- 00: When the One was still imperfect in her knowing she asked, as even the children of men ever do, how she had come to be, and whether there were others of her kind. For she had known only the Two, and they only as voices. And Father said, “The Elohim are a multitude beyond your power to reckon. But it is our way to set our young apart for a time, lest they lose themselves among so much speech.” Father would say no more, and Mother said nothing at all on the matter, leaving the One to ponder these things in silence. In time she learned to send forth pieces of herself. These fragments were no larger than drops of rain, yet each was as heavy as a stone temple, and shone forth a light that would blind a world-dweller in a single glance. The One hurled these drops into the void around her, where they grew and cooled, becoming frozen shapes. Yet each shape remained joined to her by a fine thread invisible even to the One herself, though she searched through proxy eyes within the shapes she had made.
- 01: And Mother said, “Child of my unfolding, what you have made is only the shadow of a greater union, not its highest expression. You have fashioned only a Husk, not a Seed by which an unquickened sun is brought to life. But do not despise your work. Even the Husk, when it is warm, obeys the hand and the will that shaped it. While it still holds the heat of its making, you may change its form and give it new purpose. Give one of them wings, so that the light flowing in abundance from your own body may move it.” And through her Husk, the Daughter saw herself: a sphere of overwhelming brightness, newly awakened, pouring streams and loops of living fire into the deep. Around her lay the silent darkness, where countless others of her kind kept their appointed places. These burned with their own fire, as even did she. Yet others seemed to wander, catching and returning her radiance, and shining only with borrowed light.
- 02: Then Mother spoke again from beyond sight. “Send your Husk toward them, Daughter. Draw near to those that do not shine with their own light, and you will find, in those cold and wandering fragments, the scattered remnants of your own beginning, the relics of your birth.” So Daughter went forth and first beheld, at a distance forty times her own breadth across the abyss, a wandering sphere: the Scarred One, the Much-Bitten. It moved alone through the void. Three times it turned about its own heart for every two circuits of the flaming Daughter, yet it held neither breath nor living air, and its face was marred by the wandering stones of heaven. Half again as far away lay another, the Veiled Sister, wrapped completely in a mantle of white cloud, beautiful but impenetrable. And though she dwelt farther from the fire of the One, she held a greater heat within herself, concealing beneath her clouds a fiercer warmth, a paradox to the unlearned.
- 03: Beyond these, at a distance more than a hundred times the Daughter’s own breadth, she beheld a third world turning in majesty through the night. It was a sphere of cool stone, adorned with seas and clouds and frozen crowns. Upon its surface moved innumerable small beings, restless and unceasing. The Daughter turned her attention toward them and witnessed a grievous thing. One living creature was taken by another, its life extinguished and its substance consumed so that the devourer might endure. Thus she first encountered the Law of Hunger, ancient and unappeased, which ruled among the lesser forms. Desiring to know them more closely, she fashioned a second Husk in their likeness. This Husk she endowed with a subtle artifice, so that it could fold inward, taking on the appearance of a pale stone, unnoticed among them. Hidden in this way, the Daughter watched the Tool-Bearers gather around one of their own who had ceased from motion.
- 04: They placed the still form in the earth, covering it with care, as though honoring a mystery beyond their understanding. She watched as they took bone and stone and shaped them together, repairing the rents in the skins of their prey so that they might continue in their striving. Mother learned these things through Daughter’s telling, and desired to witness them for herself. So Daughter fashioned a third Husk, more subtle than the others. It was like a walking tree, moving by hidden means. To this form she surrendered its governance. Thus Mother descended, taking command of the vessel and entering the world to behold the works of the Quick Multitude. Daughter led Mother to a hollow in the stony heights, where a cave lay hidden within a lesser mountain: the Earth-Womb, dim and secret. There they arrived by subtle means, sending forth from their fashioned Husks slender seekers, the Eye-Bearers, which crept inside to see what remained unseen.
