Legends of the Great Wheel [Mythos Fiction]

[Primal Fury]

Greetings Mythos aficionados and people who have no earthly idea what that means, I present to you the hub thread for the fiction of the Great Wheel. The Great Wheel is a cosmology heavily dependent on narrative, so much so, that the entities who created the multiverse can be accurately classified as "living stories". This thread is dedicated to brainstorming, posting, expanding, and critiquing these stories. All are welcome, especially those who are experts at writing, as we would all like to improve our storytelling skills.

Related threads can be found within the spoiler below.

Spoiler

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The Mythos Discussion Thread can be found here for those of you unfamiliar with it. It contains all the ideas we have been working on for our classes and bloodlines.
The Mythos Compendium can be found here. It contains most of the completed Mythos material.
The thread with information on the anatomy of the Titans is located here.
Here is Xefas's imgur account. It contains all the banners for classes he is working on, plus a little information about them.

Without further ado, I present to you the four stories we have so far in chronological order. The first two are mine, while the second two belong to Xefas.

Spoiler: The Birth of the Moon

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The Titans needed a guardian to protect the world they would create, to hold at bay the horrors from Beyond. It was untold ages before they had completed the Sun's design; each time it was believed they had arrived at a conclusion a flaw was found that changed the very core of their son. It was odd, almost as if a sentient virus was worming its way through the Sun's corpus, unwilling to separate from its host. Unfortunately, the cancer could not be removed without the Sun collapsing in on himself, at least not yet. Each time the Titans built glorious perfection into the Sun, the virus would mutate and impose a weakness upon him to temper his growing strength. His burning valor was cooled with compassion, that he might avoid descending into blood-hungry battle lust. His stalwart conviction was softened with temperance, that he might show mercy to those who challenged his righteousness.

This continued until the Sun's birth, when his perfectly formed, fully grown body rose from the golden cesspits of Mutation's heart. He was a sight to behold, and all the denizens of all the Titan's Stages marveled at his incomparably glorious beauty. But the Sun himself was not happy with his conception, for he found a flaw that no one else seemed to notice, which made it all the more glaring to him: an inky blackness at his feet. This... thing clung to him, and aped his movements where ever he went, mocking him endlessly. In it, he saw all that he hated: weakness, darkness, and servitude. Though it was bound to him, he was bound just as tightly to it; and the thought that he, the Guarding Star, should be shackled to anything boiled his molten blood. He reasoned that he could not be perfect until this blemish was removed, so he tore it from his being and cast it to the simpering beasts that followed at his heels, who devoured without a second thought. His final imperfection extinguished, the Sun strode through skies to begin his vigil, and hold back the tide of madness.

But what of his shadow? The poor, weak thing was no match for the innumerable monsters that descended upon it, and could do nothing but wait for its end as it was eaten by the horde of notions. But the end never came. Though it was in pieces, strewn about the stomachs and stories of many creatures, it lived on. With nothing else to do, it simply watched and listened. Time passed, and the notions were consumed by Premises, one way or another, and the shadow found herself... Her? How did it know to call itself "her"? She seemed to have found definition through traversing the minds of Premises, and touching the Themes of their Titans. As the the Sun began his Trials, she danced through the Titans' stories unnoticed, drinking deeply from their heartsblood, and growing strong off their legends.

When she had finally grown tired from reading the same stories over and over again, the shadow... No, that won't do, will it? What kind of name is "the shadow"? She needed a real name, and to become more than the runoff of the Sun's creation. In order to do this, however, she would need to return to the world that didn't want her. This was not the most serious problem; she was still sundered from her original separation and subsequent consumption, and needed to find a way to make herself whole again if she wanted to escape. She could exercise some influence on her hosts, but not enough to make them do anything they wouldn't normally. If only there was a way that two entities might come together in such a fashion that they... exchange or combine pieces of themselves to create something new. The most obvious answer likely the correct one, she chose to force the souls to devour each other and see what happened.

