《Very, Very Rough Draft of Where This River Lies》 Prologue Travel Advisory for the Exarchate of Fulin It is currently inadvisable for persons visiting, or else, of Eastern Fulin birth to visit, and or, travel through the Exarchate of Western Fulin at this time due to socio-politocal instability. Country Summary: According to western orthodox tradition, it is believed that the world as we know it was created by the Great Monad, the source of all life, unlife and thought, in accordance to our shared desire to experience the sensation of growth and progress, two of the few things in ¡°life¡± that are denied to omnipotent and omniscient being, who would no doubt be confined to the stagnation of perfection according to its own nature. And so, just as the dreamer may dream of walking around in an invisible body as they follow their familiar, physical body, so too did the Great Monad first divy his consciousness through the divine art of kenosis into equal facets between the minds of the First Men, as they shaped their own bodies from the earthen clay of the Monad¡¯s dream-body. Find this and other great novels on the author''s preferred platform. Support original creators! In our contemporary times in Universal Century 0079, when the foedarati reservists, in collusion with elven eco-irredentists, mutinyed and captured the western capital they did so under the proclamation that they were acting according to the heavenly mandate, which had allegedly been lost by the last of western dynasty, and demanded of them to enact a great henotic crusade against blasphemous half-elven nobility who had twisted and profane the sanctity of the Great Monad''s kenotic dreams. Since the ensuing damage sustained during the sinking of the western capital was too great for the eastern senate to send sufficient disaster relief aid, and the inability of slightly less than half of the provincial lords to be able to attend the auction for hosting rights of a new capital sponsored by the eastern capital''s emissaries, in joint cooperation with the western church, the proposed peaceful transition of power to a new western tetrachate has been declared a resounding failure, and the area has fallen victim to a myriad of warring states and civilI skirmishes between imperial loyalists, human foedarati, and elven eco-irredentists, with the western church currently too embroiled in an internal monastic civil war between kenotic and henotic mage cults to reilably keep the peace in the interim. It is advised that if you must absolutely travel to the western to take utmost precautions and consider remaining as near to the eastern border along the Da Qin corridor as possible. Outlining Magic: Basics A Beginner''s Guide to the Fundamentals of Magic: What is, ¡°Magic?¡± The term, ¡°magic,¡± is used as a sorta metonym for the greater scientific and philosophic fields, arts, and studies of the forces of creation, destruction and reconstruction in much the same way that the catchall word, ¡°love,¡± has become a kind of metonym or synecdoche for the myriad of emotions and concepts that the ancients would classify as constituting the different types of, ¡°love.¡± According to Imperial tradition, the study of magic began not long after the creation of the world, when man first questioned the circumstances of both his own birth and the world¡¯s and achieved the first state of jijnasa and, as a result, it was revealed unto him by the residual echoes of Isvara the exact nature of the creation of all the worlds. In the beginning it is said that the supreme Isvara, the omnipotent and omniscient God of all gods, and the source of all things material, immaterial and emotional grew bored one day of his perfect eternity, as being the source of all thought and emotion means to share and encompass all realms of potentcies of possible thought and emotion, both familiar and foreign to the mind of man, including our own familiar desires for growth risk and disgust of stagnation, as well as the opposite comforts of absolute certainty. As the primordial monad, the supreme Isvara encompassed these dueling desires just as man does now, however, just as man is afflicted now, so was the supreme Isvara unable to find a harmony between these dueling desires in his void of perfect entropy as it is common knowledge that the sensations of, ¡°true-risk,¡± and, ¡°true-growth,¡± are now and have ever been and always will be the only two things truly capable of elluding the grasp of any being so, ¡°perfect,¡± it subsumes the critiques of mortal death and transcends the restrictions of resources and the bell-curve of progress, knowing only perfect birth and limitless potentcies. And so, the supreme Isvara resolved to reconcile the rift in his heart of hearts torn asunder by the dueling desires within by laying down to rest, and undertaking the imagining of a great dream. A dream, not unlike certain dreams of mortal men, where the mind flies free of the physical body and might all at once look down at oneself as if seeing a mirror image, moving their limbs and pulling faces while they stare into their own eyes, and even begin to see through the eyes of others and themselves and no-one all at once, like holding one eye open and the other up to a kaleidoscope to behold two worlds at once. So began the cycle of mortal creation, destruction and reincarnation for the first time ever, as the myriad of the supreme Isvara¡¯s mind¡¯s-eyes began to partition themselves among the minds of the first men and their descendants as they rose from the clay of the supreme Isvara¡¯s body within the dream like how a balding man sheds hair, while the body became liberated from its free-roaming mind and settled down to form all the worlds of Prakriti and Pruhasa. And the limbs of the primordial monad¡¯s dream-body that wished to liberate themselves from the earth, but did not wish to undergo henosis and reform with the supreme Isvara¡¯s mind undertook upon themselves a second kenosis and became the ancient gods of old; the ancestral guardian spirits and deva-kings and ecological-egregores of legend! And soon, as the new minor isvaras, those ¡°ancient gods of old,¡± began disseminating the plemora of the nature of creation to man there began a war amongst the heavens, as certain isvaras became conceited and ostentatious, covetting all who would listen as disciples and maid-servants of their own prerogatives, and began to wish for even greater kenotic autonomy so as to style themselves as new true-gods among the realms of Prakriti and Pruhasa, whilst other isvaras began instead to long for a reunion with their mind¡¯s-eyes and sought to melt back into the primordial monad. Before long, the henotic-minded gods began to transform themselves into runic eucharists to be consumed and consummated by their human so that they may join together and be lost once more to the greater ¡°life¡± of the supreme monad as outside the dream, while the kenotic-minded isvaras retaliated by taking their own followers as concubines and consorts, and twisting them instead in