The ancient civilizations of man were vast, and we lived together in peace and prosperity. We held greater knowledge than they, but we shared it freely with them. Over time, they took that knowledge and bent it to their will and certain technologies and sciences were born. The majority of them lived on the land that eventually became what your kind now calls Africa, particularly its northern reaches. Though, this was all before the mother’s face had come to take on its present shape. This was all before the coming of the Powers.
Over time, mankind grew greedy with their developments, and prideful as they were, they came to resent us when we tried to reason with them. We tried to show them, with compassion and understanding that the ways they had chosen were hurting the mother. They argued that we were trying to control them like pawns. They rebelled, for they did not believe us.”
“Typical.” Shannon scoffed under her breath.
“It has become typical, yes.” The Black Leaf commented. “But at the time, it was new for Man, and matters grew dire. They spread to the far reaches of the lands, and their poisons grew. They were killing that which sustained them, as they do now.” He paused, helping her over an awkward drop in the terrain.
“And so, Dunesil created the Veil of the Leaf’s Edge, dividing all that was still good and pure, and taking from them the Great Tree in the west. It had begun to wither and die, for their many fed of her bark and their poisons infected her through the air and water and soil. Dunesil decreed beneath the advisory of the council, that men would receive one hundred years of grace upon what remained of the world they could exist within.
He told them, they had one century to clean up the mess they had wrought, as we have done yet again in secret, and mankind grew bitter against us. They had become a hostile threat, and Dunesil imposed the law of the barrier of the Veil. No Elvine shall be allowed to descend beyond its doorstep. Those who could naturally break the barrier to reach the doorstep, could no longer step beyond it, and so the Black Leaves’ furies were bound to his will.
Some among men were powerful enough to reach into the doorstep and beyond, fully into the Veil, as you had done when I had found you. Some were powerful enough to enter entirely of their own accord, but once bound within, they could not escape. They came and assaulted us, and killed Elvine. Thus, Dunesil struck back and slew them.
They were never seen again by their kin, and the masses deemed it, acts of treachery on the part of the disappeared Elvine beyond the Veil, dwelling in the peace and happiness of the fourth dimension. They claimed the Elvine had left them to die, and denied their own part within the destruction of the world.
Mankind mounted a full-scale assault upon Addl’laen beyond the Veil, but were thwarted by the Elvine. Dunesil was told by the Great Tree, to unleash those who could naturally break the barrier. He was instructed to give back the furies of the Black Leaves and let us escape entirely, no longer fringe-walkers, but fully dimension walkers. He was instructed to let us bury mankind, or the mother would perish, and with her all would die.”
“So if you buried mankind, how are we still around?” Shannon queried.
“We assaulted them, and destroyed their cities.” Deh Leccend answered.
“But as you know, as you were kin to human kind, they are resourceful and back then, when they were powerful, even more-so was true of them. There were those who hid away from the furies of my kin. We eradicated everything, and descended upon the center of their development in the north of what became your Africa.
We turned the land into sand and buried it all, forging an inhospitable place of it, that mankind might not dwell there of their survivors and discover the truth when all became forgotten, as things tend to do through ages of progress by mortal lives and deaths.
We’d set them on their path to forgetting, but we were too late. Those left of their kin with power enough to pierce the Veil, accidentally opened a different door with their exploration. They passed in the other direction as I’d explained before, and unwittingly opened a portal for the Powers to awaken.
They came and destroyed far more than we ever could have hoped or wanted to. They brought about the changing of the world’s face, a cataclysm that obliterated everything we’d once identified. They set in motion the reshaping that would come to develop eternally unto the place where the world’s face stands now. It is still changing, and will forever, even as it slowly grinds down to an inevitable halt in the aftermath of their strengths.
They would have existed forever on the mother’s face and all of we Black Leaves would have perished fighting them, for it was foreseen, that once freed of their dimension, they would discover the Veil and come to claim it and the great tree. But Addl’laen gave birth to the White Leaves.”
“White Leaves? Like you and the Black Leaves?” Shannon asked, suddenly interested enough to interrupt.
“Yes, and no.” Deh Leccend answered. “She grew eight white leaves on a new limb, and Elvine ladies came to be the keepers of the charms that were grown, which would be the keys to the imprisonment of the Powers.”
“Eight Powers?” Shannon surmised, and he nodded.
“What of them?” She asked another.
“The Powers are what you might call elemental gods. They are not true gods, but rather, powers from beyond the mother’s third dimension, as I’ve explained.” He paused, glancing to see that Shannon did desire more on them. Of course she did, the topic was abruptly fascinating, as if anything Deh Leccend had to say on any topic wasn’t mesmerizing. She was swiftly growing to like his voice despite its monotony, and she hungered to hear anything he would say.
