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To imagine a God ever has to experience fear , for many, is an absurd thought. It is so foreign to us as people, mortals, that beings beyond our comprehension would ever be scared of something.
Yet when in an age, science rises and magic can be channelled that was not gifted of the most magical beings that ever walked the earth alongside common folk, pride turns into terror .
Of course one would be proud of one's own creations, they are children, yours to nurture, to guide, to watch live and die.
But sometimes children resent their parents. Despise them for how mighty they are, wishing to rise above them, past them. And when those aspirations become reality…
At first they smiled, watched their children play and experiment. Observed from a distance how the Arcane became a power many mastered across generations, developed their own magic and rituals, mimicked those of the divine, branched out into new domains and explore the pure fabric of all that is malleable on a scale that is small in comparison to what the Gods once knew.
Then the first cities were lifted into the sky. No tasks were considered too difficult, the magocracies just kept trying and trying to fly . Fly beyond what was capable for mortals! It had to be done, ambitions climbed higher up the ladders than anyone ever could have imagined, it became a game, a competition between all those that called themselves practitioners of the arcane in high station.
Avalir, a city of wonders, marble buildings and the most extravagant festivals and parties. A place of the rich, the powerful, the influential. Rings of gold, silver and brass led the magocracy of Avalir through the centuries and every septennial Replenishment to dock the mountain it once was the peak of before once again returning to the skies, drifting along the leylines that were woven throughout the planet like veins of pure magical energy.
This beacon of prowess in publicity and wealth was the first to fall.
No one knew how it crashed, a city of tens of thousands with only an odd few hundred survivors that made it onto the skyships, teleported or flew out. Though it didn’t make up for the entire continent of Domunis being wiped out in the process, leaving only a massive group of many, odd islands that would later receive the name “The Shattered Teeth”.
It was the beginning of an age, in which banished siblings of the Gods returned to take revenge.
A being of sweet lies, horns and fire was the agent that brought Avalir to its doom, He bound a mortal to His shell for eternity to come as the human tried to reason with the Lord of the Hells Himself. It reminded Him of His sister but at least She knew She was an equal, while the human saw himself above a God in his arrogance. It was his doom, to now forever be chained to a being that was titled a Betrayer by its own kin.
One would maybe call it jump-starting a war on a scale of mass-destruction, if it weren’t for all those kicked loose rocks in the decades prior that suddenly turned into an avalanche. Though who would notice those when suddenly the Gods battled upon the surface of Exandria once more.
It had been aeons since the last time the siblings of light settled a dispute with force. Back then their creations suffered under the existence of Primordials, beings of such a magnitude of elemental power, swayed like the elements themselves, tumultuous like tsunamis, raging like volcanoes, ferocious like tornadoes and destructive like earthquakes, leaving nothing but ruin in their wakes before new life sprouted in their settling steps.
A few of the siblings wanted to let it continue on, to revel in the destruction of the people they had created together and even partake in the slaughter themselves. The others wished to see it stop, to bring peace for these meagre creatures and let them grow for longer than just half a century or less.
The cities that now sailed high above the surface, built and steered by mortals, were a testament to who won the war back then.
Yet this war, while partially carrying similar motives for the free and banished Gods, was different.
Suddenly mortals could compete in the battle. Though despite this fact, all cities fell out of the sky like birds picked off by arrows, one by one, until one remained aloft, strong, and undamaged.
Aeor .
A place entirely unrivalled in its advancements among all cities that are now nothing more but rubble and dust. Built of stone and metal, dark and brutalist in nature, yet far from being considered by nature. The only plants that grew here were a guarded source of food or just magically fabricated, nothing can grow so high in the sky where every gap is filled with anything but dirt, no animal lives where automata roam streets alongside humans, elves, gnomes or orcs.
Like an iron hand with its five big platforms rotating around the arcane core that keeps it in the air, it travels the skies now as a sanctuary for survivors of the past decade, taking in those that have lost everything in the ruined world, selectively.
No worshipper of the Gods that have painted the sky black with ash and smoke, destroyed homes and land, killed hundreds of thousands of people, may step foot into the city of Aeor. No sign, pendant or emblem is allowed on the sky ships that travel to and from between sky and ground.
Divinity is not welcomed behind its walls and on its streets.
For decades, Aeorians have crafted things to free their city and make it a heaven against the divine, in secret, it was becoming a weapon.
The siblings of Tengar have had an eye on it for a while, watched it with scepticism, curiosity and growing unease, until their sight was blinded and the city disappeared from the divine radar, unable to be peeked into from elsewhere, no matter if it was champion, divine general or the deities themselves.
That sparked the first embers of fear among all of them.
There had been small technologies like this for centuries, tiny necklaces that would hide a mortal from others of its kind trying to spy on them via ritual. But the Gods themselves could always watch, no one had managed to hide from their view entirely before.
When an entire city of powerful creatures and people simply vanished, one of the siblings travelled to inspect it and could not enter .
Not only could they not see it, they could not touch it. Go near it and they would be shunted away, repelled by a barrier.
Mortals had found a way to hide and defend against Gods .
This could not be, even Ioun wracked Her knowing mind for the possibilities and could not find a definite answer in the vast knowledge that was Her own.
They had to bypass the wall those mortals had built.
Mortals .
One by one, years or even decades apart, the siblings split off a part of themselves and let this tiny anchor rest inside wombs across Exandria. They were to become mortal and enter the city that way.
A few chose different routes, wished not for a human shell but something that spoke of their essence more than such a simple canvas.
Corellon, not even spending a thought to let Their home of decades to come be of flesh, let Themself be crafted into an aeormaton. A being of royal blues, purples and gold, pure art in the image of the Arch-Heart.
Similarly, the mother of nature could not separate Herself from Her domain and became a member of a family of timber wolves in the wild. For what they wished to accomplish She needed to be ready and hungry .
And where some chose forms that represented themselves , one in particular, still true to His title, became a mocking “worshipper” of his sun-faced brother. An old priest carrying the golden rays of light on his robes, the drastic contrast to the teenage boy that stood across from him after decades who was the subject of the joke and certainly not amused.
They had to do this and they had no time. Some in their midst had already turned away from the plan, falling into their domains of chaos, destruction and deceit to let the mayhem that would befall Aeor and their siblings on the way to the plan’s fruition if they only messed with it a little.
It would be a feast for decades to come.
The siblings feared what would happen if they failed. The Knowing Mistress had gathered that the Aeorians managed to construct something that could destroy them.
It was something that sparked ugly memories of the past in some, a history of loss and tragedy as they fled from a collapsing home.
None dared to compare those feelings to all their children that could lose more and more in the following days after having already lost a significant portion of the entire Exandrian population in the last decade. It would only make this harder. They had to save themselves to continue to protect and guide those who were left on the planet they now also called home in their mortal bodies.
They were Light, they could not let themselves cease like
Edun
and
Aily
. Darkness would be the only thing left, and none could survive the nothingness that followed.