their own images to use consummated shock-troops against the forces of henosis in the arms race for the hearts and minds of men. The war raged on, long and bloody, scarring the Earth and scouring the Mind, and claiming the lives of many men and gods alike for the unintended collateral sake of the cycle of reincarnation that was now spinning out of control, until enough gods had died and enough lives been lost so as to clog up the queues of reincarnation and usher in an era of a great power vacuum, albeit temporary, yet still just long enough for the power of the gods to begin to wane under the shadow of the power men-kings as the new, remaining races of man began to assert their own prerogatives upon the world and begin to carve out fiefdoms and kingdoms for theirselves, until eventually the world was dominated by the empires of men, those creatures descended from the first act of divine kenosis by the supreme Isvara, and their own myriad of descendants. If you find this story on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the infringement. Today, throughout the realms of the Eastern Tetrarchy of Daqin, and the lose confederation of provinces and lands belonging to the former Western Tetrarchy of Daqin, now colloquially known as the Fulin Federation, the fields of magic fall on a spectrum between the mystic schools descended from the thaumaturgic teachings of the kenotic-minded gods of old, and those mystic schools descended from the theurgic teachings of the henotic-minded isvaras of old. WIth thaumaturgy being known as the divine art of intercessing the power of qi from the material realms of Prakriti, it is primarily practiced in those regions historically inhabited by the descendants of those human concubines taken by the kenotic-minded isvaras, many of whom identify ethnically as alp-men or, ¡°elves,¡± colloquially. On the other side of the coin, those descended from the acolytes of the henotic-minded isvaras and their eucharists, most commonly referred to as idle-men or, ¡°plebeians,¡± are usually practitioners of the theurgic arts instead, and have become masters of contorting and twisting their body¡¯s meridian veins into terrific knot-shaped sigil-circuits so as to intercess qi directly from their more dominant link to Pruhasa and the mind of the supreme Isvara via their shared mind¡¯s-eye. Although plenty of plebeians have been known to both practice and even become quite skilled to the point of mastery in thaumaturgy, and vice-versa with elves in the theurgic arts as well, as not only must one have a firm grasp of the basics of Wuxing elemental relationships in order to practice magic on either ends of the spectrum, but various minor and even specialty schools of magic are known to require knowledge of both thaumaturgy and theurgy in order to study, such as the primarily theurgic schools of offensive pyromancy spells requiring at the very least basic knowledge of thaumaturgy in order to ensure that the shot isn¡¯t harmessy dissipated by a basic warding spell, or the traditionally thaumaturgic college of mycolomancers with their recent forrays into the art of cultivating mycorrhizal networks through magical means and twisting the roots of the network into sigil-circuits much like a theurgic cultivator would bend and contort their meridian veins in order to allow the major and minor elements to flow through qi transistors and dantian batteries. Of course, most innovations in human technology usually has the potential for misuse as well as good, and magic has never been any different. For examples, one need look no further than so-called, ¡°consecrated kobolds,¡± usually found within the deep glades of rural regions that were traditionally majority ruled by Thaumaturgic monastic protectorates and their orders. Extremely insular, and seldom found outside of their ethnic enclaves, kobolds are the descendants of degenerated elvish-men who were stripped of their spiritual and cognitive powers of jijnasa, usually as a sacred rite of passing into some hollowed social caste. As a result their descendants are more animal than man, often completely feral and un-housebroken. Although surgeries do exist to re-induce the apotheosis of jijnasa within them again, the procedure is still as of yet highly experimental, and even many a theurgic apothecary would hesitate to prescribe it. Just as well, unbalanced study of the theurgic arts have been known to produce many an abjuration as well, beyond a doubt most notably those calling themselves the, ¡°kaizo-kin.¡± As it was discovered that, through divine apheresis, the human body could conduct such elements through its meridian lines in much the same way the mycolomancers found their first model mychorrzial-networks were capable of conducting electricity through earthern circuits, and most other elements as well. However, even using dantians as transistors and meridians in place of copper traces, the average human body can only conduct so much electricity, water, fire, earth and whatever-else-have-you before the act of cultivating these elements in the body in excess of what the usual levels of them present in the body¡¯s natural qi cycles are would eventually prove fatal eventually without stopping to perform an elemental purge through the art of misogi. And so, in order to keep pace in their arms race with the mycolomancers¡¯ own advancements in the field of the study and cultivation of mychorzzial-network mandalas, many theurgic masters begin to look into the potentcies of lab-cultivated limbs and philter-grown muscles and meridians, resulting in mages who were more prosthetic mail and metal than men. Of course, proponents of such carnal abjurations abound regardless, often defending the claims to their positions with the justifications of such lineage-martyrdom being necessary for the sake of progress, as the development of consecrated kobolds and other such beastmen juujin has produced in many areas, a steady supply base for those looking to file their regular rank and file with disposable guardsmen or for those unable or even unwilling to hire foederati and sellswords. Just as well, advancements within the kaizo-kin cults have led to many a theurgic mage finally being capable of competing once more on level footing with thaumaturgic wizards and their fossil fueled mychorrzial-staves and yi-wo-feng gourd blunderbusses. Chapter 1 ¡°Bong-ka sahng-ma¡­¡± ¡°Bong-ka sahng-ma¡­¡± ¡°Bong-ka sahng-ma¡­¡± ¡°Bong-ka sahng-ma!