Hoqar responds to Jarik – in LImbo
"Hoqar forgive my gamble but I suspected all we saw was illusion, or at least not as it seemed from above. However, we can surmise that Limbo is designed in such a way as to hide this landscape … even from Malkar, nay even the Lord Glaennyn. My feelings are confused, the pain of Anyar’s death, he had lived hundreds of thousands of my years, seen many universes, and yet his death took only a moment. Such a waste, I did not authorise his mission. I would be angry. But for the fact my feelings of lose will be nought compared with the other Glaennyn. I am torn between anger and sorrow. So ancient – yet so impulsive. So unwilling to await calm council. So quick to risk ancient life and now? He has rejoined the Song." Jarik paused realising his voice had been concealing a distant sound.
"Illusion indeed, not even my favoured vision saw this! I feel your loss keenly, and that of your mighty companions. In Elysium there were no dragons as such – at least not of the magnitude of your Glaennyn. As for Malkar we had gods…but Muziel destroyed them when he annihilated my people. Anger and sorrow I can empathise with…"
What is this I hear?
"The towers must have once represented each sense and each staff. The fact three have collapsed suggests our never met companions have failed, will always fail, to get here. My friend, our towers stand and whether this land is representative or real that brings me hope. My decision to jump was right, indeed vital. Had we returned to Grayhawk I do not believe we would ever have arrived here. This event was had to occur, at least it was intended by me, Jarik chuckled wickedly.
"I agree about the towers – it is too much of a coincidence that there are five, especially since they are adorned with our motifs. Your decision to jump was reckless, yet at no time did I feel in danger, indeed when we plunged into (or through?) the illusion I was very calm. Again I agree – we have a task, a fate, call it what you will but we were meant to be here."
"The fact three towers have fallen suggests – events have not unfolded as planned. But, if planned by Who? Representation or reality? Is there a difference? Representation may not imply a plan but reality might.
"Who indeed…we must accept that whether by design or accident we, Jarik, are all that remain."
"I do not know if you know why I believe I am here. Perhaps we should share life stories. I’ll start. Now what I going to recount contains much supervision but much is supported by fact.
"A good idea…"
"I was born some seventeen years ago [Chappie insert my Darim age]. However, I am Glaennyn, and the Glaennyn have always existed – in every universe. I assume you know there have been many universes. But they do no not reproduce, or at least I believe not. They have tried but have always failed, perhaps until now. That I am Glaennyn means my spirit and perhaps my soul could be as old as twenty universes but I have only the experience of a youth. Perhaps I am a youth.
"This is the first I have heard of the Glaennyn; they are truly magnificent creatures. Yes I am aware that there have been multiple universes – but there exists a strange perception within my people. Naturally we thought that Elysium was the centre of the universe and that all other planes were the bits that went wrong – the residue of other failed experiments. As soon as I stepped onto Grayhawk I knew that thinking was naive and entirely incorrect. Grayhawk is the pulse of this universe – perhaps the pulse of every universe…"
"I have dreamed as a child. She, we on Grayhawk called Nature, either caused these dreams, or knew, or influenced. This alone has led me here.
"On Elysium Nature was a goddess who gave life to everything, the seas, the flowers, the seasons…everything. I suspect she perished with the rest of the gods from my world."
"My dreams are still vivid today … [Chappie insert the original dream sequence ‘A Tripy Dream’]
"Now this might mean nothing, but Nature saw in me a solution to something she feared above all. That her death would be Grayhawk’s also? Even the universe’s given Grayhawk’s importance. However, although she revealed to me and Malkar’s Disciple her faith in us. She never explained what, why or when we needed to do what ever it was She hoped we could achieve. We don’t know what is it we don’t know that we need to know … as it were. And we still don’t!!
"Strange words Jarik, but I feel a familiarity in them. Throughout my life on Elysium I have been dogged by a woman. Sometimes she is barely on the periphery of my awareness, or sometimes she spoke to me in dreams…I believe she was always there. Like you she groomed me for some higher calling. I was destined to be a king but she saw something else…she led me to Lightgiver…"
"So my life history is fraught with problematic phenomenological perspectives.
"Still what is unusual about me in my ‘normal’ life – the Darim I might have been born? Perhaps the ‘normal’ things that standout about each of us might match and shed some light on events.
"There is about you a complete lack of normality," Hoqar chuckles, "indeed my first sight on Grayhawk was you on a mountain surrounded by a thousand dragons, all of whom bowed to your power. But your thinking is shrewd – it may be the small details that afford us clues to our inheritance…"
"My outstanding characteristic is that I have never directly killed any man or beast other than the ant that gets beneath one’s foot randomly. And yet, I have achieved power and position that could literally flatten any city I chose. I believe that is why Nature believed in me. I abhor the unnecessary, untimely death and destruction and frequents existence. I am the ideal repository for awesome power.
"You are lucky, many men have fallen by my hand…it is to your credit Jarik that your hands are clean…a monumental task considering your enemy. Perhaps it is your destiny that you will only kill once…let us hope that man is Muziel! I have no love of death or killing either, but we are both repositories of power…perhaps we are repositories of the same power – or perhaps different aspects of it."
"I have explained how my Darim life encountered what you call the Great Storm in dream. The Maelstrom, we call it on Grayhawk, I call it the Great Song, the resonance that meters existence. And we stand in the last universe. The Song is either eternal or temporary it cannot be both.
