A Dream of Red Mountain: Of Voryn and the Hole In the World
Voryn Dagoth stood alone in the chamber…
A Hole in the World that seemed to run clear through...
An emptiness so deep and vast that it seems odd that poets and song-minstrels the world over don’t lament the fact that our home amongst stars is partly unfinished or wounded… missing something that ought to fill the void beneath it’s face.
The world as it turned out…
Was not hollowed ground…
The truth was…
Was that the ground was hollow…
But the emptiness was not cold… the air within the tunnel sweltered and radiated, as if the burning rage of the world tried viciously to rush up and lash out at those above its surface, perhaps in reaction to whatever had caused it this injury. No heavenly light reached within the chasm either, the only source of illumination came from the seething molten blood of the earth that would seep out from cracks and fissures amongst the walls, falling like blood soaked in fiery fury towards its center. The magma blood drips shown enough for one to take in the chasm's sight, but it’s radiance was not enough to fully illuminate it’s true breadth and scope.
There's a hole in the world…
That keeps it empty...
And the emptiness, makes of it an angry thing…
The wound was not silent… a beating echoed through the chamber. A rhythm of ages and war, a beating of pain and misjudgment, a whisper of either a promise that turned out to be a lie, or a lie which turned into a promise…
A small platform stretched across the void, a miniscule perch from which to vantage the missing substance of the earth. At its end was a dias suspended admist the nothingness, an alter on which sat the Heart of the World and of its Father. Its beating was not like that of a mother or a lover, not a restful comforting sound letting you know you are safe and that everything is as it should be… Its throbbing was more like the pulsation of an exposed nerve, an audible contortion to a pain felt into and through the bones of the world, and through all of us that stride upon it. It triggered an instinctive wincing of the eyes of any who beheld it, as if each beat were a cracking of a nix-wrangler's whip, or the snap-crackling of teeth shattered upon stone...
The heartbeat of the world isn’t peacefull…
It is a melody of pain and suffering…
An infliction we all squirm to…
Behind the Heart, fastened to the shaft's walls in a manner reassembling a sword, was IT… Kagranac's abomination… A guilded giant, golden and defiant… it stirred not, but it’s still face hinted at the power it was capable of… feet heavy and seemingly yearning for a chance to stride and run free of a bondage more profound than the enormous shackles that latched it prostrated on the edge of the world’s hollowness…
Was IT meant to be a sword…
Or was it a symbol for a cross they secretly bore…
We had deemed their logics flawed and hollow…
But there really is something wrong with the world...
Isn’t there…
The Dwem dwelled within it…
Basked within it...
Starred into it too long…
But now they're gone, and yet the world is still wrong…
Voryn, overcome with dread emotional realization, fueled by the echoing cadence and battle-thumps within the Well of Sorrow, he marched towards the Heart, his soul starved and hungry for answers. In his hands were the tools Sunder and Keening which the Hortator saw fit to leave in his care. But Nerevar was always as shrewd as he was tactful… Wraithguard was taken with him… entrusted and worn by his sheild-thane. Voryn needed protection if he were to have any answers for the missing meaning that ought to fill the emptiness of this place, the meaning of purpose that ought be owed to all those who had been born to suffer it’s lacking…
Boethiah told Veloth that you framed this world for us…
That our suffering could serve a greater purpose…
But you hid something from us…
Or something didn’t go according to plan…
For this world is empty and hollow…
And with these I can make you tell me WHY!
The First Counselor of House Dagoth produced forth bones taken from his familiar crypt… bones of his father anon his father anon his father… bones of fathers and mothers that spanned generations of his line, all the way back to Sumerset and the first step of Exodus…
He arranged them around the heart in patterns, offered them prayers and promise, calling upon all his Ancestrial spirits, so they might guard his. They answered his beacon, delighted at the chance to brush with a bone of a Divine, drunken too with expectation of what might be revealed. Blue warding flame erupted from the Bones of Dagoths… enveloping and encasing the Heart… the Heart's tempo seemed to speed a bit, almost as if it could sense what was about to transpire…
BY THESE INSTRUMENTS YOU WILL GIVE ANSWERS!
BY THESE TOOLS YOU SHALL STAND TRIAL!
SHOW US WHY THE WORLD IS AS IT IS…
HOLLOW AND EMPTY…
OR SERVING A GREATER SECRET!
ALL OF HOUSE DAGOTH STANDS AS JUDGE AND WITNESS!
NOW, BY THESE, TELL ME WHY!
Voryn then struck down with the hammer Sunder through the blue guardian flame, and struck the Heart. The strike rang aloud with a tone which resembled an eternity of heart-throbs all released in a single instant. It’s intensity knocked Voryn over backwards… lost footing caught just shy of the abyssal plunge…
Stunned, he watched as the Heart played faster and faster… until it rang out as a static hiss. This ghostfence of bones and fire was then lifted up by more than hands… The not-arms turned it sideways… the bone circle held up as if a skeletal wheel, and then the spirit fire twisted into eight spokes within the rim, with at its center… a flaming reflection of Voryn's own face as its hub… Voryn's mind raced, shocked and horrored… and then the hands-that-were-not moved the circle to its side, until it’s shape appeared as a straight line with a crown of roaring embers, rattling with exalted declaration.
Voryn, out of equal measures of Terror and concern for his kin, then lashed wildly out at the phantom appendages with the dagger Keening… causing the not-hands to release their hold on the skeletal remains. But the Heart still beated faster and faster, it’s tone a screeching ssssssjjjjjj growing and scratching into Voryn's mind.
And then out of the Heart a million tendrils erupted, seizing Voryn Dagoth by neck and loins, lifted him up and began tearing and flaying off his flesh, til his bones were shone with the light of the angry earth's blood.
Voryn screamed and curggled as the tendrils reached down and picked up the bones of his forefathers… and began weaving them into his own body's frame. At the last skeletal stitching, Dagoth erupted and burned with the fire of this progenitor ghosts, a fire that smelted him and them together as one, and a unifying flesh, perverse and divine, his old self a skin stretched thin and new over generations of bone… the tendrils released him, retreating back from wince they came…
The Heart’s beating gradually slowed down to its original tempo…
All was still for a moment and yet for an eternity… and the Dagoth Ur rose…
ALL OF HOUSE DAGOTH STANDS AS JUDGE AND WITNESS…
THIS WORLD IS EMPTY AND HOLLOW...
IT INFECTS AND SCATTERS US ALL…
BUT I WILL REUNITE ALL THE PIECES...
AND I WILL MAKE IT WHOLE AGAIN!