hadrin’s grandmother, Bylikros. Axorn’s spirit, restless to avenge herself against a spirit safely at Zeus’ side, had finally broken through Xorus’ dreams and revealed these truths to him. Without Bylikros to destroy, Xorus was plotting to raze Bylikros, enslave their dead and slaughter all of King Ma’rhechu’s family – starting with Ma’hadrin and Chext’a. They deemed preemption, and Ma’hadrin, aboard the grey-ship Bugbear, took the Elven route: a river that led to Lakesea as invisible to the mortal world as everything else within the Bylikran pocket.

Even as Ma’hadrin was on course for the shrouded Isle of Sipsids, he was first to do so: None had come the cursed island to punish Xorus for what had happened in 2850, and a courtier of King Lineil who dared even mention the crime was found as ashen and stiff as the Sipsids had been.

Ma’hadrin, more skilled in wielding his magickal light than any Elf before or since, had grown capable as Xorus in his use of the Song of Terra; he had even written a tribute to it. His power was lavender in color, and had been turned from curing-light into a mighty missile when as a child he had been bathed in the blood of the last living Violet Dragon. He dispensed the Xoran fog, found the hidden inlet to Sipsids Manor, plied a path across the accursed grounds and found corpses mining and hauling obsidian from a volcano at whose base the estate rested. They were unused to invaders, and so did not stand his way though in his mercy, Ma’hadrin released all those he encountered from their enslavement and they crawled back into their graves.

Ma’hadrin met Xorus in a haunted room, the d’row necromancer in the process of torturing one of the Sipsids ghosts he had ensnared with his fog. They blasted each other – Xorus in a light-circle that allowed him to levitate off the floor – with a brilliant array of weapons: bolts, electric balls and lightning that rocked the seabottom as far north as Joh’oprinia, as far east as Liechtan, and in Castle Moncrovia as well.

They chased each other across the island, Xorus shouting hexes upon Bylikros, Ma’rhechu and Chext’a until they were back in the room they had started, where Ma’hadrin cast his last purple-light assault upon Xorus, leaving him shattered and groveling. Xorus grabbed his opaline stone from his robe; its light surrounded his body, burned him to a cinder and fell to the floor, glowing still in his ashpile, but before Ma’hadrin could find a way to shatter the stone, it exploded and vanished.

Ma’hadrin’s attention to his ambassadorship began to decay and in 2879, two years after Moncrovia’s High Wizarder Oromasus departed from his first life, Ma’hadrin returned home to Bylikros and convinced Ma’rhechu to recede from the Terran realm and since Gregarcantz had abandoned contact with his people, there was never any contact between Asch’endra and the Elves again.

Ma’hadrin and Chext’a became hermits within their Bylikran palace, avoiding their families even, until he became convinced from a rising corruption in the Song of Terra that Xorus – now Terr’des’ God of Black Magic, in possession as he had left mortal life of his opaline portal-stone – had found a way into Bylikros. Ma’hadrin left a papyrus note renouncing his crown upon his palace door and so quickly fled with Chext’a that she did not even have a chance to say goodbye to her own father, Ver’Sol Greenlight. After they reached the undiscovered backside of Mount Carias the first week of Zynlester 2879, Chext’a would ever see anyone but her troth – and her firstborn Val’ha, one hundred ninety-five years later – again.

Queen Moncrovia in 2903 died brokenhearted and ashamed, itself a shame for all the glories and accomplishments of her reign. Her eldest son, Crown Prince Fraher, had betrothed Lucinda a d’row Volcan heretic who was recognized as High Priestess of Asch’endra’s Terr’dean religion, she who had taught Ohrt – and Xorus – the necromantic arts. Fraher and Lucinda were banished, sent away in secret to the Isle of Sipsids where corpses still worked endlessly, mindlessly moving rocks and repairing the destruction of Ma’hadrin and Xorus’ battle, and still shrouded with curse and fog as it would be for two hundred and fifty years. On the Isle of Sipsids Fraher and Lucinda – even the islands around Sipsids furthered themselves over the centuries – produced a stillborn, Prince Banus for their banishment, and Prince Colan, who began the tradition of crossing Lakesea to steal his mate. Fraher’s line was forgotten and should have been ended, but to the detriment of the future they practiced their black magic, bred and awaited their chance for vengeance.

Queen Zilog died in 2912 after nine years’ rule, her consort King Dennis completing their reign in 2931. While the Asch’endran monarchy proceeded through the Moncrovian dynasty – Dennis II until 2955, Dennis III, who reigned until 2983 and his troth another two years – to its demise with Queen Fly and King Arbogast, who drowned at sea in 2989 on visit to North Mibwaze’s heirless, dying King, the world outside Asch’endra had changed as well: Old Liechtan had become an empire, the Republic of New Leictania; the last of the Volcans had left Conschala for good, leaving only Lineal Trodome; Joh’oprinia had completed the Northern Wall; and negotiations with a twelfth regional empire, the Eastern Islands, had failed and brought a minor war between them and the Azimq’haadrians over rights to Phehek Ev’ge’u Island, homeland of the Black Dwarves and seat of their kingdom’s civilization. Cromags to the north of Joh’oprinia’s vast wall built ships to get around it, and began besieging the new settlements of the Reiglo Islands and northwest Conschala.

Crown Princess Mystinium II, though aligned with the Clerickal Church, requested that the Zeusan Pope and High Cleric alike – and every Synod matriarch and archbishop, patriarch and abbess, monk, priestess and prior, in every city, town and village – burn sacrificial pyres in perpetuity for an entire year of mourning when the King, Queen and their High Wizarder drowned, and it was so done.

