Archaic Recollection: I – “The Lost Empire”

(This Archaic Recollection was written through point of view of Willa Ataraxia, The Blind Seeress of VenusLink.)

“I had a bizarre dream the day I turned 17, terribly enough, a week after my parents died. I still had some sight back then, albeit very little… I remember as I recuperated in the hospital after that life-changing accident, that I had slept for quite a long time, only waking up for only a few minutes every other day, while unconscious for the most part. The nurses and doctors watched closely as I muttered strange things in my sleep, and how I shifted and moved frequently, almost as if I were living another life within my dreams, which is somewhat accurate. During most of my unconscious experience, I laid eyes on the most incredible images a human mind could ever witness: a utopian empire, fallen to angry gods turned into demons, and the eventual catastrophe that led to it being sealed away inside a crystal – it truly felt like a whole different life. Upon my descent from their foreign sky and into that magical world, I was able to see perfectly, go to sleep, wake up, and eat. It felt like months of a perfectly normal life for once, until…

I’ll tell you… While I was there, I learned many incredible things. One of them being that it was The Elysium, a place that existed several eons ago during The Age of Crystals, shortly after The Sanctum Creatoria had finished their First Great Work of re-assembling creation. It was long before the natural world had been broken beyond repair and recognition by man, before the continents and lands separated and settled as we know them today in human history, before the Wishing Charms started appearing, before animals hunted prey while marking territory, and before the wars and calamities of men took place. It was a Shining Archipelago Complex with grass greener than Emeralds, skies more beautiful than any Lapis Lazuli and waters bluer than any sapphire. It gave birth to the first True Human Empire thriving with advanced technology, navigation, and medicine beyond the comprehension we have today, which they used to map the lands, seas, stars and depths. At this point in time, The Ancient Humans had developed such wondrous technologies, that the Gods themselves had realized the machines the humans had started producing on their own were the same machines that the Gods brought from their own world, evidence of Humanity remembering their divine origin. However, this something that The White Council did not want due to their own nefarious reasons. Thus, as Humans’ knowledge and wisdom grew, so did The White Council’s hostility and judgement towards them, until the tipping point of the glass: The Celebration of Emanation, an Empire-wide celebration of the Elysian Peoples’ technological advances, advances made thanks to “The Green-Stone Laboratory”, a special team of scientists handpicked by The Elysian Royal Family. This allowed them to gain access to teleportation technology via the use of a Crystal Rift, which had the curious side effect of giving the teleportee magickal abilities upon being used, something that the Empire gave freely to the public as a means to increase the quality of life within the Empire even further.

The action of Humans gaining access to such technology absolutely infuriated The White Council, and upon them seeing the Empire providing its people with these technologies and abilities to the people, it fueled their fury even further. This led them to decide it was nigh time to close the curtains for good on the Empire’s theatre-play. When The White Council of The Sanctum Creatoria’s Divinatorium decided that they have had enough of the Human Pride and Ambition brewing on the surface of the recently formed Earth, they went ahead and cast down their heavenly judgement through their “Tune of Maya”, emitted by the collective voices of The White Council itself as they sang their sentence aloud, reorganizing the world yet again to obey these new orders while distorting it forevermore. The days of this Shining Nation’s People were numbered, as the seeds of sin had begun to spread amongst men while taking root in their hearts through the illnesses of Wrath, Sloth, Gluttony, Greed, Envy, Jealousy, resulting in the Perversion of the senses. Honorable Pride turned into senseless boasting, the moral decay, a work fine-tuned by The Dark Princes of The White Council. The very first war had begun: A war between the land, sea, skies, stars and depths, a war between animals, men and gods.

Little by little, everything had fallen into disarray. People got angry and started fighting each other. Manufacturers, employers and suppliers became greedy. Parents neglected their children while cheating on their partners. Schools failed to execute their sole purpose, as principals became selfish and the teachers impatient with their students, as those very same students became more and more detached from their realities due to the declining state of their once wonderful homes and families. Animals fought each other, hunting prey and claiming territories, while also forcing their mates to breed. Plants turned parasitic and territorial as well, killing swathes of creatures that fed on the once nutritious flora. Waters became toxic and polluted from the now infected animals bathing in them, leaving behind parasitic seeds and spores that spread worldwide through the currents: The natural harmony of the world had been broken by the same people who established it.

Suddenly, it was too late to undo the damage The White Council had done to creation – then again, this was their “Second Great Work”, and they were proud of it. The lower ranking Gods of The Sanctum Creatoria were tasked by The White Council to descend to the surface and announce the beginning of a new age for The Humans: The Age of The Divinatorium’s Rule. Despite their infected hearts, Humans were not about to bend down to any other rulers other than the ones already in power within The Elysian Empire – The Mahe Family. They were comprised of The Elysian King & Queen, Luel and Irene respectively, and their MANY divine children who took administrative roles themselves too within The Empire.

