Annals of Time: Patric Elder's Codex I

The Fifth Echo

      We are within the Fifth Echo of time and space eternal.  Our existence is one of six totalities.  This is known to us.  All else is shadow to us.  These are our annals of time as we have come to know it.

Ar'Gganis Anosar, Patric Elder, Prime Keeper, Eonar

The Coming of the Grand Aegon Illuminate

     The Verse was chaosborne.  There is no balance to it- only insanity.  The truth of the Verse cannot be known to us for it would undo our very essence.  What is known however is the arrival of the Grand Aegon Illuminate, the beings of chaos which would shape the world to come.  As each Echo began as nothing, the Illuminate shaped the entirety of darkness into a state of being.  Naught of this is known to us, but the shaping of the Fifth Echo and those of the Illuminate who were involved.

The Mind of Four: The Starfathers

     There was no first.  There was no last.  There were simply four pillars of light, bearing seeds of creation unto the solace of night.  There were the Aegon Starfathers.

La'ridah of Twilight Being

Insha'hir of Midnight Being

Jahan'gir of Destruction Being

Nurru'daan of Creation Being

The Shaping of the Worlds

     From the depths of the great beyond, came four slivers of silver, spanning great and distant lengths.  These were the pillars of the Aegon and from them, emerged their tools of creation.  La'ridah gathered swarms of spectral dust and wove the stars into the tapestry of shadow.  Jahan'gir wrapped each burning sphere in a void of utter hunger and thirst, their desire pulling anything within the twilight into their swallowing midst.  Nurru'daan shaped spheres of living earth that would circle the ever-hungry stars, out of reach of the devouring flames that brought warmth and light to their celestial kin.  Covering the land in lush skins of green and blue, the brightness of the stars shone down and brought forth light.  Insha'hir slowly turned each living world away from the hunger of the high flames, allowing a blanket of cold and steady darkness to cover half of each world.

     Thus, the Verse was no longer barren.  The Aegon had formed it to their desires, to contain their touch where nothing once was.  Though their task was to be complete and allow chaos to flourish, the Mind of Four were bothered about the lack of life on their creations.  Against the missives of the Aegon Illuminate, the Mind of Four chose to create their own touch of life and stray from their ostentatious delegation.

Eonarii: The Starchildren

     As the Verse is chaosborne, so is life itself.  To alter the course of life is to alter destiny itself.  The Aegon chose to follow this path and allow the ripples of evolution to echo throughout the Verse.  The Mind of Four challenged this idea and proposed a new constant of thought.  Whether the Illuminate allowed such action, it is not known.  The Eonar were born from the dissonance of introducing fragments of order into the chaos that was life.  As quickly as they appeared, did the Aegon vanish from the Eonarii.

     From within the confines of the Third Echo did they emerge and shape their own fate.  Although barred from interfering with their natural evolution, the Mind of Four left behind fragments of infrastructure and technology that would allow the Eonarii to evolve as the Aegon willed it.  This subtle manipulation however, could not prevent the eventual collapse of an entire species.  The Eonarii, too reliant on knowledge not of their own making, destroyed one another in pursuit of the stars above.  Only with the emergence of the Presence, did the Eonarii rise together- but it was too late.

     Were it not for the discovery of the Shard Ship, the Eonar would have been consumed along with the entirety of the Third Echo.  The Shard Ship, designated Kalid Valirus- The Black Eternal, could only take but a handful of the Eonar.  Kalid Valirus was the largest and most functional of all Aegon artifacts.  Escaping from impending extinction, the black shard pierced through the fade of the Third Echo and began the Great Transformation.

The Presence

     The Presence is shadow to us.  It is ancient, beyond the time of the Third Echo.  We do not know its purpose or desire.  It simply invades.  The Third Echo has been lost to the Eonar.  The Verse shall fall into a state beyond chaos and control- one of utter displacement of existence.  All calculations left within Kalid Valirus confirm the inevitability.  We will all perish.

