'Sivran' Series - All Liturgies

Prim Leaves her Father’s House
From the Song of Maybe

There came a time when Lord Hansa entered the hollow and singing hall of the multicolored Akaroth, for lunisnight celebrations. There was a great feast there for a fortnight or more, and there, caught in a heated philosophical fugue with Akaroth, Lord Hansa in anger committed the  violation of letting his pipe smoke rise and befoul the all-wind that permeated that house and nourished the ways of the void. Fueled by wine, Akaroth was driven into such a drunken rage by this insult that he harnessed fifty winds to his will and at once slew Hansa with a single stroke of his war fan and felt little regret at the time. Later, in grief, he did heavy penance for this act, for he slew a widely respected man, but all agreed that Lord Hansa had committed a grievous offense.

When Akaroth’s archons learned of this offense, they snatched up the cooling body of Lord Hansa and rode the void to his estate, and there they slew his servants in the multitude and cleft the skulls of his retainers and set fire and lightning upon the land. They tore apart the house of iron nails that stood on that land and within found Hansa’s virginal and radiant daughter Prim, who was preparing her father’s supper, as she did every night. “Look,” said Thunder Cleaves Stone, who was chief in majesty among the retainers of Akaroth, “here is that maid or daughter which he makes a slave. How piteous and crawling a thing!” They fell upon Prim and shaved her beautiful locks and in insult demanded black bread and liquor for hospitality, which she could not fulfill. “Dog!” said they, “and daughter of a dog, live a dog’s life!”, and threw they before her her father’s mangled corpse and left her raw with their laughter in the scoured and smoking ruin of her father’s estate. Later Akaroth learned of their conduct and was greatly enraged for Hansa had been a great wise man, and he had the Archons tied to a flensing tree which stretched the seven corners of the multiverse and there flayed them with lashes of lightning as they had flayed the house of Hansa, and all agreed this was just.

Prim was despondent but did not cry for there was no finer daughter. She took up her cloak and vela and great knife, and felt a little better, and she smeared the ashes of her father’s house on her face and body as was the custom, and she felt a little better, and she wrapped her father’s poor body in a linen shroud and she felt a little better still. She prepared to set upon the road, but she had never left her father’s house, and the thought terrified her, so she plucked a single iron nail from its smoking ruins and pocketed it. So comforted, she slung her father’s corpse over her small back and set off on the road of the Ruling King, which wound seven times through the void and the Wheel, and looked for a place to bury her father.

Soon she came upon a grand field on which the ground quickly became slick with the ruins of men and heaved with the wetness of lives smashed by incredible violence. The earth shook terribly, and carrion birds circled, and a mighty stench filled the air so that she was afraid and gripped her great knife. She came upon a devil there who was perched upon a corpse and gorged upon its eyes. “Look thee craven,” said the devil, “for great lords are doing battle here.”

Indeed, Prim shortly came upon a conflict so brutal that its noise split the earth and heavens both from end to end. The Gods Sivran and Ogam-am were settled in their destroyer aspects and were doing battle with their armies. Great tides of men and horses were dashed aside by their dueling, the ground shuddered and cracked, and the air was thick with the slurry of violence. Prim felt the coldness of fear in her heart, but gripped the iron nail in her pocket, and spoke in her small voice. “Great lords, where may I bury my father?” spoke she, and then again a score of times for her voice was weak and lost easily in the cacophony.

“Who is this ant,” howled Ogam, frothing with rage as he finally noticed her, spouting flame from his navel,”so ugly and ash covered?”

“It is Hansa Primpiyat, that small Prim who you may know, who was the daughter of a great man,” spoke Prim in her small voice, and both Gods ceased their brawling and craned to hear, for she was a piteous thing and they recognized her broken burden as the master Hansa. Prim shrank back, but it was a good question, and both Gods reposed a while to contemplated it, while the blood dripped and smoked from their wounds and their armies continued the slaughter.

“Bury him on the battlefield,” commanded Sivran after a while, “for then he will die a conqueror’s death, which is a righteous death of glory and struggle.”