"The Catastrophe is a tangible force…I have seen it. It can strip a city in seconds yet I was able to touch it, to bathe myself in its fury and come out unscathed. The last universe? Some of the scholars of Elysium suggested this theory but – I have to admit – I was amongst the many who thought them mad. Surely there will be others?"
"Now then Hoqar, the Glaennyn can exist within the Great Song, Storm or Maelstrom whatever we chose to name it. I have always believed that all comes from the Maelstrom and that the creator, Prometheus, did not fully understand the power he was moulding, otherwise, there would have been but one perfect universe and no need for the ultimate critic – the Unmaker to adjudicate his failures.
"Your knowledge outstrips mine by some way, Jarik, for you refer to things I am clueless about. The Unmaker? Promethius? History was never my strong point – as my scholars were quick to point out – but in no teaching can I remember such beings. Grayhawk is truly the centre of the universe if such knowledge is readily available. Though I may not be gifted with your perception and knowledge I am not without knowledge myself…perhaps within us both is a key to unlock this mystery."
"I also believe that I can pass through the Maelstrom because I too am Glaennyn. I believe the same of you. We are of the Maelstrom in a profound way. We, to my mind, are the very representation of the Maelstrom within reality – its agents, its eyes, its ears, its consciousness and its will. We are the anchor of the universe. Ultimately we will have to make a choice. Prometheus and the Unmaker were but blind sculptors who could not see or feel the ultimate result of their work. If they got it right they would never know, see, hear, feel, touch or smell their work – the irony is killing. But We stand at a point infinity more difficult than anything that Prometheus or the Unmaker faced. Our choices could decide everything. Permanently.
"We or the staffs we wield? Could it not be that we are who we are because of what we wield? Or is it that we were always destined to wield then – perhaps the only ones who could. To have such a responsibility humbles me more than the vast distances of this place…but from what you have told me we are similar…too similar for comfort.
"You call yourself Glaennyn, dragon lord, whatever…in my lands there could be only one wielder of the Lightgiver, and from a very early age I knew my destiny. But the oddity came when I was an adolescent. The wielder of Lightgiver becomes instantly infertile therefore since the line of Elysian kings began the wielder must procreate before he ascended as wielder…it has always been so. My father (and more importantly this woman we will call Nature) told me that this was unnecessary as I would be the final wielder.
"I thought they had gone mad. Hundreds of my ancestors had prolonged the line so why was I to be denied an heir? The answer was taken from me when Muziel’s armies came. We were poorly equipped to deal with his forces. Soon battle became slaughter and the war became an annihilation. My father (the last king) fell so I took up the staff prematurely. I fought valiantly but soon Muziel had me cornered. He took the staff and bid his minions to kill me. I stretched out my mind and grabbed it back from him, my rage unleashed its power and I went for him. I swear there was fear in his eyes but I was driven back by the hordes…I fled then…I left my home forever…and left my people to that murdering butcher…"
"You might wonder what I going on about, but worry not I’m about to get stranger. I suspect we now stand in, or on the very edge of the Maelstrom. Your staff, like mine, will be of the Maelstrom, as are you, as am I. These towers are therefore also representations of the Maelstrom, or perhaps representations of us within the Maelstrom. We only see the Maelstrom as a ‘storm’ because we normally fail to see its texture, hear its tempo. The Maelstrom is no storm.
"Or the Maelstrom is a storm and we are merely at its centre…we are in the calm eye of the hurricane…"
"But I forgot the point of this. My dream focused on one specific question argued between the ‘creator’ and ‘unmaker’. What to do with the souls of the dead? It is quite clear what I believe should be done. They should all return to the Maelstrom from whence I believe all comes and ultimately returns. Like all detritus it begins and ends up in the heart of the Maelstrom. Is it not ironic that the future of the very universe itself might swing on the interpretation of childhood dreams. But then was its predecessors creations and destructions not in the hands of children.
"Muziel has a mastery of souls beyond even the greatest magicians from my lands. If anyone would know about them he would…from my research I have gleamed that the Reaper is gone (he was called the Dark Escort in Elysium)…we have both witnessed how the souls are processed and turned into to sorcerous energy but the more powerful ones tend to linger. I agree the souls are the crux to this…perhaps we can find further answers in the towers over yonder, though I would prefer one of your dragons to fly upon."
"Now that I am free of my ‘temporal’ attachments I believe enlightenment approaches. The answer lies within the towers. As for how to get there – I suspect we are already there and have always been. Here time is probably meaningless from our contemporary perspective.
"This sand looks real…as does the distance…I don’t suppose – as Glaennyn – you can sprout wings?" Hoqar is more hopeful than serious.
"But I guess you have as an intense interest in visual art as I have in music and speech. I’ll sing somethings … let me think … Yes that’s them … "Songs for the Souls of the Dead" dedicated to all the dead but specifically to Anyar and Nature. Nature as Mother, Glaennyn as Father. It will be both joyous and sorrowful, as is life, as is death, as we will see, as we will hear …
Hoqar smiles and hears the first music ever to fall upon this place. The air picks up the melody and it drifts aimlessly across the desert in all directions – a sonic ripple infinitely slow and without a barrier to absorb its plight. Jarik reasons that this song will take one hundred thousand years to reach the edge of this place – the song will never fade, it’s tone will never fall out of tune…
Jarik picks up the tempo of the distant beat and begins a series of songs, written, as they come to him. [make me roll if you like, by my thinking only when they are complete will we arrive at the Two Towers]
Too much beer I’m afraid