They met on Mutation's Stage, as one was quite immobile. Two expressions of eternal hunger: one was known only as Mu'Orr. He was little more than a mountain of flesh who's peak was punctuated with a mouth filled with rows upon rows of teeth like meat cleavers. He was drawn to Vogpynn, the Voracious Matriarch, a betentacled living chasm in Mutation's crust. They battled for days, tirelessly devouring each other with no end in sight. In the end, the Empyrean had to put a stop to the conflict, lest it turn into a full-scale war. The blood, bone, and unswallowed meat left behind coalesced to form the nascent goddess's first child: Penia, the Bottomless Maw. This creature would live on to sow terror throughout the whole of reality before, during, and after the Great War, but that is a tale for another time.

And so Penia hunted. Each notion, Premise, and Titan that held a piece of her mother was either devoured, dismembered, or bled, freeing a piece of the goddess's essence. Ephemeral as the wind, the menace refused to be captured or restrained, spurred on by her mother's whispers. Eventually the task was completed, and Penia fled to the edge of the Great Wheel to set the nameless one free. When she arrived, she wretched and heaved, vomiting her fully formed progenitor off the edge of the world, then disappeared. She scarcely had time to notice her new form as she plummeted into the depths of the Far Realm, but it didn't matter; she knew that she would become so much more once she emerged from her chrysalis of nightmares and madness. So she closed her eyes, and let the Seething Chaos take her.

Leagues away, a mysterious figure sat atop an errant cloud in silence, watching the events play out below. There were a few moments when she thought to intervene, in order to ensure that everything went as it did before; the more she saw, however, the more at ease she felt. As the little shadow-girl fell out of sight and into madness, the figure rose to her feet. She wondered if that girl would experience anything new this time; but of course she would, that's how the Far Realm worked after all. Finally free to do as she wished, she surveyed the chaos below her. The Titans no longer held her interest, more like children's stories to her now than anything else; no she was searching for someone else. When she had finally found him, all glowing and full of himself, she stepped off the cloud and said "Well, I'd better go introduce myself."

Spoiler: The First Meeting of the Sun and Moon

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Destruction. As far as the eye could see was nothing but fleshy, bleeding wasteland punctuated by wildfires and craters filled with dismembered nightmares. Even as the fires burned the land away, waves of blood quenched their light and worked to repair the damage. It was Mutation's Stage that was chosen as the sight of the Great Trials, as hi/r's was far more malleable, and healed faster than any other. A glowing figure stood amidst the destruction, unmarred despite the landscape around him, and looking quite unhappy. "This is pointless." The Sun had just finished another battery of tests from the Titans, and was growing tired of them. "How much longer must these trials continue? I have proven time and time again that there is no challenge they can pose that I cannot surmount! No foe I cannot defeat! No-".

His brooding was disturbed by the oddest sound: Giggling. He scanned the area for the source of the noise. He felt a tap on the lowest of his shoulders, and cast his gaze down to see a young, dark-haired girl beaming up at him. "Are you actually pouting?" she asked, firmly placing her hands on her hips. They stared at each other for a few long moments, she waiting for a response, and he wondering who exactly she was. Eventually, she decided to break the silence; "Well? Are you? It seems unbecoming for one as glorious as you." The Sun was already frustrated with the events of the day, and did not want to deal with what seemed to be another specter, so he left the strange girl to her strangeness.

Much to his displeasure, he found her skipping along beside him as he walked. "Ya know for someone who claims to be so virtuous, you're very rude." He did not respond, and she did not care. "That was pretty impressive though, how you just obliterated all those... what were those things anyway?" The Sun sighed and finally deigned to address her, "Mere notions conjured by the Titans to test my prowess. But as you can see, I am above such distractions, for I-" She interrupted him before he got any further, "Please don't start that again. You're very boring when you drone on like that." He stopped in his tracks, fuming from the disrespect she was showing him. He thought to cow her into submission with his glory, and teach her where she belonged.

"How dare you... Have you any idea who I am?" Though he stood at his full height, with all his arms blazing with power enough to strike down the oldest Anthols, she was undaunted. "I know exactly who you are, maybe even better than you." He was taken aback, ever so slightly, by the confidence with which she spoke, though he did not show it. "I know that for all your talk of courage and valor, you yearn for opponents only so strong as to prove your greatness, and never so strong that you must struggle against them." From yellow. "I really don't know which of your so-called 'virtues' I find sillier," To orange. "Your conviction," To red. "Or your purity." To the deepest crimson, the Sun's light darkened as his anger grew. "And don't even get me started on-" He could take no more of this. "ENOUGH!!!" The girl went silent, but the smile never left her face.