“Bury him on the battlefield,” roared Ogam, as molten steel dripped from his mouth, “for it is not a weak and womanly death, and his mighty corpse deserves veneration!”

So agreed, both Gods returned to their mortal drama. Prim considered for a moment, and then followed their command, though she was struck more than once by a passing bolt or a hurtling stone, for though the lords’ advice was sound, they were mad with battle lust and thought little of the lives of small things.

Prim returned to the road, and bound her bleeding wounds, and slept, for she was weary, but barely a day had passed when she heard the voice of her father’s corpse rasping. “What a din!” he said, “I can barely sleep for this racket! What terrible excuse for a daughter has interred me in this madhouse!” Prim returned once again to the battlefield with fear and obedience in her heart and though she was struck by hails of bolts and the the gore of the ruins of men, she retrieved her father’s body.

Tired and encrusted with filth, Prim once again set on the road. She trod for many days more, and her fine vela became torn, her dress became ragged, her back ached, and her shoes ripped. Interdimensional winds lashed at her, the ground betrayed her, and she came to hate the very air. Eventually, she came to a place where the road met emptiness and there encountered the angel 7 Sound of Clear Water Through a Grove, which bade her halt. “Traveler,” said the angel in its middle voice, “you look sick and weary. The lady Pravi reposes not far from here. Please pay her a visit.” Prim reluctantly obeyed, for the filth and pain of the road was wearing on her, and strode towards a grove of white glass with swollen feet.

There in a rippling expanse of frozen space the lady Pravi was ensconced on her dais with all her court around her. Her scalp was burnished and oiled, her fingers were very well trained and elegant, her left half was singing a song of love, her right a song of longing, and her cleft form was lovely and sensual. Her court burned fragrant incense and sang accompaniment and bared their breasts to the cool infinity, and indeed it was an awesome sight to behold. Prim was pricked with fear, but she clutched the nail on her pocket and set on.

“What mud spattered vagrant and dirty thing defiles my presence,” spoke the right half of Pravi and the left half made a small gesture of cessation and the music stopped most painfully. “It is I,” spoke Prim in her small voice, “the orphan of Hansa.” Pravi was a poor and abused soul herself, though vain and self-indulgent, and she took pity upon Prim and her grisly burden. Her attendants bound Prim’s feet and layered oils upon them, and sang gently to blunt her pain and found fresh linens for Lord Hansa, though they gave her neither bread nor liquor, for fear of impurity, and did not attend to her wounds. “Great Lady of Pleasure and Enjoyment,” said Prim in her small voice, “where may I bury my father?”

“Bury him in a beautiful field,” said the left half of Pravi, “so he may repose in light and silence and warmth and rest in beauty and peace, for in all things these are good qualities. This is known by me.” And her right half proclaimed that this was good, and she called upon her attendants to oil her silky flesh and bring her fruit and that was that.

Prim considered this for a moment, and then followed her command. When she had done so, she set back upon the road, and lay down to sleep, as she was very tired and in great pain. Not a day had passed however, when she heard the voice of her father’s corpse. “What deafening silence!” it rasped, “What putrid soporific sweetness is this? How insipid and smothering a place to bury such a great man as me! What wasteful  and negligent daughter would do thus to a father?” So, Prim set back to that place, and wore out her boots to shreds, and went back on the road barefoot with her rotting burden.

Exhausted and smeared with grime and ash, Prim traveled for many days, where the road tore at her every minute and blackened her bare feet with blood and calluses. Eventually she was halted by a pair of peregrine knights in the middle of a ten year watch when they came upon her filthy and hobbling figure.

“Halt Yea,” spoke the first knight, “traveler, the road will devour you before long. Over there is YISUN’s speaking hall.”

“A great gathering is there,” spoke the second knight, “pray ye ask for relief or rest, stranger, from those gathered, for ye shall proceed no longer on our watch.”

Prim gripped her knife but she was too weak to fight. She was afraid to enter that hall because she knew her dreadful appearance would surely offend her father’s peers and invite their wrath down upon her. But, she clutched her iron nail, and the assurance therein sent new strength into her cracked and bleeding feet, and she went on.

