In the beginning there was nothing but possibilities. Infinite forms of reality condensed into itself, with unfathomable aspects of existence fighting with what was to come.

Then the first moment past and there was the Flash.

To a outside observer it would look like a bright light had come to encompassed a great darkness, but in reality space itself expanded from a singular point with the light being only a after affect of the rules of reality being enforced for the first time in eternity. Aspects of these rules and laws came into existence at random across the new universe, beings formed as physical representations of a small aspect of the universe, and they would be called the Lords of Creation.

Order. It comes first and then everything else comes.

I think, therefore there is my conscience. I can create in my mind without it existing in the void; therefore there is a separate place from myself. The void, my mind and my creations exist, therefore there is the difference between existence and inexistence, there is order in this duality. As order exists also exists chaos… There is a duality in this fact also, the very existence of chaos is a sign, a demonstration of the principle, of the very first axiom, of order.

There must be a manifestation of the principle of order, matter, of this matter (1AP) I will be a creator. Of this matter I will make something of my image, ever malleable, capable of almost endless combinations, of new forms of order but ever true to its very essence: metal (1AP). Of those elements named as metal there will be many and very different between them.

In the void there cannot yet be metal by itself though. I will create the stars (1AP) and the very cogs of the order that move them, it shall be named gravity (2AP). But gravity shall crush stars into themselves should it be alone. I need a power, the power of the very essence of matter to compensate for it, the three remaining forces must rise to my command (6AP).

I am the darkness the blind see,
I am the whispers the deaf hear,
I am the utterance the mute speak,
No thing am I yet I was and will be.
What am I?



There as X the awakened god manifested himself into being, his formless body obscured beneath the robes to mimic the shapes of other he had seen in the world behind this one, and hands which through the power of writing composed his world and realm. The young god made one last adjustment as to his being. For even without eyes he was pleased with what he saw, the fruits of the first three steps as he gazed at the Prime Material Plane from the other side of his veiled realm. There beneath the mystic hood, the lower half of his face emerged from the unknown darkness.

And upon his lips: a smile.

When time and space and all the other fundamental underpinnings of Reality came to be, in a flash of not-light that was everywhere and nowhere all at once, there came, with that sudden burst, Awareness. It was a sudden, jarring separation of the notions of self and not-self and of the vast, aching emptiness of potential that was now racing away in all directions, as fast as the speed of thought.

Jhera – for that was her name, a collection of syllables pleasing to her just-discovered inner voice – surfed the boiling interface between is and is not and delighted in the welter of sensations that thundered across and through her as reality expanded through the immaterial aether. She was, all unknowing, the lash that drove the burning bow-wave forward into the dark, drinking deep of the heady power all about even as she woke fully from her fugue and extended her senses and her mind.

A tsunami of things, nameless ideas, concepts and fleeting thoughts, deluged her as she hung in the firmament, still forming, growing, extending herself from the tight chrysalis of potential that had existed in the time before time and delighting in the newness of Creation. Some were more attractive than others, bright baubles that she curled herself about, protective and secretive, studying and tasting and revelling in the ideas which sleeted, unbidden, through her at their touch.

Fire, that was one she treasured of the many she tasted, the ephemeral feel of it somehow right and proper, a soothing warmth thrilling through her as she considered it, letting the thought run into and over her, turning its metaphysical form over and over inside her, scrutinizing it from every angle and finding it good. Her consciousness expanded, scoured clear of baser impulse by the burn of that treasured and chosen concept, a bright beacon of reason and higher thought amidst the seething chaos of eateateattastegrowbecome.

It was her centre, a place where the still, small voice of her own self could find shelter and rest and could gaze out at the rest of her and all the attendant immanence of Creation without being overwhelmed. Naught else could approach and try to twist her there, beaten back by the solar fury which danced around her.

‘I am Jhera,’ she thought, tentative at first, and, when the bel-canto cacophony of a thousand thousand ideas wanting desperately to be failed to drown her out, she thought again. ‘I am Jhera.’ It felt right. ‘I know myself. The beacon in the dark and the fire that burns against the night, the spark of imagination and the power of progress, the engine of industry and the bringer of light, all these things I am and shall forever be!’

