The First Wizard

VIII - Parhon

The air was still and heavy with anticipation. The wizard looked around as he passed the gateway and the great antechamber revealed itself to him.

The circular stone gallery elevated itself in a dome shape to the very top, where the ceiling meshed with the surface ground tiles. The walls were decorated with strange and worn symbols and runes, their meaning lost to time. Blue crystals adorned the gaps in the walls as they lightly illuminated the dark entrance. Further ahead, the wizard saw another archway that opened even deeper into the earth.

The god of knowledge stood by his side as he gazed to the old temple's decay. He stepped forward to the center of the chamber where a large well stood, an opening to the heart stream of the world.

"What is this place?" the wizard asked as the faint blue light of the crystals flickered ever so slightly in the darkness.

The lord of knowledge leaned to the well, and as he reached his hand to it, the wizard saw a viscous purple-red liquid dripping from where he had submerged his arm.

He turned to the wizard as he reached further down to the well. "An old temple. A very, very old temple." The wizard heard a clicking sound and as the god took his arm from the well. The viscous liquid began to pour out from the well. It raced down on small indentures in the ground and quickly surrounded the circular room, climbing the walls to fill the inscribed runes. With a snap of his fingers, the god set the liquid ablaze and the room was illuminated by the glowing stream in the floor and the walls.

Various colors dominated the temple as the runes emitted different colors with thousands of different hues, all brightly illuminated by the liquid coursing through them.

"Pretty," the wizard mused over the colors dancing around him.

The god let out a small smile at the wonder in the wizard's eyes. Then, he took off both his gloves and began to expertly manipulate the light. At his command, the once vague patterns of geometric shapes in their thousands of hues morphed together as the god of knowledge built a clearer picture from the shapes in the antechamber.

"Do you still remember what you saw in the book, Thalon?" the god asked. Before him, the god was slowly changing reality as he manipulated the light.

"How could I forget? I saw how the gods created all the kin. That they gave us part of their essence and that of the void so that when we die, they can absorb our souls and become stronger," the wizard said as despair dominated his entire being.

"You know only half of it, my child," the god said. Suddenly, the chamber itself changed. The light overwhelmed the chamber walls, ceiling, and floor as the god used the light to bring a visage of an older world to life in the chamber.

The vast infinity of space, stars, and the planets stretched out and revealed themselves to the wizard. The two beings floated high above the clouds. Below them was the primordial world of Vaelia, still nothing but a formless lump of rock, floating aimlessly through the galaxy.

"When the gods came here, they didn't come of their own volition."

A large explosion took place far off in the unfathomable depths of space. Reality seemed to break apart as an extremely fast beam of light broke through the vacuous darkness. Something was off though. Even in the illusion, Thalon could hear something, a voice cackling as it crashed down into the world of Vaelia.

"What was that?" the wizard asked as he looked for the impact in Vaelia below. Its aftershock shifted and changed the rock.

"That was her," the god said as a stern expression took hold of him.