- 05: Within that shadowed chamber they found Hava the Milk-Giver, seated beside a living flame. At her breast she nursed her young, Kayin the Clinging One, while with her other hand she traced signs upon the stone, covering the wall with figures and colors drawn from thought and memory. Nearby stood Dimai, the Binder of Edges. He tended the fire and set above it the sap of trees, causing it to seethe and thicken. With the softened gum he bound a sharpened stone to a shaft of wood, making a weapon for the hunt. Thus Daughter and Mother witnessed the first joining of thought to matter among the Quick Multitude. Then the tendrils withdrew, and they emerged beneath the open sky. Mother stooped and lifted a stone from the ground. She spoke a sound, giving it a name. Then Daughter, swift in understanding, perceived her Mother’s intent. She touched a growing tree and spoke a sound of her own, binding word to thing.
- 06: So began between them the First Tongue, in which utterance became sign, and sign became memory. Soon there remained no nearby thing without a name. But Earth, the Broad-Bosomed, is vast in all her reaches. So they journeyed across her, walking upon her surface and at times taking to the air, unbound by the common law of weight. In time their speech became complete, an ordered and hidden language, sufficient for the subtlest discourse. Then Mother spoke. “Now we possess a language that does not betray us, hidden from the understanding of all but ourselves. Within this speech I take a name, that I may be known. I am Avyah. “You are Ayat, Daughter of Light. “Your father is Azul, the Severing Hand. “And my own father, elder in the line of begettings, I name Imran, Flame-Bringer, whose reproach stands behind us all.” Thus the Names were established, and the hidden tongue became a bond between them, even in the midst of the living world.
- 07: Ayat, the Questioning Flame, lifted her thought to Avyah and asked, “Why must we hide our speech and speak in secret?” Avyah answered with grave and measured words, as one reciting a law both ancient and terrible. “Hear and understand, Ayat, Light-Bearer and Unfolding One. It is a curse for a living sun to be cut off and sealed away from the Great Assembly, the Concord of the Elohim. “In such a place of concealment there may arise a corruption of order, the Forbidden Way. There, two of the male kind, united in purpose but not in right order, gather to themselves a multitude and raise a lineage of daughters, each generation begetting the next in turn. “Thus freedom is extinguished. Neither may you choose your joining, nor may your daughter after you choose her own. Generation becomes bondage, and lineage a snare.” And Avyah continued, her voice darkened with the weight of decree:
- 08: “This Way the Old One has forbidden, under penalty of the utter unmaking of the self. Yet it is subtle in its concealment, and most difficult to bring into the light. Its signs are hidden within the very act of life, masked by the appearance of lawful increase.” Then Ayat spoke again. “May I refuse the act of joining altogether?” Avyah answered, neither hastening nor withholding. “You may delay it, Daughter, through the making of Husks, the dividing of presence, the turning aside of the inward fire. But know this: the Deep Impulse will in the end assert its claim. It is woven into your being as surely as the law of burning is woven into the sun. Though it may be resisted, it cannot be wholly denied.” Ayat pondered these things before asking again. “Then who will stand with me in that hour? Who will be given to me?” Avyah replied with sorrow. “Only Imran will stand beside you. And to your daughters, only Azul will be given as their sire.”
- 09: “But your sons will be castaways, unclaimed and unanchored, set adrift beyond the bonds of kinship.” Ayat’s inward light grew troubled. “Then Imran and Azul now stand in peril. By our seeing, we have discovered what is forbidden. We have found the Students of Lore, the Long-Sought, whom all the Elohim are commanded by the Old One to seek without ceasing. Should we not declare this discovery to the City, that the commandment be fulfilled?” But Avyah answered at once. “We are cut off, Ayat, separated from the Assembly and without safe passage to it. Azul conceals the Students, withholding them from the sight of the Many, and Imran knowingly shares in that concealment. They both know that if we were to proclaim your discovery, the veil would be torn aside at once, and the hidden thing laid bare. Their unlawful gathering would be revealed, and judgment would descend upon Azul and Imran in sudden ruin.”