¡± In the inner-sanctum of the former temple, the priestesses had gathered for their shift. The din from the chant of their magic hymn drowning out most-all traces of the goings-on of the outside world. Pellegrina mantlettes woven of the same plain brown leaves most peasants fashioned their roofs from adorned their otherwise bare shoulders as they continued to chant the incantation in the same sing-song lilt, ¡°Bong-ka sahng-ma, bong-ka sahng¡­¡± The words themselves held virtually no power, rather, the energy was in the way the words strummed their vocal cords in a way that complimented and harmonized with the qi flow of the meridians of their vocal chakra. Most were of some kind or some other elvish ethnicity and all were devout generational kenotics, granting them natural affinity with thaumaturgic magics on a level as instinctual as taking breathing, and yet for the specialized task at hand every breath, every chant, every skirt swirling step in their concentric, synchronized dance around the altar of their heavenly hostage was conscious and calculated the way a runner modulates the breathes he takes during a marathon. All of this in service towards the cycling of qi through their meridians and dantians, so that the apherisized elements separated from their Onda Vital, their qi flow, would be of only the highest, most refined quality that they were capable of as hierophants for when the briar-transistors that sprouted from beneath the wooden hafts of their Shepard''s crooks pricked the flesh of the palms that gripped them and drew the ¡°decanted¡± elements from their blood. Shackled to the altar by mycorrhizal chains and earthern manacles lay a koi the size of a rhinoceros, long disgraced from his position among the Terravaraic pantheon as a minor banner lord in service to the lords of the water arcana of the kenotic-minded isvara¡¯s divine Fellowship. Indeed, although he had been still merely a guppy long ago when, following the Primordial Divine Endowment of Creation and kindling apheresis of the light of the Progenitor Isvara¡¯s myriad consciousness to all humanity, when the first Fellowship of kenotic-Isvaras began to codify the stipulations of magical theory according to the physics of the WuXing Principle that the Progenitor had set to govern Creation, he had been there all the same. Certainly, he had watched with his own eyes the advent of magical theory as the lord of the element of electric, the Catfish King, under the decree of the god of the air arcana, disseminated the secrets of elemental conductivity to the First Men, the original bearers of jijnasa, and began humanity¡¯s tutelage in magical theory. The story has been taken without consent; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident. Now he could do nothing but watch as the far-flung descendants of the First Men plyed their knowledge of magical theory on him, as the elements drawn from their blood by the briar transistors of their shepard¡¯s crooks conducted through the tracings of the mycorrhizal circuits beneath the wooden shafts, cycling according to the signals of the mycorrhizal matrices housed within the vivianite crystals affixed within the crooks of the priestesses¡¯ staffs, until finally the song reached its crescendo and the priestesses raised their voices in exulted unison, closing the mycorrhizal circuits within the wood and lancing beams of enchanted light towards his body; beams of enchant light that should have been impossible considering the relative darkness of the inner-sanctum. Already he could feel the warmth of the spell spreading across his scales and working its way through his meridians and respiratory systems, for after one thousand years he¡¯d become all too familiar with the spell; a healing incantation, designed to artificially massage grant the koi spirit enough sustenance and exercise to prevent his own meridians from atrophying and keep him from falling into that great slumber that gods, major and minor, fell once their body¡¯s qi-pressure had been depleted beyond a level capable of sustaining their Onda Vital. That was the closest a god could get to experiencing death, next to being reconsummated into the henotic mind of the Progenitor Isvara beyond the firmament of the dream, and for a kenotic-minded Terravara like himself, it was the only death he was allowed and yet, it seemed to him now more than ever that even to fall into that great slumber for a time would be preferable to spending another day here in the temple, branded a traitor and station usurper, damned to serve as little more than a glorified dantian to power the water plant in the backwater borough that used to house his once exalted temple. Now, his only consolation was the knowledge that with any luck, a piece of himself would soon lay in the hands of the remnants of the former imperial legion of the western tetrachate. It had taken decades to reverse engineer the blueprints of the spell in his mind¡¯s eye from the annals of his ailing memory of a near-forgotten conversation with one of his fellow divine bannerlords, a particular sponge spirit, of the secrets of an asexual budding spell, and even longer in order to actually amass the needed excess qi and covertly arrange the synapses of his meridians pull unbeknownst to the templars who watched him day and night under the orders of the plant administrators. But in time he had managed to pull it off, isolating a ¡°bud¡± of his consciousness and condensing it within a single, inconspicuous scale so that when the priestesses next bathed him, too concerned with scraping away the old, rotting scales and spraying away his growing pile of refuse they would never notice his disciple, a sympathizer whom he spoke to only in a morse-semaphore of blinks, as his disciple pocketed a lone, discoloured scale. That night, outside the grass palisades that grew in deliberate, terraformed rings she would hand the scale off to a man clad in the lorica segmentata of the old Kingsguard¡­ Concerning the Seige of Jaburo In the universal calendar year 0,079 U.C., after approximately half a year under siege, control of the capital of the western tetrarchate was finally wrested away from the foederati usurpers as the city fell to the forces of the western imperial legion, aided by their eastern tetrarchate counterparts and the remainder of the foederati forces still loyal to the western senate. However, the pyrrhic ¡°victory¡±, if indeed it could be called that, came at a great cost as the cornered foederati and the Vitruvian usurper, prepared to fight to the death if it meant even a snowball¡¯s chance in hell to prevent the western senate from retaking power and reinstituting the dreadful tax policies that had crippled the economies of the vassal states under the suzerainty of the western empire in the name of ¡°rebuilding public infrastructure¡± following the wake of the war with the Saghdid empire, the foederati in a last stand against the allied forces of the imperial legion set about cultivating mycorrhizal matrices to grow throughout the bricks and mortar of the towering calcinators of the capital. Having been erected centuries past by the emperor Redivivus, the first emperor of the Empire of Daqin before it was split into bureaucratic tetrarchates of east and west, according to the disciplic succession of the principles of the Huange-he sutra matrix thus disseminated to him by kenotic-minded of the dreaming Brahma, the jellyfish god Akashic Catfish, the towering calcinators were created to counterbalance the imbalanced qi flow of the leylines beneath the plains the city was built on, narrowly averting calamity in subduing the power in the tremors of an earthquake that otherwise would have decimated the capital long before its fated time! Upon these same towering calcinators the foederati now cultivated snaking mycorrhizae through metal and mortar, reaching deep into the earth below the streets of the capital, transforming the calcinators into towering dantians of metal and stone masonry to be manipulated like the electric organ of a zapfish. Feeding alchemical reagents to the mycorrhizal matrices and using their thaumaturgical dominion over plants, the sages of the occupying foederati forces, hierophants of the Order of Acarya, beseeched the souls within the mycorrhizae to manipulate the elemental qi flow of the leylines like dantian in a spell of electrogenesis to cast a moat of magic lightning around the outer walls of the city and fell the legion besiegers. Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings. And indeed, the foedarati¡¯s ploy seemed to pay off at first, as many legionaries were vaporized by lancing bolts of lightning! However, even the thaumaturgical casting of spells release anti-qi as a byproduct. On that day, the skies above the capital of New Ketumati city were so congested with mass quantities of anti-qi released by the foedarati¡¯s misuse of the leylines beneath the earth that a vortex amassed within the darkening clouds and devoured the city from above; dealing a crushing to defeat to the foederati, as well as a crippling blow to the legion¡¯s forces. As even if the east could muster the strength to send reinforcements and hosts of excavating parties enough to sift through the rubble, the loss of the capital and all the lands around it in a 30-mile radius rang the death knell for any hope of salvaging the last dynasty of the western tetrarchate. Cardinal Concuspiscence ¡°The wall is high, higher than anyone ever knows,¡± the old man chuckled to himself, ¡°but what they never tell you is that there are very few things in this world that are truly impossible. Instead, rather, the vast majority of what seems impossible to us usually only looks so because of our mortally finite amount of time and resources. But with enough resources and time, anything is possible.¡± ¡°Pffft, no shit sirrah,¡± huffed the youth, ¡°Bet that¡¯s easy for you to say, old timer. Even you mychorrzians outlive the average tall-man. I can work my ass off to come up with the resources needed to start makin¡¯ moves, and by the time I might actually have the money I¡¯ve already got one foot in the grave, meanwhile you and those damn knife-ear¡¯d elves wouldn¡¯t have seemed to age a day! We tall-men are always at the bottom because we just can¡¯t compete! Sure, maybe some of the wizards up in their high towers and convents might have cultivated some sutra or incantation to buy themselves more time, but those techniques aren¡¯t exactly the kinda thing that trickle down to the public.¡± Indignant heat tinged his pale cheeks a flush pink as the youth stared into the face of the old man seated on the prison floor across from him on the other end of the small chess board. Weathered and creased with innumerable lines, he was old for a mychorrzian, (or at least, for any of the mychorrzians the youth had seen before,) and the flaxen hair-like gills of the underside of the inverted mushroom cap that sprouted from just above the bridge of his nose showed it. Unauthorized use: this story is on Amazon without permission from the author. Report any sightings. ¡°That may be true,¡± he rasped thoughtfully,¡±but at the end of the day, elves and dwarves and orcs and even you tall-hearts and us mychorrzians-, at the end of the day we¡¯re all still the sons of the First men. We birth the same, we breathe the same, and we bleed the same. Though the elves may have been changed by the kenotic gods of old to be more naturally gifted when it comes to matters of longevity and thaumaturgy, it is in that same human blood that runs within us all Lord Zurvan¡¯s qi flows. It is for that reason, that just as for better or worse there can never be such a thing as a truly unique thought, there is also no such thing as a truly unique spell or sutra that can not be cracked or reproduced given the time and dedication. Ever since the fashioning of this world through Lord Zurvan¡¯s cardinal concupiscence time has always followed after desire and dedication; time and resources, they alone should be no cause for worry. The catch is rather, knowing hen to hold your hand and knowing when to fold. Like the old sages say, ¡°the wall is high, higher than anyone ever knows.¡± Knowing, or rather, having now at least heard all this now, in this world of dueling desires, do you still dare to aim for the top?¡± Champloo ¡°It''s too easy to look out for just, ¡°number 1,¡± it''s a natural instinct after all. Lookin¡¯ out for another, especially a stranger, knowing that there likely won''t be anything in it for you, to do somethin¡¯ like that solely for the sake of, ¡°doing unto others,¡± how you¡¯d like them to do unto you in an ideal world¡­ that takes a real, ¡°strength of character,¡±¡­¡± rasped the old gnome. With his phygrian cap slouched low over his eyes and his lips buried beneath the depths of his beard it was difficult as ever to tell exactly what he was thinking, but in his tone was the unmistakable trace of pride tinged with joy. ¡°But the thing about strengths, y¡¯see, is that strength by design must falter for a time in order to grow and cultivate itself,¡± grunted the big vitruvian in the west-most corner of the cell, looking for all the world like a big brown granite slab of an aksumite; one of the few races of men that had remained un-transmogrified by the meddling of the angels. ¡°Now, me and the old gnome¡¯re well past our days of holding out hope for any growth spurts, but you, you¡¯re still growing. Ain¡¯t no sense in lettin¡¯ a good crop die stunted if you can help it, so quit yer blubberin¡¯ and take the hit!¡± The brown-haired youth hadn¡¯t managed to get in a word edgewise, only stood there, eyes down-cast and hands balled into fist. The youth was lithe for a boy of his age, as were all vitruvians of nestorian ethnicity, but his callused hands had the same weathered look of all penal serfs. ¡°We already know what you¡¯re thinkin¡¯, so don¡¯t think of this as some kinda hand-out. Think of it as sorta like an investment or a loan. With all the hands the lord commander¡¯ll get outta this levy business-, hell even outta this sponging dungeon alone-, the empire¡¯ll be sure to have the western tetrachate back in line in a month, tops! We¡¯re expectin¡¯ you to make it big out there kid, so that afterwards you can spring bail for us too, than we¡¯ll all be free again to dice and whore as much as we want, ha-hah!¡± This story is posted elsewhere by the author. Help them out by reading the authentic version. ¡°Mmm-hmm,¡± the old gnome bobbed his head in agreement, ¡°It is the natural way of things for the old and infirm to pass on their hopes and dreams for the young¡¯uns to inherit. You hear me, boy? We¡¯re going, ¡°all in,¡± on you so there¡¯s no time for second guessin¡¯ yourself. Just keep your head down and follow orders and you¡¯ll come out alright.