Everything considered, the result was catastrophic: a war that almost wiped out the island off the face of the Earth. Thankfully, this was avoided by the sacrifices of Luel and Irene, albeit too late. The King and Queen were only able to save The Elysium itself but not its people, aside from me and a few important and special people that slept safely (and unknowingly) in the depths of The Elysium’s underground, placed there in secret by The King and Queen themselves. Queen Irene of The Elysium took me by the hand, led me to the top of The High Palace Exodus, and sent me back up to where I came. As The Elysian people and royalty fought the lower ranking Gods of The Sanctum Creatoria, The White Council simply watched from above on their thrones of silver and gold, laughing away the ensemble of death and destruction taking place down on the surface, as I cried my way up into the clouds, desperately trying to fight Queen Irene’s energy which forced me back into my world.

By the evening, I had already returned to my physical body back at the hospital, yet I could still see the streets of The Elysium, turned into flowing streams of blood originating from The High Palace Exodus, The Elysian Capitol on Pisces Isle; the blood of The Elysian people and the Demon Gods they slayed converging into an elixir of Elysian Pride. They all went down with a good fight, choosing death instead of submission, loyalty over treason, and honor over cowardice. As the sun set and the skies darkened, the lights of The Elysium’s infrastructure started lighting up the now corpse-filled city, illuminating the Ruby River formed by the vast amount of blood left behind by the former residents and invaders. However, as the moon started to rise from the depths of the horizon, the Ruby River began to change its tone, from a solid red to an iridescent white, thus changing into a Diamond-esque River. The blood of the lower ranking Gods of The Sanctum Creatoria had started reacting to the moonlight and had begun to separate itself from the blood of The Elysian People, seeming like it were alive itself. This did not last long, since as soon as the divine blood has started to collect itself and flee, the spirits of The Elysian People had begun to manifest themselves through the condensation of the evaporated Elysian blood to combat this new threat. They all converged into a single entity, known as The Quasian Sea, which swallowed up the spilled god-blood and locked it away by dispersing itself in the waters of The Elysium, accidentally curing it of pollution and infection, but rendering it deadly to humans, albeit extremely nutritious for other divine beings.

Over time, the corpses and skeletons rotted and broke, creatures eating away at whatever they could after such a disastrous event. The blood was washed off the ground by rains and storms, the structures on The Elysian Archipelago decayed and fell, the smaller islands were swallowed by the rising waters, leaving behind only Pisces and Laurel Isles, Solstice and Corium Islands. All these places became barren and empty wastelands, taken over by the now healing flora and fauna, until the day that The Domain Keeper is set to awaken. She, with her Two little helpers and companions, will herald the arrival of The Heiress of the New World with her Guide and Mentor. But as time passed, so too did the ire of The White Council and their memory of the situation; that is, until a High-ranking God of The Sanctum Creatoria took it upon herself to secretly rip out what was left of The Elysium from the Earth and contain it within a Custom Data Crystal, effectively preserving it from further Time-related damage, despite the feat never being done before. Why would a God from the The Sanctum Creatoria do such a thing, one might ask? Very simple: That peculiar God had decided it was time to deviate from The White Council’s rules and end their chain of suffering, since The White Council itself had become very abusive and discriminatory towards lower ranking Gods, including her younger sister, Kami – The Angel of Mercy, in essence rendering the “Act of Mercy” a rare thing to see within the world. After all, The White Council was responsible for sending out most of the lower ranked Gods directly to their deaths, knowing entirely what was going to happen, knowing well that The Elysian Humans were indeed a force to be reckoned with. Many of these fallen Gods were close friends with the God who sealed The Elysium, but this one act of selflessness and revenge from a God of The Sanctum Creatoria had begun a chain of events so great, it would effectively weave The World’s fate on the Tapestry of Maya itself.

The Deity who pulled off this incredibly tremendous feat was none other than Helena, The Goddess of Harmony who resides within The Sanctum Creatoria’s Crystalarium. She saw how horrible things were on the surface, and how much of the flora and fauna in the world were suffering because of The White Council’s “Tune of Maya”. She had swiftly and secretly sealed The Elysium away in the Custom Data Crystal she prepared herself for the occasion, and kept it safe within her chambers inside The Sanctum Creatoria until it was time to use it. Within The Elysium however, things would take a drastic turn, changing its appearance as it was ripped away from the real world: The Elysium’s oceans are now confined within a limited circular sea as it clashed against the walls of the Data Crystal, losing many of the islands originally swallowed up by the sea due to the separation of the landmass, leaving only the previous four Islands left, and the scenery had also taken on an iridescent-purple and pink hue.

Once The White Council found out that The Elysian Archipelago – or what was left of it – had vanished, they frantically begun theorizing, using any means possible to find out what exactly caused the great disappearance. From the highest of arts, to the deepest of magicks, they tried and tried their all to find the reason behind that mysterious archipelago’s disappearance. Things took a more challenging route due to the absence of The Usurper, who was sleeping within his Machinata Chronosia, leaving The White Council clueless, never suspecting it was one of their own who sealed the place away within a Crystal, and dared to keep it within their domain. After some time, The White Council had yet again forgotten about the ordeal and moved on from that Era to focus on other bigger matters at hand: The re-emergence of Human civilizations. During this time, I had just been experiencing these events in a spectral, almost dream-like state – similarly to the dreams and visions I’ve had since I was a child… and I’ve never been able to forget any of it, no matter how hard I tried…”

– Willa Ataraxia, The Blind Seeress.