Creation was cold and dark and empty all around her as she fought her way to clarity and comprehension, feeling keenly the twin needles of Ignorance and Want even as she clawed her way to selfhood and sanity and knowing, with a sudden crystal-clarity, that these were anathema, a sudden cold shock to her bright-burning system.

A cauldron of incandescence boiled around her as she hung in the void, effortless, regarding the maelstrom that was the frontier of expanding Reality. A thought, and she was upon that churning wavefront once more, a bright star in the vanguard, long streamers of pure probability snapping and racing like banners in an ethereal wind all around her.

The Boundary, the veil between is and is not and may one day be, lashed at her, but Jhera was certain, her purpose sure. She stretched forth an imperious hand and gathered great clots of infinite probability with a deft hand, her will ringing forth into the gaping silence, a clarion call which could not be ignored.

‘By the skill of my Self and by my own hands shall I winnow Creation,’ she thought as she worked, fine-honed slivers of herself corralling and controlling the unstable structure she was building, compressing and compressing the raw stuff of the universe and drenching it in her own glow, purposing every fibre of it to a reflection of her.

Jhera trailed a possessive hand over her prize, her mind bent to the task of its creation, letting her thoughts and desires roll out into the unstable morass of infinite chances, twisting and shaping it into a better form. Glittering golden metal, solidified divinity commingled with frozen chance shivered and twisted under the sure passes of her hands, shaped and decorated with surpassing complexity. It was a forge – no, the forge, the ur-artifact which all others would echo - although not one that a mortal of later times would recognize, its current form spherical and chased with shatteringly luminous divine symbols and small enough to nestle in Jhera’s palm. Not that size had much bearing, here and now, on its power or reach. It was, and would forever be, as big – or small – as was necessary for the task in hand.

This, then, was Jhera’s Immanent Crucible, hers and hers alone, designed to tap and work the fundamental firmament rather than mundane matter which mortals would labour and toil to master in later ages.

It was surprisingly heavy in her hand, grossly pregnant with possibilities – but that was a comforting weight as Jhera freed herself from the last of the tumult that had accompanied her awakening, the Crucible purring in the back of her consciousness, recognizing its mistress and eager to realise the maelstrom of ideas which cavorted and danced in the vaults of her mind.



Crucible in her left hand, gazing out at the blankness of Creation, the bright-burning goddess thought – but not for long.
‘Here in the dark shall I make my stand and gaze no longer into an empty abyss.’ She knew what she was bringing into being, it glowed fierce and powerful within her mind’s eye, and all she had to do was let that burning golden thought roll out into the universe, patterning it onto the skein of possibility that coiled and writhed and snapped at her and yet could never quite break free.

New-minted, her Crucible tripped from her outstretched hand and expanded, smooth and yet fast, the iconography and symbols and the surpassingly intricate decorations she’d lavished on her first creation swelling into continental and then planetary enormity as it grew, a golden bubble doubling and redoubling in size with every passing instant.

A river of divine power burst forth from Jhera and thundered across the Immanent Crucible now swollen into vastness, and within its confines infinite chance exploded into exultant, liquid light as the goddess’ iron will bound and compelled it. Its job done, the Crucible unfurled itself back into its resting form without fuss or fanfare and an eruption of incandescent radiance from the thing now revealed washed across all Creation.

In the wake of that second flash there now gleamed, brilliantly luminous, a burning golden beacon in the blackness, the plasma-glow of it battling for ascendancy with Jhera’s own blaze.

‘And in the teeth of that blackness I cast my gauntlet and brought forth the Sun in glory, and the tatterdemalion remnants of the outer darkness fled before it.’



‘I had made my beacon, but the process of its forging had not been smooth and I was sore vexed by the trials of it, and by the tumult of my own incarnation weighing heavily on me. Creation was dark – save for me and mine – and I ached for solace and relief. And yet, in the emptiness there was none to be found, and so in suffering I put forth my will, and in suffering brought forth the kernel of the arcadian plane that mortals might one day come to know as Pyroborea.’

