Fully half of the Old Masters were consumed the instant that the elder evil awoke. It rose like a specter, a terrible wave of nothingness from which even the light of the sun could not escape. It reached for the Old Masters, one by one, with hands that warped the very space of the world around it. The Old Masters had sought the infant that they had birthed from a dying star but had instead found a creature weaned off the life of a thousand thousand souls.
Hands of darkness reached first for one Old Master and then another. Each time it fell the Old Master vanished, consumed completely by the elder evil’s hunger. Caught unaware, the remaining few could do little but try to protect themselves. Words spilled from the rest of their flock. A hundred words and incantations were shouted in an arcane tongues. Ice and flames coalesced from nothingness at the will of the Old Masters, as did more esoteric things like purple starlight and living dolls made of pure thought.
As they had when the people of the land first attacked them, the Old Masters directed these manifestations of their power against the elder evil. They fought and strove to keep it at bay, to drive it back to its slumber, drawing power from the places dark and unfamiliar. But all of this was for naught as the elder evil consumed everything the Old Masters attacked it with, growing ever stronger even as it continued to snuff them from existence.
The thirteen watched with horror as one by one the Old Masters disappeared and knew with certainty that the end of the land, even the end of the world was upon them. But even as they saw this they recognized something familiar within the elder evil, something that they and it shared in common. You see, the land had raised the thirteen, molded and shaped them. It was because of the land that they’d grown strong and able. And as it was with them so it was with the elder evil.
When the elder evil had fallen, it had come to rest in the land and the land had provided for it. Like the thirteen the land had fed it and nurtured it, allowing it to grow strong. For, you see, the land does not judge. It does not pick and choose favorites among its children. It gives all who live in it opportunity, the good and the bad, and bids them to take what they need and to grow. Everything in the land was one and the same.
This was the truth that the thirteen had learned from the spirits, and it was in this truth that they found a way to stop the elder evil.