YISUN’s speaking house was full of light and sound, its feathered arches were gold and russet from the warmth within. As Prim entered, she saw a great assemblage of lords in attendance, some in their speaking forms, some clothed as great animals or birds, some as a heat or pillar of stone, some great dark roiling clouds, some stretched their limbs through quantum states and others reclined, lotus-like, through probability as they made merriment. A great cry set up when Prim came to the threshold for her feet made black marks upon the gilded tiles and the ash and filth caked upon her form befouled the scented air within, and she was so bent with the weight of her father’s corpse that there were almost none who recognized this torn and broken thing. The gods, forgoing custom, made to cast her out, so foul was her appearance, but Het, who was the doorkeeper, was the keenest among them and did not speak roughly to her. “This is the orphan of Hansa, the poor and broken wanderer who was Prim,” she chastised to the gathered, “shame upon your heart of hearts!” She struck the ground with her stave, and the gods were shamed. Still, they were so repulsed by how ugly Prim had grown that they called only their servants to approach her, who bound her feet again, and served her black bread and spirits, and wrapped her face and ragged shorn head in a binding cloth so the gods may hold her in their sight and set her gently upon the proscenium. Thin wine was brought to clear her throat and fresh and golden cloth was brought for the decaying corpse of Hansa.

“Great masters,” croaked she in her small voice, “where may I bury my father? I have searched and searched, and still he will not be at rest. How may I please him?”

“Annihilate his body with fire and free yourself of his burden,” spat weeping Ashma, but Prim could not, for there was no finer daughter.
“Pass him to me, ” spoke bloated Kaon, “so I may bring him to YISUN’s gardens.” But Prim saw his smile of greed and gripped her great knife.
“Set him walking on the road,” said Pedam, tapping his staff in thought, “so he may never tire of his surroundings.” But Prim had grown to hate the road.

There were more.
“Set him in the deep mountains,” bellowed Yam, the high.
“Give him a crown so he may rule the dead,” said noble Payam.
“Make him a coffin of air, so the emptiness may pass through his bones,” said Ovis, fluctuating between five different time states.
“Give him a silver death mask,” said Kami, who tapped upon her ribcage and fingered her string of heads.
“Feed him to my sons so he may live a new life,” said the God of Pigs.
“Make his body into birds,” said Voya, “small birds, so they may pass easily through holes in the universe.”

There were more, and more besides. Prim could not decide on any of these things, and all they did was rip at her heart relentlessly, and the gods grew restless and discontent. The hour grew late, and with relief, the assembly ushered Prim out of the light and warmth of that hall and onto the cruel and jagged road and freezing morning, and Prim went on.

By degrees, Prim grew more and more bent as the corpse of her father grew bloated and swollen. The cloths on her face and feet became soiled, her great knife bent and chipped, and her beautiful vela grew ragged and torn. All the while, the corpse of her father berated her. “What a horrid excuse for a daughter,” it rasped, “I still lie uninterred! How infantile and unaccomplished! My daughter’s life amounts to less than a flea’s! Better she kill herself than allow this shame to rattle my sorry corpse! She should have died in that iron house with me where she belonged!”

After a while, Prim’s feet were fed to the road and became too swollen with blood to walk, and so she crawled like a guttural beast, and all she passed on the road gave her a wide berth and were horror stricken by the stench of death which surrounded her.

Eventually, it was too much for Prim, and she could go no further. Following her father’s last instruction, for there was no finer daughter, she set her feverish mind to one thing – dying in that iron house as her father commanded. With claw like hands, she wrenched that iron nail from her cloak and with all her strength, pounded it into the rough earth of the road. In a flash and with a terrible groan, all around her grew the terrible jagged eaves and beams, the arches and hollows of the iron house of nails. It was just as she had remembered it, even the dinner she had been preparing before the destruction of her father’s estate. Crawling, she unburdened her cargo and dragged her father’s corpse onto his throne, and prepared to expire.

