The Primordial Record

The silence in the obsidian prison he had built to shelter his mind was now different. It was no longer an endless, stagnant pool, but the held breath before a thunderclap. The chains of will that bound Telmus, once thrumming with corrosive energy, now felt like faint, decaying threads.

He could feel the edges of his own body, a distant, forgotten sensation like a limb waking from sleep. Telmus had not been aware when this sensation began, but he knew that after he mastered his Destiny and went further, his soul began to yearn for the touch of his flesh, and this connection was silently made.

Across from him, Xylos, the Primordial Demon, had not taken its form as a serpent or a shrouded man. It was a simple, humanoid shape of shifting smoke and embers, its star-eyes dim. Their debate, their millennia of discourse, had reached its inevitable conclusion. The terms were set.

"The contract nears its fulfillment, Telmus." Xylos's voice was not a grind of continents, but a soft sigh of wind over ash. "The Confluence is upon us. A true monster has arisen among us that can be considered one of my kin who chose to wear a singular, monstrous form rather than exist as a pure concept. He has breached the veils of Reality, and his hunger for vengeance will unmake the stars your people cherish. There is no right or wrong in the battle that is to come, only survival."

Telmus opened his eyes. His long white hair, a spectral banner in the non-space, seemed to catch a light that wasn't there. His onyx skin, a testament to the sun-baked cliffs of his homeland, felt solid, real. He was remembering what it was to have substance.

"And the wager stands," Telmus stated, his voice firm, no longer the weary rasp of a prisoner.

"It does," Xylos confirmed. "You may step out of this cage. You may wield the power we have forged in this debate—your will, my essence, intertwined. Face the beast they call 'The Desolator, the Last Epoch… the Creator.' Victory grants you freedom. Our bond severs. I will be… diminished, but you will walk the world again, whole." The embers of its form flickered. "Defeat means your body and soul become mine utterly. A permanent vessel. A true ending to your story."

Telmus rose. The obsidian floor, for the first time, felt cold beneath his feet. "I am ready."

"Then you must prepare," Xylos said. "You have one chance to look upon what you fight for. One chance to say goodbye. The arena awaits."

A door of light, painful and pure, irised open in the darkness of Telmus's mind. Through it, he could feel the pull of his physical form, a heavy, anchor-like presence he had not felt in an age.

Not just his physical form, he could feel the call of his home, a place that should have been lost to him, and Telmus no longer fought the pull of his flesh. His prison shattered into obsidian Shards, and the slayer of divinity was free.

®

The world returned in a riot of sensation.

The first was pain—a deep, bone-deep ache of a body held in stasis for eons. The second was smell. The faint scent of polish, of sun-warmed stone, and the fainter, sweet smell of fresh sunblossoms laid at his feet.

Ah…. He could smell the Askhor Plains of Trion… his home.

He was standing.

Telmus, the Godslayer, drew a breath. It was a ragged, shocking thing, the air scraping down a dry throat, expanding lungs that had been still for generations. His eyes, wide and unblinking, adjusted to the soft light filtering through the arched windows of a temple, and he noticed that his body had frozen into stone.

His Will commanded his flesh, and his head jerked a bit to the left, causing a loud cracking sound as if a mountain had been suddenly split apart.

Before him, a young woman with hair the color of wheat gasped, her hand flying to her mouth. The basket of sunblossoms she'd been placing at the statue's marble feet tumbled, scattering golden petals across the floor. She stared up at the living legend, her eyes wide with terror and awe.

Telmus ignored her. His gaze was fixed on his own hands. They were not marble. They were his hands, black-skinned and scarred, the hands that had held a sword, that had touched a lover's face. He flexed his fingers, feeling tendons creak and muscles scream in protest.

He took a step. The sound of his bare foot on the cool stone floor was the loudest sound in the universe. The woman scrambled back, but he passed her without a word, drawn like a magnet to the far walls of the temple.

There, in a mosaic of countless colored tiles, were his family and the engraving of his people.

Time had not been kind to his memory. The faces were sharper, more real than any reconstruction in his mind-cage. His mother was not the dismissive avoidant that Xylos had described, but a woman with sharp eyes and a weary smile.