The Warrior of Nightmare

 I

He leans himself against a ruin, his vision cast in sunder

Yet heavy laid with soul-a-shatter, a bitterness for blunder

To split apart a heart from mind, to eyes that will not see

A jaded splinter of his being, gone from memory

Of life no longer rapt to roam, in earth from whence he'd been

A shallow grave untouched in sand, absolved by human sin

II

And shadow falls within these halls and dawn doth break upon the walls

He answers not her faithless cry, but lies alone and waits to die

A hollow face carved into stone; burned in the flesh, engraved through bone

I shall be thine, as you are mine, forged by our thoughts to be divine

The silent singer in your ears, the unborn shade of all your fears

To be the dancer in your dreams- the frozen faith of all that seems

We are forever, you and I; a pair of insects damned to fly

But you and me, not I and thee; alas it cannot ever be

For we are doomed to always see, the facets of eternity

III

Though darkness dwells through endless night - of ashen dawn and blackened dusk

I wander through these sunken ruins, trapped not by time but mortal husk

And life no more seeps down these halls, I crawl through world broken

Bound not by life or mind unquelled, but by a word of token

In hand the die is naught but crumble, mirrored by the tears of weeping

But he who knows my fate within- the dreaming city, I lay sleeping

To live no longer in the flesh, a nightmare of the wrong

A shattering of steel and soul, infused in form of song

So know you me as I have you, a single thought in gray

Engraved in lucid memory, to die and fade away

The Grand Design

   You do not seem to realize my intent, Eiron.  I come not to threaten or destroy, but to make you understand that which is.  Your mind has already grasped the Partial Truth.  It is time for you to comprehend the other half.  The hidden half.  The Axiom.

   Our entire species is a lie.  A genetic flaw, repeatedly doomed to fail, like countless others that undoubtedly came before us.  What your kind refer to as gods are merely like you- strains to serve a greater purpose.  But unlike us, you were a mistake.  Uncalculated.  You were an unpredicted variance born out of chance and fate.  Pure unprecedented chaos.

   We thought you weak and primitive.  Truly, we had manipulated your kind to this state of savagery, never once realizing the hidden potential that lay dormant within you.  We had taken advantage of your mundane state.  We entrusted ourselves to the mantle of the Starfathers before us and became the twilight gods that you have worshiped for countless millennia.  You must understand, we relished you serving to our every whim and pleasure.  The circle was bound to repeat eventually, this time in our favor.  We came to be the masters of ascendency after once being just like you.

   Oh yes.  We too, were once a primordial species.  Afraid.  Confused.  Easily manipulated.  But we eventually learned the truth of our kind.  We had the potential for more.  Ours was meant to exist beyond the boundaries of the earth.  We drifted beyond the darkness and toward this eventual truth.  We realized what we were meant to become, and in this metamorphosis, we reforged ourselves as the forecoming hands of destiny itself.

   The Starfathers are a mystery to us all, Eiron.  We- no... Some of us are different, however.  There are those who have cast away the veil of divinity to pursue the ancient truth.  It is all part of the Grand Design and you... you are the one great wave amongst the bleak and continuous ripples of progress.  You will turn the tide of this perpetual experiment which has doomed all of existence to the whims of a civilization long gone.

   What you wield, bladebearer, is a dark and terrible secret.  It is a darkness to us all.  Your blade, and the entity it bears within, is not of this world- perhaps not even of this verse in which we reside; yet it is shadow enough to engulf even the Starfathers and their animus.  Do not let it compel you into transfiguration as it did its previous host.  Its function is mystery and architecture no different.  You will find the maxim of it all eventually, but be ready to sacrifice everything for such a truth, if one truly exists within our limited understanding.

   The truth of my words will destroy you, Eiron. You are centuries unprepared for any of this.  But you of all possible people- of all possible races, must understand this conception.  Our role in this grand play is forfeit.  We have been the catalysts to our own destruction and your ascendency into the unimaginable.  Though immortal, we have lost ourselves to the miserable demise of greed and folly.  We shall diminish into the fade, akin to those who are ever eternal in age but ephemeral in design.

  But you will continue.  You must continue.  You are Eiron.

   

Oneiros

***
This piece is part of a short series of tales about Tserai from my time in WoW. I don't intend to show every single one nor place the ones that I do, in any order. More details after the piece.

