The Fifth Era - Trodden and Mewling

The Volsigne arrived at the mountains together, save Death who remained apart from all. Cyx led them in V-shaped formation, while behind followed their twelve dwarfevenheim generals and a great host of uvrenheim. The daunting show of force was not lost on the unbloodied gods, who crowded closer together at finding themselves faced by such.

“My children.” Cyx smiled warmly to regard them. “Why do you make me come to you? Why have you not joined father and family below?”

It was Axion who gave answer, loud and immediate. “My family begins and ends with nine, Vol Cyx. I have seen your ways, and they are not mine. We are no trodden and mewling hounds for you and yours.”

Sar snapped his teeth. “Brash boy. You forget who rules this world by right.”

The god laughed at him. “Of course I do not. Why do you think we dwell upon the highest point?”

Then it was Cyx who laughed. “He dwells with these dragons, and thus becomes one.”

“What I become is no concern of yours, as with the rest of my family. Our choices are to be ours alone. We will come forth and walk amongst your kind as equals, or we will stand against you as the same. We would hear your answer. Time you may be, though you will not for long keep ours.”

Cyx studied his youngest son, overcome with pride and at the same time nearly blind with fury. “Of course, my son. You and yours will stand equal to the Volsigne. Come, new gods, and rule alongside us.”

For many ages then, the gods and Volsigne moved as one. The elder concepts were as alarmed by their youthful counterparts as they were charmed by them. They danced and laughed. They snarled and struggled. They were, and they became.

Axion would visit the dragons often, and bring Telos along to glimpse their wonders. Vaug and Dovac mined with the dwarfevenheim, fumbling to learn their craft. Dymerva moved with Aro and Nokira traveled with Ara, while Rounea and Vylana attended Lea and Sar. So it was the gods and Volsigne existed together, and the world knew a harmony it would never know again.

For Cyx had never learned from dragons, and thus discovered no distinction between strength and brutality. Despairing and confused, he began to lash out at all which he had made. These gods, promising as they had at first seemed, proved flawed in fresh and infuriating ways; they would not listen to him, would not obey his aim to bring order and arrangement to the universe, would not trust his will as that which gave birth to worlds and slaughtered stars. Though they could not die they remained weak as a whole, and proud, and obdurate for each passing age.

Cyx’s hand ruled harsh and stern as the years wore on, made heavy and bitter by perceived failings. He would fell Sar’s beasts without regard, studying them in creative and protracted ways; he would make the uvrenheim tear one another to pieces, rewarding them with rank and title for clean-plucked heads and unpulped hearts; he would command the dwarfevenheim like eager slaves, extracting ever-more involved creations from their limitless minds.

Gone was the bright-eyed leader of a new day, worn to nothing by his inability to translate his purpose. The ambition which guided him, unspoken and unmade, pure and formless within, had done so along a path of disappointment ending in ruin. Each change he made had gone awry, each seed he planted blooming to black rot: uvrenheim, dwarfevenheim, gods, none were as they should have been. All was wrong, he knew, and each choice he made to fix it only sank him deeper in filth of his own making.

Up to then, he had abandoned the gods to move about as they would. No more. If he was to set things right, to heed his ambition and put it forth as it was meant to be, he would need to bend all of living creation to his will to see it done. Slowly did he begin to restrict them in ways subtle and slight, suggesting rather than directing, capitulating and pivoting, tightening his grip at a measured pace.

His creeping exertion over thought and action went unnoticed, save by one god among nine.