“They dwell now on your third dimension, slumbering imprisonment beneath the charms of the White Leaves, thanks to the ladies, but they did not fall until we had suffered many casualties. The Black Leaves are now only twenty one, three dwelling on each great land in the event of the return of the events that have now come to pass. But now, I see coming, as you had asked, the awakening of the Powers if we are not swift enough.
When the seventh day of Dunesil’s grace to the treachery of mankind ends, we will have to be very swift in the erasing of mankind.” He was telling all that he knew, but Shannon cut him off, for he wasn’t getting to the description of the Powers swiftly enough.
“Tell me, Deh, what are the Powers?” She insisted.
“They are known as great myths misconstrued through the ages by your kin. The first to come was the swiftest, for he was the child of a foreign star. He became part of some of your kin’s religions, called an arch-angel. Though, his right name was Miqael, the starfire shard, bearer of the sword of the stars.
-When he came, he turned mountains to ash and the mother suffered a heat wave great enough to allow the coming and survival of the second Power.
Enfaeri was born, Miqael’s brother. He has been all but forgotten, but for within seldom-heard myths and legends of hellish hounds and demons of hellfire. Again, consumed religiously and twisted to represent vile things that do not truly exist. Enfaeri’s fires consumed the sky and set all things ablaze, melting the cooling ices necessary for nature and weather.
-In his wake, the seas rose and boiled, creating ideal situations for the coming of the others.
The legendary Quetzalcoatl’, known as a god in some of your ancient cultures, didn’t truly exist. He was actually kin of myths and lore, the two headed serpent of the sea, the brother Powers, Lleviathan and Kraqen. Forever did they fight one another, each seeking to consume the other that the victor could have a tail.
They are portrayed in certain sects of your kin, as the symbol for eternity, balance, and the everlasting struggle. They are portrayed as the yin and the yang, the serpent consuming its own tail, the everlasting spiral, and the golden ratio which found its way into many philosophical, mathematical, and scientific ideologies -particularly geneticists, biologists, and psychologies.
To balance, as balance always needs opposition, Lleviathan and Kraqen, bound brothers fighting one another for domi
nation, opened the world to the coming of two more sets of brothers, one divided pair and another bound pair. The divided came first, to fill the void of balance, and yet, they opposed one another, creating an imbalance again. The Bahthalamuts, Onix and Fafnir, the Powers of the weather and the air -wreaking darkness with the clouds of their battles. They are seldom told of in legends, but what has been documented and told throughout the ages, is vastly far from accurate.
At any rate, the balance needed a final pair of brothers to complete a three sided coin. The final Powers to come, before the White Leaves joined we Black Leaves to bring them under control, were Traemin and Gane. The brothers bound to one another, as Lleviathan and Kraqen. They were of the elements of earth and wood and life. Unlike the others bound, they worked together to complete the balance. They reshaped the land and reclaimed and gave life to new forestry in wake of the destruction wrought by the others.
They were mindless. They were not evil, and were not good. They simply were.”
His story was ended, but Shannon barely noticed. Deep in thought and lost within the retelling, she tried to envision the powers as she watched her feet cover ground beneath her. She noticed that the land had lost its uneven rising and falling. The trek was not difficult or mountainous. It was like a twilit plain.
“Where are we, Deh?” She asked.
“Your country’s midlands.” He answered. “We’re half way there.”
“We’re in the Midwest?! Already?” She asked, feeling as though they’d only just begun their walk.
“How can that be?”
“The Veil is not complete.” He informed.
“When the Powers of Traemin and Gane came, they did not seek only to claim the third dimension as I had mentioned. They did indeed discover the Veil of the Leaf’s Edge, and they sought to reclaim it as well. The White Leaves ended them, but not before the Veil shrank. They taxed Dunesil greatly, but he managed to hold on long enough for the White Leaves to bind away the reclaimers.”
“What does that mean?”
“As you know, milady Firea’csweise, Dunesil created the Veil. He was the greatest of the Elvine, and he did so alone. As such, the Veil is his alone. It stems from his being, and flows from his power. It is a part of him. He almost died holding it together against the Reclaimers. If it had not been for the White Leaves, he would have died when they consumed the Veil. Thus, as he was scarred by the battle to uphold it, he diminished and became less than he was. As such, the Veil was constricted.”
“I don’t understand.” Shannon admitted.
How could it be possible for space to shrink, or was that exactly what Deh Leccend was telling her?
“Try to remember, Firea’csweise, the Veil is beyond the third dimension. It is not subject to the same laws, as you already know. Time here is different from time there. As such, space bound forever to the concept of time, is also different, though they didn’t always used to be this way. In the beginning, time and space here were as they are on your earth. But, in the wake of the Reclaimers’ attack, time was stretched.
As a result, space was condensed. Try not to think about it in the conventional means of space and time. Just know, that it is the concept that is important, milady.” He answered as best he was able for her limited understanding of extra-dimensional unfathomable concepts. She was human after all, and was as such unable to completely comprehend it all in any case. And she was quiet for a time, left to pondering all that he’d told about the history beyond history.