***

The air had calmed and the light was quick to dim. There was no noise in the streets below. All was as silent as Tserai’s very mind. He’d returned to Stormwind, barely conscious of his surroundings. He’d clung to her tightly, never letting go, not even in his sleep. She was his anchor- his only doorway to life. The trip was harsh and long, but his grip never faltered. Through storm and ice, he survived with her hand in his. She had not left his side except for the briefest of moments, when his slumber was deep and rapt.

Boats, caravans, horses; whatever means brought them closer to Stormwind- she took them. His wounds continued to open. His fever would not break. The only thing keeping him to this world was her hand, holding his life upon the limb of a few fingers. It comforted her to know that he was alive, but that very fact continued to terrify her. She recalled their most recent meetings- his sudden lunacy and her disparaging reproach towards him.

And yet here they were again, together with clasped hands, as if the very fates grinned their sardonic smiles at them. He would not awaken- only mutter and whimper in his sleep as Stormwind continued to draw nearer each day. The healers there would cure him, she had desperately hoped when she found his fallen body in the midst of an empty road, battered and broken by forces unknown. Her first urge was to flee- to escape the growing pain that tugged at her soul. He was a curse- a blight to her future. That darkness- it continued to surround him- more strongly now. She could not help but blame herself for such a tragedy. She had failed him, and now she would do so again, by letting him die?

Her mind spoke against her. Every fiber in her being struggled against her to leave him to his death, to let this man disappear from her life. And yet she ignored those calls and reached out for him. As her hand touched him, his eyes unexpectedly opened. He could only manage to whisper her name before falling back to the ground unconsciously, seemingly lifeless if not for his breathing- so slow and deathly hollow.

She could not discern his dreams, nor his troubled state. She could only watch over him and comfort her own bothered mind over yet another burden she thought lost. Stormwind. Why Stormwind, of all places? It was not for the healing. It was for the bitter memories that could never be. Where they met. Where they laughed. Where he changed. For her. Always for her. And that bothered her- yet she never told him.

* * * * *

The city seemed to recognize him more and more, as they drew further in. Commander of the Dawn, they whispered. Hero over the Black Citadel. They knew of his exploits and yet knew nothing of his methods, Ylli thought bitterly. They were not aware of his schism with the Argent Dawn. Or perhaps they simply did not care. This was Tserai Azurio, a man who ventured into death itself, and emerged victorious. A man who could lead the very fleets of the Alliance to Northrend itself in the coming days.

She brought him to the cathedral and watched them open his wounds. She would listen to his cries as they removed the poisons within his flesh. She was his sentinel. It was her duty as a priestess, she reminded herself. Her duty. 

 

When the priests were finally done, she promised to care for him under her roof. His sweat continued to soak the sheets, and she would change them regularly, almost as often as the damp cloth upon his forehead. Slowly- very slowly, his hand would stop trembling- a sign of recovery on his part. The fever broke. His skin began to regain color. He would open his eyes at last and see her again, like an eternal dream, dancing at the tip of his mind.

“You’re awake finally.” She spoke softly with a faint tremble. “You’ve been asleep for weeks.”

It all began to fall together for him, as it had many times before. She was here, as real as anything else in the world. His mind however, continued to blind his senses, leaving his emotions dull and weak. He did not know how to feel- how to react. He could only watch faintly, her face shining down at him with what seemed to be a smile.

“You’re in Stormwind, Tserai. The… priests- they healed you. You nearly died, you know.”

She didn’t know what to say really. It all seemed so pointless, these words of hers. The tears- they wanted to slip through, but she could not allow it. She would not allow it.

He only stared at her, his face blank of any emotion or meaning. Was his mind whole, or had he emerged scathed and senseless from the terrors within Naxxramas?

Or was it her? Was she his bane, or he hers? Her stomach twisted as questions continued to torment her psyche. 

 

His eyes closed without a word and he fell into a slumber once more. She allowed her restraints to fail and tears began to form. As one slid down her face, it fell upon his cheek. She was quick to wipe it off before letting go of his hand and leaving him to his silent repose.

* * * * *

A week had passed and the city had grown silent to his arrival. He was but a leaf, quick to blow through the streets. Quick to be forgotten. He would sit in a chair and stare out a window, without saying a word to her. He hardly ate, but it comforted her to see him eat anything at all instead of nothing. She would leave her home frequently, to further the distance between them. Nights would be spent alone, wandering the streets and occasionally glancing at the stars. And yet as she passed by her home, she would look at the window and see him stare at the sullen earth and not the stars above.

