Chapter 1: Here
Chapter 2: Here
Chapter 3: Here
Chapter 4:
“Where did you go?”
I heard the question banging around in my head, repeated again and again. As my vision cleared, 6 shapes became 2 and I saw staring down at me a pair of hollow looking eyes, almost completely white.
I began to retch again and the man grabbed me and almost effortlessly turned my emaciated body over as I vomited onto the ground. I was a sick husk of a man at this point. I hadn’t eaten in ages, I had sores all over my body. I wreaked of death, and though I was alive, that was more semantics than a meaningful state of being.
When I had first ingested this plant I would be physically sick for a few hours, I’d have a short vision and eventually wake up in a cold sweat, nauseous. but before long the effects grew much worse. I soon lost my appetite altogether and began to have trouble sleeping. When I did manage a few moments of sleep I suffered through terrible dreams, but there were no visions there, only a never ending darkness, and when I tried to scream there was no sound at all.
I was “living” vision to vision. The time that passed in between could barely be described as “existing”.
The tar I had mixed with other herbs and oils to try and intensify my experience was starting to have more severe effects. It had been ages since I had any form of clarity whatsoever. There was only fog. The only times I felt alive was during those brief moments when the universe gave me a glimpse of the organizing principles that I so longed to understand.
But in truth, I was no closer to understanding than I was in the beginning, I only knew the magnitude of what I didn’t know at all.
And what kind of knowledge is that?
Is ignorance a better alternative?
The truth that I in fact know nothing was the worst condemnation I could ever ask for. I sought understanding but only encountered more confusion. I sought answers, but received only more questions in return.
Why are we here?
What is our purpose?
Where did we come from and why have we fallen so low?
Though I have always been a man of science and I had always put all my faith in knowledge, the things I was seeing, if only for a moment, were pointing me in some other direction even when I still was not willing to admit such things.
If these visions were of my own creation, then why could I not understand them?
And if some other being pulls the strings, then why does it seem like we’ve been abandoned here to rot?
Why pull the veil aside at all if they weren’t going to tell me what it meant?
What was the point?
What’s the point in living, or what’s the point in dying?
If there is a God or Gods, I don’t know them, and I’m pretty sure they’re not benevolent, not the Tindremic ones anyway. Liars and extortionists. How could such people be in favor with any higher power unless the whole system was corrupt.
The “civilized” are as animalistic as the Risar horde they tell horror stories about to their children. And even the ones that call out to those Gods are hypocrites and liars anyway, the worst of their kind some of them, justifying what they do for some lie.
Whatever the case, all I can know is what I have seen, and what I have seen I cannot explain, and what I cannot explain I cannot know. I’ve seen the darkness, I’ve seen the growing depravity, the desperation in all their faces...in my face. And in it all a pattern.
The seed is planted, it grows up from the ground, when it thirsts the rains come from above. Nave feeds them and they grow taller. The stars move, the seasons change, eventually the rot appears, green turns to yellow and brown. Then the darkness, then death. A seed falls and is swallowed by the ground. Rebirth...another cycle. Are we the same? Doomed to repeat the same descent into darkness?
“Where did I go?”
I remember asking him in return, still confused in the bleary state of fog and nausea that followed the visions.
“I’m not sure. I’ve never seen such a place. I was standing in a garden......within an immaculate courtyard framed in carved figures, beasts of some species I’ve never known. A crackling sound rattled through the sky. I could feel vibrations in my skull like a loud drum....It was a pattern so foreign but familiar....1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8....and the ground was cleaved in front of me. A great ravine opened at my feet, and the waters of the deep engulfed everything I could see.”
“Ah...so you’ve seen it then? Karāš Šinʿarin”
“The what?”
“I don’t think you really have a word for it in your tongue....your people might call it the sundering of Asterra”
“What happened?”
The man with the glowing white eyes only looked down, sullen.
“It was a day of great loss”
Chapter 2: Here
Chapter 3: Here
Chapter 4:
“Where did you go?”
I heard the question banging around in my head, repeated again and again. As my vision cleared, 6 shapes became 2 and I saw staring down at me a pair of hollow looking eyes, almost completely white.
I began to retch again and the man grabbed me and almost effortlessly turned my emaciated body over as I vomited onto the ground. I was a sick husk of a man at this point. I hadn’t eaten in ages, I had sores all over my body. I wreaked of death, and though I was alive, that was more semantics than a meaningful state of being.
When I had first ingested this plant I would be physically sick for a few hours, I’d have a short vision and eventually wake up in a cold sweat, nauseous. but before long the effects grew much worse. I soon lost my appetite altogether and began to have trouble sleeping. When I did manage a few moments of sleep I suffered through terrible dreams, but there were no visions there, only a never ending darkness, and when I tried to scream there was no sound at all.
I was “living” vision to vision. The time that passed in between could barely be described as “existing”.
The tar I had mixed with other herbs and oils to try and intensify my experience was starting to have more severe effects. It had been ages since I had any form of clarity whatsoever. There was only fog. The only times I felt alive was during those brief moments when the universe gave me a glimpse of the organizing principles that I so longed to understand.
But in truth, I was no closer to understanding than I was in the beginning, I only knew the magnitude of what I didn’t know at all.
And what kind of knowledge is that?
Is ignorance a better alternative?
The truth that I in fact know nothing was the worst condemnation I could ever ask for. I sought understanding but only encountered more confusion. I sought answers, but received only more questions in return.
Why are we here?
What is our purpose?
Where did we come from and why have we fallen so low?
Though I have always been a man of science and I had always put all my faith in knowledge, the things I was seeing, if only for a moment, were pointing me in some other direction even when I still was not willing to admit such things.
If these visions were of my own creation, then why could I not understand them?
And if some other being pulls the strings, then why does it seem like we’ve been abandoned here to rot?
Why pull the veil aside at all if they weren’t going to tell me what it meant?
What was the point?
What’s the point in living, or what’s the point in dying?
If there is a God or Gods, I don’t know them, and I’m pretty sure they’re not benevolent, not the Tindremic ones anyway. Liars and extortionists. How could such people be in favor with any higher power unless the whole system was corrupt.
The “civilized” are as animalistic as the Risar horde they tell horror stories about to their children. And even the ones that call out to those Gods are hypocrites and liars anyway, the worst of their kind some of them, justifying what they do for some lie.
Whatever the case, all I can know is what I have seen, and what I have seen I cannot explain, and what I cannot explain I cannot know. I’ve seen the darkness, I’ve seen the growing depravity, the desperation in all their faces...in my face. And in it all a pattern.
The seed is planted, it grows up from the ground, when it thirsts the rains come from above. Nave feeds them and they grow taller. The stars move, the seasons change, eventually the rot appears, green turns to yellow and brown. Then the darkness, then death. A seed falls and is swallowed by the ground. Rebirth...another cycle. Are we the same? Doomed to repeat the same descent into darkness?
“Where did I go?”
I remember asking him in return, still confused in the bleary state of fog and nausea that followed the visions.
“I’m not sure. I’ve never seen such a place. I was standing in a garden......within an immaculate courtyard framed in carved figures, beasts of some species I’ve never known. A crackling sound rattled through the sky. I could feel vibrations in my skull like a loud drum....It was a pattern so foreign but familiar....1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8....and the ground was cleaved in front of me. A great ravine opened at my feet, and the waters of the deep engulfed everything I could see.”
“Ah...so you’ve seen it then? Karāš Šinʿarin”
“The what?”
“I don’t think you really have a word for it in your tongue....your people might call it the sundering of Asterra”
“What happened?”
The man with the glowing white eyes only looked down, sullen.
“It was a day of great loss”
