Gantamachy Pt 2

The war began and began again and again. This war would never end for it was doomed to be a cycle. Jorn and his siblings would crash their flame-shapes into the crystalline carapaces of the Elvenwyes, the ancestor spirits of Elven kind that followed Elonwye. Jorn led an army of his own, the predecessors of Mennic souls known to him as the Dead-In-Shape. The first to fall in this war was Jorn’s own son, Branni, the youngest and fairest of all his children. The Mennics were born from Jorn’s grief of his son's passing. With each passing cycle the war got more and more destructive but also created more in its wreckage, which was the definition of potential according to the Mennics. The Nine Worlds or the “Piles of Bones,” were the result of the carnage.

Jorn’s greatest weapon was the way he wielded hope. However, he also had a champion who was born from the loyalty of his Dead-In-Shape. This champion was Leki, who scolded every soldier of Elonwye with his sword made of blackened god-steel. Leki was free and on fire, burning with the purest hate that love could muster. He left no elven heart on the battlefield uneaten but also wept a tear for every Mennic that fell in service to Jorn. Leki was unstable when in a fit of dealing death, which is why Elonwye approached him then and told Leki that the cycle of war would never end so long as Jorn was loose in the universe. Elonwye told Leki that, if he joined him, they could end the boundless cycle of war and preserve the souls of many men. He was loyal to Jorn but also loved the souls of the Mennics. He was seduced by Elonwye and became one with him in flesh and spirit. He was reborn in Elonwye’s service as a new man and was given a new name. Leki was now Memnon, the Champion of Elonwye who turned his blade on Jorn.

After Leki’s betrayal, the war finally got the best of Jorn. In the tenth cycle as the war was rumbling again, Jorn fell to Elonwye and Memnon on the battlefield. The Dead-In-Shape along with Jorn’s own siblings and children watched as he was crushed under the weight of Elonwye’s boot. The hope that once filled him was spilling out and was mingling with the wreckage of the Nine Worlds. Elonwye reached in to Jorn’s chest and pulled out his beating heart. It’s beating rang like an iron bell, writing all of the future songs of the Mennics. However, it also laughed at Elonwye as did the ghosts of the Mennics who swore this was not the true death of Jorn. His body disappeared from the battlefield as his heart was still beating in the hand of Elonwye. His spirit was claimed by the Bone-Molds of the underworld, who claimed all of the souls of the fallen Mennics.

The laughing ended and one man rose up from the crowd of the Dead-In-Shape. It was Volthundr, the most powerful of all the living Mennics. A thunderclap bellowed upon his arrival and he said to Elonwye, “you have hummed the first note of the perish song, Cycle-Starter.” He wielded lightning bolts in both his hands that had rings on every finger except his fourth. Then approached his brother, Ellogar the crafter of his nine rings, who spat fire at Memnon's feet. Humiliated, Memnon raised his sword and struck down the two brothers. Their bodies shifted and melted until they were completely gone. They had gone to the underworld to join their father in the war against the Bone-Molds in the realm of Duun. Memnon gazed down at their bodies as they fell into the darkness but all he saw was the face of Leki gazing back at him from the mirror-garden below.

The tremors of war shook the whole of heaven and broke apart the Nine Worlds that surrounded it. Their wreckage was reassembled into a new world, a whirling disc spinning violently toward heaven. This was the birth of Randos. The Elvenwyes were guided by Elonwye to their new home. However, the Mennics, refusing to turn tail and run after war, boarded a celestial ship and sailed it across the waters of the dark to find refuge in this new world. But this world had no room for them. Every other pilgrim that came to this place found in it a home. But the men were forced to stay aboard their ship and wander across the seas. The only home they had was the place within every man's heart that kept him moving forward. That is the new definition of potential according to the Mennics.