Our Finder and Keeper awoke blind and alone in the wastes of the Tenebrion sometime near the end of The Fall. Too weak for anything but words, he looked into the endless and impenetrable obscurity blanketing the Earth and despaired.
“Am I so lost now, that even my eyes have forsaken me? Would that I could see, my surroundings to comfort my heart, to put salve on this suffering, would I be alone? I hear no other voice save this wretched thing blotting out the world.”
Numenarch clawed his way across broken volcanic stone and ash, his hide hardening to the malignant forces that swirled angrily around him. He could feel the thing clawing at him, trying to taint the stillness of his being. The thing sought to betray our Finder and Keeper, it did speak lies to him, and show him the witness of false things. As the obscurity danced around him, it did express its false civility and offered the glittering of treasures and trinkets. To this, our Lord did raise his voice to the foul presence that haunted him, and even though his was but a whisper... it struck at the very heart of the Tenebrion.
“I can feel thee, O’ thing of false stars... I can hear your false wind and know you for your lies. Even as I turn to stone against you, there can be no denying all that dwells within me. I am not yours.”
Across the wastes, did our Finder and Keeper take his first steps in the freshly darkened world. He struggled for any memory beyond the collection of dull screams his mind had managed to salvage. Indeed, even as he grasped for some understanding of what had happened to him, he mustered something unexpected. Our Lord did laugh heartily at the villain’s expense. He looked with fresh eyes at the obscurity, seeing past it, imparting unto it only disdain and pity.
“Were that I was in Hell, I would surely not be alone as I am now. This dismal place would be alight with the foulness of regret and stink of shattered hopes. I would not have my dreams, and there would be no echo of my solitary voice. I know you O’ thing! Thou art a blackguard... a pitiable betrayer and I will not suffer you to bring coolness to my flesh. I am warm in spite of you.”
The Tenebrion howled angrily bringing down the maelstrom, emerald lashes of lightning falling to the Earth, rending stone and casting aside ash. Indeed, the false shadow did throw in with all its desperate hate, its malignant force casting a long and fearful stain in its wake. The noxious murk reared up ugly, scattering stones to summon the echoes of the dead to its side. Our Lord quieted in the aftermath of this display, placing the palm of his hand astride his chest.
“All that the world has suffered holds the trace of your passing, O’ thing, and for that I am a vengeful angel, a reckoning unto you. Despair in your iniquitousness and know that I am Justice to your crimes. I shall walk this forsaken land crafting a legacy that shall end when you do. O’ thing, false shadow and corruptor, I will see you cast down for your misdeeds. By my own two hands I will contrive the means to see you undone.”
Our Lord swore a binding oath in only the first few moments of his awakening, that he would end the Tenebrion’s hold on the world. It would be an Oath all we Shadows would come to know well. His promise would become our creed. Even as our Lord spoke the end of his words, the echoes of the dead, howling and vengeful did descend upon our Finder and Keeper. They clawed at his stony flesh and moved to suckle on the very fiber of his essence. He was dragged to the ground until suddenly he was as a thin rod against lightning, a conduit for the Powers Primordial.
“Hinder me not, lest ye rest disquieted by my fury.”
Our Lord reached to his side, grasping the hammer that had laid with him since before The Fall and struck a blow against the echoes of the dead scattering them like leaves at the head of a hurricane. He brought his hammer up again and this time sundered the Earth. It was here that the reverberation of those echoes called by the Tenebrion would echo for the last time, as our Finder and Keeper cast them down like bones from the hand of a soothsayer. It was then that he looked into the chasm he created and divined from what he saw these words.
“I shall know sorrow, and I shall know triumph in equal measure... but you O’ thing, shall eventually come to know nothing, returning to whatever foul place spawned you.”
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