"I grow tired of your insolence, spirit. I will suffer it no longer!" He lifted five of his mighty hands toward the heavens. "Now hold on, there's no need to-". She could say no more, for he brought his hands to the ground like a bolt of lightning, creating a thunderclap that cast her to the wind. As he watched her fly through the air, helpless against his power, he felt a deep sense of satisfaction, having finally silenced her. He turned to leave, only to find her standing behind him, still smiling. "Was that really necessary?"

As his frustration and anger slowly gave way to confusion and curiosity, the Sun examined the girl more closely, his all-encompassing sight dissecting her layer by layer. She seemed harmless enough; between her unkempt hair and her too-long arms and legs, there didn't seem to be anything particularly special about her. But wait... how could he have missed it? Her patchwork dress was not simple blue cloth, but seemed to be sewn from pieces of an alien sky. Her eyes glowed with a soft white light, and her teeth were of the purest silver. Beneath all of this, however, was something more. Something unsettling. "You don't like what you see, do you brother?"

Fear was not an emotion the Sun was familiar with; whenever a challenger was foolish enough to approach him, he would simply beat them into submission one way or another. But now that he had found someone who would not be intimidated by his majesty, or subdued by his strength, he could not help but feel an infinitesimal twinge of dread. This strange new feeling lead him to ask her the question she had been waiting for since she arrived, "Who are you?" The Moon burst into gleeful giggling almost before the words left his lips. "Well that's a silly question, isn't it? I'm your sister!"

Spoiler: The First Night

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A legion of newborn gods ten-thousand strong, and more, floated in the hazy incomplete matter of the universal chaos, awash in the light of their father and guardian. He and they, in that time, were of one mind and purpose. A dozen of the Sun's hands flickered out of sight beneath coruscating blades of sunfire that cut through the maelstorm, burning into it a high mountain of stone for the creator-star to stand upon, and a valley for his troops to admire him from. "In this Day, we make our stand. From this rock amidst a sea of madness, we declare our freedom from the whims of oblivious and immaterial masters that oppose the very nature of the meaning and progress we yearn for in our hearts. We shall make war the one true reality for the Titans, and bring their fanciful dreams crashing down upon them. Together, we will leave not one left standing, not one grain of sand or one drop of blood left braced upon another."

The Sun was prepared to go on in this fashion for quite a while. It was his coronation speech, as a prince crowned king of the gods, and his declaration of war, to inspire his troops and lead them to battle. But a whisper stopped him, leaving a fine sheet of ice clinging ever so delicately to the edges of his ear and jawbone. It didn't melt, impossible as it seemed. "No. Not this day." A lithe, dark-skinned arm curled around his chest, and a face appeared from the brilliant golden display that perpetually burned behind the Sun. It was severely angular but beautiful in its perfect symmetry, though its eyes were hidden behind a black cloth. The Sun did not look at her. He would not. His sight was perfect and piercing, and the cloth the woman wore was not inordinately dense or mystically veiling - he was absolutely certain that he had no desire to see what lay beneath, and therefore averted his gaze at all times. When he spoke, it was not magnified, as it had been, to resound from one edge of his island to the other, but merely drifted to those assembled around him. "History shows that even you are powerless to stop me, gatekeeper. What new development has given you the authority to do so now?"

End remained absolutely still, in that way that few others can match. An unmarred stillness that reveals no breath, no heartbeat, no connection with the world around her. Through the waves of flame that poured from the sun's body, her hair did not waver, her clothes did not dance, nor did the frost she planted on her king relent. "There will come a night long, long from now. A night where I lay you to rest, when all the lights of heaven have gone out, and the wind no longer blows, and the earth and sky have parted into the darkness forever. Until that night, I have no power over you. But it is because I see that night in the countless march of years beyond us that I know you shall not do battle this day. You cannot. If you fight today, you will die, your legend snuffed like a candle without accomplishing so much as to burn the fingers that crush you. This war does not begin today, and it will not end so soon as you believe. It will be long and terrible. Though you will relish the victory you find, you will live to regret the many atrocities you visit upon others and that will be visited upon you and yours."