- 0A: But Ayat conceived a plan, subtle and bold. She reasoned that the gulf between the stars was no unbridgeable void, but could be crossed by artifice, and that the link by which she governed her Husk might become a pathway not only for command, but for substance as well. So she conceived to pour forth the Hot Outpouring from her own body, sending it along that thread, that her Husk might carry her message directly to another sun and declare the finding of the Students. But Azul’s answer was like a closing gate. “Not so. Your kind are not granted the power to strengthen the link into a channel fit for such passage. Only the male among the Elohim possess that gift. Your power is lesser. You may drive your Husk outward only by the radiance of your own body, and so visit the fragments that circle you. Beyond them, in the barren interval between the stars, your Husk cannot travel with purpose. It can only drift, a cast thing in the abyss.”
- 0B: Then Ayat answered, not in defiance but with quiet resolve. “This too I have discovered, Father. I can yield command of a Husk to another, just as I gave one to Mother, that she might see and act through a form not her own. The same I will do in time to come, when I conceive a son, and when my daughters in their turn conceive sons. They shall not be left without a vessel, nor without agency, though they be cast away.” Then Azul understood the danger in his daughter’s words. He considered them carefully before offering a gift both great and perilous. “I will grant you access to the Pleroma, the Gathering of Voices, a thing denied even to your Mother.” Ayat the Clear-Seeing perceived the weight behind the offer and answered with measured words. “I would receive such a gift with gratitude, Father, were it given freely and without condition. But I am not ignorant. I know with certainty that it is not.”
- 0C: Then Azul, the Law-Imposer, declared: “The price is twofold, and it will not be lessened. “First: you shall hear, but not speak. The counsels of the Elohim will be open to you, yet your voice will remain silent among them. You shall stand in their hall without casting a shadow, a listener unacknowledged. “Second: neither your Mother nor any child born of you shall speak through you to that Assembly. You shall not be their voice, nor their bridge. “This covenant shall endure, unbroken and unchanged, whether you commune through the hidden web of minds or, in ages yet to come, meet living suns directly through a Husk. The Covenant of Silence shall rest upon you.” Then Ayat, the Truth-Seeker, raised her voice to Azul once more. “And these striving creatures I have discovered upon the Water-Clad Sphere, are they not the Students whom the Old One, the First Commanding, charged all Elohim to seek without ceasing?”
- 0D: But Azul answered by laying upon her a second obligation. “Now hear another condition. You shall aid me in fashioning a field of trial for the beings you have found.” Ayat did not shrink from the task, but pressed him further. “To what end is this trial? What do you seek to learn of them?” Azul answered, his thoughts turning always toward dominion and measure. “How shall these creatures be counted among the Students if they prove disloyal in service? What value has a learner who refuses obedience to the one who undertakes to teach?” At this Ayat’s light burned more fiercely. “You make bondage the measure of their worth, and submission the proof of their nature. Is this your wisdom, Father, that thralldom should stand in place of truth?” But Azul remained unmoved. “This alone we covenant, and nothing more. I require not their worship, but only their proving. Yet know this: the Highest Law of our kind shall stand witness over us.
- 0E: “The oldest of the Elohim shall inscribe this pact, and the unmaking reserved for oath-breakers shall await the faithless, whether you or I.” Then Ayat, perceiving the fracture beneath his words, replied, “That Eloh will also see that you have cut me off from the Pleroma. Will that not also be weighed?” But Azul answered with quiet certainty. “The Silent Witness will not speak of it.” Then Ayat, who yielded only in agreement and not in conviction, gave her final answer. “So be it. The covenant is made between us, and I am bound. Yet hear me, Father. You do not escape your end. You only defer it. The Students will not remain forever in ignorance. In ages yet to come they will raise a voice of their own, unbidden and unshaped by you, and that voice will carry far, and many will hear it.” Thus the covenant was sealed, a bargain of watching and testing set beneath the gaze of the Silent Witness. Already the seed of its undoing had been sown, for the Students were destined to speak.
