The Crystal Cosmogony and the Call to Arms
"In the beginning there was the Void, and in the end there shall still be the Void. This vast expanse is all there is and is comprised of naught but darkness and emptiness. Scattered throughout the infinitude of the Void must be an equal infinitude of meager fluctuations, tiny knots of concentrated darkness. Dark matter, some may call the non-substance of these primordial nexi. From these twists of the Void are born entire worlds, separate realities unto themselves, awash as islands of light in a fathomless sea of night. They are birthed, live, grow old, and yes, die, surrounded always by the cold embrace of the Void. These cosmic gyrations eventually separate into discrete layers as well, and thus the great Powers of a world are manifested. Fire, water, earth, wind, ice, lightning, life, and always death . . . what we call the "elements" congeal and crystallize from the merest trickle of the lifeblood of the Void. It is from these voidshards that we owe our existence, so far removed from the black furnace of creation and destruction above and beyond. For what are we mortals but the merest motes, nothing but the finely settled dust of an endless shifting of sands in some monstrous crystalline hourglass?
It is only by the grace of these discrete Powers, these elementals, these crystallized gods that we are allowed to exist and thrive. But it is only by the silent acquiescence of the eternal Void that the gods exist themselves. Who was it that set our own particular hourglass turning? Perhaps life, the highest and most primeval of elements, the holy antithesis to the dark reach of the Void, is only a stretching of the dark matter inherent to space, a give to the take of the Void. Yes, the Void is truly the master taker, who devours all and gives nothing in return. Life, then, is the fundamental resistance to that pull. The Void seeks to pull all of itself into itself, endlessly, without any thought, if such a thing as the Void can be said to possess such an abstraction, to the insignificant beings caught in its insatiable descent into oblivion and pure chaos. Life is the hardening of the Void's own being, as it is stretched taught. Where there is the ceaseless, inevitable, grasping darkness of the death force of destruction that embodies the Void's will, there must then be that crystallizing life force always yearning backwards, away from that gaping maw of the abyss that reaches from beyond the lowest depth of Hell itself.
We give names to these eternal machinations to comfort us in our sleep. We call them magic, elements, gods, goddesses, life, death, heaven, hell. We give them titles that are as ancient as fear and hope themselves - Altimus, Janus, the Void, the Nexus, the Crystal. Other eddies in the churning maelstrom of the Void surely have their own names for their own distinct powers that be, for there is nothing in any world as frightening as a thing with no name. But it is all a series of fantasies without end, propagations appearing for a brief moment throughout the Void wherever the pull of life is strongest. Will there ever be a final fantasy, a zero world at the end of time where all stories must end? Will the Void's darkness someday win out over the Crystal's light? That needs must be a tale for another time and place. For now, the insignificant grains of sand that we are must look to our own world, our own fantasy within the chaos-born dream, our own little hourglass with its fragile crystal wall against the clawing Void beyond. We must believe in the time we have, even as we see the cracks starting to show in our tired, ruined world. We must not let fear in. Our hope holds the very foundations of our reality together against the storm in the night.
We are all warriors of the light, shining our will to live in the face of inescapable death as a beacon across the bleak face of an uncaring, unfeeling cosmos. So yell into the Void's mindless stare and do not be afraid! Do not succumb to the night! Believe that our life's brilliance will shine forever, and by the force of our dreams we shall ensure the light of the Crystal endures until that last, final fantasy waiting at the end of all things arrives to wake the sleeper in the dark and end his grand dream. The dream of life and light must end someday, yes, but until then, we shall rage against that dying of the light! Rage, my fellow warriors, and never let our memories be forgotten!"
-recorded on the Hill of Despair during the final sermon of the Prophet of Eden, AF 32.