¡± A month had passed now since they¡¯d all put their dungeon-scrip together to pay the separate fee for the Warden to waive the youth¡¯s inherited debt so that he¡¯d be eligible to sign on with the penal levy. However, the act had left the boy with little-to-no savings left afterwards, and as the regiment quartermaster corps weren¡¯t known for loaning full uniforms to foot-soldiers, let alone convict conscripts, the boy now trudged along in the rearguard of the caravan in a chain-gang of fellow convict conscripts in only his dungeon stripes and a tattered hand-me-down of a sun-bleached scapular. Officers and NCOs would routinely pass by the columns of on foot chain-gangs astride their own mounts; knights errant atop grand destriers, sellswords clad in coats of many colors steering shaggy dire wolves, and even kaizo-kin templars with their sweat stained metal skin and prosthetic flesh saddled upon equally bizarre vahanas. All of them coming and going amongst camp followers and quartermastery hedged in by the rearguard, and all of them kicking up great clouds of dust with every passing. And yet, despite it all trudged on, completely unperturbed by any of it. For the first time in nearly two years, with fresh air in his lungs, and the warm sun beating down on his pale skin from high above in a jade sky that seemed to greet him the way one would embrace a distant relative they hadn''t seen in ages, the youth felt his mind clear and his senses return to him, acute and sharpened. For the first time in a while the youth felt determined as there was only one thought in his heart; the burning desire to strike it big while he was deployed in the west! Makenshi Kenosis (concept) In this realm of creation, cultivation has been held as a sacred art and act of communion with the immaterial Pruhasa since the dawn of creation when the demi-gods, the immortal limbs of the God-head, first descended upon the newborn world following the advent of the cardinal concupiscence of the God-head, detaching themselves from the God-head, Vishnu Zurvan, like the limbs of Starfish cut off from the main body, desiring to grow bodies of their own but only able to eternally emulate an effigy of the primordial. It was the demi-gods, now styling themselves as proper, ¡°Gods,¡± as they walked among their mortal followers, who first disseminated the first disciplic sessions of tutelage concerning the secret arts of neidan and waidan to the chorus of infinite souls that had been born from the creation of the world, and of all those souls who¡¯d received the disciplic lessons of the gods about one-fourth of those souls were inspired to take on material forms and attempt to dwell in the barren, uninhabited below, becoming known as jivatma, marking the first breaths of humanity in the newborn world. And when the kenotic-minded gods took for themselves a quarter of humanity to change in their own image and consummate as concubines the art of cultivation changed as well. For the first time ever in all the world, cultivation was used as an art of martial prowess as kenotic-minded gods waged war against their henotic-minded counterparts, with mankind caught between blood feud of the gods, leaving only two quarters of humanity unchanged by either side. Eventually, even as the gods, having been incapacitated like the limbs of a starfish diced too small to be able to regenerate in a feasible time frame over the course of their own petty war, fell into immortal slumber, the fate of the remainder of mankind was left hanging in the balance, as the seeds of deep-hearted rivalry and even disgust, had been sown into the hearts of the widowed concubines of both the henotic and kenotic gods. But Fate is a fickle thing, for it is neither a rigid course, nor is it subservient, but an entity nearly equal to mankind in of itself, and in this world of dueling desires Fate can always be coereced to change. Or at least, so the disciples of the so-called, ¡°demon king,¡± believed. Many moons and many a century after the cardinal catharsis of creation and the hubris fueled fall of the demi-gods, many a human kingdom had fallen as well. It was in the interim of the fall of one such kingdom, that a local lord resolved to try and solve the paradox of dueling desires for himself. In the interim of the fall of the western tetrachate of Fulin, as the eastern senate¡¯s delegates tried and failed to spearhead a peaceful transition of power brigands began to infest the lands and warlords reigned supreme as each one fought to dominate not only his own fate, but the fate of his former peers as well. In a world where anything is possible given enough of ever elusive materials such as, ¡°time,¡± and, ¡°resources,¡± in a world like that of the so-called, ¡°martial world,¡± where cultivation had reigned as king since the time of the demi-gods and secret sutras and rumored plemoras of faux-immortality abounded, how could it be that Fate itself could remain free? If two dueling desires, born of equal dreams of the heart, were to clash with one another, how many would have to be sacrificed? How much does it cost for honed skill to overcome natural talent? It is said that these questions weighted heavy on the mind of the lord Redivivus, a slave boy who¡¯d bought his freedom with his earnings as a legionnaire in the bygone days of the western tetrachate, who¡¯d been elevated yet again to a peerage by an old platoon mate who would later go on to on to lay claim to the lands in the northern reaches of a region called Ichaivalia as warlord. When his lord fell in battle Redivivus dedicated the remainder of his life to avenging his friend and liege, and held out against the opposition forces for another half year. Even after his death Redivivus'' own bannermen and martial disciples resolved to avenge their lord. On the day of his execution at the order of the new warlord of Ichaivalia, Redivivus commanded his court stenomancer, a master alchemist in his own right, embalm his brain by the power of his stenomancer¡¯s cryogenic magics. In the dead of night, the stenomancer stole away with the corpse of his liege to a forsaken redoubt across the border, wherein the remainder of bannermen loyal to Redivivus'' memory gathered as the stenomancer sought to resurrect his liege lord. Despite the fact that in all the realm of creation there has never been such a thing as, ¡°true resurrection,¡± as it is believed to be a natural, ¡°dharmic trauma response,¡± that prevents the soul both from being able to desire or to be coereced back into the same vessel twice, there are, however, workarounds. Although the act known as, ¡°necromancy,¡± the art of the coercion of a soul into the corpse of another, usually done by a bokor, was reviled all throughout the lands that constituted the boundaries of the former western tetrachate, the act of stenomancy, that is the art of mapping the layout and composition of the body with ba-gua trigrams on a stenograph, had been rumored to have positive results in the, ¡°resurrection,¡± of individuals. