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Agrande: Karaft's Letter by ~undergroundwalruss:iconundergroundwalruss:

Categories Literature > Prose > Fiction > Fantasy


The men of Agrande have many tales of how they came into being.  Most tell the story of Ara, Cova, and Zana who brought life to a desolate and dead world.  This, however, is the story of the beginning of the world as told by the Mages of Trenegor, passed down through the generations, told often and believed seldom:

In the beginning, the world of Agrande was like a ball of stone, flying across a cosmos that cared little of its existence.  It was pulled at a whim from place to place, until it was finally drawn to the fires and warmth of a star, which the dragon kin named Peliar, the sun.  There the new world was beaten and shaped and molded.  Great rocks from the cosmos beat massive craters into the land, and during the first rains, these craters filled with water to become the beginnings of seas.  Mountains were raised, valleys were made, and the whole land changed in shape, but it remained still and barren and insignificant.  The air grew thick and fewer of those great stones from above came to leave their marks on the fledgling world.  It rained often and fiercely, and lighting from the sky would seem to set the land ablaze.  The entire world seemed to wait, though there was nothing yet to wait, and none knew what was to come.

Then came the mightiest storm of all.  The seas grew restless and the mountains groaned under the wind, and the rain fell so hard as to drown all land.  The thunder bellowed a deep, forceful tiding of things to come, and the clouds were as dark as the cosmos themselves.  A mighty bolt of lightning struck out from those clouds, a moment’s kiss with a raging sea, and from that half-second kiss was born a flame.  The flame danced on top of the water, not orange or red or blue, but the purest white, and neither the wind nor the angry waves could quell it.  It burned without heat, and without fuel, and spread quickly across the sea and the land, until all of Agrande was covered in white flame.  Never was the white fire so beautiful as when it burned openly, and ten million tongues of flame each licked the sky.  Each flame burned alone, of its own power, shining mightily into the sky, yet from the cosmos, the world appeared as a tiny star, shining with one combined light.

Thus came Ara, Cova, and Zana to Agrande.  None know from where in the depths of space these spirits crawled, or if, as many have suggested, they were born with the kindling of the flame, but wherever their origins, they saw the flame, and they hated it.  For deep down, they knew that this was something they would not and could not possess, and the spirits wished for control over everything in the cosmos, from the largest star to the smallest drop of water.

And Ara, who had the power to see those things to come said, “This flame will grow, and it will consume all of this world forever, and in time, it will spread throughout the cosmos.”

And Zana, who was great in strength, stretched out his hand to quell the fire, and as he laid it down over the earth, the fire disappeared into the seas, and the mountains and the ground, and it seemed to be gone.  But Ara saw that the fire was not gone, that it only hid just under the earth, and that with time it would return to the surface, more powerful than it had been.

When she shared this news with her companions, Zana burned with anger that the flame would not be quelled, but Cova laughed.  “This is not a task of might alone brother,” he said.  “We must resort to other means to quell the flame when it returns.”  And with that, they left the little world of Agrande to its own devices, and went to spread their destruction through the rest of the cosmos.

Even after the spirits had left, the flame did not rise again to the surface, but where it hid beneath the earth grew grasses and trees and flowers and moss.  And where once the world was hard in appearance, it grew softer.  The browns and grays of the earth were replaced with the greens and yellows and gentle blues of grasses, the violets and oranges and violent reds of flowers, the greens and silvers of the leaves of trees, and the whites of moss on stone.  Where once the world had carried the sounds of thunder, and waves crashing, and stone against stone, now could one hear the gentle breeze passing through the leaves of great trees, and the whistling of wind against thin blades of grass.  Where once the world smelled of sulfur and fire, now it also carried the sweet smell of flowers in blossom, and of fruits ripening.  Far to the north grew the Plains of Han that stretched for miles, where the flames can still be seen in grasses and sparse trees that shine white and beautiful during night and day.  Far south grew the Forest of Taran, where the leaves grew in silver and gold and the deepest of greens.  The whole world was made peaceful and gentle and beautiful.

