The Water Sign

The Second Lie

The second lie of the Aspect Claria was the lie of the Elohim and the Struggle. Our enemy and our purpose. These two ideas formed the reason we trained, the reason we fought and gave our lives.

The teachers taught us early on that the first few times the Elohim came to Earth, they failed to create the religions they intended. That’s why the Greek, Egyptian, Sumerian, Norse, and other traditions showed that the “gods” could be as malevolent and petty as man. The Elohim had failed to fully conceal their true nature.

They manipulated our history to suppress these first failures, to try and wipe out all traces of belief in these stories, and started again. They set about creating a new set of religions that would exclusively glorify them so that they would only be thought of as just, righteous, and perfect. The perfect lie to make a world full of slaves.

The more religions that upheld this idea, the better: humanity would then be more divided when it came time for the Elohim’s full invasion, and these believers would bow willingly to the gods they thought they served.

Early on in his life, Headmaster Midas discovered the Elohim’s treachery through his research into cultures and began to write the Aspect Claria: the texts that together formed the Book of All Reason. He also explained that he had discovered secret abilities within mankind, the hidden powers of the Inner and Outer Aspect we could use to fight back against the Elohim.

Realizing the importance of his work, he started a school with other likeminded teachers where he could unlock mankind’s true potential: the Garden. He gave us names to remind us of those earlier stories, the earliest myths that illuminated the Elohim’s vanity and hatred of mankind. Though often twisted in their veneration of the “gods,” those myths contained the clues to the true nature of the Elohim and chronicled the greatness of the men who defied them.

He renamed himself in the same fashion with which he named us. The story of Midas, he taught us, was the story of the most generous and benevolent king to ever live. But when the old king grew too wise and learned of the evil nature of the Elohim, they decided to destroy his authority by creating a new story about him. A lie. So our Headmaster took the name for himself: he said we were helping him rewrite that story, returning Midas’s name to the standing it had always deserved.

In the Aspect Claria, Headmaster Midas explained that only he knew the day and hour when the Elohim would return to enslave us. Through his writing and our many lessons, we learned their plan for our world and the importance of our destiny in preparation for that hour. Each of us had been chosen, plucked out of the blind world to learn the truth and fight for the Struggle. Each of us had been given the key to unlocking the Aspect. It was the greatest honor. It was the greatest story.

I still remember seeing him for the first time, a dark shape against lights too bright. The first moments outside the dungeon. I was only seven years old and he was there. He was there from the very first time.

Everything before this moment has been washed away, his voice recited to me in a soothing tone. You exist now in the purity of the Struggle and where the other once was, now only Ayax remains.

It was like hearing Allah for the first time.

The child had died somewhere in those weeks of rats and darkness. The thing that emerged—that was me. That was all that was left. And he had named it, giving life to it.

Ayax.

Briefing 001

For all of us, it was our first time being in an actual briefing room. Just getting to it involved walking through sections of school that were supposed to be off-limits for underclassmen, a violation that made us all even more uneasy.