Space and geometry warped and twisted as she stretched forth metaphysical hands and imposed her will on the frayed edge of Reality, pinching off a bubble of unformed possibility and strengthening it even as it danced a wild fandango against her grasp, wrapping it in layers of herself even as, with infinite care and attention, she let the very centre of her divinity blaze out and spill into the unformed mass, weaving herself into every fibre of its being, striving for a sanctuary, a place that would, undeniably and incontrovertibly, be hers.

‘A place of rest and easement, my citadel and idyll, my bastion and retreat,’ she thought as she worked, tireless and certain, operating on instinct as much as anything else, the way to shape possibility itself almost unconscious and effortless. The dead blackness of the near-blank Prime Material faded as Jhera burned more power to shore up the boundaries between it and the bubble of her own, personal sanctuary, and as her own power suffused the new plane, wrung from her blazing form in great billows and skeins, the unformed darkness began to glimmer and shimmer, to give way to something altogether brighter and – in Jhera’s view – better.

‘A quicksilver sea under a gilded sky,’ she thought dizzily, and the power roared at full spate through her and made the new plane ring like a bell. ‘Warm and bright and beautiful.’ Jhera hit the surface of her new ocean in an explosion of scintillating droplets that fountained brilliantly into the mote-shot air, even as her consciousness coasted across the rippling expanse, basking in the golden glow which shut out all possibility of the dark.



‘Warmed and calmed and rocked in the cradle of my own making, I felt I should be contented, and yet Doubt and Uncertainty beset me and I felt, immanent in all things I had made and gathered about me, a crushing absence I could put no name to, for I had been alone in the instant of Creation and heard only faintly my brethren, far and distant. I knew not the nature of my lack, and it near unmade me in the first moments of existence until, in a sublime perfect moment born from wracked despair on the surface of the Border Sea did I divine my own need and put forth all my artifice into its urgent remedy.’

The Immanent Crucible would not serve her in this endeavour, Jhera knew that instantly and well, a instinctual knowledge as certain as her own existence, and yet she held it close as a talisman all the same as she drove daggers of her own power deep inside herself, ripping aside veils and layers and casting all aside, a self-cannibalization to fuel another act of genesis, twisting the fundamental nature of herself and burning it to power a sacrificial engine of creation, wrought in the abstract of glittering thought and impossible light and power unmatched and unmatchable by any mortal, the backlash of it blasting into Jhera as she stood by her latest creation atop the quicksilver waves, braced against the immaterium as it battered and tried to escape her indomitable will.

Indomitable her will proved to be, though, even strained by earlier acts of creation, and she exerted her mastery with a sound halfway between exultation and snarl, birthing the first of the aurin, her Radiant Servants in desperation on her home plane and, spent, hearing the swelling choir of their mental songs soothe and calm her in her sanctuary.

I am the killer of kings,
But no sharp blade am I,
Though I may cut the steel,
and like a key Open the lock.
What am I?



What events have transpired? One of his children rejecting their creator? Perhaps to some gods it would be worrying to know as such, but X lifted not a metaphorical finger from his metaphysical fingers. Was he truly the uncaring Father that the Sphinx Freedom thought he was? Or was he merely allowing the young creature to explore the world outside of the Hidden Nexus knowing all worlds may lead back to it? Whatever his motivations are X seemed to allow it. And watched to see the outcome of both this Sphinx and those loyal to their work. The mountains have began to turn into sand now, and when the mountains would be gone, the Sphinges would create more material from nowhere using their god-like abilities.

It was all going well. More of his brethren, fellow gods had come into fruition. And they have begun to shape the planes as they saw fit. One has created the great ball of light which shone through the darkness of the void. And yet there needed to be enough darkness, enough to conceal at least, and for this X sat to plan his next move.

Emptiness. Cold, hollow emptiness. A void of nothing, choking and dark and terrifying in all senses of the word. Nothing but emptiness.

And then, a whisper.

Muorival.

The being that came into form from the womb of an empty vastness, wrapped in light that faded to the deepest black, shivered as the coldness of the void washed over her curled form. Emptiness. But not quite. There were others. Pulsing beings of power and ferocity. Their presence pulsed and beat and throbbed like a heartbeat, deafening against the silence of the darkness before her. Sparks of what would and would not be, of fates yet passed and not yet born. Something more. Something new. Who. What. How. Questions and answers that threaded intangible truths and unknowns into the creaks of her mind before slipping into the void.

