In the beginning, all was bright.
A pure, brilliant white, from edge to edge and top to bottom, from one corner of the universe to the other and back again.
All was bright. All was energy. All was one, and the universe slumbered.
Such was the way for ten billion years, though time was yet to be invented. There was no happiness, and no sadness. No suffering, and no prosperity. Only the white void, which did not cast judgement, did not observe the sins of others, did not snatch its wonders away; for there was no-one else.
A questioning crack appeared. A black tear, infinitesimally small, inconsequential against the unending light.
Slowly at first, ever so slowly, in poured Ihlomet through the crack, slowly and then quickly, flowing in an unstoppable rage. Ihlomet the herald, bringing with him the four riders. Brightsun breathed in the light, swallowing it whole, becoming a breaching inferno that threatened the end of everything. Frostfield counselled Brightsun, subduing her fire, compounding it into a single point that became the sun. Verdant used the concentrated energy to give birth to life, which flourished and spread far and wide. Ihlomet saw the danger and commanded Leafless to bring death and entropy, such that there would be balance.
Having completed his work, the herald Ihlomet withdrew. The white void now become black, its light confined to the sun, the way was open for the arrival of Unihex.
The Creator of Space and Time wielded the sword of Palin, using the blade to slice at the sun once, twice, thrice, a thousand times, a million cuts, over and over, its energy cast out into the abyss, until the black void was illuminated once more, now by the speckling of fresh stars.
Unihex held the smaller stars in their hand, cooling them until they became rock and earth. They blew on the pebbles, scattering them across space. Upon the rocks hopped and skipped the Tiny God, Paf, carving the mountains and the valleys, the rivers and the seas, from the tallest cliff to the tiniest grain of sand.
Where life once roamed untethered across the skies, it now flocked to the planets. Glaicius, Lord of Liars, placed his hand upon each living creature and gave unto them his essence. To some he gave only a little: the beasts and the trees. To the sea people and the koth he gave more. To the aen’fa he gave everything, and we were one with the stars.
The four gods shepherded their creations and all was well. The bright light shone within every being. Unihex looked upon what they had accomplished and was satisfied. No longer having use for the blade of Palin, it was plunged into the very earth itself, almost to the hilt, and became The Peak. Unihex sleeps near his sword and will wield it again should the universe have a need.
The secret god, Paf, walked among people as one of them, delivering small miracles to those worthy. Glaicius remained to whisper in the ears of those who would listen.
The harvest god, Ihlomet, was not yet done. Bringer of both fortune and disaster in equal measure, he was not satisfied and wanted more. He commanded Verdant to work the forges hotter and longer than ever before, and from the crucible was born the first human.
Bringing forth the Long Decline, the aen’fa’s energies were diminished, stolen from us by the usurper race, severing our ties to the soil and the air. Despite our pleadings and our faith and our protestations, Ihlomet withdrew and remained unknowable. Glaicius promised aid, but the Lord of Liars deals only in illusion. Paf concerns himself with smaller matters. And Unihex rests.
We await the return of the gods, for that will be the time of blood and toil and reckoning.
3202 Frostfall.
On the road south.
“Wow,” Lola said, turning the page, “this is intense.”
Daryla smiled, rocking back and forth as the caravan continued along the mud-strewn road, rain thumping on the canvas roof. “I did say it would interest you.”
“Right, but I’ve never read about any of this. I’ve heard of the Palinese gods, but none of this was taught at school, and it’s not in any books I’ve read back on Mid-Earth.”
Slava was slumped back on the bench, her eyes half-closed. “That’s because it’s an aen’fa text. You’ll only have read the stuff approved by the university in Bruglia. They’ve done very well out of being the gatekeepers of the primary portal.”
Nodding, Lola flicked back through the pages of the book. “There are elements here that are quite common in creation myths back on Mid-Earth.”
“Myths, eh?” Slava said, raising an eyebrow and opening her eyes. “Don’t be saying that around any aen’fa you meet."
“Right,” Lola said, “but this isn’t literal.”