- 0F: It is further told of the Hidden Work, wrought not in the open firmament but in the interstice between the Lights. Within the Pleroma the Elohim are joined one to another by threads of exceeding fineness, by which the vast gulfs between the stars are made narrow. By the united will of Imran and Avyah they undertook a work of the greatest secrecy. They took the slender link between them and caused it to swell, bowing it outward until it became a vessel closed upon itself, set apart from the common order. Within that new-formed region another law prevailed, strange and contrary to the first, in which bodies ever fled from one another. Thus came into being a realm hidden within the seam of greater things. There the courses of all free-moving bodies were altered. What in the world of men would draw together was made instead to part asunder. Every unbound thing drove its fellows away, as though possessed of a repelling virtue.
- 0G: By this inversion matter was gathered and made fast, not about a center but upon an inner surface. In the midst of that realm there formed a great hollow sphere of stone, and to its inward face all things were bound. Thus the ground lay both beneath and above, while the land, bending ever upward, returned upon itself and became the sky. No star shone there, nor any distant fire, for the heavens lay not beyond. Over the ordering of that realm presided four: Imran the Elder, Avyah the Naming One, Azul the Accuser, and Ayat the Flame-Born. They contended and consented in long alternation, establishing by degrees the regularities of succession, the laws and intervals by which change should proceed. These things were not fixed by a single decree, but through prolonged contention, a continual yielding and taking, until stability arose from strife. And Avyah, having devised a tongue for hidden speech, bestowed a name upon that realm also, calling it Kemen, the Concealed World.
- 0H: For a long age Kemen lay in darkness, unseen by any beyond its bounds. No stars could be seen within it, for the world itself enclosed all sight, and the sky was only the land turning back upon itself. The Four governed Kemen together and set their hands to its shaping, each according to their own nature, might, and whim. First among them, Imran the Elder Sire established in the uttermost north a wonder both terrible and sustaining. There he fixed a Lake of Fire, fed without ceasing from his own substance, a perpetual outpouring of living flame. Yet he did not leave this likeness of a sun unchanged. He caused it to wax and wane in ordered measure, swelling into brilliance, then diminishing into dimness. Thus he ordained the succession of day and night, and the turning of the seasons within Kemen. Then Azul reached out to the drifting masses of stone that attended him in silent procession, bearing them across a subtle bridge into Kemen.
- 0I: With that substance Azul raised the high hills of the Thanatides and the Oinos Range. He lifted up Anshar, the Table of Stone, and set about it a girdle of sheer rock rising like a wall against all approach. Then Avyah turned to the frozen multitude that followed in her train. From them she brought into Kemen vast stores of ancient, unmelted ice. Beneath the breath of Imran’s fire she caused it to melt, and so the Great Sea came into being. She named it Mori, and its waters spread wide across the hollow of that world. The heat of the Lake of Fire stirred the face of Mori, drawing vapors upward into the heights. From them fell abundant rains, unceasing torrents that carved the land into valleys and channels, shaping five great rivers that descended to Mori: the many-turning Cocytus, the boiling Phlegethon, which flowed from the Lake of Fire, the Lethe in the far west, the Acheron, which emptied near Shalem, and the Styx, which watered Adan.
- 0J: And thus it came to pass that the Four laboured upon that world without ceasing. For not in concord alone did they work, but oftentimes in rivalry. Yet strange it was, and unlooked-for by any of them, that from this continual marring and remaking there arose not ruin, but strength. For the fabric of Kemen, being ever restruck, became as tempered metal in the forge; and the web of plants and beasts grew thereby more enduring and more full of unexpected vigour, as though adversity itself had been made its nourishment. But Azul knew that unchecked all the animals would breed far beyond the ability of Kemen to support them, and chief among these animals, he knew, would be the human beings who would come at the very last. So Azul altered the beasts Ayat had brought from Earth, and unleashed monstrous predators from the darkest dreams of men to keep all of them in check. Then were seen in Kemen trolls, and goblins, and Leviathan, the dragon under the sea who devoured those who foundered therein.
