Fall of Sharath (short story)

This is a creative work set in the world of Elanthia, attributed to its original author(s). It does not necessarily represent the official lore of GemStone IV.

Title: The Fall: First chapter of Dhe'nar scripture of the fall of Sharath

Author: Kree Morlain

This is the story of the fall of the shining jewel Sharath, of the ultimate domain still to bear the stamp of the creator gods who stood by the great drakes' sides at the hatching of the universe.

This concerns the city of Sharath, dried up heart of the Dhe'nar which has ruled for long between the jungle's walls, and whose sovereigns, mindless or great, possessed or deified, were all the heirs of the vision and of the fixation which said that the eye of the Arkati, the initial round slag of the great furnace of the worlds rested on this face of Elanthia called Sharath.

Of this eye, the Vortex was the pupil pit of nothingness and of stars opened on the past but the future too, tunnel, temple, and cemetery. According to certain wandering priests of Sharath, the Vortex was only the sign of the prophesy which fortold the whirlwind of the end of the jewel, of the revolt of the people from the Arkati, and the Way.

When first Dhe'nar stood proud, strange funny creatures and numberless cruel and frenetic ones like insects came from the south where mountains somtimes seem to come out of the invisable.

When second Dhe'nar stood proud, the sky itself had struck and torn the harmonious design of the jewel that was Sharath, submerging palaces, fracturing spirits, giving birth to the age of impostors and of outrage.

Imagine the time, the viscous universe, the voracious spinning eye of matter in the black and slippery blood of the serpent. A flash of frost in an inky sphere, limpid spiral of the surging lymph.

Imagine the luminous jewel, splitting the essence that drips from the world on the prismatic fusion. The dark dance of Noi'sho'rah and his speaking to thousands of the darkness and Belial in the mists of Gyrene, and pandemonium of the abyss.

The serpents and the sirens on the periphery of the slag heap. The metamorphic songs of the Way in the volcano's mammon and leviathan. The sylphs and the salamander, the age, the slime, the ashes, the tree of life in forest of pieces. Noi'sho'rah and the eternal conflagration of fire spread by the eyes of Tah'lah.

Imagine the time...

The unutterable material of time keeps within its darkest folds, the secrets of many a powerful city whose names shone over Elanthia before floundering under the earth, under the night. And within the long generating sleep when the jungles boiled to the sound of the Arkati's rumbling breath and in the slender reigns of Elanthia, was no greater glory than that of Sharath...

Sharath...born of the Way of the Gods and Dhe'nar uniting their unnumerable thoughts in one soul...Sharath...made of shining black ora, rich polished tanik, and of meteors raised in mad towers which groped to the sky where there still stalked the clouds of birth.

The gods breathed images, elves raised idols, each block turned from the quarries, from the gulfs, from the volcanoes and from the sky, could have crushed any one of the cities of forgotten names. Night, coming from the east seemed to battle with the shade of the temples. And the sun at every dusk avoided the trap of mouths of stone which floated and rolled with the tide of its essence.

Towards Sharath there flowed rivers of monoliths and in the clouds of the Arkati's birth, the heads of titans with eyes like chasms opened the straits of mirage between cotinents of storm. Idols, pillars, with avid mouths, threatened the sky, guarded it..in the Thousandth summer of Sharath, the moon of the giants could slip between the ultimate balance. In these times of glory, in the temples, in the bellies of meteors mad priests sang the name of Sharath and it was pride.

But in the confines of the land, the shadowy glaciers were being worn away against ramparts of stone. The torrid vapours were dispersing before the flowering jewel, the gods were wearied, were fretting and piling up cyclones of cinders, and terrors, and crystallizing winters, and one day... dawn, night, tempest.

But elven priests, blind to the 'way' raising up their jewel higher then the very clouds themselves demanded and betrayed. They roared, Vomited, torrents of titanic firebrands, stars woven of thunder.

And the city became oceans of fire, became a necropolis of crevasses, of stones and of idols under the sun veiled with clouds and mist. And the Dhe'nar, lost, broken, faces, arms and totems spread over the piercing mountain which had raised up from the earth itself to pierce Sharath with its hatred.

And Noi'sho'rah and the Arkati spoke...

Creatures of chaos, you dare to tear the earth, you want night, you call for fire, you strike a kingdom there where my eye sees all that is past. Chosen of the elven, to profane what you have created, you shall have light, you shall have fire, I shall raise an empire from your flickering life. You do not exist, nothing has begun...

See Also

• Dhe'nar
• Obsidian Tower - CHE Organization