“I understand that answers your question?” He questioned.
Shannon sighed. It sort-of answered it. Or perhaps it more than answered it, but the fact that she didn’t understand it all made it feel like it went unanswered.
“Yeah.” She finally responded. “Thank you, Deh.”
“It is my duty, Firea’csweise.” He lowered his head slightly. “Thanks are not necessary.”
“I thought I asked you to call me Shannon.” She commented with a sullen smile, but it was an effort to lighten the mood wasted on one like Deh Leccend, the Black Leaf.
“I will remember that, milady Firea’csweise.” He said with another nodding of his head, but he still didn’t use her proper name. In fact, it seemed as though he’d not even heard what she’d said. Shannon smiled a bit brighter. At least her effort had lightened her own mood a shade or two, for she realized Deh Leccend would never call her by her right name. He was utterly hopeless.
“Now.” He began again. “I will answer your other question.” He rightly confused her, for she had certainly not remembered all the questions she’d asked to have fulfilled by his vast well of knowledge.
“What other question?” She asked, still smiling, and brightening up a bit more with the revelation that he would be speaking further.
“In pertinence to what I can see coming.” He spoke, but his words sucked all the brightness out of her in a heartbeat. Shannon suddenly felt like she didn’t want to know what was coming. It would only depress her again. But, it was too late now. Once he’d said it, she found herself unable to stop him. She had to know what he guessed was coming.
“Go on.” She said tentatively, voice lost beneath worry.
“I presume Addl’laen has told you some of it, for she has seen all that I have, and more.” He started up in that tale-telling drone.
“I see the humans utterly failing to pass the tests presented before them.” He revealed, and Shannon let her shoulders slump. She’d guessed as much was bound to happen. It was inevitable. Mankind, as she knew, would never submit to the truth. Deh Leccend’s prediction was nothing more than a grim confirmation for her own assumptions.
“I see the first of seven allotted days passing even now, idle and inactive. They will do nothing to obey the mandate of the council. Their unresponsiveness will wreak their ends. Dunesil will unleash the furies of the Black Leaves, and we will destroy them all.” He went silent, brow furrowed lightly as he pondered what would come after that. He was quiet for a very long time, analyzing the paths to the end of the destruction of men.
“In wake of our wrath, I see their end, as was promised that you and Dunesil would see come to pass by the Great Tree.”
“How do you know what the Great Tree told me?” Shannon asked, suddenly realizing she hadn’t said anything about what Addl’laen had spoken, aside from the fact that Dunesil would see the end of mankind’s ways, and that she’d been called Firea’csweise.
“It was in the pool of the council. Don’t you remember?” He asked, not quite realizing she’d made little sense of the waters, which her voice had so furiously sundered. Shannon shook her head.
“Oh. When you spoke, all the Great Tree had said to you, and all that was in your mind at the matter of the subject you spoke of was reflected there in the pool. Just as it is with anyone who speaks at the water’s edge. What is on the mind of the speaker is shown for all that all may clearly understand without the barriers of language getting in the way.” It was the only reasonable answer, but how they’d read the waters and deciphered what could be shown was far beyond her.
“It is the only fair way to do council and debate.” He clarified. “Upon a medium that shares no bias yet will express subject matter, facts, fictions, lies and opinions clearly for all to understand implicitly of what the speaker wishes to transfer.”
Shannon only wished that mankind had such a wondrous tool, provided they could understand it. All those damned government officials would spend lest time bickering and more time solving. Moreover, they may have actually been able to prevent their coming doom. There certainly would have been less liars and cheats in the government, for they’d be found out for what they were immediately upon speaking. Or would that have made no difference? Certainly not if they were all liars and the corruption was as complete as Jason suggested it was.
"Originally, the pool was a work of art. Or rather, created for a beautiful songstress, the only daughter of Dunesil Llaerth and Qaiyi. That she might create art by vo
ice. But it was recommissioned when its value was realized upon in wake of her death by Enfaeri." Deh remarked, but shifted gears swiftly.
“But, most dreadful in wake of mankind’s refusal to acknowledge, or if they acknowledge, then refusal to heed Dunesil’s mandate and emissaries of the ultimatum -is the waking of the Powers.” He finally started talking again, dragging her out of her private thoughts on how foul human governments had become over time, especially her own.
“If we Black Leaves are too few to eradicate the wrongs of mankind swiftly enough, then the Great Tree may shed her White Leaves. I do not believe it will happen, but I cannot overlook the possibility that it may. If she loses the White Leaves, then the Powers will reawaken, and I fear there will be too few Black Leaves to withstand them again, until the coming of the White Leaves ladies.”
“Addl’laen wouldn’t doom you to suffer that fate, Deh.” Shannon tried to quell fears that he couldn’t possess, as she laid a caring grasp upon his arm.
E.L.F. - White Leaves Page 19