Title: from heaven to earth
Disclaimer: I don't own DGM.
Pairing: No pairings.
Summary: A tale of a tragic fall from dubious grace, or how Adam (and then Mana) took on the mantle of the Earl.
There was once a god who made the world, and he was a strong one.
There was once a man who walked in the grace of the god his creator. From the god he learned the arts of being, the tricks of creating and the lore of the known world. This was earth and that was water and this was fire and that was air. Man was made of earth and man needed fire and man needed water and man needed air. As the man learned from the god, he too grew in intellect and wisdom, and the god was pleased, and gave to him a gift – the name of Adam.
There was once a woman, another child dear to the god, who was beautiful and wholesome in the spring of the world. She was good and kind and the man, who loved her, wanted to take her to wife. And so he asked her to wed him in the garden that was the ancient world, and she agreed. And the god was pleased and he hallowed their marriage.
And in the time that was and the time that was to come, the world flourished. Both the seas and the land were bountiful in their own manners and there was peace everywhere and anywhere. In that glorious time Adam begot sons and his sons begot sons.
Life was good and pure, verily a slice of heaven on earth (if for a while only).
The darkness had yet to come.
:::
Then came the strange pestilence, not of disease, but of an insidious evil, scarred and abhorrent, twisted portents of malignant intent from a source beyond the world that was.
First came a strange wind, scattering the sands from the beaches, snapping the tender necks of young trees. The clouds hung dark and heavy in the skies, and the seas rose choppy and grated against the boulders. The people no longer looked up to the firmament, for they could no longer feel their piety rise from their prayers to the throne of the kingdom above.
Second came the earthquakes, when the earth shook and shook as if suffering from a delirious fever. The people watched their houses crumble, watched the land tear itself open, watched as their gilded shrines were swallowed by the gnawing hunger of the very terrarum.
Third came the darkness, a blanket of night charging across the light of day, and the sun wilted in the face of the empty, aching not-night. The people shut their doors and lit their holy candles, huddled around hearths, beating their breasts and fearful of the signs that heralded the decay of their age.
(The faithful did not know it then, but the truth was that the other god had bored his way into their world.)
What the people did know was that the peace was dispelled; brother slew brother, and acrimony snaked its way into the heart of every hearth, building up walls and tearing down ties. Some men left to form a tribe of their own in the heart of the deserts, braving the fiery heat and the extreme cold to worship at the altar of a different god of their own making.
Then, in the age when the fore-sighted Noah of Adam's line had come of age and become the leader of his people, the greyness came. Everything became grey – the sky, the land, the sea. Men looked around them in fear, looking away from their scythes, from their hunting knives, from their suckling babes – for the world had changed, and they were afraid beyond the ordinary measure.
And so they sought out Adam, eldest of their line, and chaplain of their flock, in his house high up in the mountains that looked towards their holiest place, and they asked of him the reasons behind the grey storm that raged around them.
Then Adam took pity on the sons of his sons, and he stood up and climbed to the peak and spoke to the god.
A great evil has come, came the answer, a breath of wind against Adam's ears. Steel thyselves, for we are at war. Have thy heir build a ship, for I will send forth a great darkness and a great flood, to staunch the evil that has come into this world.
And so Noah and his sons built a large ship, though many of their people disbelieved them and thought Adam finally mad in his dotage.
Last came the darkness. Adam watched from the peak of the mountain on which he lived; never-ending streams of rain fell against his hat, rolled down his cheeks. His robes were drenched and lay flat against his skin, and his feet were wrinkled from the water.
Who has won? Adam wondered in the empty, almost silent darkness as the rain swilled around him. Has the battle been won?
Then Noah's ship came for him. There Adam sheltered with Noah until the waters subsided and they found land again.
Then the gods came before them. To Adam's utter shock and horror, the creator he had known since he awoke in the paradise of earth before the evil came – that creator knelt shackled against the sand, his beard tattered and mussed. The other god laughed, growing taller as he stumbled over with laughter, until the sun itself seemed dwarfed by his very silhouette.
Tell me now, fools, the other god said, who do you serve now? My men have served me well, and they shall reign now over this broken world. His voice was the bellow of a hurricane, the ear-rending scream of the sea itself set afire.
Adam's god shook his head. Wait for the day when I shall rise again, he mouthed, cheeks pressed against the sand. Adam watched in horror as the sand entered the creator's mouth, as the creator spat the sand out. Wait.
Adam motioned for Noah and his sons to kneel. We serve you, they said, heads downcast.