With a flash of anger, the Sun wrenched himself from the grasp of his grim vizier, turning to face her and the three indistinct lights that still flickered out of focus in his golden glory. "The moment that you demonstrate to me that I am possessed of the capacity to be incorrect, I shall begin to believe your simpering, cowardly nonsense. Each one of you believed yourself to be undefeatable, unconquerable, yet it is I who struck each of you down. It is I who showed you mercy. I am perfect, and you shall do as I say, regardless of whether you fear for your safety in the coming battle."

End silently pointed down at the Sun's feet with a rigid, precise motion, reminiscent of a clock hand's calculated movement from one set interval to another. "I believe you've met." she said. The Sun glanced down. With a furrowed brow, he murmured "We have, yes." There, at his feet, was a tiny silver-haired harvest mouse, clinging to a few blades of grass that had grown beneath one of the shrouded stars. Her presence revealed, the mouse twitched and spasmed, growing in size until it had reached the gangly shape of an odd dark-haired young girl. Given the position the mouse had been in, the sudden extra size and weight caused her to tumble head-over-heels ungracefully, landing flat on her back with a soft thud on the earth. Unfazed, she gave a giggle that only slightly referenced a mouse's squeak, and scrambled to her feet.

"This one challenges you." End said, "If she wins, you will swallow the light of your glory and sit among the people you mean to lead to their deaths. You will listen to them without speaking, and you will learn from them without teaching. You will look at each and every face and remember them. And in your stead, this girl shall light the sky."

The Sun grinned, but it was all arrogance and no warmth. "You don't- it wouldn't-... She couldn't possibly- I mean-" he began, but the Moon cut him off. "Not forever. I'll just hang out for a bit, and when you feel like you need to come back up here and shine, you can shine all you want. I just wanna have a little fun is all."

Several of the Sun's hands shook in the air, casually, dismissing her. "Fine. I shall burn the fight from you as I did the other stars, and you will kneel as the rest do. If you survive. Name the contest." A minute passed as the Moon considered, tugging absent-mindedly on a rope of her tangled hair. "Alright. I have one that's real quick. I used to play it with my friends when there was something that none of us wanted to do, but somebody had to do it. So someone would shout the game, and then everyone would go as fast as they could, and whoever was slowest would lose and have to do the thing we didn't want to do." she explained, as the Sun rolled a hand impatiently, trying to prompt her to get on with it.

"The game is shadow-tag. Whoever tags their shadow last loses."

Spoiler: The Second Challenge

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In the valley the Gods had made at the edge of the world, lush grass spread outward in all directions from their war-camp, its many bonfires and lamps quenched as each deity retreated to the safety and half-hearted darkness of their grandiose tents and makeshift caverns to rest, save one. She wore the face of a young maiden, gangly and oddly proportioned, as a child that has grown a lot in a short period of time, and not everything has had the time to catch up. Her dark hair was long, but had gone too far without a trim, so it grew unevenly and tangled itself into frizzy knots, appearing more mop than mane.

The north of the valley crested into an impressive hill, though the grass grew drier and more yellowed as it climbed, until the very peak was scorched black. On the hill sat the Sun, beneath a tree that had been bleached white and stripped of its brittle leaves. Slowly, the girl stumbled her way up the hill, lanky legs and poor posture fighting the steep incline as best they could. When she had finally reached the top, she collapsed behind the sun with a labored exhalation, casting a dark shadow upon the camp below. It was several moments before she could speak.

"I can see that big brain going a mile a minute. Working on something useful I hope." she said. It would've sounded confident, even a little cheeky, if her voice hadn't cracked mid-sentence. All of the Sun's hands were pressed against one another as he sat cross-legged, outwardly peaceful, meditative. His stance didn't change, but he deigned to speak. "Tomorrow we do battle. I am certain that I shall win, though I am as yet uncertain as to the path that will lead me to victory. Our foes are many, and though I am undefeatable, it would seem that no scarcity of their number claims a similar title. What is it that happens when two unstoppable forces meet one another?"

