Epilogue

  This world is one of order. The natural order that governs this world is unchanging. There is no life in this world. Life might seek to dominate creation and defy nature’s order. The beasts now walk the world. They have defied nature and dominated creation.

  Before men would come to inhabit the world, in an age before the sun’s radiance would bathe the earth and warm the seas, existed the age of beasts.

  Truly horrid creatures. Some hairless, some with claws, many with grotesque features of the present world’s fauna, but all with magic. These beasts lived by the sole principle of domination.

  Strength justified existence.

  The strong were born into this world by no God, no maker, but through the gathered magic residing in their self-forged core. Their roaming of the world was itself a show of might so great in defiance of natural order, its abhorrence was recognized even in a Godless world.

  In this age many beasts would force their way into existence and forcefully be removed from it by their kin. Beasts would rise to rally others under the banner of strength and many would fall. Throughout this age, beasts would rule until their usurpation by abdicators who believed them to be weak. This was the way of the beasts. The strongest was to subjugate until they were themselves subjugated.

  Throughout these countless millennia, there existed one beast unlike its kin. The first beast.

  Leviathan.

  The beast hungered for power, however, unlike its kin, it did not seek strength for the sake of bloodshed and pride. The Leviathan’s hunger was deeper. Endless.

  The Leviathan wished to be strong for the sake of strength. While the other lowly beasts sought power and might to dominate their fellow beasts, the Leviathan sought the strength to dominate creation itself.

  The Leviathan did not participate in the domination of its kind, rather it was a force of nature that’s mere existence shadowed the other beasts, making them look like nothing more than insignificant lessers next to their disinterested evolution.

  The beasts gained an appetite for bloodshed so great that war became their craft. The beasts had no reason for war outside of domination. War was not the tool that men would come to wield in their age, rather it was a ritualistic manifestation of the principle of domination. To wage war was to seek domination, to dominate was to exist, to exist was to defy nature's order.

  The beasts continued their war games, and so too did the Leviathan continue to amass power. In an unnumbered time, the Leviathan would come to dominate the laws of nature once more since his self-creation.

  The Leviathan swiped its claws through the very shackles of nature's order, and pulled from the belly of the ethereal a great ball of light.

  The sun.

  Its heavenly light bathed the once desolate and everdark world the beasts inhabited.

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  With a gnashing of teeth the Leviathan pulled from the heavens a great rock. Its pale hue in the dark a promise of the sun's return from the abyssal horizon it fell over at the day's end.

  The moon.

  In its final act, the Leviathan unleashed a horrid roar. The Leviathan let loose the magic it used to first defy the natural order of the world from its core. The Leviathan’s corporeal form was no more, and nature’s order had once again been defied.

  This magic permeated the soil of the earth and the clouds of the sky. From this magic arose a creature whose existence was contrary to that of the beasts.

  A human.

  The man did not exist in contrast to natural order. His birth was not an act of defiance to creation. The human looked to the sun for strength. Its heavenly light warmed him in the day, and at night the moon’s pale shimmer illuminated the sky and reflected onto the dew-covered grass the promise of the sun's return.

  The sun wept for the man. A solitary creature of order in a world of defiance. Under the consent of nature’s order, it granted the man the strength he desired. The beasts had their magic, but the sun had granted the man a new power, the power of the soul. In the same radiance that the sun bathed the world in, the man manifested and twisted the light harbored within himself into a great weapon of fire.

  A sword.

  The man took up arms and fell upon the beasts, slaughtering them in great numbers. The beasts offered him their kingship, their magic, and their subjugation, but the man continued his campaign unswayed. For it was the command of his sun. His light. His God. The beast's very existence was an insult to the sun. Upon its command, the man would continue to slay the beasts. Despite his great efforts, he was unable to see to their eradication entirely.

  The sun saw the loneliness of the man’s heart. From its irradient form it sent a small piece from within itself down upon the world to bring him partnership. While a human, this new creature was slightly different from the man. Its hips wider, its muscles smaller, and in it a remnant of its former transcendence, the ability to create life within itself.

  A woman.

  The man was no longer alone. He granted a name to himself and the women born of the sun. He would be called Daedulus, and the woman Elara.

  The age of man had come upon the world, but the threat of the beasts still persisted. The culling of their ranks by Daedulus had left only the strong. The strong would gain strength and new beasts would continue to force their way into creation. The beasts saw the opportunity for even greater strength. The beasts sought the domination of mankind.

  The beasts forced the humans into their war games, and the practice of war became second nature to mankind. With their souls ablaze, they would take up arms against the beasts in their ritual and make it their own.

  Daedulus would lead mankind, and they would call him king. As time passed, humans would come to populate the world in numbers rivaling the sand of the seas the moon tenderly pulled upon.

  King Daedulus and Elora would die as all humans do, and his radiant sword lost.

  The moon feared for the humans after the loss of their king, their champion, and wished to aid like its celestial twin once had. However, the moon had forgotten its place in the natural order. Its existence was to assure of the sun’s return, a promise of the radiance and warmth to come anew on the dawn of the next day. It was not its nature to be anything more.

  The moon, in defiance of order, sent a piece of itself down to the world as the sun once had. This fragile pale spark was swallowed by the world and consumed. Natural order would not allow itself to be defied again. The moon lost its piece, the scar of its attempted defiance forever marring its face.

  Mankind continued on. A Queen came to take Daedulus’ throne, and another after her fall. This is how man continued into the current day. The humans, under the banner and shield of the Sol empire, continue to make war with the beasts. Armed with their blazing soul weapons they now call pieces, in honor of the sun's gift, they fight for the restoration of the natural order.

  It is said that the willpower of First King Daedalus' radiant soul was unable to leave the world unprotected from the beast's threat. It awaits its next champion, humanity's second king, in a lost corner of the world, its light ready to defend humanity once more. The man that finds this lost piece and is deemed worthy by it shall commission its light to wage a final war against the beasts and restore the natural order to the world.

  “That’s just a story Grandma”. Muttered the boy, his eyes working in opposition to his mind, pulling him into sleep.

  “A story it may be, but a fine story it is indeed”. The old woman whispered as she ran her wrinkled fingers through the hair of the sleeping child.