The words were bitter in Adam's mouth, like hemlock, like tears, like hatred turned putrid.
:::
When Adam regained his strength, he brought with him Noah and Noah's sons, and together they retreated into the hidden bellies of the world, which the creator had shown to Adam alone of all men and creatures alive.
There Adam taught his heirs all that he knew, all the lore he had ever learned, and together they concocted a plan for revenge, for resurrection, for rebuilding.
In the world outside, the angry god (the jealous god) ruled with an iron fist. The people of the tribe who worshipped him gained power, gaining thrones and high positions and wealth unthinkable.
Some of that people wielded a special power which the jealous god gave to them. A power to defeat Adam, the unwanted relic of a different age, a rabble-rousing believer in a different god, a thorn in the careful peace that was the anxious aftermath of a terrible war.
And so Adam stayed shrouded in secrecy and bided his time, watching and waiting as men died, first from the wicked wars they waged on each other, and then from the disastrous plague that left lands untilled and armies stricken.
Adam saw the suffering, and thought of the ancient link between the dead and the living, thought of heartache and loss and the deep roots of love and memory. And so he brought back the dead to face the living, the living who did not know how to live. Only the dead knew the truth, for they were dead and could see clearly.
And he called himself the Earl of Millennium, for he would soon master time, and shut away the jealous god back into the nothingness of sleep. He would reclaim the throne of the world for his master, the rightful ruler, the true creator. He would save the people who had descended from his loins.
And his Noahs would aid him, sons of his sons.
:::
As human civilisations ebbed and rose, the jealous god grew sleepy. The shadow of his iron fist slowly but surely grew short over the land.
The Earl of Millennium noticed this. When the time was ripe, the Earl set forth to wait in the shadows, under the awning branches of ancient trees, for the juggernaut of mourning to breathe life into his plans.
In the darkness before dawn, day after day after day, the Earl would step out of the feathery darkness, and say to hapless lovers, weeping mothers, sobbing children: Come to me, for I am the path to resurrection. Call him back, and you shall have him. That I promise you.
Inevitably, the bereaved would call out the names of the lost. Sometimes it was John, or sometimes Mary, or other names which the Earl did not bother to remember. Then the Earl would bring forth his power, split the earth asunder, and retrieve a skeleton with the face of the dead. Using an ancient spell, bound up in love and blood and loss, the living and the dead merged into a weapon of destruction.
The weapon against the Innocence.
And so the Earl gathered his armies, and waited anew.
:::
Having surpassed the lifespans of most of his descendants, the Earl found life ebbing away. No fool was he, to think that his mortal, earth-bound body could survive the trials of millennia.
And so he thought long and deep.
Then, as he grew ever weaker, he chose from among the great-sons of Noah a mere babe and had it brought to his chamber. There, in the shifting half-light, Adam performed the greatest magic of his life.
When Adam finally closed his eyes, he fell into deep and unending slumber beside the crying, swaddled child, whose eyes now burned a sharp gold.
:::
Mana Campbell, the inheritor, grew into a cunning tactician.
He told the Noahs his plans; and that was to be his undoing for a time. Neah Campbell, whom he loved more than the others, turned on him, for he had miscalculated which strings to pull. And so his plans came to naught, for a time, and he barely escaped with Rhode Camelot (and no one else).
Together in the cave where in his memory he had sought refuge all those centuries ago in the storied age when the gods had battled for supremacy, the Earl turned to the eldest child of Noah, and she comforted him with soft words despite her own gnawing fear.
And in that time he vowed to bring an end to the long-standing war, to tear down all that was evil and all that was wrong, to resurrect the good and the pure.
And so he built his world up again, in memory of all who had died before their time, in memory of the vanquished god, in memory of the good that had ceased to be in the absence of paradise lost.
AN: The Earl is one of the most intriguing characters in DGM. This idea of the Earl as the tragically misunderstood character came into my head when I read From Wild and Wicked Sleep by one of my favourite FF writers, Empatheia (a definite must-read if you have some time), in which the Earl and the Noahs were cast as the "white side" of the war, iirc. I lay no claim to this concept of the Earl as the good-ish guy. I lay no claim to most other minor concepts in this fic - as with much of my writing, it was influenced by Tolkien and in this case, Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series as well.
Also, this piece was originally posted on my other account, but I have since revised it and removed it to this account instead. The main revision was to incorporate the latest DGM developments (i.e. Mana as the Earl).
Concrit is welcome, if you have the inclination to review. If not, thanks for reading anyway, and I hope you enjoyed this piece.