She stood beside his wife, whose arm was around Telmus's daughter—her face a beacon of fierce love and intelligence. His wife was laughing, her hair a wild cascade, and her grin infectious.

He reached out a trembling hand, but stopped short of touching the cool tiles. He had no right. He had been absent. A story they told, a statue they polished. Not a lover, not a father.

"They are all gone, you know, but she remains out there in the upper realms."

The voice was old, cracked with age. Telmus turned. An ancient man, leaning on a gnarled staff, stood by the doorway. His eyes, milky with cataracts, seemed to see right through him.

"The Trion that you see is a new one, recreated by an unknown power," the old man said. "But this temple, your temple, is real, brought forth from Trion before its destruction by the being you are about to battle, and he also spared your people, and they chose to remain by your temple instead of leaving with him. Your daughter has been here for a while; she visits, but your wife…"

Telmus's throat tightened. "She is gone?"

"One hundred thousand years ago… she remained longer than any Earth God had the right to live, she never took another husband." The old man nodded. "But her family line remains. They live in the hills, where you were born. They are farmers. They are happy."

The news was a dagger and a balm. Grief, long suspended in the timeless prison of his mind, crashed down upon him. Seri was dust. But she had lived. She had built. She had continued the story.

He had not fought for nothing; his people had not been butchered by the madness of the God King.

"Thank you," Telmus said, his voice rough with disuse and emotion.

The old man smiled, a network of wrinkles spreading across his face. "They said you would return when we needed you most. They said the Godslayer would awaken."

"I have not come to save you or to do anything noble; there are no right choices," Telmus said, the truth of his purpose settling on him like a mantle. "I have come to earn the right to walk among you again."

He turned from the mosaic, from the memories. The pain was a part of him now, fuel for the fire to come. He walked past the stunned young woman, out through the great bronze doors of the temple, and into the sun of a world he no longer knew.

The sky above the temple was tearing open.

Not with clouds or storms but with geometry. A colossal, shimmering hexagon of impossible light was forming, its edges bleeding colors that had no name. From within its center, a pathway of solid light descended, touching the main plaza. An invitation. An entrance to the Arena.

In the distance, people screamed and fled. Or they fell to their knees, praying when the changes in the heavens entered their sight.

Telmus walked toward the light, effortlessly stepping into the air. His body, once a prison, now felt like a finely honed weapon. Every ache, every remembered smile, every scar was a whetstone sharpening his will.

Are you prepared, Telmus? Xylos's voice was in his mind, a familiar shadow.

"I am," he whispered to the air.

He stepped onto the pathway of light. It was solid, humming with immense power. It drew him upward, faster and faster, into the hexagon as all of Reality opened up before him.

The sensory overload of stepping into the Arena was instantaneous, but his powerful mind was able to compartmentalize it.

To his perception, the Arena was not a place of stone and mortar. It was an extra-dimensional amphitheater carved from nebulae and woven with the fabric of dying realities.

The "seats" were platforms of crystallized time, floating continents of molten gold, and shifting clouds of conscious gas. The audience was a panorama of cosmic horror and sublime beauty.

Here, a being of pure fractal geometry clicked its crystalline segments in conversation with a swirling vortex of weeping eyes. There, an entity that was a living galaxy, its arms filled with spinning stars, observed with ancient patience.

Dragons whose scales were made of event horizons, phoenixes reborn in the hearts of supernovas, and things for which Telmus had no name, no reference—they were all here. Primordials. Eldritch gods. Concepts given form.

And they were all watching him.

In the center of the impossible arena was a flat, circular disc of pure white stone, a stark simplicity amidst the chaos. This was the stage.

Telmus landed upon it softly. The air thrummed with the silent attention of a trillion alien minds. He felt their gazes like physical pressure, assessing, curious, hungry. He was a novelty because his control over his power made him appear mortal, yet he was acting as a lynchpin from which this Era would turn.

He stood tall, his long white hair flowing in a non-existent solar wind, his black skin absorbing the strange light.

His eyes searched for only one person, and when he saw her white hair in the distance, Telmus smiled. His voice pierced through the Arena like lightning on a cloudless day.

"Little girl, your old man is here. Please tell me you brought wine, I have been drinking demon piss for an eternity."

A hush fell on the Arena.