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. Deep in an ancient cistern long forgotten beneath the bowels of the forgotten redoubt, the stenomancer prepared to submerge the frozen brain of his liege lord in a grand calcinator. Transmuting the alchemical compounds that had up the muscle and sinew and memories of Redivivus back into their elemental bases according to the periodic table of ba-gua, the court stenomancer began to carve out the sequences, shapes and arrays of ba-gua trigrams that comprised the, ¡°map,¡± of the mind of Redivivus in a series of braille-like, ¡°broken,¡± and, ¡°unbroken,¡± hyphens, like those that made up the figures of the trigrams, across the surface of vivianite tablets, according to the diagnosis of the calcinator. After twelve years of his painstaking task, the Redivivus'' trusted stenomancer ordered the tablets in place in a column of three zoetropes; each, ¡°page,¡± of each zoetrope containing only a single hyphen, so that stacked one on top of the other, the zoetropes would, ¡°spell out,¡± the corresponding trigram of the mapped layout of his lord¡¯s embalmed brain when read from top to bottom. Aligning the column of zoetropes against three golden needle mechanisms in control of three counting-dials on an enchanted dial-lock, the stenomancer activated the massive zoetropes with a spell of perpetual motion and watched as each push of the three needles by the braille-like indentations of the hyphens carved out of the surface of the vivianite scrolled the dials on the enchanted lock up by one or two, ¡°ticks,¡± depending on whether the hyphen was, ¡°broken,¡± or, ¡°unbroken,¡± before the needle straightened and the dial would scroll back down to read, ¡°0.¡± With each combination of, ¡°1s,¡± and, ¡°2s,¡± put into the dial-lock, the telekinetic enchantment on the lock would activate and a gate would unlock, releasing an alchemical reagent, corresponding to the elemental trigram represented by the binary sequence that served as the three-digit lock combination, into an vacuum of exogenesis. Inside the boundaries of the vacuum each reagent released would collide with the ones released prior, igniting in a transmutational fusion, each reaction causing the corpusant spell suspended in the vacuum to grow larger and larger. Within the corpusant flickering silhouettes began to take shape, like shadows dancing in a flame, as old memories of an embalmed mind were alchemized back into existence. Than the shadows of the memories became solid as the corpusant hardened and became tangible muscle and sinew, expanding outward into spongy flesh, a brain born anew! And with the mind came the memories, and with the memories came the struggle and impulses that had raced through the mind of Redivivus during his last moments. But now, here in the safety of the vacuum, there was nothing to restrain his will, no anti-magic inhibiting spells or headsman¡¯s axe, and so when the mind of Redivivus struggled to free himself within the visions replaying in his mind¡¯s eye he found himself feeling disoriented and unable to move or even feel any of the limbs he was still seeing the nightmares of his memories. In an attempt to reorient himself within the fast darkening visions of his mind¡¯s eye, the mind of Revidivus reached out to his sole remaining ba-gua organ, a type of organ in humans akin to that of a catfish¡¯s electric organ except capable of producing and subsequently combining the full spectrum of the eight wu-xing elements instead of just zhen-thunder, his shen dantian, and willed his limbs to regenerate at the cost of his own, unbeknownst to him fully replenished, alchemical reserves. Bone burst from alchemized earth and metal, and blood boiled from fire and water, until the mind of Revidivus had alchemized a new body within the suspension of the exogenisis vacuum! Disciplic Session The disciplic session between the brocken specter of Saint Maitreya and Lord Redivivus: And it is said that as Saint Maitreya and Lord Redivivus discussed the parameters of their hypothetical realm the venerable Maitreya questioned Lord Revidivus, ¡°which is better; a world set in stone, where fate is king, or a world where all things are possible at all times?¡± And pondering Maitreya¡¯s query the Lord answered, ¡°Well, m¡¯Lord, this is quite the question, for though a world ruled by fate at least offers the solace of fatalism, a world where all things are possible would encompass both the, ¡°goods,¡± and, ¡°bads,¡± of all potentialities. For it seems, at least to me, m¡¯Lord, that potentially is truly cold and uncaring, a sort of state of pre-prepared-¡±non-matter,¡± and therefore such a world would lack even the solace of the security of fate, where decisions hold nowhere near as much weight as pre-destination.¡± ¡°But, on the other hand, m¡¯Lord,¡± said Lord Redivivus, ¡°It is only, ¡°potentiality,¡± that is cold and uncaring, as all potential is a non-entity, mere tools by which entities, that is we jivas, are able to subsist and act. But the realms themselves, that is all the worlds and everything within and between, are very clearly opinionated, biased beings. As we ourselves are only mere reflections of all the realms, extensions of this kalpa which is itself simply a phantom phantaisiai of the dreams of Vishnu-Zurvan, than it can concluded that the universe itself is also capable of love and hate and pettiness and charity as are we; these are things that would be bereft in a world ruled solely by ¡°fate¡± and potentiality, and as such would be very interested in the states of perceived "justice" and perceived "injustice." indeed, it seems to me at least, m''Lord, that a world where all things possible at all times would break down into a world of dueling desires and dreams, rather than a world of good and evil or, "good or evil." Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit. "And so," asked the venerable Saint Maitreya, "which of those three do you prefer, Redivivus?" "A-ah well," stammered Lord Redivivus, "I suppose it depends on what I''m in the mood for." Almost There For many it was no surprise when the vitruvians¡¯ experiment faltered, at least in the westron tetrachate, given the history of relations between the two dominant ruling classes. Ever since the dawn of creation, when the Primordial Concupiscence first moulted the Archon-Abscissions into the seedling realm, the forebears of the elves and the kaizo-kin had been at odds with each other. For while the kenotic-minded Abscissions, seeing the the newborn world created from a mere quarter of their former vessel¡¯s infinite power, thought to make good of the start of their independence among the material plane, the henotic-minded Abscissions longed to return to the transcendental planes and be dissolved once more into the ocean of the Primordial Concupiscence¡¯s immaterial flesh. From the side-lines the two pantheons of Abscissions