RYE - Isendral Learns of Ulthuan

The Enemy/Asur of Ulthuan

The Fated Place, Long Ago

The ocean churned, its waters a vast and inscrutable thing. It had grown into new spaces as the land that had existed alongside it forever was split apart by foreign power, rushing into the continental divide with an all-consuming urgency. Now it lay silent, new currents churning in its depths for the first time. Living things flocked in their masses to the influx of territory, from the skimmers and scavengers up above to the colossal leviathans of the deep.

The tumultuous process of terraforming had not ceased, however, and now it began again. Those above the world who styled Themselves makers and shapers required a land separate from those They had divided the existing supercontinent into - one with no history, no connection to land or sea that did not originate with Them. One that could adequately serve as a conduit for the Purpose that burned in Them ceaselessly.

Minds moved and magic followed. Rock split in trenches hundreds of kilometers long, its cries of pain muffled under the ocean’s caress. The sea lay heavy upon the stone as it was rent and torn by forces outside its control, and bore witness as a mighty will grasped the skin of the world and pulled upwards, peeling it away from its origin with relentless, implacable might. A great wound was carved into the side of the planet, and the fiery blood of below surged upwards in agonized freedom. The ocean tamped it back down in a great hissing rush that obscured all things, and by the time the tumult had died down, the original mass of stone had gone, forever taken from the deep place that was its home.

Ages Passed.

The new continent floated upon the waves, made to ignore its weight by Those That Shaped. Their attention focused for a blink of geological time on other matters. The land did not know what these were, for it had been set apart from the rest of the world. With time, however, Their minds returned, and the tools of Those That Shaped were sent to carve the flesh of the land into the form that was required. Clawed feet walked upon the land’s floating surface, and named it Tephex’chuqmundi.

The land was whittled into shape, piece by piece. Mountains were raised across its breadth like gooseflesh, and the perfect ring shape it had been peeled from the earth with was scraped and clawed, forming into rocky cliffs and sandy beaches, becoming bays and isles and inlets. Water pooled and ran across Tephex’chuqmundi’s surface and under its skin, stripped of its salinity by the tools that walked across its back, carving rivers and lakes and underground cisterns in a faint echo of the ocean’s caress that it had felt long ago.

Plant life came in the wake of the tools, planted in specific planes and ways according to the designs of the Shapers. Films of algae crept across bare rock, growing and then dying in the light of the sun over and over, until the rotted remnants of their corpses had piled up in sufficient quantities to provide sustenance to other things. Grasses bloomed across meticulously levelled flatlands, and trees took root by river and in soil. Vines climbed the sides of mountains and became hardy shrubs, or descended to the beaches to become kelp and seaweed. Roots burrowed into Tephex’chuqmundi’s flesh and drank of its power, and found it to be good. Moving creatures spawned in the spaces between millennia, roaming the landscape, multiplying, and diversifying as they grew into the lands they inhabited.

Time moved slowly on the scale of continents, and in between one moment and the next, Tephex’chuqmundi’s designated shape was completed. The tools of the Shapers departed to other works, and provenance of the land was passed to other things. Slender feet walked the plains and beheld the forests and mountains and lakes, and brought something to Tephex’chuqmundi that had never been there before. Where before there had been naught but thought and design, now these creatures looked upon the land with wonder and joy and prayer.

They named it Ulthuan, for the first thing they had seen when they alighted upon its shores was the moon, shining gently as though captured in the calm waters of the Inner Sea.

They Who Shaped watched from afar for some centuries, allowing their creations - elves, as they would later be called - time to wander and learn, feeding their souls and flesh on the richness of Ulthuan’s bounty. Then, when the elves had learned enough to wonder at their place in the world, they sent their servitors once more, to educate them in the things they had to learn.

The slann came from the sky and built a great temple upon a small isle in the proper manner, and called the strongest of the elves to journey within. This required three days and nights, and the slann tested the resolve of the travelers on the way, buoying them down with pressure on their thoughts and spirits. The strain caused many of the voyagers to die or turn back along the way - a necessary process, for only the most resilient could bear what was to come next.

Of the hundreds that heard the call, eight reached the temple and ventured within. There, the slann held aloft a golden tablet that had been written by Those Who Shaped. The slann spoke the words upon the tablet with a mighty effort, for what was inscribed there struggled to be contained. The world warped under their pressure, and the memory of what had been spoken passed out of the minds of all that were present.

The Phrases were spoken in a matter of seconds, and the passing of those seconds was twisted and broken until one hundred years had elapsed. The eight elves who had listened emerged from the temple having aged not a day, and looked upon the world with the gods burning inside of them.

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The vision faded and Isendral saw the world as it was again, though she had to blink a film of tears away. ”That was …” She paused, pondering. ”This was a precious experience. I’m still not exactly sure what circumstances could have lead to it, or whether they were truly my kin, but seeing the birth of a people - and a place - in such a vivid manner was nothing short of joyful. Thank you.” She bowed her head to the slann sitting across from her, who did the same.

This was only the first instance of our tutelage of the Itz’xa’khanx, but it was the most significant, Ulha’up said, chewing thoughtfully upon an Ixti grub and speaking with his mind. Once their foundations had been set as decreed by the Old Ones, we moved on to other tasks. We returned twice for matters of import - once, some centuries afterwards, to instruct the followers of their mage-god in the proper usage of color theory. I was not there myself, but the memories of my siblings show me that they were able students - given what they later accomplished, they must have been.

He fell silent for a time, chewing upon another grub. Once he had finished that one and reached for yet another, Isendral spoke. ”And the second time?”

Ulha’up bit into his Ixti grub, but seemed not to taste it, his misty eyes locked on the past. The second time was later. We were bid to instruct them in the topics I spoke to you of earlier. Names, forms, words of abjuration and banishment. We did not question why - some among my spawning thought it a precautionary measure, should the itz’xa’khanx stray outside their boundaries and become tlozoq. Afterwards … the foresight of the Old Ones was recognized to have accounted for what would happen.

Isendral grimaced as she remembered that particular conversation. Much of what Ulha’up had told her about the nature of the shaeil’tann and how to combat them was not unknown to her, but the slann had been mechanically, gruesomely thorough on the subject. He had walked her through variation after variation of protection methods against possession, listed common counterspells that could be used against daemonic sorcery, and given an exhaustive overview of all the different varieties of warp entities the lizardmen had battled against in their time. That topic, in particular, had taken months of telepathic communication to cover, and while Isendral appreciated the seriousness with which the slann treated the topic, the experience reminded her of nothing so much as one of her earliest memories, when her tutor Flethanariel had kept her in the Mother’s Garden until she could name every creature in it by heart.

She had been in there a long time, and only appreciated Flethanariel’s insistence much later on, when it was too late to properly thank the older Eldar.

”There came a time when there was cause for them to use this knowledge, I take it?”

Ulha’up merely looked at her and nodded, and they spoke no more on the topic that day.