Queen Mystinium reached far back in time – to Archduchess Moncrovia’s regency and Moncrovia II’s reign – for the name of her new dynasty: Blue Rose. And it was also the time of Oromasus’ chosen return, to a friendly old couple from the Asch’endran trading town of Apocania. Though only fifteen when Mystinium took her throne in 2989, Oromasus accepted her offer and once more took the position of High Wizarder.

And he took possession of Dervish, one of the Nine Swords of Ariadne, a gift to each of the sovereigns by the gods of Argentum in 2900 for their advancement of peace and prosperity – excepting Conschala, for Ariadne’s disapproval of the House of Trodome. Joh’oprinia had received the Book of Ceremony, and the Outlands Ariadne’s hidden temple where the Swords and Book must be brought to successfully invoke Nirvana, realm of the Emotions, and command the will of every living being.

2990, the second year of Blue Roses, was the Age of Insipirility, its hero an explorer and inventor named Andronicus Flooher’ty, who wrote and negotiated the accords that year of the Second Treaty of Hafer’ty. Insipirility – a loving doctrine of home, hearth, family, friends and fealty – became the quest of each knight and Queen’s man of the Blue Rose army, and a fractious rebellion within the Joh’oprinian capital to their line of Kings Percivale. Flooher’ty passed into sainthood in 3000, the Patron of Time for his work establishing the Terran calendar and unified measurements for time’s passing.

In 2995 North Mibwaze, waning under the High Wizarder’s regency, searched every parchment, every cavewall etching and wisewoman’s tongue in search of even the most distant of an heir to sterile late King Moondropht, before they petitioned Queen Mystinium for commonwealth status. The wizard abdicated when she approved their request, retiring to a village called Pearl to spend her last days. In her place, Mystinium nominated a communing viceroy for the North Mibwazans’ vote. By their referendum and until 3010 when the boy-wizard Lath-vecat – born the first day of 3000 when Saint Flooher’ty died and Xorus returned – assumed the viceroy’s mantle, Gregarcantz, who had renounced his high counsel to the Elf-king Ma’rhechu, left the aging Volcan palace of the aging Volcan King of Conschala for Quasa City and the shining palace of North Mibwaze.

To enter Terra for revenge and acquisition of Ariadne’s Swords in the first days of the third millennium, Xorus gave his birthopal to the demon-messenger Aentfroghe and onto his empath First Wraith, which brought the portal-stone to him who would first conjure and be possessed by the demon-god, a young Joh’oprinian Baron named Cry.

Xorus came, nearly achieving his goal but for Ariadne’s Curse against the Swords and Book’s coming together for one hundred years. Xorus misjudged and was a day too soon and the moment he crossed the Joh’oprinian border for the Book of Ariadne, he was struck back to Terr’des holding only the Lovesword, and the Swords across the spectrum of realms: some to the bottom of Terra’s deepest waters, others to Terr’dean and light realms, and four – Dervish, Dop-splythe, hidden Rada and Crundin – into the respective vaults of Queen Mystinium, Pope Andronicus VIII, noone and the House of Taryn in Azimq’haadrin.

Dimatox gave her demon-son no mercy upon his return to Terr’des, the firekeeper stoking him with her hottest treacheries, burning him with brands that marked his cowardice and failure, and inviting the Terr’dean ruling host to inflict their worst as well onto his hide. He was poisoned and strangled, paraded and ridden upon, spikes through his back and his heels. He was fried in oil, cut apart and sewn together – for the gods who were Demogorgon’s children did not take fondly to the new demons in their midst – and only when decades had passed in Terran time was Xorus released to begin his second attempt.

Before Xorus slid through the tesseract back to Terr’des, however, he set in motion curses against all those he hated: Queen Mystinium became bedridden until her death in 3002; for Oromasus who had given him such trouble in stealing Dervish, he laid a curse upon him and his intended, who turned into a tigress; for Joh’oprinia’s capital, a century’s time before an army of Dragons burned it into the ashes of history; for Lineil, a flood that left only the cornerstone of Lineil’s castle, and noone alive; and for Ma’hadrin and Chext’a, a curse to be delivered by his First Wraith if ever they were found: that she and every subsequent daughter would be killed by the birth of their firstborn, until they were no more.

In the blink of time before Xorus beset the world with his destruction and hexes, before she lay wasting and skeletal and wracked with grief and dread, Queen Mystinium did find love – Joel I, who declared his regency until his own passing in 3041 – and whereupon her deathbed and the massacre of Lineil, Conschala was in the last month of 3000 annexed as a vast duchy and Asch’endra-Conschala born; to honor the line of Kings Dennis, Lineil became Denlineil; and Lineil Stream, Denlineil Stream.

Oromasus began growing older while his tigress lover did not. He kept her in a cage in the High Wizarder’s chambers in Castle Moncrovia, until only a few remembered why he kept her.

Joh’oprinian King Percivale’s High Wizarder Feefthemf went to the Island of Dragons to leaven Xorus’ curse with a prophecy and, aware of Xorus’ other targets as well, chose justice as his cause: If every daughter of Ma’hadrin was to perish from Xorus’ evil, then it would be a daughter of Ma’hadrin who freed Joh’oprinia from its fate. The prophecy cost Feefthemf his life, and his spirit came to haunt the island until such time as his prediction ever came true.

The Isle of Sipsids remained in its foggy shroud and passed from the House of Sipsids into the purchase of the Val Tress barony, the Baroness unaware of the lost line of Fraher still dwelling there.

The First Wraith began its quest for Ma’hadrin and Chext’a.