Aethon Primordia's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Aethon Primordia came before the named gods, and now he was forgetting. He stood in a grove of moss-draped trees, the kind that wore old words on their bark. He needed to find where the slumbering elder spirit slept. Wake it, and the world would remember the old powers. But the resting place lived only in his memory, and his memory was leaking. His water had drifted far from him. When water went, so did the knowing. Each morning the location grew fainter, like a name on a stone worn by rain. He pressed his palm to a tree carved with running script. His icy emerald eyes showed him the cracks in everything, whether he wanted them or not. The bark split under his sight. Inside the crack he glimpsed a word he had set there himself, long ago. A direction. Half of it was already gone. He had hidden the answer in his own mind and hooked it to the trees. Now the hook was pulling loose. Aethon climbed a shining path that rose through clouds. At its top waited a cloudbound castle with golden pearl gates. Two angel guardians stood watch. They let him pass. He had come before all of this. On a soft cloud inside sat Divinus, who made everything that exists. Silver hair, long beard, a tired golden glow. His eyes were closed. "I need what I hid," Aethon said. "The place where the old one sleeps. You held a copy. I left it with you." Divinus did not open his eyes. "I have not rested in four centuries." "Then you remember." "I remember everything. That is the problem." Divinus opened his eyes. "You gave me the location. You made me swear to speak it only when your water left you. Your water has left you." Aethon felt the gap in himself widen. "Say it. While I can still act on it." Divinus studied the fading spirit before him. He saw the cracks too, in his own way. "Under the first well. The one your waters filled when the world was new. The elder sleeps below the water you lost." The words landed. Aethon knew the place now, cold and exact. The elder rested beneath the deep well, under the very element that was abandoning him. "That is the one part of the world I can no longer reach," Aethon said. "My water will not answer me there." "No," Divinus said. "It will not. You must go down without it." He closed his eyes again. "I told you once. I will not tell you twice." Aethon turned toward the pearl gates. He had the location at last, burned into him before the rest could slip. But to wake the elder, he had to descend into deep water. The one element that no longer obeyed him. The one that had taken his memory when it left. He stepped onto the glowing path and began the long walk down to the well.