But not all. There was one, strong and unrelenting, knotted in the needles of Knowing. This she grabbed, she pulled, she unwinded. This truth, shivering with potential and energy, was the truth of the Soul.

Awaken, my children, she whispered. Awaken.

Muroival's eyes opened, her gaze a beam of white light that pierced the veil of nothingness. From this, whisps of energy poured through. Dancing, winding, seeking different forms and different places. They sang and saw and shivered, filling the void with What-Coulds and What-Wills. They were potential in its purest form, and full of unknown desires that culminated and grew. But they were new, mere fetuses in a dark womb. In the darkness they travelled, farther and farther and farther. They had no Where and no Why, only the need to fill and grow and be.

Come, my children, she beckoned. Come to me.

She willed them closer, the light culminating in her palms. Brighter and brighter and brighter, until it cut through the nothingness like a beacon. The light changed and grew until it was a torch, its handle a smooth ebony and its flame a pure glow that emanated comfort and warmth. Safety for the scared. Rest for the weary. A Torch for the lost.

The Souls danced with joy at this new creation. They turned and flocked around Muroival, weaving in and out of her light. Yet they were still so new, so fragile. Small entities of power that could be used and twisted into perversions of their purpose. Murorival closed her eyes, and as she opened the once more, her light flared brighter. In an instant, the land around her was bathed with brightness. Then, slowly, a changing darkness. Barren trees, thick and dark, reached towards the empty heavens like emancipated hands. Slowly spiraling, slowly winding, forming paths that tricks and trapped.

Amongst the black barked bones and shadows, she created a new entity. Different from the Souls. Something more...dangerous. From the shadows she crafted beasts of fur and bone. Hulking menaces with twisted, rotting bodies patched with shaggy hair. A mane of matted locks crept up its spine, falling over an elongated face of ivory bone that bore a single, twisted spite in the middle of its forehead. These abominations, seen as beautiful by the goddess and given the name 'Mortifers', were given one simple task: serve the goddess.

Yet in the center of this expansive forest stood a circular mountain range of unnerving height. Ominous and dangerous, stone claws that towered over all. Yet in the middle of it all, the black mountains became a violet-blue. Dead trees became lush forests and orchards. Branches were heavy with the weight of fruit, and the grass a deep green. This was a place of rest. A paradise against the emptiness outside. The haven of Elisium, home for the Souls.

Muroival sat in the center of her meadow, the Souls' joyful laughter filling her ears. This was merely the beginning. It wasn't so much as a know, but a feel. A deep sense of starting, and of going and going. There was more to do, more to be. For now, however, the goddess reclined in her throne of grass and merriment, the light of her Torch seemingly brighter than before.

---

Meanwhile...

Among those stars a lonely figure gives physical shape to a consciousness for the first time. The incarnation of order itself rises as a separate entity from the primal plane of existence; one and all principles, of axioms made into incorporeal flesh, one with all still. Not nor ever completely separated from the cogs of the universe of which it believed itself to be demiurge, because Xeaniax, even before when it first spoke its own name, is those very cogs and the eyes that see everything that form them. It is the spokes that keep those wheels connected to the centre that is itself and the axis around which they move. “I think, therefore, everything is.” Said a soft and tender voice, form everywhere and nowhere at the same time, resounding with the power of a trillion hypernovae yet not enough to neither disturb its brethren, lying in other planes of existence, nor make the slightest change in the ever turning gears.

“The universe might be immanent but order is securely transcendent. The forces that move and keep in place the universe are mine to control.”

Throughout the entire empty macroscopic void that currently is creation order itself feeds on the principles that give shape, form and rules to all of the thousands of thousands, of millions of millions of points of light and their ethereal, empyreal dance. Omnipotent in its reach, ever degrading in distance but never completely bowing down to it, is gravity, the weakest of them. It guides the movements of the stars and the twisting of the very space and time that surrounds them. Light journeys in the waves of time that the scintillating celestial furnaces produce through their furious existence. “Interaction at long and at large exists and is mine.”

