I: A Tale of the Gods

 

There was never a beginning of the Earth, the Sky and the Sea. Just their existence and the gods Jinana and Ezephel. Both of them were beautiful gods. It is told that Ezephel stood twelve hands tall, and that his long hair was the silver of running water under the moon at night. His eyes glowed with the same deep gray of the nothing he came from. He wore a crown of ice upon his brow and his body was enrobed in crystals strung together with silver thread, his clothes reflected light and the wonders of life wherever he went. Ezephel walked strong and tall but spoke softly. He had a kind heart and marveled at all of the wonders of the World he lived in with Jinana.

 

Jinana, his partner was as glorious as he was. She was as tall as he, enrobed in gossamer and leaves of all seasons. Her long black hair was woven into intricate braids and loops upon her head which bore a tiara of branches from the forest. Her eyes were the color of her hair, without the whites, pure black, absorbing light and life. She walked softly, danced gracefully and spoke less often than Ezephel, though when she did, her words were not soft as his were. 

 

Neither Jinana nor Ezephel had a beginning either. For as far back as they could remember, they knew there was something they had to search for, fragments of something to complete their existence. These fragments contained the knowledge of the mystical, the wonderful and the miraculous. The two gods wandered the Earth and found lush plants and life as well as deserts and death. They searched the Skies and found ethereal clouds, musical winds and the sun which gave heat to the deserts of the Earth. The Sea which surrounded the Earth on all sides was cooling and gave life to the greenery of the forests. Within the three great regions, they found fragments and they began to learn. They learned of civilization, of community, emotions, survival, and living. Ezephel and Jinana understood the workings of a delicate balance between life and death. Eons after they began to wander, they found all of the memories. All of the World was in a beautiful balance of the elements and the gods found peace.

Ezephel found himself to be lonely with only Jinana. He did not hate her for she was a kind and beautiful being, but he craved the company of others like them. He held knowledge of many things and he wanted to share it with many people. He wanted to be a teacher and to be a creator of a great civilization as he had learned of from the fragments. He searched the sands of the dead deserts, he took the grains of sand, one by one and built hollow images of himself and Jinana. He then filled the hollow statues with fragments of the World as well as his own life. From this sacrifice, the statues were given life and were taught languages to communicate with. From the desert, Ezephel then lead his creations from the wasteland of the desert past the lush green of the forests and into the grand sweeping plains beyond. Thus was the birth of the Rana Civilization.

Jinana saw Ezephel's doing and was upset for she was deeply in love with him but could not find a way to tell him her feelings. She was envious of the attention he was giving his new life. She had been with him far longer than his creations had and yet he was treating them with more care than she had ever experienced. Seeing him create creatures in their image and receiving knowledge, she became so jealous that she retreated into the forests of life, cutting off contact with Ezephel, and planned revenge upon the civilization he had begun to build. There, she broke branches from the trees and plucked long blades of grass to weave into existence Creatures of all shapes and sizes to roam the Earth. From the life of the forest, they gained shreds of knowledge which was already within the Earth and thus Jinana found no reason to teach them anything and let them live life as they saw fit. However, the Goddess was not satisfied with simply giving creatures to the Earth. So she went to the skies where she pulled the clouds into threads weaving them into cages to capture the song of the winds. From this, the creatures of the sky were created. Like the ones of the Earth, they who could fly were born with knowledge to live. Finally, Jinana went to the seas and siphoned the salt from the waters, wrapping it carefully in kelp and formed the fishes and the creatures of the Sea. Once again, like the Earth and the Sky, the life from which the creatures came was already embedded with the knowledge of life. At last, with her work done, Jinana once again retreated to the forest and watched as her creatures flourished without her help. She found solace and company with their simple ways of living and found peace away from the Civilization which was slowly building itself. Thus was the birth of the first Mortals.

Ezephel saw the creatures Jinana made from the life of the World and imparted knowledge to his Civilization to hunt Jinana's creatures for food and for survival as he saw they were more plentiful and more alive than his creations. He saw how dangerous they were to his Civilization and imparted more of his own Knowledge to help them flourish. With this act, Jinana watched as her work unraveled and was destroyed by the Rana. She wept, but could do nothing, she had taken so much life from the World that if she took any more away, the balance would be broken and everything would die.