watched as the phantom limbs of the Primordial Concupiscence bent and stretched and tangled themselves together in an innumerable myriad of phantom limbs that grew to shape the very earth of the realm. And as the earth took shape, only a brave quarter of the infinite souls that shone in the skies of the firmament above were roused by the beauty of creation and inspired to descend down towards the earths with a taste for Samsara in their hearts, and they became phantasiai in the dream of sleeping godhead of Primordial Concupiscence as they were kneaded and shaped into mortal men and fauna by the phantom limbs of the godhead''s dream. And gazing upon the beauty of material creation and fervor of all the earthern-souls as they partitioned themselves into jivatma and paramatma and became human, then the kenotic-minded Abscissions began to covet the good they saw within the material realms and resolved to descend into the world as well, styling themselves as gods as they came unto the people and fauna of the world and disseminated the plemoras of Wuxing and Waidan alchemy. Purporting themselves as gods to earthern-souls, the kenotic abscissions were adored by many and esteemed by most, and as such began to covet the praises of the humans as their own unfettered hubris grew. Soon mighty temples and grand ziggurats began to be erected at the behest of the kenotic ¡°gods¡± by their disciples and the kenotic gods spirited away a quarter of the humans and consecrated them in their own image to serve the kenotic gods as concubines and serfs; and they called these consecrated men, ¡°Elves.¡± However, looking upon the actions of their kenotic cousins and despairing at the realization that the new self-styled gods had given the humans the knowledge of waidan and cultivation magics for the sake of playing king-maker and engaging their neophytes against each other in petty wars for the sake of bloodsport, the henotic-minded Abscissions deigned to descend upon the earths as well, styling themselves as the true gods and denouncing the divinity of their kenotic-minded cousins. Taking for themselves an equal portion of the remaining population of unchanged humans and disseminating to their new disciples the plemoras of ba-gua and neidan alchemy, the henotic gods dubbed their neophytes, ¡°kaizo-kin,¡± as they set to work rearranging their human bodies in their own image instead for the sake of waging war against the kenotic gods and all their disciples in the name of glorious tandava. Unauthorized content usage: if you discover this narrative on Amazon, report the violation. In the end, although the hubris of the self-styled gods did portend their demise, mankind persisted, and the world was left broken and scarred, yet intact. In the wake of the gods¡¯ war the various decentralized sects of ethnically-kenotic elvish men and kaizo-kin waged war both against each other and among themselves, and were often forced to rely on human kings to act as intermediaries between their lands for the sake of trade and commerce. However, due to the humans¡¯ naturally shorter lifespans compared to those of elven and kaizo kind human monarchs often preferred to arrange marriages between elves and kaizo-kin for their heirs in order to prevent a crisis of succession, as opposed to other humans. As a result, though the lands atop the phantom limbs of the all-but-forgotten Primordial Concupiscence, the original godhead, changed hands and names over the centuries as dynasties rose and fell and the races of men drew and redrew borders, in the end, there was only ever one great kingdom accredited to human-kind in the histories; the kingdom of Vitruvia. After a series of costly external wars with its neighbors, the kingdom of Vitruvia was forced to split itself into western and eastern tetrachates for ease of bureaucratic administration. However, although the eastern tetrachate may have made out alright during the partitioning, the western tetrachate, which was notably more rural and boasted far more insular ethnic enclaves than its eastern counterpart, was constantly beset by both even more external wars along its borders as well as internal civil wars among the senators of provinces with notably large ethnic enclaves of elves and kaizo-kin. As a result, a myriad of budget cuts rendered the western senate unable to maintain the standing army necessary to defend their borders and the senate was forced to hire foedarati and private militias in the interim as a temporary solution while the economy stabilized enough for the department of the treasury to be able to pay back all of its promissory debts to the department of defense; a hope that would be dashed in the end, as the economy¡¯s downward spiral only worsened, leading to a foedarati militia sacking the western capital, sounding the deathknell for the tetrachate as the coup forces, unlike all of the predominantly native-born coup armies before them, abdicated their suzerainty of the other provinces. "Yea, thats probably 5 minutes" The hearts of men are naturally biased towards their preference for, ¡°good,¡± and such, will actively seek it out whenever and where-ever thought possible. Even men who intentionally do evil do so either because of their lust and appreciation for the art of enacting evil in the moment, which they see their practice and personal development of as a, ¡°good,¡± or because they believe that doing evil is the only way for them to get ahead and make gains, something they value above all else as a quantifiable, ¡°good.¡± However, the ability to pin down and define, ¡°good,¡± intrinsically implies an equal opposite of that which is, ¡°less-than-good,¡± or sometimes even, ¡°not-good,¡± which in the ancients¡¯ dubbed, ¡°bad.¡± As immortal manifestations of one¡¯s jivatma, often referred to as the local, ¡°petty,¡± halve of a partitioned soul, the hearts of men are naturally imbued with concupiscence; a concupiscence that drives the heart, (dragging along the soul by extension,) to gamble on the material planes and seek out mortal incarnations. However, as abdication of the soul¡¯s dominion over its own omnipotence is intrinsic to the partitioning of the soul into jivatma and paramatma that occurs as a metaphysical reaction whenever a new soul binds itself to its mortal trial of Samsara the end result is that no one mortal hearted man is ever truly in complete control of their, ¡°fate,¡± with the remaining power vacuum being filled by a joint-custody with, ¡°Lady Destiny,¡± the governess of butterfly breaths. As such no man is ever solely capable of ensuring that they experience only their vision of, ¡°good,¡± thus making it so that to experience some measure of both, ¡°good,¡± and, ¡°bad,¡± is intrinsic to each and every mortal lifetime lived. Nonetheless, men and their hearts, as manifestations of their souls, are mere extensions of the universe, grown from it in an unlimited quantity at the same time of the universe¡¯s own birth by a partitioning of a quarter of the infinite power that lies beyond the firmament of the universe