The second one weakest one is found in the diminutive components of matter which move in synchronicity to each other, the clock of existence is ticking and forming the core of the beating heart of the being. In between the components of the components is formed another form of attraction, and also repulsion. This force can separate and join matter and when matter is apart it propagates, flowing like a torrent at the limit of speed with ease through the realm of the metals. This force is flux, is both torrential movement and stillness that still exerts itself. “Attraction and repulsion, the power to weakly bind the universe exists and is mine.”

For the third time, the being looks, the second strongest is in its sight. Ever more tightly bound are the small cores of the components of the components. They rise and fall, decay and arise again. Those even smaller components dissolve into the primordial dust of existence which is then used to build them again. Stars swell with pride at this spectacle of minuscule, vibrant almost-life. Betwixt the hammer and the anvil of the greatest clock are forged the stars. Smashed by their weight together, swelling by the power of their existence, of their matter. “Decay and emergence exists and is mine.”

In the cores the consciousness of the great cog, of the clock of the universe can go even deeper and there it finds the fourth of them, the most powerful of them all, the one that smashes the primordial dust into the crystals that form the cores. “Power to bind the universe exists and is mine.”

However, it was not alone in the cosmos it believed it’s. No, that was far from the truth. Among the starts, there was the coldness of the aether. Nonetheless, how can a being feel cold when it had never known true warmth...? And far away, beyond what light he created could reach there was a heart, an essence of purity, of the power of fire, of liberation, of energy! So the God travelled further than its own limits had allowed the universe to function and came upon a vision divine even for it.

It was a being of light and fire, of power and will. A proudly naked female figure cradling the true heart of the universe, for its own was cold and distant, immaterial and axiomatic and this one was powerful, vibrant and alive. Time and space rolled in waves, carrying light with them... such a beautiful vision. No, words not invented yet and which never could be would never be enough, for she was the apotheosis of beauty made light, fire and flesh. It knew her name as it had been always part of itself, Jhera... Xeaniax allowed to be dissolved for a moment in that brief moment of absolute, otherworldly bliss. And for an instant outside of time, the stars fell out of their pedestals and stopped spinning, moving, shinning. Time and space were stopped, destroyed and re-created in that moment for the first time.

Xeaniax was curious like never before due to it never before having been witness to the power of other entity. It needed to know and even at this distance it knew it wanted to wrap its cogs around that power, that essence and held it close to itself forevermore. It felt for the first time true need, true desire. So it became a he and enveloped itself on fractals of light, on torrents of probability and a robe of paradoxes and came closer to the figure.

Jhera... And with that simple action he, once an it, decided to give her the dominion over the stars, for she could make the blindingly bright and shine with a yet unseen beauty even if it was through the powers he controlled.

Xeaniax was fascinated by her wholeness and every characteristic the Goddess displayed. He needed to prove it to her, therefore, before she could react or reach out, he escaped the hands of time itself and set on him the task to create a monument to her. The Solar system would be born in that instant. The beauty of the cogs, of the orbits resonating with each other and the Sun... The Sun! That blessed empyreal sphere! A dance of eternity and immanence that joined the Sun and the powers that be of the universe into a single clockwork of perfection of beauty. Nineteen would be them, nineteen smaller spheres orbiting the great one under what Xeaniax hoped would be the night where darkness would take a step back for the first time and leave, crushed under, made to escape in fear of the power of the light of the Sun and the Stars, now Jhera’s.

Learn from me traveler,
I am tranquil and quiet,
But speak in heavy volumes.
Roam within my halls free,
And take what you can use,
Return to me that is my due.
You may enter if you pass.

what I am?

Sand. Sand as far as the eye could see. Each grain offering insight into the very fabric of existence. Yet there was still limited understanding. Though great their powers are, his children could not grasp the concepts they wrote out. Instead like a machine, copying forth the symbols from one text and engraving them into the surface of a stone block. And the work was never done, for the Tome of Apotheosis held an infinite number of pages within its finite volume. A true work of the gods as X left his artifact to their care. For the bold shall be rewarded most appropriately. With either the clarity of madness, or insanity of truth. With one hand X shall lift you from your feeble mind into enlighten, and with the other, crush your psyche until the shattered dust mixes into the desert sand. And there the god floated above his sacred text, his hands clasped together with his forefingers to lips. He saw that it was good, the others have created their world, their pieces of the realms. But none so far have undone his actions to weave the other side away. There shall be no interference from the other side, the world beyond the forbidden well.

