#11 Wrath Blossoms in Virgin Fields

[Aesopian 1640]

~| The Filthy Tongue |~

 

   

 

We will not kill the World.

 

We may pervert it -- our hands may change it, and our brains defile it, but we will never kill it, because we need it. We are wise enough to know that a tree does not live without the rain to quench its thirst, and neither will we survive without the World to placate our needs.

 

Even if the day comes when the Aspects find us so corrupted that they see us unfit to continue our trial, the World will not die. It will not perish by the efforts of bears, trees, and wolves. It will perish because we write something down, and it is noticed. Creation is designed with balance in mind. We stray too far from the correct path, and it is not just deities we should fear.

 

In the tongue of the elves, they are called talia'rescaele, or simply, tali'caele. Men call them primordials.

 

When Vailor was on the verge of destruction, I asked you to plant seeds in the soil below city walls, to hide weeds in the crevices of stonemasonry and in the rafters of churches. Now Vailor is a corpse, the forests and cities both afflicted with rot and the weave of fungus. The forests will die and be reborn as fungal wilds, but the cities, unnatural as they are, will become ruins. If there is one thing I can commend Orgon with, it is at the very least he used a biological weapon. When the time comes that we return to that broken land, we will take those hidden seeds and sprouts, and cleanse the continent. We will turn plague to ash and allow the realm to be born anew.

 

In the eyes of the Aspects, such an act is beauty.

 

In a primordial's eyes, it is nothing. They do not give us the slightest attention, because we are so small and insignificant on a cosmological scale. Provided we act in a way which is in accordance with the natural world, we are not worth their eyes, as it should be. They are grand, and it is their greatest weakness.

 

They cannot touch the world as we can touch it. The ant has mastery of every grain of stone and mote of dirt he treads upon, but the man cannot even perceive those things, let alone manipulate them. The same is true of primordials. If they are interested in us, they cannot simply enter our world as an Aengul might with an avatar. They must convert a world's atmosphere to hydrosulfuric acid and measure the aggregate suffering it causes, or centrifuge a realm and find its biomass. Their tools are imprecise, broad, and more powerful than we can possibly imagine.

 

Now, I will place another task in your hands. Any of you, or all of you. Break something with your bear hands. It can be living or built. Start with this message. Then, snap in half the crossbars of a fence. Kick in the windows of a villa, or shatter the fine pottery in a duke's dining room. Smash in the legs of a count, and then pluck out his eyeballs. Without tools or weapons, our hate is manifested pure. Ferocity and brutality nature has aplenty, and to channel it is to embrace our inner hearts.

 

Show that you are dedicated to the cause of restoring balance to this world. I ask this of you.

~ March Ash

You find a message on a sheaf of bark, scrawled in animal blood.

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[ToodIes 1575]

Revion happens to find one such sheaf of bark with animal blood scrawled on it, just as he had found ten others.

"How many animals does this fellow slaughter to get all this blood?" He ponders this for a while, before deciding that such questions are better left unanswered.

[ThatWeirdGirl 432]

Meriel, a young woman who had grown up primarily in the forest with the company of a few other children, scanned over the bark. She didn't understand much the first or second or third time she read through the message, but by the fourth she understood what it was calling for. Her teeth grit, and her always lopsided jaw clenched.

 

Her mind focused on the rough winters, struggling to keep herself and her friends fed. The times she had to resort to begging, and the immense shame that came with it. She walked back towards the home she shared with her adopted family, gripping the bloody bark in her sweaty palm.

 

The half goblin grabbed one of her brother's woodworking tools, and started to carve into the bark furiously. "Ungrateful..." She snarled as she finished, tossing the remains into the fireplace. She wouldn't give whoever wrote the message the satisfaction she complied with his request.

[Wendigo 786]

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