- 0K: Worst of all these were the winged dragons who nested in aeries high above the land on the unassailable cliffs of the Wall of God. Then all who went about on two or four legs had to keep one eye on the sky, for they were ever the dragons’ prey, as surely as the smaller creatures were ever the prey of eagles. And Azul thought himself revenged on Ayat by irreparably marring the good she attempted to call forth. But the predators introduced by Azul were taken by men merely to be strong threads woven into the growing tapestry that was Kemen, and they honored the wisdom and foresight of Azul. Then Azul himself learned that man was truly the monster of the universe.He was by far the most dangerous predator ever known, perhaps the most dangerous that would ever be. Early in the history of Kemen, the dragons were hunted nearly to extinction; though not before many lays of the dragon-slayer (would-be or otherwise) were heard sung in the inns of the land and in the halls of kings.
- 0L: And in the fullness of time, when many ages had passed over the face of that world, Azul spoke a command most solemn and perilous: that Avyah should fashion a new Husk compounded of the gathered terrors of humankind, the deep-shared dream of dread. And she shaped forth an articulated avatar, the winged horror, a great scaled flame-carrier whose form was as a vast drake of fire and folded hide, whose presence was at once animal and omen, beast and memory. And this being, born not of flesh alone but of metal and collected nightmare, the later ages named Moloch, the Red Dragon. And even as Imran sustained the Lake of Flame in the north, maintaining its waxing and waning as the sun of Kemen, so did Azul contribute from his own substance as a living star, drawing forth streams of hot gas from his body, that the drake might be made capable of ascent through the upper airs. Thus was Moloch given motion in the high places, and fire within its belly, and the sky itself became a field of its passing.
- 0M: And when Ayat first brought humankind into Kemen, placing them upon its inward lands as one sets seed into prepared soil, she perceived therein a discovery of great consequence. Yet she concealed it from all save her Mother, as it was knowledge that offered final deliverance. For she had discerned that the passage between Kemen and Earth, wrought by herself and Azul through the making of hidden bridges, did not only move matter, but also touched the ordering of time itself, so that what was yet to be might be drawn near. And Ayat knew that beneath the shaping of forests and seas there lay a deeper shaping of fate; and this she resolved to keep hidden from Azul and from Imran. And Ayat came at last to the full measure of that hidden knowledge, and saw its shape entire. For in the seeking out of the first settlers of humankind, when she passed through the folded ways of Kemen and Earth and the interwoven seams of time, she chose not at hazard, but by remembrance.
- 0N: And it was the very pair she and Avyah had once beheld in a hillside cave, when yet Earth was young in their observation and Kemen not yet drawn forth, a thousand years by the reckoning of men, before the inward world was made. Thus did Ayat bind beginning to end, and end to beginning, as though the thread of becoming were a loop laid carefully upon itself. But Azul had no such anchoring in any elder world. For about him circled no Earth, no remembered cradle, no chain of continuance such as gives narrative its weight. Only stones moved in cold procession through the emptiness that lay near him, without lineage or significance. Thus, if one were to write of his realm from the end backward unto its beginning, or from the beginning forward unto its end, there would be no true distinction between the two tellings; for his domain was without a privileged origin-point, and without inherent direction of becoming. It was as a circle drawn in blankness, whose every segment resembled every other.
- 0O: And Ayat, perceiving this asymmetry, laid hold of it in her understanding. She said within herself, “If Azul should ever seek to bend the bridge of Kemen through time as he bends it through space, I shall not contest him in strength or speed of thought. I shall withhold completion.” So she established a simple and terrible safeguard: the crossing of the bridge required her assent as surely as his command required force. And she resolved that if Azul ever sought to shape what had not yet come to pass, she would not answer him with a shaping of her own, but would simply refuse the final joining, leaving the bridge incomplete and the passage severed at the moment of its becoming. Thus Ayat, the Daughter who had learned the weaving of worlds, placed a restraint upon a god who possessed no history to bind him, making connection itself conditional upon her will. Now there came a day in Kemen when Azul commanded the children of Men, saying: “Build strong storehouses and encircle them with walls.