And it was only after the world grew suitable and lovely that the flame decided to reemerge.  But remembering the spirits, and their promise to return, it did not come up to the surface unprotected again, but instead clothed itself in bodies made from the earth.  Tiny creatures of water and of soil and of rock grew up out of the ground and spread slowly across the surface of Agrande.  And the flame was in these things, but it lay dormant, because the bodies and minds of the creatures were too weak to recognize it.  And for years upon years, the world continued on in this way, and the creatures grew in strength and in capacity.

There came, in time, three types of creature who could both recognize and make use of their inner flames.  The first were the Tela.  Their bodies were made from the insects of the forest, and as such, their torsos are small, their arms thin, their skin hard, yet fragile.  They stand not a foot high when walking erect, and the browns and greens of their bodies and clothing make them nearly undetectable in the forests.  They have an extra set of arms about their midsection, and though their eyes are similar to ours, they retain an insect’s feelers.  They are short-lived, but also fast and cunning and uncannily strong.  Very few humans have set eyes on the Tela, for they are untrusting of our ways, and when they wish to be hidden, none but the keenest eyes will spot them.  They have always revered the world and the cosmos, the trees and the beasts, and the sun and the moons, and every thing that might have helped to grant them life.  Above all, they revere the flame that resides within every living creature and thing, and loathe that which seeks to destroy it.

Next were the Great Dragons.  The Great and Lesser Dragons are cousins, born from the same ancestors, though the Great Dragons gained an incredible intellect and capacity for thought, and the Lesser Dragons, as we know, retained a huge and powerful body.

The story goes that when that first ancestor came into being, he was an enormous creature as large as a mountain.  Ara, Cova, and Zana saw their potential and swore to destroy them, but when Zana reached out to destroy their bodies, the flame had become so powerful that it burned him.  And Zana went into a rage, and hurled from the cosmos rocks and debris, hoping to destroy the mighty creatures, and all of life suffered greatly.  But the Dragons’ ancestors, with their unrealized spark of intelligence, retreated to the caves of the mountains of Mund Trenes, where they took shelter, and over generations grew small and cunning, and it was here that they grew their wings.  And after some time, many of the creatures left the caves to hunt on the Plains of Han, where they became mighty hunters, the feared Lesser Dragons that to this day still roam the plains.

But the Great Dragons remained hidden in the caves and shrank in stature even as they grew in capacity.  They were about as tall as a man when they stood upright, though they rarely did, and in place of skin they had rough, glittering scales.  They flew on wings which spread almost as wide as their bodies, ideal for crossing difficult passes and moving about in the treacherous mountains.  Their tails they used for balance, their teeth and claws for hunting, there was not a single part of the dragon that did not belong, or was not suited for its purpose.  And they were relentlessly curious about the world around them.  After Zana, realizing that his assault was futile, resentfully stopped his barrage, and the Great Dragons were free to step back into the daylight, they travelled throughout the world.  Their capacity for knowledge was insatiable, and wherever they went, they were delighted by their discoveries there.  This is how it came to pass that the Dragons and the Tela became friends.  

At first the Tela were wary, and rightfully so, as they were just the right shape and size to be considered prey for the mighty hunters.  Yet the Dragons understood quickly that these creatures were like them, curious and keen, and able to speak.  And by watching, the Great Dragons learned the speech of the Tela, and thus befriended them.  And for a while, life thrived all over.

The humans were the last to come and we were different from the others.  We showed a passion for learning that outshined even the Dragons, and we adapted in ways the Tela never could have.  We altered entire environments to our will, tearing down forests, leveling mountain, and building up plain.  We travelled, as the Dragons did, though everywhere we went, we changed.  We did not blend into their background, their background changed to suit us.  The Dragons considered us the most noble of the races, the Tela considered us the most vile.

They both were right about us, in a way.  Mankind showed immediately that it was capable of a great amount of good.  We traded openly with the Dragons, and over time created for them tools and showed them how we changed the earth for our purposes.  The fire has always burned more brightly in us than in any other creature.  In the Tela it hardly has time to kindle before it is extinguished, in the Dragons, it has time to burn and grow dim.  But with us it burns with strength from our moment of conception to the moment we die.