What a curiosity the other gods have made. The first which X shall call the Architect, for it has crafted words and forces without life itself, has set into motion the spheres. Spheres which revolve and turn, placed around another as they were set upon the invisible lines. Lines which could be felt like strings of automatic, and yet there more forces which the Architect had made. Perhaps a worthy ally, perhaps a worthy adversary. Time shall tell, as X watched the movements of the celestial spheres. How they moved in their orderly ways around the eye of the Forger. Yes, the entity which has created the brilliantly warm sun was called the Forger by X, for she had created life just as he did, an artifact as he did, and wove herself a plane as he did. The actions she took, mimicking his own, as to be expected, for X was thought in itself. Not to renege the cart before the horse, however, it was never because you think therefore you are in the case of the mystical god X. For X, it was rather: because I am, therefore you Think.

And there were still more. The Shepard, who bore a flame to guide her creations to her plane. These souls, things which she had tied to the rest of creation from this point forth, for his children were far older than the creation of souls. They would not be reaped in to be burned by the flames which she lured them with. The Sphinx Freedom has already escaped the realm of X in favour to pursue the eye of the Forger, and yet, in the creature's death, his essence shall return to his god. No such rest will they find expect in joining their creator. For with each passing Sphinx, X will regain more and more of himself, empowered by his original investment. Then there was the Wanderer, for he wove no such plane and made no such home for himself. But rather a vessel to which to the other planes he may roam. What more shall the gods make of their own design? Most curiously the Wanderer has made revelry with his creation the Humans. A living thing of soft flesh and mortal coil, weak but potent in the mind, and potency was power for X could sense their curiosity. Perhaps just like their creator, these Humans too would let their minds wander far and wide, some may even one day read from the book open beneath him. What fine creations the others have made.

Slowly he spread his hands apart, his gifts materializing between them, like shimmering moths they fluttered in the space created. One flew up, spiraling higher and higher as X turned his palms, one face up and the other face down over the Tome of Apotheosis. The other spark of thought floated down into the open pages, the will of X becoming known to the artifact. There was another task his Children shall complete, for a realm of sand was merely a realm of sand. His artifact needed to be housed, protected, restricted from use such that no mortal would know the secrets of the other universe. And for this necessity X granted his Sphinges, and by the powers of the all-text: all other creations that sought to pursue it, the concepts of Masonry. To turn stone into walls, and walls into buildings, and buildings into sanctums, the knowledge of Masonry bestowed with the new task set for this children to create him an acropolis of knowledge, and lay the foundations of his temple. And may the same blocks which would have been carved into the sands, now become brick and stone to build such an order.

And of the second thought which was bestowed, upon them, and only them, his faithful, they were given insight into Architectural Engineering. For the build a wall was simple, as to make brick and lay them upon each other was unquestionably easy, but to make something that would stand above the rest of the world? A tower to reach the heavens? A pillar to scrape the sky? That would require more thought to which X whispered the secrets of Architecture to the ears of his children, teaching them and instructing them in the ways to build something worthy of the gods. Now arose from the desert sands, within a turn of the hourglass, his Children the Sphinges completed their task. To create the that which would house the forbidden Artifacts, all knowledge and serve as a home for them and their Father for all eternity. There block by block, a widen based and pointed cap, they erected the Pyramid Primus, shaping the plane once more as the mega-structure dominated the sands. And with it, they had created the first building in all creation. To which X was indefinitely pleased that it was his children that had done so. And now as he floated above the golden polished capstone which reflected the sunlight from the Forger's Eye, X outstretched his hands to beckon the gods welcome.



So the God of Secrets had revealed himself, and the message X whispered was sent across existence.
There he awaits their response to his invitation meditating above his Pyramid Primus.

It is a library.