Caden Law
01-30-09, 09:12 PM
There was a clock ticking, somewhere and somewhen. The actual place and time of it didn't matter, only that the clock kept ticking, kept counting out and counting down what moments remained. Elsewhere, and not necessarily very far from the clock, a curtain was drawn upon a wall that was more concept than material, still sheathed by a darkness born from too many colors, all of them congealing into the pitch black illogic that truly governs creation.
In that darkness, a mandible lifted and became a hand, reaching out into a portrait on the wall, behind the curtain, out of time and place. The portrait was the world, was a continent, was a region whose name has long been forgotten, was a city now buried under a mile of cursed black ash, was a neighborhood collapsed to diamond-like rubble, was a building now compressed into a layer of diamond sharper and harder than Occam's Razor. Through the portrait, the hand reached, into a room that hadn't stood for eons past counting, into a place that survived only in akashic delusions of smithies and forges, and working gods whose followers still raise hammer and tong to molten steel in the echoes of their names.
In the portrait was a man. Not a dwarf, but short enough that myth would forget. Not an elf, but his ears were big enough that poets would confuse. Not a drow, but his skin was dark by nature and soot stained to boot. He wore an apron and leathers, and a sleeveless robe decorated by fallen stars and rising hammers. He worked a hammer of uru on an anvil of solidified knowledge, driving metals together through sheer force of will while liviol burned pungently on candles all around. Sparks and sprays and gusts and bits of the four core elements bled away with each strike, but the smith never deigned to notice them. They were lost to ages, just as this city would be when his maddened work was done.
A thing formed from the beating and subjugation of nature. Neither solid nor liquid, gas or plasma; it as all these things and none of them. It lit with every color of every rainbow any mind could comprehend, and darkened and faded with each strike of the hammer. Burning majesty gave way, by inches and by miles and by the passing of years, to the cold, cruel precision of a weapon. It was worked for the commission of great powers; a king deluded enough to think he deserved it, a nation insane enough to think the power and the knowledge were theirs for the taking, and all of them were gone now, but the work itself remained.
It was almost complete now. Only shaping remained.
And that is when the City of Ng'sal Yamadi died. Not because it was struck down by a vengeful god, as later generations would believe, but because it happened to be there at the time. A great hand reached down from the sky, burning bright with the black light of infinite knowledge, rounded by a halo of numbers forming an absolutely perfect circle. The mile high spire was the first thing to collapse as the hand came in, and before it fell any further the pressure of collapsing atmosphere and escaping winds was enough to flay houses bare and cast children screaming to the fields so many miles away. Down from a place that was inarguably Above all mortal comprehension, the very essence of macrocosmic power applied to solve a truly microcosmic problem.
The smith struck his last, and the weapon's Name lit into place along what could have been a blade or a head or a haft or shaft or handle or chain. He was gone in an instant, his every bone broken in sequence and his insides splayed across the floor as an unfathomably loud bell tolled across the world.
Three times for the survivors, numbering just a few.
Twice for the weapon, its fate sealed to the day it was needed anew.
Once, and only once, for the smith, his work forever done.
The hand closed on the weapon, and in a dark place it was drawn from the portrait. The curtain was left to fall shut again, and within a library beyond reckoning, a scholar admired his commission. He said its name, because he was the only thing living that could still read it; written as it was in a language lost to the ages, a password waiting for the right set of apes to bungle its characters just right and hit the button that might just save the world.
But not just yet, the scholar said to himself with a sage nod. He smiled, the way gods do when they're playing the old ineffable game, a poker face that was all mandibles and compound eyes. Not just yet...
In that darkness, a mandible lifted and became a hand, reaching out into a portrait on the wall, behind the curtain, out of time and place. The portrait was the world, was a continent, was a region whose name has long been forgotten, was a city now buried under a mile of cursed black ash, was a neighborhood collapsed to diamond-like rubble, was a building now compressed into a layer of diamond sharper and harder than Occam's Razor. Through the portrait, the hand reached, into a room that hadn't stood for eons past counting, into a place that survived only in akashic delusions of smithies and forges, and working gods whose followers still raise hammer and tong to molten steel in the echoes of their names.
In the portrait was a man. Not a dwarf, but short enough that myth would forget. Not an elf, but his ears were big enough that poets would confuse. Not a drow, but his skin was dark by nature and soot stained to boot. He wore an apron and leathers, and a sleeveless robe decorated by fallen stars and rising hammers. He worked a hammer of uru on an anvil of solidified knowledge, driving metals together through sheer force of will while liviol burned pungently on candles all around. Sparks and sprays and gusts and bits of the four core elements bled away with each strike, but the smith never deigned to notice them. They were lost to ages, just as this city would be when his maddened work was done.
A thing formed from the beating and subjugation of nature. Neither solid nor liquid, gas or plasma; it as all these things and none of them. It lit with every color of every rainbow any mind could comprehend, and darkened and faded with each strike of the hammer. Burning majesty gave way, by inches and by miles and by the passing of years, to the cold, cruel precision of a weapon. It was worked for the commission of great powers; a king deluded enough to think he deserved it, a nation insane enough to think the power and the knowledge were theirs for the taking, and all of them were gone now, but the work itself remained.
It was almost complete now. Only shaping remained.
And that is when the City of Ng'sal Yamadi died. Not because it was struck down by a vengeful god, as later generations would believe, but because it happened to be there at the time. A great hand reached down from the sky, burning bright with the black light of infinite knowledge, rounded by a halo of numbers forming an absolutely perfect circle. The mile high spire was the first thing to collapse as the hand came in, and before it fell any further the pressure of collapsing atmosphere and escaping winds was enough to flay houses bare and cast children screaming to the fields so many miles away. Down from a place that was inarguably Above all mortal comprehension, the very essence of macrocosmic power applied to solve a truly microcosmic problem.
The smith struck his last, and the weapon's Name lit into place along what could have been a blade or a head or a haft or shaft or handle or chain. He was gone in an instant, his every bone broken in sequence and his insides splayed across the floor as an unfathomably loud bell tolled across the world.
Three times for the survivors, numbering just a few.
Twice for the weapon, its fate sealed to the day it was needed anew.
Once, and only once, for the smith, his work forever done.
The hand closed on the weapon, and in a dark place it was drawn from the portrait. The curtain was left to fall shut again, and within a library beyond reckoning, a scholar admired his commission. He said its name, because he was the only thing living that could still read it; written as it was in a language lost to the ages, a password waiting for the right set of apes to bungle its characters just right and hit the button that might just save the world.
But not just yet, the scholar said to himself with a sage nod. He smiled, the way gods do when they're playing the old ineffable game, a poker face that was all mandibles and compound eyes. Not just yet...