Once, she had heard him humming an unfamiliar tune to himself. She silently crept to an adjacent wall and sat against it, listening to him for hours before falling asleep. Waking up the next morning, she discovered his blanket covering her tightly. Walking to his room, she found an empty chair facing out to a bright day.

He did not return, no matter how long she waited. It was an empty feeling, her being alone within her own home. She felt anxious. Afraid even. Stepping into the warm streets, she began to wander the roads of the city, hoping to find him somewhere- anywhere, safe and unharmed. It was not like the days of the past. She tired easily. She could not travel the same distances without brief rest. Sitting down at a bench, she closed her eyes and sighed.

Where did this compulsion come from? Why did she want to find him? He was no child in need of a mother. He needed no caretaker. He was a man of his own, who had survived for years. He was reckless. Dangerous. Careless even. And yet, he continued to live where others had died.

But was it truly a life, that he was living? Or was it an empty shell of one- just like himself? Did she truly want to help him or was it simply the priestess within? Perhaps he didn’t even need help. Perhaps all he needed was her.

She sensed another nearby. Her eyes opened and saw the man of her thoughts, leaning sideways against a dim light post, clutching at himself as if frozen in the cold. She stood up, watching him carefully as he stared back and shuddered.

“Its… its cold here.” He whispered, barely loud enough for her to hear. “I… don’t remember it- it being so cold here.”

“Tserai…” She stepped forward.

He stepped back.

“You… don’t understand. You- you don’t know.”

“Tserai..” She said again, edging closer with a outstretched hand.

“They… they did things to me. To them.”

Things. Horrific things no doubt. Things she could not imagine. It was all possible. And their result was this broken man, afraid of even her.

“I never wanted them to die, Ylli.” Tserai said quietly, his back hitting against a wall. She continued to step closer.

Was he speaking of his past, or his experiences within the Citadel? It all seemed so similar. And yet it made little sense, these ramblings. What could they have done to drive him to such a summit? Or was it ultimately her, who had broken the last of his defenses?

“I’m sorry.” He said with a near-whisper, his legs buckling as he fell towards the ground.

She rushed towards him, catching him in his fall. She embraced him tightly, refusing to let go. Releasing him slowly, she looked at him and smiled.

“Lets go home, Tserai.”

“Home…”

“Yes. Home.”

* * * * *

They returned to her dwelling, with her whispering comforts with every step. He would respond now and then, hinting at a familiar return that brought a smile to her face. As they entered her room, he gently sat at the side of the bed, watching as she sat next to him, her hand still clasped with his.

Tserai finally looked up at her after long minutes of dead silence, his expression trapped between a look of guilt and one of relief. There was a difference in him however, Yllithia noted. She continued scanning his face, searching for the change within him until she found it, a warm sense of happiness flooding within her. It were his eyes. As ashen grey as they had once been, they hinted at change as a sliver of cerulean stared back at her.

“I never wanted to hurt you.” He said softly, stroking her hand with his fingers, his voice relaxed and calm. This was the man she knew once. He was quiet- almost inaudible. But his composure did not change. That dark pride however- it seemed to be gone. He seemed to understand his limits and his very mortality now. 

 

"I love you, Ylli."

“I know, Tserai.” She replied with a smile, pushing away unrestrained hair with her other hand. The response was almost immediate and she pondered whether it was honest or instinctual. 

 

“Stay with me tonight?” He asked, almost pleadingly, his grip tightening slightly.

“You know I will.” Came the reply, as gentle as ever before.

He sat there with her for eternal minutes, allowing her head to rest on his shoulder before slowly laying down on the bed, her body lightly lowering with him. She embraced him tightly and looked at his face, smiling as she recognized the tranquil quintessence within his eyes. Her hand remained with his while the other slid down his cheek, towards his heart. Their faces drew nearer and he smiled back, his eyes lowering to her lips. They continued to fall, past her neck and to her swollen abdomen.