But suddenly, in that moment, a most undaughterly sentiment came over Hansa Primpiyat. She saw eternity stretching before her, a servile eternity, a comfortable, familiar, and putrid eternity, her rotting corpse serving the ruin of her father in that awful, devouring iron house in perfect, decaying, daughterly obedience, forever and ever. And she felt true fear.

She crawled out of that house as soon as her bloody limbs would take her, with terrifying clarity, and hauled herself over its cold black threshold and away from the grip of eternity. But as soon as she did, there was a sound like the closing of a great tomb, or the dropping of a great stone, or the ringing of a deep bell, and a rush and a clap and there was no sign of that iron house any more in all the cosmos. Suddenly, Prim felt the awful stab of ten times the fear she had before, for all she had ever known and cared about was gone forever with that house, and all that remained was that pitiless and hungry stranger called the road, her new master, crueler and more relentless even than her father, and she curled in a sodden ball and cried an awful keening wail that split the heavens and reached even the archons on their flensing tree. Great filthy tears poured from her eyes and nose and her belly was wrenched with terrible spasms of pain and grief.

A pale face came before her and she was abruptly struck from her despair as though by a great hammer. A beautiful stranger had appeared, mild and tall, of milky flesh, spare in figure, but radiant in voice and visage. “I know you,” said the stranger in a small voice, “you are Prim.”

“I was Hansa’s orphan, the slave, Prim,” croaked Prim in response, “and now I am nobody, just a small dirty thing in great emptiness and here I will die.”

“No,” said the stranger, and the clarity and firmness of her voice and smile send a shock through Prim, “you are Prim, and Prim only, and Prim you shall be.” And Prim there realized her tears had made a great pool and she was greeting her own reflection. And she fell into that murky pool and straight away it turned clear as crystal and Prim vomited forth a great black knot from very deep within her, and her body was scoured and lashed by the icy waters of that pool, and great draughts of poisonous filth and despondency were drawn in rushing gasps from her wounds, and her skin was sealed and her soiled trappings were purged and the caked illness and death was ripped away and she rose from that pool fresh and humming. Her back straightened and she scarcely thought on her father’s corpse or the faintest echo of that iron house. The air was quite pleasant and the road which had seemed cruel now seemed to whimper and bend before her, and she stood up and laughed a perfect laugh of dominance, and its sound rang like a bell as the warmth of life steamed within her, and the road stretched on and it was good.

That is how Prim left her father’s house.

Aesma and the Red Eyed King

Final Part

So it was that the Red Eyed King rode Aesma through star-winds and yawning gulfs of space-time to where the Temple of the Disc of the Sun stood glowing in its stately majesty. And when Aesma landed with the King astride her back, the priests from the temple marched out from between its columns in graceful stride. Their aprons were neatly pressed, and their collars were starched and spotless, and their gleaming rods of office rapped out a pleasing synchronous pattern as they came down the temple steps. For indeed, the priests were expecting Aesma. Their hearts were full of the pride of their victory, and anticipation to see what manner of man had conquered Aesma the Wicked so thoroughly. Already they had spread the word of Aesma’s forthcoming wedding widely across the world, and it had become table talk across all creation in short order. The temple at that time was for that very reason bustling with activity. Worshippers, gossips, and philosophers alike had all come to see the triumph of order, reason, and light over womanly discord, darkness, and wantonness.

But as the priests descended into the temple courtyard, they beheld that the throng gathered there around the new arrivals was recoiling in horror. There was no proud and virtuous man standing there, for as the King dismounted, and as he stood to his full monstrous height, the priests beheld that he he had a pure and perfect aspect of a destroyer. And at once, all their notions of victory melted away, for victory itself is of course a ridiculous notion.

“What is the meaning of this?” boomed the Hierophant.

Aesma made of herself a woman-shape again, and dusted herself off. “I have done as you said, oh great teacher!” she said, throwing herself to the dirt in joy. “It is so grand and great to be submissive! I have brought my husband meals, and darned his clothing, and he has even mounted me across the stars.” She blushed and looked demure as well as she could, which was to say quite terribly. “Now I am here to be joined in holy matrimony, and to submit to the will of my husband, as you have asked of me!”