And there also lies our weakness.  We fear death in a way that the Dragons and the Tela cannot understand.  We may even recognize it as natural, but we still flee from it, seeking in vain to avoid its grasp forever.

That is how the spirits, Ara, Cova, and Zana, made their first lasting assault against Agrande.  For Cova had some powers of persuasion, and appeared in the mind of our first High Priest Saldar, and brought to him the ideas that have poisoned humanity ever sense:  That the fire that burns in us is evil.  That our passions, our wants, even our wish to postpone our own deaths was the cause of all pain.  That only by allowing that fire within us to die, only by extinguishing that fire wherever we saw it, would we be able to live on forever.  For by removing the fire, our spirits would be cleansed and able to pass on into eternal bliss.  And one day, one blissful, blissful day, the spirits would return again, to destroy this earth and all of its evil, and build a new one, where the purified spirits would live in ecstasy forever.

The humans, fueled by these poisoned words, first attacked the woods.  The Tela, we said, were our enemy.  The Tela, who worshipped the fire as a false god, who considered it to be sacred.  We burned their woods, and from it carved out a kingdom.  We swore not to rest until every one of them was dead.

The Dragons intervened.  Angry, confused, betrayed.  How could such a wise, powerful people have fallen so far?  They swore to put an end to it.

There is not much I can tell you about the Great War that you do not already know.  Torog and Sir Vince, two brilliant generals standing off against each other, Torog’s inevitable fall, and Trene’s desperate stand against human forces at World’s End.  These are nothing new to you, so I won’t waste your time.  However, I do feel you should know that the creature we wiped out was intelligent and creative and powerful, and that this world is a less splendid place because of their absence.

I am Karaft, Archmage of Trenegor.  And I am the last of my kind.  I have told this story far and wide, from one end of the kingdom to the other.  Most have thought me a blasphemer.  Some have tried to kill me for even speaking it.  Few believe my story, and almost none understand it.  I will not seek an apprentice any longer.  I cannot bear the pain of failure each day.  So I am writing this so the story will not die with me.  I am writing this so that one day, somehow, someone might find and understand what is said here.

If you are that person, let me tell you that you are very incredible indeed.  To have pierced through their lies and come all the way here, to the end of the world to discover the truth.  To read that truth and recognize what it means.  To understand, truly understand, that all you believed to be right is wrong, and all that you’ve known to be wrong is right.  You may feel alone in the world.  You may look at a sea of faces and see them leering back at you with malice.  Those are the faces of people you cannot change.  But you have a weapon against them that they can’t understand.  They cannot possibly understand, since they can’t see the world as you and I do.  You have the truth.  I hope that will one day be enough.
©2008-2009 ~undergroundwalruss
:iconundergroundwalruss:

Author's Comments

It's not all going to be that melodramatic. To be honest, Karaft is kind of a prick, as much as I like him.

Yeah. This is the new project I'm working on. I've actually been working on it for a while. It started out as just a list of characters, personalities I wanted to throw together. To be honest, most of those personalities have taken a backseat. Though I've got a part for all of them, the story about the siege of Fortress Crowl really took the forefront, and that's the one I'm telling here. Not that I intend that to be the last story I tell about Agrande, because there are too many characters and plot points that I want to deal with to try and wrap them all up in one story.

I don't want this to read like a "moral" story, so I'm kind of worried about using this as THE introduction to the whole world. I just sort of like the idea of having a fantasy world that came into being without the help of some outside power. And I will be treating magic differently in this story than most fantasy stories do (there's no "actual" magic, though mages still get to be awesome, and Lady Irene has certain almost supernatural powers). But I still want it to be fun. That's the important thing, that you get to know and like (or hate) the characters and that I put them in situations that make you worry about them. Any "moral" that might be involved there is secondary.

In case you can't tell by my lengthy comment section here, I want to actually make this good, so comments and criticism are greatly appreciated.

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November 17, 2008
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