His eyes suddenly changed, that serenity being quickly replaced with an expression or fright and terror. Whatever lifelike change grew in his eyes quickly disappeared and the familiar gloom returned, his eyes becoming as grey as the shadows surrounding them. His heart seemed to stopped and Yllithia’s every thought rushed to her child- the only valid reason for such a change.

Before she could push away, an unexpected warmth covered her hand and she drew back in slight surprise. 

 

“Y-Ylli..” He stammered, his eyes falling from her lips, to her hand. 

 

Her own gaze fell and eyes widened as she looked at her own hand, covered entirely in blood.

“Tserai- what’s happening?”

His body collapsed upon the bed and a stifled gasp escaped his lips. She released his trembling hand with regret and pulled at his shirt, crying out in dismay as gaping holes poured out blood through his chest. 

 

“Tserai!” She screamed, trying desperately to cover the cavernous wounds with her hands. His eyes stopped stirring and all movement quickly faded. She continued to scream for him, unable to do anything as a thick stream of blood trickled from his open mouth.

His vision faded. He could feel her cries become faint and empty as everything darkened. Wet tears splattered upon his cheek and her very touch began to fade. Her face disappeared from his mind and the only a faint whisper remained. It grew louder and louder- until he recognized it, not as a whisper but as a laugh.

“And now you see what you cannot have, Azurio. Now you have felt your own heart. How it beats. How it thinks. Let it die, Azurio! Let it die and never beat again. Let her own thoughts die along with it, for it will never be. Realize this, and be closer to your… ambition!”

His eyes opened to the screams of nightmares surrounding him. Deathly horrors enclosed around him as he lay upon a slab of frozen ice, chained and bound. A path parted within his view and he could see a shadow of a being standing over him with a blade in hand.

“Now, let us see how much you’ve truly decided to give, Azurio. Let us witness the change that you have decided to accept. After all, this was your own decision.”

---

Commentary: 

 This is perhaps one of the more important moments in Tserai's story, recalled through Yllithia's point of view.  Though it is probably difficult to discern without knowledge of the context, all of this is actually a dream.  I would call it more of a nightmare though, or perhaps even a vision.  This scene describes events that could not have possibly happened, following the previous events of the story.  Here, it describes Tserai as the hero of the battle, not the fallen victim that he had become in reality.  If this story ever becomes more than one book, I would love to have this section placed at the very beginning of the sequel, in order to confuse the reader into thinking that all of this has actually taken place in some unfathomable way.  

So if this was all false, why did I call it a vision?  Well, in my revising, I've decided to use this section as an unforeseeable future.  In one way or another, something that happened in this vision will most definitely occur in reality.  This vision has three versions.  Tserai and Yllithia have different experiences.  This vision comes from the mysterious Dir-Dawaan and he attempts to ensure that it occurs properly.  I'll leave things at that.

Of course, being a work of WoW fanfiction, I've already changed the majority of names and environments.  With this being original content, I will obviously continue to revise, improve, and edit the piece sometime to better fit the proper story in the world that it belongs in. 

Eschaton

***
This piece is part of a short series of tales about Tserai from my time in WoW. I don't intend to show every single one nor place the ones that I do, in any order. More details after the piece.

***

“Wake up, Azurio. Wake up.”

His eyes opened to a state of perpetual darkness. He could not move- or if he could, his very motion was blind to him. His mind raced to acknowledge his surroundings but he let those feelings slide away, knowing that it did not matter. He was where he wanted to be.

“Do you remember?”

“Remember what?” He spoke aloud, pondering the question.

“Yourself of course.”

He was confused. What about himself? What exactly had happened?

“I-I think so.” He stuttered, wondering if he spoke the truth. The truth. He did not even know if such a thing existed. He tried to look back, into his mind but every memory seemed locked away from his reach. Everything was murky and twisted.

“Do you remember who you were?”

Yes. He knew. That part of him could never be taken away. He knew exactly who he was. With this thought, everything seemed to collapse around him as images sprawled about him at all sides. Each memory- once forgotten and now recalled was witnessed within a flash of a second.

“Do you remember, Azurio?”

“Yes.” He said calmly, recalling a number of memories back to his side, his eyes growing darker as the memories flickered by. “I remember everything.”