“What has overcome you?” said the Hierophant, aghast.

“It’s love, I think!” said Aesma, “Isn’t it wonderful?”

The priests racked their staves against the King, and charged with a mighty battle cry. But the king swept up his shield, which was a thousand times heavier than stone, and their attack was dashed against it like water breaking on a cliff.

“I must thank you for inspiring this poor fool to free me from my long imprisonment,” said the King, in his voice like drifting ash. Aesma was too dazed to notice being called a fool and merely gazed upon the King through tears of admiration.

“Now that I’m free,” said the King, “These eyes of mine see a world even more putrid and insipid than in ages past. I ache for its destruction, and since I only deal in fire, fire shall by thy reward.” The king pulled his Roc-feather mantle tight about him, and drew into him all the dread powers and venoms of the night. He invoked his war forms of which he had ninety and two, enclothed himself in roiling smoke, and crowned himself with cinders. Planting his feet, he grew to such monstrous size that his flame-circled brow seared the clouds, and the earth shook and shuddered with his mighty inhalations. The crowd at the temple scattered before his majesty, and black clouds obscured the light of the Great Sun Disc as the king reached out with taloned hand and crushed it into a thousand splinters. The light and power of the Disc was exceptionally potent – a great beacon of strength and wisdom that had drawn in pilgrims from distant empires to bathe in its majesty. For this reason it seared the king just a little when he crushed it with his hand, but then its light was snuffed and it fell in shards to the earth. As an oily night fell upon the land about, the virtuous and manly priests of the Temple knew immediately that they had made a terrible mistake.

“Wife,” roared the king, in a voice that seared the mountain tops far away, “Bring my mine sword!”

And Aesma brought the king his massive sword of bone, that could cut thirty six ways at once, and he enwreathed himself in a dread black fire that could burn up the land, and immediately set about his rampage. First, he smashed aside the priests and roaming saints that came up to defend the temple, for their staves and starched aprons could do naught but turn to char beneath his onslaught. He toppled the white and stately columns of the Temple and he burned the altars to cinders with the mere heat from his body. Most of the crowd and congregation was slaughtered and torn to bits from the gale of his passing, and the Temple was consumed by hellish flame.

So satisfied with his work, the King turned his red gaze away from the temple, and found all the land about unspoiled and pure, which offended him greatly. He took five great strides across the land, and each stride burned a forest up and smashed its trees to matchsticks. On his fifth stride, he found the great domain of the king Mavamatri Io, which was a shining white city that had long revered the great Sun Disc, with orderly avenues and leafy boulevards of gilded paving stones. As they saw the King approach, the city guard blew the great horn of defense, and to its clarion call rallied five thousand men at arms in armor made from gleaming fish scales, whose chariots were drawn by horses shod in silver. The warriors of that city could draw a bow heavier than any man in five hundred kingdoms, and they were brave and righteous men, bearded and muscled from toil and training. They loosed upon the King their shafts, but once again he drew up his bulwark and dashed the rain of arrows into a pitiful shower.

The King struck out with his sword that cut thirty six ways, and it cut the air with a fierce and awful wind that blew the walls of the city asunder and killed seven hundred men at once. And in very short order, the King’s red gaze beheld only ashes were the great city had stood, and he was pleased. Aesma, for her part, was so lovesick that she could only sit in stunned admiration in the smoking ruins of the temple and watch as her would-be husband lay waste to the land about. But very shortly, it occurred to her that the marriage ceremony would still have to take place, so she staggered to her feet and skipped after the King, following the wake of his destruction.
And indeed, that wake grew very large indeed. On the first day of his rampage, the King razed ten cities to the ground, and slew a score of demigods. On the third, he had razed thirty five cities, and slew a hundred and thirty two demigods, and thrown twenty temples into ruin. And by the seventh day, he had razed ninety five cities, slew five hundred and sixty demigods, boiled seven seas to dust, burned the College of Stars to the ground, set alight the Ulaptis river, and slaughtered the god Un-Utram in single combat. And each day, Aesma would follow along, giddy with love, mend his battle-worn armament, sing his praises. But as the sun grew low and the only light was from the cities burning to the ground around the King, Aesma would tug at his ankle and say, “Oh husband of mine, will you come back to the temple with me? Have you forgotten our ceremony?”

