The Fourth Era - Gods Given Shape

Noa walked the land, womb growing heavy. She visited places her previous self had once explored with the Volsigne. Eventually she climbed the high places of Cyx’s chosen world and settled upon the tallest mountain peak of all.

Soon after, new life was again introduced to the world; Noa gave birth to nine children, small pink miniatures of the forms the Volsigne had fashioned for themselves.

The children had been born small yet would grow to much the same height as the Volsigne themselves and, like the Volsigne, were yet more concepts made flesh. Cyx’s latest children were those he had always sought—processes long-woven into the fabric of the universe, birthed forth into living awareness. Noa remained silent during the birth, save on the ninth and final child; here she screamed and beat her fists against the stone until she threatened to sink the mighty mountain.

As she had told him, their children proved markedly different from any uvrenheim, dwarfevenheim, or low beast of Sar. They required no food or drink, no rest or sleep, and to them death was only their mother. Once they had grown no year could touch them, no ailment could strike them, and no mere blow could fell them.

Noa called them gods, and raised them into maturity upon the greatest mountains of their world. For a brief time her children reminded her of when she had once been Life, bright-eyed and hopeful. Noa devoted her previous self to the love and warmth she provided the nine.

The gods chose their own names.

There was the youngest, Axion, god of sky and storms.

There was Vaug, god of anger and fire.

There was Xumus, god of rot and the dead.

There was Nokira, goddess of luck and lies.

There was Telos, god of knowledge and dreams.

There was Dovac, god of delusion and fear.

There was Vylana, goddess of the ocean and mystery.

There was Rounea, goddess of animals and balance.

There was Dymerva, goddess of love and kindness.

As the gods developed, their existence caused a destabilization within the Volsigne. Sar’s beasts no longer heeded him as they once had, torn between his form’s will and that of young Rounea. The same could be claimed by Lea’s trees and valley winds, which had also become smitten with the new goddess, or her oceans which would bend to Vylana’s fledgling will instead. For the first time the Volsigne felt vulnerable, and threatened, and they were exhilarated by it.

Only Cyx kept them from confrontation, dismissing the clamor of his Volsigne. He had not yet met these gods for himself, though he knew them to be his greatest triumph. Finally he had created beings of equal value, and he would not allow growing pains to impede their full development. He held his Volsigne firmly in hand, and they settled to witness the new way of things.

Upon their mountain fastness, the gods flourished. Noa taught them what lessons of value she knew from her journeys beyond, guiding her children toward values cherished when she had once been Life. She neither dampened strength nor intercepted weakness, allowing each of them to become as the universe dictated.

Yet she was not Life, and could not stay beside them. She was meant to be away, beyond stars and darkness, striding distant places until that last of days for Cyx’s chosen world. Noa could not remain. She gave the gods all she could before releasing them, like birds from a nest, from their known and lofty home.

The gods stayed together, skittish and wary without their mother. Even as early as then, a clear leader had asserted himself—Axion, youngest son of Noa and Cyx, god of sky and storms. As his birth had been different, so too had his growth; he had outpaced his fellow gods by leaps and bounds, exerting far more raw will and strength than any of them could hope to match. Axion shared the same innate ambition as his father Cyx, though in him it had been tempered by his upbringing.

He relied upon it to guide his siblings then. The rest of them were all that each cared for; in these earliest days they were close-knit, free of hidden aim or buried resentment. They had spent their lives together, laughing and crying, adventuring and learning, being and experiencing.

They roamed the planet same as the Volsigne before them, yet for the gods there was more to discover within and without. Across landscapes of stone worked by the uvrenheim they journeyed, and through great metal gardens forged by the dwarfevenheim. Down to the lowest bowels of the earth they went, deep and hidden and airless, then back up across the hills to the mountains where they had been born. Lea’s chill displeasure with Cyx had become long-forgotten by those years, and the world once again basked in glorious summer.

The gods learned much of land and sea, and of the life with which they shared a planet. Certain animals took fierce liking to certain gods, and the gods to them. They brought these animals alongside them as companions, and their grins and foolishness grew with the number of their traveling pack.

Boldest among them, Axion was first to approach the dragons. They were few and mighty, preferring isolation. These were more than beasts of tooth and claw; dragons were as old as Time and Life, and had been aware before either concept. Cyx had been confounded by them and his ambition had never declared he master them, so he had left the scaled behemoths to fly and sleep as they would.

Axion discovered the dragons spoke their own tongue, maintained their own culture, and were capable of feats even the Volsigne could not perform. For the tongue they spoke was not thought rendered to word, but thought rendered to power. A word could steal the lightning from his grasp, or the fire from Vaug’s, or set the seas to raging against Vylana.

The great dragons spoke a language of magic and, try as they might, the gods could never learn it. The words lay always beyond their grasp, a power not theirs to know. The dragons had no trouble deigning to wield the lesser tongue conjured by the Volsigne, and so in his youth Axion lived with them.

His hosts taught him much and more. He learned the workings of the universe as they knew them, the means to parse right from wrong, and the distinction between strength and brutality. He learned to fly, yet never so gracefully as them; the dragons took him far and deep, away from the little planet of the Volsigne, on through great darkness and starfields of old.

Upon his return, Axion was greatly changed. He had seen enough to render him wise, and a third eye had opened above the gaze he had been born with. He had come to more closely understand the ambition which drew his steps onward, and his choices came with unflinching certainty.

The other gods had settled in his long absence, building humble settlements atop the mountains where they had been reared. They lived in comfort and companionship, stitching clothes and crafting crude tools, training their bodies and studying the world from on high, making music and art and memories. They were content, and upon the day Axion returned they whooped and cheered and danced beneath infinite skies.

Soon after, the Volsigne came.