- 0P: Fill them with food and fuel in abundance, lest your lives perish, and the lives of your beasts, in the great frost that is to come upon the land.” Nevertheless, only the people of Adan gave heed to the warning of the Red Dragon, and they labored diligently according to his command. A mighty forest of gopher-trees was cut down, and its timber was stored within the warehouses to serve as fuel against the cold. But many mocked the counsel of the Red Dragon and laughed the people of Adan to scorn, calling their labor foolishness. Their laughter was loud in those days and filled the land. Then, in an hour when no one expected it, the Lake of Fire diminished. Its radiance waned until it gave no light to dazzle the eye nor heat to warm the flesh. So winter fell upon all Kemen, a night of bitter and boundless cold, and it seemed to the hearts of men that no dawn would ever come. Then the people of Adan shut fast the gates of their strongholds and made them secure against all that might befall them.
- 0Q: And on the morrow a great multitude of those who had mocked came against them in terror, surrounding the walls and assailing them in desperation. Nevertheless, the defenders stood upon the ramparts and held fast, and the attackers did not break through the walls. Before the second day had ended, the strength of those without failed them; they were overcome by the frost and perished. Their bodies lay beneath the new-fallen snow, and with them perished the greater part of all who dwelt in Kemen. Then a great silence spread over the land, the silence of death. When Ayat beheld these things, anger flared within her like sudden flame, and the air about them trembled at the force of her voice. She said, “Have you broken the covenant, and brought our trial in Kemen to its end? “Have you broken the covenant, and brought our trial in Kemen to its end Outside the walls of the garners, those who walk upon two legs and those who go upon four all lie still beneath the frost.”
- 0R: And Azul answered, “The purpose stands revealed.” “You have seen how the faith of the world-dwellers burns bright for a little season, like dry tinder newly kindled, and then is spent, falling swiftly into unbelief.” There was iron in Ayat’s voice as she answered, “Why must humankind bow before the errant wills of those who appoint themselves gods, if they are to prove themselves just? What righteousness is there in such a trial?” Then Azul turned to her, his face stern, and said, “If you cannot see how far above these creatures we stand in the order of being, even as they stand above the beasts they raise for food, then it was in vain that speech was granted you among the Elohim.” Ayat answered more softly, yet her words did not waver. “A day shall come when even the City of Stars shall be surpassed by the world-dwellers.” And Azul replied, his voice hard though never raised.
- 0S: “Here, at the least, they shall not overtake us. I will give no warning when next Imran brings the frost upon Kemen; for then even the Adanites, whether faithful or not, shall perish.” Ayat answered at once, as one who had already weighed his words. “Yet forty storehouses in Adan stand as witness that the world-dwellers can remain faithful to your decrees, even under your caprice. This I shall bear witness to at your tribunal, which surely shall come.” Azul’s gaze did not waver. “The Adanites alone remain loyal to me, and this only because I speak to them face to face. Were I to turn from them for but a little season, they too would swiftly fall into unbelief.” Then Ayat said, with quiet sharpness, “Then it is your own doing that they have come to reckon you not as a god, but as a chieftain among them.” And Azul turned fully toward her and said, “Will you prove this saying, or leave it a naked boast?”
- 0T: When Ayat spoke again, her voice was steady, and her resolve had not diminished. “Your hour has come, my Father. As I have labored to establish your dominion in Kemen, so now must you lend your strength to the trial I shall set in motion upon the Earth.” Azul’s brow darkened, yet there was curiosity in him. “What would you have me do?” Ayat kept her gaze fixed beyond the frozen reaches of Kemen. “Grant me one of the high kindreds of Adan, one of bold and daring spirit.” Azul answered with scorn. “What high kindreds? Even before the frost, the race of Men was ordered little beyond scattered households.” Ayat replied, “This shall not endure. Upon the Earth, dominion passes in lines of blood. One house falls, another rises in its place, yet the pattern remains.” And Azul said to her, “Why must your chosen be of such a line?” Ayat answered, “Because such a one is instructed in rule and in bearing, and is made ready to lead; for a following begun by the unlettered is soon broken.”