as according to the Empyrean¡¯s concupiscence; the first, primordial concupiscence in all the worlds. And as an extension of the universe, the biases of men¡¯s hearts for their own visions of, ¡°good,¡± and drive to seek it out and enact it where-ever and whenever possible are not their own unique desires, but rather an inherited trait of the greater universe. Looking down upon the material plane and seeing the fruits of men¡¯s efforts to seek out good across all the earths, a portion of the engram-isvaras in the newborn universe at that time, themselves the remnants of the Empyrean¡¯s prior dreams of past kalpas materialized into molted engrams, were inspired by the good of the efforts of men to themselves take a chance, gambling on the, ¡°risk-reward,¡± factor of the material plane created by the Empyrean Dreamer¡¯s oneiric-limbs just as the souls of men had, and they descended to the earths below. Styling themselves as, ¡°gods,¡± as they traveled amongst the men of earth they would become deified as the gods of the kenotic pantheon, and they would be the first to disseminate the secret plemoras of waidan, ¡°outer-alchemy,¡± and thaumaturgy to humanity through those they took for themselves as neophytes, concubines, consorts and proselytes, transmogrifying those they took into forms more akin to their own images, the way a dog marks it¡¯s territory. Beseeching their devout to honour them with grand ziggurats and legendary pitched battles in the name of blood sport, it would not be long before a great many of the remaining population of unchanged humans began to resent the shackles of the kenotic gods and their acceleration of the cycle of, ¡°good,¡± and, ¡°bad,¡± mortal experiences, wishing deep within their hearts for a reprieve of samsara and the material plane. Hearing a kindred desire within the pleas of the disenfranchised humans to escape the material plane and be reabsorbed into the full might of the Empyrean Dreamer beyond the firmament, the molted engram-isvaras who hadn¡¯t descended upon the earths in the hopes of carving out a kingdom, who would later come to be known as the gods of the henotic pantheon, deigned to answer the prayers of the disillusioned men of earth by themselves now descending upon the world; Taking concubines and consorts for themselves as well, transmogrifying them into new shapes through the formerly secret arts of Neidan, ¡°inner-alchemy,¡± and theurgy for the sake of doing battle with their kenotic cousins and bringing about the end of the newborn universe through glorious tandava. Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. Even now, untold centuries and a myriad of kingdoms later the descendant generations of the transmogrified races of men still warred with each other in bitter memory of their long since slain gods. Faint starlight glinted off silvery steel in the predawn darkness as the deep blue of night slowly brightened to the light teal of day, but the marketplace had already been abuzz with the din of the city¡¯s denizens for some hours now. Grey skinned men with slender, clipped ears like a pitbull¡¯s stood in elvish battledress opposite an equal regiment of men who¡¯s eyes had been all but seemingly swallowed by their sallets; lop-sided grins stretched the corners of their mouths, while lipless pink gums and bone white teeth sprouted from the steel of their sallets¡¯ visors where there should¡¯ve been eye slits. Only the road separated them, while behind them a myriad of tents, pavilions, food carts and shell shanties had been erected by the merchants and labourers who called the market-square hall and home, less than 900 words, god damn Up in the sky, 10 miles high, a man stands above a temple he will destroy. From atop a balcony overlooking the nimbus fortress¡¯ inner sanctum he stands impassively, hands folded behind his broad-shelled back as he cranes his reptilian neck to-and-fro, silently observing the scene below. In the Universal Calendar Year U.C. 0079 the majority of the populace believe that it is the actual shape of the yantras of Yossarian and the binding seals that he placed over the myriad of the demi-archons that hold power, when in truth the drawn shape of the yantric sigils are almost entirely inconsequential, as in reality they are merely, ¡°blue prints,¡± for the practicing mage of how to organize the alchemical reagents necessary to perform the spell. Below, much of the ceramic tiled floor of the inner sanctum had been dug up and excised in exchange for plates of plastron inscribed with canals and gutters insulated with vivianite, ¡°veins,¡± bridging the gap between small, ¡°fuse,¡± silos of, ¡°consumable,¡± reagents and the gelatinous pillars that served as the nimbus fortress¡¯ exogenisis calcinators, erected along intervals roughly in the center of the plastron plated floor. In truth, as the, ¡°diagrams,¡± for the yantras of Yossarian had been copied directly from the, ¡°shape,¡± of the physical imprint of the salvageable engrams of both the henotic and kenotic vestigial oneiric isvaras¡¯ memories, the geomantic arrangement of the components and reagents in the summoning circle inscribed in the floor mattered far more than the actual shape of the sigil formed by it, a factor that had historically bottlenecked innovations in the fields of both thaumaturgy and theurgy due to many staple engrams of a mage¡¯s cantrip lexicon requiring fuses and grand calcinators that would be quite unwieldy when set up due to their size. However, due to the recent breakthrough in calcinator design pioneered aboard the nimbus fortress the Syndicate¡¯s mages had become capable of shrinking engrams down to a size small enough to fit within a person¡¯s own body by converting a number of the body¡¯s own dantians into, ¡±calcinator organs.¡± Now, within the depths of the gelatinous, ¡°calcinator,¡± pillars lay many of the Syndicate''s own templars, volunteers selected from the nimbus fortress¡¯ top soldiers, suspended within the ooze as miniature engrams and cacinator organs were constructed and transplanted within their bodies by the largely autonomous tendrils of the gelatinous pillars themselves. Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author. Taking all of this into silent consideration the man remained stock still in his contemplation, the only indication that he hadn''t spontaneously fallen under the effects of a paralyzing cantrip was the occasional swivel of his reptilian neck, usually accompanied by a slight bobbing nod and a satisfied, ¡°hmm.¡± In the dim sconce-light of the inner-sanctum the scales of his body¡¯s carapace glinting sporadically in the ethereal glow; a, ¡°Beastman,¡± by birth and a, ¡°kaizo-kin,¡± by career, the tortoise-like shell that covered his body grew in the shape of a, ¡°krug,¡± disc curiass, with the gaps usually filled in by chainmail filled instead by raw sinew and muscle that grew in the shape of armored sh¨¡nw¨¦nk¨£i scales that shone in the sconce-light as he nodded in silent contemplation to himself, impassively observing the scene below.