 

Time passed and the Rana worshiped Ezephel for giving them Knowledge to live and thrive. They began to sacrifice Jinana's creatures to him; they began to kill her creations in his name, for they were those who were born from the dead of the desert and knew nothing of the life in which her precious creations came from.

 

Eons passed and the Rana learned more and more with the Knowledge which was given them, and they began to learn on their own. They began to attempt to create from the dead as Ezephel did. The Rana combed the World in hopes of finding shards of knowledge that only the gods possessed. They no longer respected and worshiped Ezephel as their creator. Instead, they believed with their knowledge. The Rana believed they had become equals with the god, forgetting where their original lessons, lives and knowledge came from. The Rana waged wars against one another, grasping for more power. What Ezephel did not know when he created the Rana, was that they were dead from the beginning. No amount of knowledge given to lifeless beings would make them complete. Though they became many and passed knowledge from one another through childbirth, their lifespans seemed too short, too fleeting and the Rana searched for a way to be immortal as their god. They, being born from the dead, could only yearn for more power from missing fragments which they believe had not been found yet.

 

Soon, the Mortals had been nearly wiped out from being hunted for self-defense, for food and for sport. Jinana still did nothing, watching silently from the deepest part of the forests, protecting the Mortals who wandered to her way. One day, Ezephel stumbled into her Sanctum in the forest, wounded and hounded by the Rana. With the knowledge they had, the Rana reasoned the only way to become complete and to be immortal as Ezephel was, they must steal the rest of his knowledge. They had to kill the god to become like him.

 

That night, Jinana held onto Ezephel, terrified of what he had created. She was struck dumb by how powerful the Rana had become, how they flourished much more than her creatures did. There was not much the two could do. She could only hide Ezephel for so long before they were found.

 

Ezephel's powers were greatly weakened from sacrificing his life and his knowledge to his creations. His wounds didn't heal as quickly as they should. He grew sickly and depended on Jinana to keep him alive. It broke the goddess' heart to see the one she loved so deeply in such pain. She watched over him day after day, tending to his wounds and moving when it seemed he was feeling a bit better.

 

Silently, Ezephel thought over his actions and knew the only way to atone for what he did was to die by the hands of his creation. To have created life from the dead was a mistake and now he would have to pay the price. He knew they would not become immortal from slaying him, though if killing him was going to offer some peace to the World, death was a solution he found fitting. One night, as Jinana slept, he crept away from her Sanctum and offered himself to the Rana. Without hesitation, they attacked him, spearing him with the weapons he taught them how to make. They shouted orders in the language he taught them how to speak, they screamed and shrieked in triumph with the emotions he had taught them to feel. Thus was the death of the god Ezephel who created the Rana.

 

Jinana woke from her slumber to find her Sanctum empty of Ezephel and to the sound of victory trumpets in the distance from the Civilization's capitol. It did not take her long to understand what had happened. At first, she was deeply sorrowful, but very quickly, the sorrow grew into anger and the anger grew into a blood lust for revenge. In rage, she left her forest for the first time in eons. In her wrath, she left a blackened trail, one that to this day scars the Earth. Her fury burned her tiara of branches upon her brow; her long, looping braids were alight with fire, illuminating her face and her path as she traveled to the heart of the Civilization.

 

The Rana were stunned at the sight of a burning woman. Never had they seen Jinana, Ezephel had never mentioned to his creations his partner in the beginning, he had not taught them who had crafted the creatures that roamed the Earth, Sky and Sea. Thus, the image of the burning goddess in her glory shocked them greatly. Because she had not sacrificed as much as Ezephel in the creation of her creatures, none of their weapons, nor any working of knowledge the World seemed to affect her as she searched for where they were holding Ezephel's body.