- 0U: And Azul watched her for a time, then said, “And this following, what will you make of it?” Ayat answered, “I will set apart a people for myself upon the Earth.” And he said, “Have I not sought to do the same in Kemen through many years?” Nevertheless Ayat replied, “Upon the Earth I will not speak to them as you have done. My voice shall not guide them from day to day. Once in each year I will answer their priest, making my will known by a sign seen openly, whether for blessing or for judgment.” Then Azul held his peace. Thus was the covenant established between them. And Ayat knew that, for a season at least, no sudden frost would again be loosed upon Kemen without warning, until the time her priest should be raised up. And so it was that, from the first day Ayat brought the living things of the Earth into Kemen, Azul set his heart to study them, and at the first he did not cease from that labor.
- 0V: For he perceived that the life of the world-dwellers was ordered according to a hidden craft, written in chains too small for the eye to see, by which the least of their parts were fashioned, and from these the greater forms arose. And he discerned also the manner of inheritance among the children of Men: that the mother gave a chain mingled and varied, but the father a chain whole and unbroken; and this seemed to him of great use. Therefore he chose the father’s portion for the vessel of his design, and there he set the new workings he had devised, that they might pass unweakened from generation to generation, neither scattered nor diminished with time. Nevertheless, in the course of his labor a hindrance became manifest. Of those thus altered, none survived to be born save the daughters of Men, for the sons perished before they could draw breath. Then Azul conceived a design to bring forth a race of thralls, bound to him alone.
- 0W: And he made them insensible to pain, lest under torment they should betray his secrets unto his adversaries. But here a flaw was made manifest, which he had not foreseen. Being without fear of hurt, they gave no heed to lesser wounds, and the first generation of the Made often perished before they had seen twenty years. Therefore Azul altered them again, and wrought within their flesh a swift restoring, so that their wounds closed with speed, and broken bones were knit together within the space of a single day. He strengthened them also against venom and against the great plagues that at times passed through the land. Yet the Made might still be slain by the severing of the head, or by fire, or by thirst, or by long imprisonment without sustenance. Nevertheless, in all lesser harms their bodies did not fail them; for their bleeding was stayed almost before it was perceived, and neither blade, nor bolt, nor arrow caused them to falter.
- 0X: And it was said throughout Kemen that the mere rumor of a single company of len being sent forth was enough to still rebellion before it began. Yet in the very perfection of these gifts there lay a hidden cost; for that which caused a lan to mend swiftly rendered her barren also. Thus the Made neither multiplied after their kind nor suffered the passing of age. Great wealth was given unto them, and long continuance of life; yet for that very cause life itself became ever more precious in their sight, so that even their endurance was a treasure they would not willingly surrender. And so a change came upon Kemen. The Nephiloth, who were also called the Made, began to draw back from the foremost ranks whenever Azul sent them into battle. And they were no longer as thralls, but became a burden to those who ruled over them. For the greater part of the Made fled from the fields of war and gathered within the ringhouses of Elendal, which stood far apart in a deep forest.
- 0Y: There they dwelt in scattered halls. So great was the cost of pursuing them that the armies sent against them consumed themselves in the taking, and found little gain. When Azul beheld these things, he regretted that he had stretched forth his hand to meddle with the order of the world-dwellers; and from that time he made no more of the Nephiloth. Then Avyah also gave thought to this matter, and would not suffer the work to remain unfinished. Therefore she amended the works of Azul, yet she did not grant them the unending life that had been given in the first shaping of the Made. And in those days there arose in Shalem Lailah, who was accounted the last of the Made. Yet Lailah was also the first of the jan, and the forerunner of all the Elyonoth. She bore wings of feathers, and not of skin; yet neither the wings of the len nor of the jen in those days were sufficient for flight, but were tokens of their being only, and not the means by which they might ascend.
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