Chapter Two: Calm Inside The Storm

As I stood waiting for something I knew I couldn't hold back, my vision phased into a purple haze for a few seconds, and as it returned to normal I realised my barrier was gone. My defensive capabilities were far greater than attack, and so I realised I had no chance. I needed a miracle. The four elemental gems were attached to my belt, collected by my grandfather. It seemed like an awful thought to have to lose them, but as the entity tore down the cliffs surrounding the plain, I suddenly knew that I had no choice.

I didn't think twice. I picked off the gems from around the belt and flung them outwards into the air in a semi-circle. They halted in mid-air as the spirits took control of them. I knew it was their will that Mammon be destroyed, and this was the only hope. The ground was set alight in a circle of fire around me, the wind roared over the plain, a storm began, raining heavily, and the Earth began to shift again.

The Earth's power united, the elemental channels awakened. The full force of mother's elements were in effect, wiping the slate clean. I watched in awe as a shaft of light engulfed the flaming pillar and sucked up the child. The gems were shot into the sky with the shaft of light, like an arrow piercing the heavens, and dispersed to places beyond the horizon. The gems were gone. I had to sacrifice the stones. Had I also sacrificed my pact with nature? Whatever the consequence, the Eletale Book was shut, and I was still alive.

I picked up the unconscious and beaten Lavaar, walking back towards Greenoch from the ruins of Dindom. The reign of the Dindom kingdom was over, burnt down into dust. A desolate desert. Celtland would take a while to recover. I always believed, however, that Dindom still existed in a faraway place. Maybe beyond the stone gates my ancestors built.

However, in one of those places, Mammon waited. He hadn't died, but lost much of his power. He waited for a thousand years. It would take that long before the stone circles would be used again. Mammon's servants found the stones that locked him away, and sought to use them for their own power. The spirit of the Earth, invested in the four gems, was the only key to the other places, however I would not see them for another thousand years, until they were found by the servants of Mammon.

Years later, in the dark gaol:

The night was still, no life in the cave. It was always night there. Only one power inhabited this place. "Shannon, my marionette... Shannon, just like me. You are bound to me, and you are bound to this place. Why do the magicians hate me? I know why. I am a spirit born of their weakness."

Shannon looked up to her creator. His pupil expanded and compressed repeatedly in the centre of the red sea of blood, the mirror to his soul. She stood on a shard of rock, rubbish sucked into the darkness somehow. "Mammon, why am I here? What is my purpose in this cosmos?"

Mammon grinned. "This is why you are divine, Shannon. The childish nature of a human, their happiness and life, is an obstacle in front of the truth. They can't see beyond that obstacle. You, Shannon, you see. Your purpose is to observe. Observe the humans, and you can learn how vile they are. Your purpose is to be my… friend."

Shannon's lifeless stare searched around her for light. "Is everything, everywhere, dark, Mammon?"

Mammon let go of her hand and floated forwards a little. Little pieces of debris floated around him. He bent down and picked up a piece of stone in his hand. "When you are grown up, you will go to Celtland. You will find light there, and you will bring it to me. We'll take all the light from the humans that they took from us."

Epona speaks:

"It came to be that Shannon conceived Mammon's children, and that was to be her primary purpose. Mammon thought it a false hope for Shannon to lure someone to the gate and release him, but there was no other hope for him. In ways he expected death, but hoped his children could carry out the wishes he always wished he could have. It was centuries later that the children awoke from their sleep, and when they did, the story of the master apprentice and Mammon was already forgotten…"