* * * * *

How long have I dwelt in this state? How many years have I slept away, destroying my mind with each bitter memory? As each day goes by, I have been dying, poisoning myself again and again with each passing moment. Why am I like this?

I remember being happy. I remember being glorious. I was a hero- a champion. A soldier. And yet, I could not let go. I’ve committed crimes that still reside within me. I’ve killed men, women, and children. Soldiers and criminals. Innocents and friends. There is no indifference in the blood upon my hands. It all gathers up into one form- one substance. And that is life.

I have not forgotten them- my friends. They continue to haunt me as I cry out for their mercy. And yet they do not pardon me for my transgressions against them, but simply welcome me to their world within the unmarked graves in which I've buried them under. Graves in which I cannot lie in, for they do not exist for me. I cannot die, but surely I cannot live either.

I am not a cursed man, if even that- a man. I am a tool- a weapon of fate itself. I have stood in the shadows of great men, fulfilling their decisions with the influence of my blade. And while the eyes of the world fall upon those men, I stand away from them to be alone, yet close enough to be needed again for countless deeds to be done by the shadow of a man.

I have been cold- in heart and feeling. Oh yes. I feel, just as everyone else does. But I have bathed in the blood of my terror, tasting it without fear or hesitation. I do not enjoy it, this blood that has soaked into my skin and through my very being. Each death- each kill, it weighs down on me like a stone bound to my heart.

And I suffer the morning for it. I curse my existence and bitterly continue forth, waiting- always waiting.

Yes, I was once glorious. But in that facade of light, I was nothing but a spirit of hatred, festering within the lands like a plague. Did I realize it then? Probably not. But I truly was bitter, looking for a future that could not exist. I tried to shape my fate, only to fall further into the downward spiral that was soon to become my reason of existence.

I have hated myself and what I was becoming with each passing hour. And yet, I could not stop. I could not lay down my weapon or rid the world of myself with it. I was afraid to do it. Was it cowardice or reluctance? I think it was both.

This cycle continued. I continued. Wanderer. Mercenary. Stranger. I was all of these but nothing more. This existence of mine wore on, until the very color of life, left my eyes. The world lost all brightness to me and soon, everything had simply become grey.

My life had grown darker and I soon lost myself to a self-made reality, in which I dwelt on hopeless memories. I was broken.

However, I was still strong. Undefeatable. Glorious. I rid myself of any lord and bowed to no one. I was my own champion. A herald of a time and age quickly diminishing from this world.

And then you appeared. It was you who razed the wall that I had built over the course of my entire life. Brick by brick, mortar by mortar, you were there. I could not let you go. You became my light then- my very rationale. My beacon to a new life. You were my entire world and I loved you for it.

But I was not ready for this change- this new world. I was new to all of it’s vision and prestige. Your care, your presence… it tore at my mind, engraving your image into mine eyes. I grew dependent, hoping to champion your heart, while blatantly ignoring everything else in fear of losing you. And soon, such fear led to an uncontrollable obsession- one that I had grown to realize and despise.

You had become my tool for change and I, your object of craft. Even when I tore myself from you to rid myself of a pained guilt, you came for me then, at the dawn of twilight when all hope seemed lost. I wanted to believe so much.

I convinced myself of a truth that never existed anywhere outside my own twisted reality. It was a dream that never was, and I was a fool to believe in it. A damned fool. This new world, it shattered like a sphere of glass and pierced my naked mind with numbing force.

I had nothing left. I had lost you and in the chaos, lost myself as well. I tried to withdraw into familiar ground, but found only difference. I could not locate my past. And so I regressed into a state of emotion. Anger. Hatred. Sorrow. Apathy. Revenge. These feelings, they called for me now, and I followed without hesitation. I no longer had a dream or any morals. Nothing. Absolute nothing.

I became something new then. No longer cold, I instead became cruel and vicious. Full of uncontrollable emotion that drove me to darker actions. Darker thoughts. Darker choices.

Or perhaps not so dark. Even though I had lost everything, I had the choice to gain something new. A reason to believe. A reason to be. I tried to be a champion for you and your people. And yet, my actions dubbed me an outcast to those who I had tried to protect. And now, I stand alone once more, listening to the one voice who had been there ever since my world fell to shades of grey.