The girl laughed derisively, though it came out warmer and less mocking than she'd meant. "I was hoping to find an answer." said the Sun, when she'd finished. "That is my answer. Here, c'mon-" she placed a hand under two of the Sun's arms, and pulled. Ten thousand of her could not have moved him, but he rose at her behest nonetheless. "I know what you need. Lets have a competition. It'll be fun, and it'll help clear your head."

The Sun's stern expression tilted into the slightest grimace. "The last time I accepted a challenge from you, I let you name the contest. I've never felt so humiliated." The girl launched into a fit of involuntary giggles at the memory, "But you learned a lesson!" she guffawed through shallow breaths. The Sun waited for her to calm herself before continuing. "I do not like learning from you." he said with a simple yet firm note of finality as he turned from her. Any god would have known their place, and left him. She stayed. "You can pick the contest this time. If you win, I won't challenge you anymore. I mean, your authority and so on. You lead, I follow. End of story." The Sun tucked a few hands to his chin. "And if you should win?" he questioned.

The Moon smiled. "If the contest is your choice, I won't win. So it doesn't matter." She was beaming from ear to ear with each word. It filled the Sun with enough dread that he almost declined. "Fine." With a pair of hands, he grasped two small stones from the hillside. With another few sets, he tore branches from the white tree at his side, and sheared them smooth, bending and fashioning them into a pair of identical bows, each with one bleached arrow. He handed a bow, an arrow, and a stone to the Moon. "The contest is archery. I will place my stone, and you will try to shoot it. Then, you will place your stone, and I will try to shoot it. If I hit and you miss, you lose. If I miss, and you hit, I lose." he said, a subdued smugness in each word. The Moon merely nodded. She couldn't lift her bow off the ground.

With perfect poise and a perfect toss, the Sun sent his stone hurtling through space, over the hills and valleys, out into the cosmic chaos between the floating titanic planetoids. It sailed until it struck a sleeping monster, many hundreds of thousands of miles away, and embedded itself into its thick hide. "There. A simple shot. I could do it blindfolded." The Sun wasn't lying. "Aiming with my feet." His grimace turned up into a slight smile of self-satisfaction. The Moon slung her arrow over her shoulder, and heaved with all her might, sending it tumbling down the hillside into a patch of mud at the bottom. The Sun let out a bark of laughter. "You really aren't any good at playing other peoples' games. Now, trust me, there is no place in the whole of this universe that my arrow cannot find. Toss your stone in a river, bury it in the ground, hurl it into the sky. I don't much care." With a motion that was intensely practiced to appear as if it were the utmost casual, he raised his massive bow with one hand, and knocked his arrow with another.

The Moon's smile briefly subsided as she opened her mouth and swallowed the stone, but resurfaced shortly after. With a little bounce, she turned to face away from him. It was quiet enough that she could hear the Sun's blood boiling. "What? Go ahead. Shoot your own ally, an unarmed little girl, in the back. Should be the easiest target you've ever had." The end of her sentence was punctuated by the baritone twang of a massive bowstring. The arrow flew wildly to the left, uprooting a thicket of trees a few thousand yards in the distance. The Sun's light flickered and dimmed, even as his body seethed with a halo of angry fire. The Moon just laughed, and started to make her way back down the hill. "Meditate on that, dummy, and maybe we'll survive tomorrow. Unstoppable force my ass. Now... I'm off to go put flowers in Moradin's beard while he's asleep."

[Xefas]

My Imgur album also has some bits of story in it. I actually can't recall if I posted any stories deep in the bowels of the Teramach or Olethrofex threads. It's hard to look for, since I probably put them in spoiler tags if I did. ._.

I'm almost certain that, somewhere in the Mythos discussion thread (potentially several somewheres), there is information on the Empyrean. A story about Design is also hidden in the Titans thread.

[Primal Fury]

Oh shoot. I forgot about the Titan thread too.

Let me know if you find that stuff Xefas, as I wouldn't know where to begin to look.