This grew extremely vexing to the King, who truly cared little for Aesma and could harbor nothing so infinitely complex as love in his small and dull heart. And by fits and starts, the King made the exact same mistake as the priests of the Temple. He began to relish in his conquest, and he grew assured in his victory, for the swathe of carnage and devastation that the King had carved was visible even from YISUN’s speaking house, and it’s smoke was so thick that it blotted out the sun for near half of creation. Grand and imperious armies rallied against the King, and were dashed to pieces upon his armor, and everywhere he went he left a sea of dying men and horses. Even the meta-dimensional halls and transcendent planar-estates of the Gods began to pay attention to the King, and rallied their celestial hosts. War gods girded their loins and clad themselves in steaming armor and summoned their sword arts for battle. The Great Gods of Justice summoned the minor Gods of Justice from where they were harassing Ogam, and together they shouldered their spears and clothed themselves in molten law, and marched for the battlefield.

But even the Gods themselves could do little but slow down the King’s ferocious rampage. For battle as they might, they were unable to strike a single wound against the King, who was encased in his invulnerable armament. And the King did not sleep or tire, for his hatred of creation and his burning rage against the insipid beauty of the universe gave him the awful power of Want, which filled his limbs with unstoppable force. He shattered the smoking spears of the Gods of Justice, and threw down the Gods of Law with a strike from his shield, and did battle with Sivran, God of Conquest, for seven and one days before Sivran retired to his palanquin from exhaustion.

So indeed, the King’s victory seemed assured. And it was there at the height of his conquest that he decided to rid himself of Aesma.

“Oh husband of mine, won’t you come back to the temple with me?” said lovestruck Aesma, for the twentieth time. The King looked at her with his terrible red eyes and said, “Get thee gone, gnat! Thou hast served thy purpose, now play in the ashes a while!” And he took his sword that could cut thirty six ways and smote Aesma with a blow so mighty that it sent her hurtling across the world and blew all the love clean out of her. When Aesma landed, she was pouring tears again. She staggered around, sobbing, until she found herself trudging through the ashes of the Temple of the Disc of the Sun. By this point she had been crying for a good day and a half, so her eyes were very sore and blurry with fiery tears. But she could see just well enough that she made out the sorry and filthy figure of the Hierophant of the Temple, who was poking through the smoking mess that had been the mighty congregation hall with what remained of his staff of office.

“Oh teacher!” sobbed Aesma, and shook the poor Hierophant from side to side, “I did what you asked! I followed all the rules of your temple! Is it because I’m too wicked that I must be punished so?”

“You awful, wretched creature!” shrieked the Hierophant in rage, “Look at what your foolishness has wrought! Get up and set this right at once!”

“Oh I was struck by my husband,” said Aesma, “And now my heart is aflame with pain!” And she sobbed and rolled around in self-pity, covering herself in ashes and moaning. The immediately Hierophant saw that he had made a second, and far greater mistake than getting Aesma to marry in the first place. By trying to tame Aesma, he had inadvertently removed one of the only weapons that could be relied on to trounce pompous fools such as the Red Eyed King with any degree of reliability.

“Get up!” sputtered the Hierophant, “You have to fight!”

“Oh but that’s against the rules!” sobbed Aesma.

“You useless moron!” said the Hierophant, “The great Disc of the Sun is shattered! This temple is brought to ruin, and the world will ne’er see its like again, even in the whole history of creation! The stars themselves burn with the evil you have unleashed! Who cares if you were struck?”

It was true that the Temple would never return. But Aesma was not listening, for a sudden thought had hit her like a stone, and she stood up.

“Say!” she said, nurturing a growing anger, “If my husband strikes me, doesn’t that break our marriage vows?”

“You absolute dolt!” said the Hierophant, “You haven’t even been married yet!”

