Prologue (Part One)

An excerpt from Dyian History Volume I: Pages 1 – 3

      It is wrong to say there was nothing at first. There was rock and space.

      Crumbling pieces of earth drifting endlessly through infinite stars and a gaping hole of black. There were many things at first. There were the little snakes of erupting power cracking through staggering comets. The winking stars—each a portal to another realm. There were the distant worlds gazing upon the ever-blinking cosmos, unaware of its perhaps newest neighbour.

      The Trillion Realms—a honeycomb, every little pocket of life in the dastard darkness a world of sparking magic. Many of them stretched across the boundless restraints of space. The four ruling creators of it all—the God of Death, the Goddess of Eternal Life, the God of Elements, and the Goddess of Choosing—otherwise known as the Arcane Gods, birthed a god or goddess in all of the realms, to guide and inspire the mortals walking the land they made.

      They were the almighty—infallible, undefeatable. No other’s power could rival theirs. The Goddess of Eternal Life—the gentlest and most giving of the Arcane Gods—exhaled onto a shard of Gaiarek.

      A stone, veined with green, sizzling magic. Now with the power of an Arcane’s breath. It launched towards an undetermined destination, leaving a vortex of emerald lights behind it. The Gaiarek halted between five vaguely outlined hexagonal realms, a wave and blast of power pushing them apart to form a new realm—Mortisia.

      The Gaiarek split open, and the breath of Eternal Life allowed a life-filled spirit—green with the echoes of life beginning—to emerge. She ascended her throne in Mortisia, and became Gaia, the Goddess of Life.

      She had named herself, with the ancient weaving tongue of Kakrike (kah-kree-kay). Gaiarek in the star-cursed alphabet was two things—Gai, meaning child; Arek, meaning bountiful. The newly anointed Goddess of Life took only the first letter of ‘arek’, believing the remaining ‘rek’ too rough and brutal.

      She reclined on her seat of supreme power in her realm, and in the palm of her hand she began to fulfil her sole purpose—to bring life. Dust and splintered rock gathered within the warming caress of her slender fingers, forming spherical energy cores.

      Crackling, buzzing energy, fighting to be free from its forced shape. Golden lightning struck every invisible corner of the realm, the walls built to keep other gods out. And to keep Gaia in. More powerful cores, pulsing with magic, accumulating dust-laden layers of asteroids, selfishly shielding itself, unbothered by its siblings.

      The balls filled the realm, illuminating the tightest nooks and crannies. Gaia flung out her arms—a test. Her magic shook the barriers of Mortisia, and many energy cores were blasted into oblivion. Only the larger ones—the stronger ones—remained. Her lips pulled upwards as she surveyed the surviving orbs.

      Their cores’ light had almost been covered up completely, obscured by the fragments of earth it tugged towards itself. Some were drawn towards each other—circling one another. But once the cores could no longer be seen, darkness reigned. Joined in soul and creator alike, the now-planets released a drop of their cores. The droplets of Gaia’s magical essence converged to become a fiery ball.

      Large planets and smaller versions of themselves orbited the fiery ball, spinning fast and unrelentingly. A solar system. Gaia decided to give it a name as she had once gifted herself with one.

      The solar system . . . should be named Cloudstorm. In its future she could see whorls of white misting the surface of the planets dancing around the fireball.

      She drifted back to her throne. Ways off was Cloudstorm, proudly nestled among the far-away suns.

      Her solar system.

      Her realm. And hers only.

      Until a purple-streaked comet hurtled past, coming to a stop right before it could breach the walls of Gaia’s realm and pass into the next.

      Not so alone, after all.