 

In the middle of the capitol was where the Rana laid his head upon an altar. The rest of his body had been shredded and greedily devoured by the Rana in hopes of gaining his immortality. Through a path of slain Rana, Jinana made her way to the altar. She clutched the head of the one she loved deeply from the beginning of her memories and wept bitterly. The Rana, still unsure how to respond to the goddess' existence quickly reasoned that her death would result in more knowledge and power for them. Hungrily, they all surrounded her grieving body, waiting for the right moment to strike her down as they had Ezephel. However, she could feel their presence, and the fragments of Ezephel's life within all of them. Fragments which belonged to the head in her arms. Blinded by her anger, Jinana broke her silence and razed the Civilization to the ground. When she finally calmed herself, she found the Rana' flesh dissipating in the south eastern wind leaving nothing but the bones of a once great Civilization. Thus came the end of the Rana Civilization.

 

Jinana saw the destruction around her and felt greatly alone for the first time in her existence. She found herself craving and needing to create life once again, but she knew full well that they could not be from the dead as Ezephel's creations had been, but she couldn't bear to live a World with creatures that had almost no knowledge. She found herself gathering bones of the Rana from the burned Civilization and spreading them across the Sea, the Earth and across the Skies. She put three sets of bones aside and from them crafted the first Immortals. To them, she entrusted the knowledge Ezephel had left in his head. This was the knowledge of magic, the secret Ezephel had kept from the Rana, the key to immortality. She could not give the next races all of the Knowledge to only one creation. She had to split the memories, keeping them separate in fear of another Civilization such as the Rana. She would create them in the image of her and Ezephel, but she would be careful as to how much knowledge would be given,

 

From the Sky, she stole clouds and sunbeams, strung them on the cold northern wind and created the Phoenix Tribe of the Sky. She gave them wings to soar and long crimson hair to keep their memories close. She taught them to weave mementos into their hair. To them, she granted Sanctuary in the Sky. An island made of crystallized air and mountain top snow in the Sky where they would thrive and learn Anima, the magic of the Sea. From that, they could draw on pure life source and spin spells. However, she put a price upon their powers and their immortality. Their Memories would be sacrificed, like Ezephel's every 500 years in order to keep their bodies living forever. Should they not, they would be like all other Mortals and their bodies would rot and degrade with time.

 

To the second set of bones she had left, Jinana cut long blades of grass and sinewy vines before weaving them tightly and creating the Unicorn Tribe of the Earth. To them, she gave the Knowledge of the Lucent, the light magic of the Sky. She gave them a horn upon their head to bear the weight of their Knowledge. As a price for their magic, she vowed them to silence for no impurity should ever leave their lips in order to cast Lucent spells. To them, she gave her Sanctum in the forest as their abode to learn and to grow. To them, she gave never degrading bodies, but should they break their silent vow, their bodies would dissolve and disperse into the winds.

 

Finally Jinana rubbed the last bones in salt water and bound them tightly with kelp and sea breeze. From these bones came the Leviathan Tribe of the sea, who were destined to master Stygian magic, the dark magic of the Earth. For their price, she took away their sight, forcing them into the dark. She made it so that they would forever bear the markings of their mastery on their flesh, the etchings of spells would be how they were to cast. To them, she gave Temple in the depths of the Sea to flourish. Their price was a heavy one, but to them, she had given them the deepest, most powerful magic and she had to balance it. To each of the tribes she gave opposing magics in order to ensure that there would never be anyone who would completely master the knowledge and give birth another Civilization such as the Rana.

 

Thus was the birth of the Immortals.

 

From the bones which had been spread across the World, the Memories embedded in them began to warp and to form into creatures which were a cross between the ones Jinana had first created and the ones Ezephel had made. From these bones came the second Mortal clans and from these bones came the Tribes.

 

Jinana, satisfied with the outcome, wished to be alone for the one she truly loved could not see the work she had done. She was tired of living and retreated into a sanctuary of her own at the edge of the world where the warm south-eastern wind blows. This was her land of perfect peace, where any who came could be completely welcomed. She vowed to herself that if any of the new races, should they find her paradise of Apeliotus, she would grant any wish, with the correct price. .

 

Thus is the story of the World as it is written in the texts of the Immortals.