“Oh!” said Aesma, standing up, and becoming herself again. “I’ll beat him to a pulp!” She smacked the Hierophant for good measure, and felt fantastic. Then she set off in a dead sprint through the charred and smoldering landscape to where the Red Eyed King stood, wreathed in ruinous power, and laying waste to the world about him with great bolts of black fire and scorching ash. Five hundred gods were doing furious battle with him, and the light of their burning combat obscured the sky itself. Aesma instantly filled to the brim with an unstoppable berserk rage upon seeing his wicked face, and she began to tantrum, as was her custom.

“You!” she screamed, and laid hand upon the nearest thing to her, which was a large rock. She hurled it with tremendous force, where it struck the King in the thigh and made hardly a dent. Aesma was so angry, she turned to the next largest thing she could find, which was a stray horse. The horse was a well-bred steed that had once pulled the chariot of Mantos Am, God of Tax Law, but Aesma cared very little. She gripped the horse by its mane and flung it bodily at the king. It bounced of his thigh and he barely turned from his heated combat.

This so enraged Aesma that she turned to the next largest thing she could find, which was a boat – a mighty war barge a hundred paces long or more that had washed ashore when the river was vaporized by the king’s passing. She flung it at the king with terrifying force, and it glanced off the back of his hauberk and shattered into a thousand splinters of wood. This got the king to turn a little in Aesma’s direction, but at that point he gave her so little regard, so enthralled by victory as he was, that he spared here only the tiniest sliver of a sneer before turning back to his fight and swatting three Gods of war out of the sky with a swing of his hand.

Aesma couldn’t take it at that point. She dug her fingers in the earth, and with a mighty heave, flung part of the entire battlefield at the King. It struck the king square in the shoulder, and knocked him off balance as clods of earth, men, horses, and errant war machines went flying everywhere.

“What are you doing, miserable creature,” said the King. He threw off his combatants and turned to face her, and aligned all his aspects of war and mastery, armor states, and vorpal blade arts in her direction. He was an awe-inspiring sight.

“I think you’re the handsomest man I’ve ever met,” said Aesma, and she was quite sincere, “And you’ve got such a great work ethic! But you struck me with that sword that cuts thirty six ways, and more importantly you let my love for you pour out of me and die cold and withered on the floor. And that I cannot forgive!” She leapt at the king, and summoned up her destroyer form, and rained such ferocious blows upon him that the other five hundred Gods made a circle of their shields and gave her wide berth. But the King was a mighty warrior, and would not yield, so clothed in the invulnerable armor that Aesma had made for him. Any other warrior would have shriveled in dismay at the impossibility of victory in such a situation. It quickly became apparent that Aesma could not beat the Red Eyed King in battle. He was equally as fast as her, better trained, and his war aspects were more deadly. Most of Aesma’s killing blows bounced harmlessly off his shield, while others were rebuffed by the scales of his hauberk.

But Aesma did not cling to victory. Her lack of success merely filled her with a hot and infinite rage.

With a free hand, she groped around until she found the largest object she could find, which happened to a nearby mountain, and with impossible strength she tore it up by the root and dashed it across the Red Eyed King’s shield. The mountain shattered with a colossal rumble and the King was thrown back, but still he would not yield. So Aesma found the next largest object she could find. She raised herself up and reached into the sky and tore a passing moon from it’s orbit. And as the King staggered back from the mountain blow, Aesma ripped the moon molten hot through the atmosphere, and smashed it down into the King’s sword. Moon and sword both were blown into a million pieces, and the battlefield was rent asunder and turned into a maelstrom of screaming men, and gods, and horses, and chunks of stone and clouds of earth. Up and down ceased to have meaning, and the stars were blotted out by the cloud of destruction. But still the King would not yield.

So Aesma reached even further out, and pulled stars, one by one, and hurled them at the King. And the King hunched low and charged at Aesma through their fiery trails as they hurtled to earth in great explosions. He kept coming, even as his shield was blown into pieces, and gripped Aesma by the shoulders, so Aesma grabbed an Eye of Night, which was a star so large it had broken through space-time and collapsed into a hole infinitely more massive. She bashed the king over the head with it, and he was stunned and bloodied, but managed to knock it away from Aesma, where it flew off and devoured a nearby lunar kingdom.