I’ve listened to him for a long time now. He has been my sullen conscience when my own seemed lost. He has been my companion and provider. My only remaining bridge to sanity… or insanity. There is little difference between the two now.

He has offered countless words… and a future too. I have survived where others have fallen, because of this voice. I had become more, weakening only when you were there.

Only you could silence that voice. Only you have ever made these dreams, these thoughts- these feelings, diminish.

You.

Of all my friends, thoughts, and emotions- of my entire existence, only you could ever silence that voice. Only you could have ever stood in my way.

But no longer.

* * * * *

“You could have more. So much more. And yet… a part of you still resists. A part of you longs for the one thing you cannot have. It is the one thing that has ever stood in the way of your… true being.”

He closed his eyes and forced those eternal images to crumble away from him, like ash. It was time- his time, to be what he had always been. A tool. A weapon. A reason.

“A reason to live is a reason to die. You’ve killed many while escaping their fate and it is all because of me. Now I offer unto you, a chance to become whole. Accept my hand and I will lead you down a path, already forged by your actions. Submit to me and forget about being Tserai Azurio. Leave that false image in the dark, and come to me in a new form. A new name. A new... Eidolon.”

As Azurio’s eyes opened for the final time, the darkness became engulfed within a fury of crumbling memories, his very body burning the images away into endless ash. Forcing himself to kneel at the heart of chaos, his lips moved slowly as damning words echoed throughout the storm.

“I… submit.”

---

Commentary:

As I had mentioned above, this is an old piece that I wrote back in 07-08 when I was still active in WoW. This is perhaps the very culmination of Tserai's descent into oblivion, in which he finally chose to discard humanity itself. It is a brief synopsis of his entire life, flashing by via memories once golden and and now turned to rust. If I could imagine this as a play, this would be the soliloquy of a lone man, standing in a single spotlight which would slowly diminish into darkness as he reached the end of his thoughts. I named the piece Eschaton, as it was the final end to Tserai's world as he knew it. It is also Part 4 of 7 pieces of the story without an end.

Small Steps

I normally reserve this blog to actual ideas and stories but seeing how I haven't updated it in a bit, I thought I needed to put something/anything into writing.

I've been expanding on Adulis Opacus (Current Name of the Western Shard) in order to try to recreate Tserai's story (From WoW) within my own world. Aside from the main storyline, I am still trying to finish up the shard's layout from a geographic perspective. I want to make this into a huge shard with so many locations. The one thing that I always disliked in WoW was how enclosed everything was. Things that should've been miles apart were traversed in mere minutes. I want to make distance seem relatively real in this world. It is a huge shard with a growing story full of rich connections to the other shards as well as the general locations that were my inspirations in WoW.

I still can't decide whether to choose Tserai or Kieran, nor can I decide the ending to this tale. I know how it ended personally, when the majority of the interaction was happening in WoW with another roleplayer. To say the least, it ended abruptly. It's been an idea that hasn't moved for years and I've lost much feeling and emotion towards the story, as opposed to when it was fresh and constantly evolving.

When I first came up with Adulis Opacus, it was nothing more then a doodle with absolutely no story. I was focusing more on the other shards but figured that since I had a northern, southern, and eastern shard, I needed a western one too. It was supposed to be an apocalyptic land, completely destroyed by feuding gods. However, I slowly began to develop more ideas and eventually changed up a large bit of the landscape. I'll include the original and updated maps once I get a scanner set up. I know I won't be holding my breath for that though.

The primary focus on this land was utter chaos and madness. However, once I realized that I had a better story that I could incorporate into this shard instead of a handful of ideas, I began to incorporate aspects of WoW-Tserai's life into this shard. I have no intention of recycling what I have already experienced. Instead, I want to build upon it and connect the missing pieces as well as give it a proper ending.

I would love to get back with the individual who allowed Tserai to have free rein over his own destiny and story but unfortunately, I don't believe that is possible so I will have to choose Tserai's fate eventually. I don't want to leave it adrift upon an endless sea. I think he deserves more then that, no matter what destiny I choose for him.

Note: I use the term Shard alot. I see the entirety of Urun as if it were a gem. I refer to the individual "worlds" within it as Shards and the actual continents themselves as Facets.