“Yield!” said Aesma. But the King would not yield. He was exceedingly foolish, and still clung to his dreams of conquest. This allowed fear of losing to make its way in his limbs, which poisoned his grip. Instead of snapping Aesma’s neck, as he should have easily done, she instead squirmed out of his hold.

It was exactly then that Aesma did a truly impossible thing, since by then she was thoroughly fed up. She flexed her fingers, and planted her feet, an inhaled a mighty gale of breath, and reached out to grab the fabric of the world itself. And with a deafening roar, she lifted, and the entirety of creation shook.

“What are you doing?” said the King, aghast. And the other Gods who were hurled too and fro through that chaotic battlefield echoed his cry, for all could feel it.

“I’m going to lift the Wheel and beat you over the head with it until you give up!” puffed Aesma.

And the King saw that this was true. Aesma had indeed lifted the Wheel. He knew then that he had lost utterly and completely, and yielded. He lay down his shattered sword, and shuffled off his battered scale hauberk, and dispersed his dread aspect. If there was anything to be said about him further, it was that he was a graceful loser.

Even still, it took some convincing by the five hundred other Gods and the celestial hosts to get Aesma to put down the universe, but eventually she did. She remained upset all the while the King was escorted back to the Crucible of Punishment and locked inside an even tighter cage, and only cheered up once the key was turned in the lock, removed, and melted. Aesma was brought before Payam, who was foremost in YISUN’s Speaking House in those days, and sentenced to a hundred days as a scullery maid as punishment. Strangely, Aesma seemed rather meek about the whole affair and accepted her punishment gracefully as long as she was brought wine once in a while.

“You seem changed, Aesma ten Yondam,” said Payam to Aesma.

“I’m done with husbands,” said Aesma, who was despondent. “I think it’s time to grow up.”

“Oh?” said Payam, with great concern. The other Gods in YISUN’s speaking house also leaned in closely at this, for they were very worried at what could possibly go wrong next.

“Yes,” said Aesma, “I’m getting a dog.”

“Yemmod, storm-crowned, came to Lam, the Blue City
His men were like flies upon the earth and over the earth. They set upon the land a terrible blaze. The heat of the flames consumed the land about and licked the tops of the great walls around the city, and there was much wailing.

Yemmod said, “For every man of age to fight, hack off his right hand,” and it was done. “And his sons too,” and it was done. Then the hands were set in a pile, like pale driftwood, and the people could see his cruelty. The shrine of the Goddess was burned and its idols defiled and smeared with filth and excrement. The angels of the shrine were driven back and abandoned their sanctuaries.

An angel came to Umman Ap, who was king of that place. “See the defiler Yemmod,” said the angel. “He stacks the bodies of the people of this city like the autumn harvest. He provokes your power. Ride forth and drive him from this holy place.”

“I cannot harm Yemmod,” said Umman, blue-eyed. “He has consumed the hearts of many of my kin and is swollen with their star magic.” This was true, but the angel was enraged nevertheless. His kind lashed together steeds of fire and clay and abandoned the city to its fate. Umman had expected this. He gathered the remaining people inside the walls of the Blue City, which had never been breached.

The others were on fire, for it was a time of war. The yellow city had recently been consumed by great gales and fell into the void. This was the way of things.

At last Yemmod rode to the gates of Lam. He had a spear three times the length of a man and its point could burst through shields like matchwood. It never missed its mark. It was called Amija, or heart-piercer.

Yemmod said “Open the gates, and grant me passage.” But the gates did not open.

“Open the gates, lest I make the dead to outnumber the living.” But the gates did not grant him passage.

Yemmod called for star fire and smote the gates with one blow into ten thousand pieces. This was the way of things.

There was one way the city could be saved, so Umman sent for him. The sword-saint Intra was there. But when the men of the Blue City found him, he was very drunk.”

– The Song of Maybe