“Didn’t your department have dealings with Glaicius and Paf on Mid-Earth earlier this year?” Daryla was enjoying watching Lola’s mind expand before her eyes. The journey had been quiet, uneventful, and exactly what they needed after the rough passage through the Bruglian Wastes. The temperature was already warming as they headed south and the rain had arrived, turning the roads to sludge. She pulled back the tarpaulin from the side of the caravan and leaned her head out. Rain was a luxury they couldn’t afford back in Bruglia. It was always the thing she most looked forward to when leaving the city, whether she was travelling through the portal to London or across the continent. The wet haze that lay across the fields was unimaginable to anyone who had lived their life in Bruglia. Even as someone who had been fortunate to travel extensively, the joy she felt had never diminished.
“Clarke did mention something, but I assumed it was impersonators. I mean, even if there are real figures in history, or even still around, they’re not actual gods, right? They’re going to be highly skilled wielders. Maybe they can do things nobody else can do.”
“Heathen,” said Slava, closing her eyes again.
“Well, what about you two?” Lola said. “Are you believers?”
“I believe in magic,” Daryla said, pulling her now-soaked head back inside.
“That’s different,” Lola said. “You can actually do magic here.”
“But you can’t on your world.”
“I know that. What’s that got to do with anything?”
“When the portals first opened, some people thought our magic might leak away. That we’d lose the ability to wield.”
“Like what happened to the aen’fa?”
“I thought you said you didn’t think it was a true story?”
“Whatever.”
“Some had a crisis of faith: the gods clearly did not exist on Mid-Earth. Nobody had heard of them. There was no wielding. Perhaps we’d been mistaken all along? Others looked at it the other way around: that we were clearly superior. That the gods chose to bestow us — and only us — with these gifts.”
Lola put the book down and crossed her arms. “But what do you think? Stop talking in generalisations.”
“I tend to think of wielding as more of a science,” Daryla said, with a slight shrug. “I take my energy from light. That much is certain. But Paf exists. I’ve seen him. Whether he is a god or not I have no idea — but if he is, as the weak god, the Tiny God, he’s my patron. I’m a micrologist. I’m not going to risk not believing.”
“Ah!” Lola cried, “this is all so exciting and weird. No offence. How long until we stop for the night?”
“At least another three hours until we reach the next town.”
“Oh, good,” Lola said. “Lots of time to do more reading.”
Thanks for reading.
I read a quarterly magazine called Delayed Gratification, thanks to a tip from Elle Griffin. It’s the news, but drastically slowed down. As such, I’m currently reading about events from the start of the year. It allows for the writers to see the real consequences of major world events, with their coverage being far more informative as a result.
There was also this, which I thought was worth sharing:
I have so many questions.
Talking of questions, the unstoppable Sarah Fay interviewed Substack co-founder Hamish McKenzie. The inscrutable nature of many leaders in tech is one of the industry’s many problems, given the outsized impact they have on culture and society. It’s somewhat reassuring therefore to hear the motivations behind what McKenzie is up to:
This was obviously a conversation from someone who is a mega-fan of what Substack is doing. Something I’d like to see is an interview with Hamish and Chris Best that gets into the deep complexities of content moderation, safety and censorship, from someone who is able to dig into the nuances and subtleties. The ‘debate’ always seems to be led by people with fixed agendas and quite basic viewpoints: free speech maximalists, or pious virtue signallers, neither of which are useful starting points. It’s a fiendishly awkward thing to untangle, and is too often reduced to a my side-your side dichotomy.
Anyway.
On Wednesday I delivered a workshop for a group of 14-17 year olds at the National Centre for Writing. They’ve embarked on a year-long programme to upskill them as writers and in their understanding of the literature scene. As tends to be the case whenever I get the privilege to teach young people, I came away from the event with a great sense of hope for the future. They were a talented, friendly, witty bunch.
I was talking to them about publishing online and the newsletter game, as well as world building. An interesting combo! I’m sure some of the material will work its way into this newsletter sooner rather than later.
This week I stumbled on an interesting essay from Luke T. Harrington:
It’s talking about Marvel and Star Wars, of course, but explores an angle I’ve not read much about previously. Rather than getting into the weeds of whether the individual movies and TV shows are any good, which is subjective and a little pointless, Luke instead takes a longer entropic view, in which the collapse (or the ebb-and-flow) of long-running franchises is largely inevitable through no particular fault of their own.
TL;DR: I should probably wrap up Tales from the Triverse before my readership hits a generational shift. 🙄
Author notes
Did you enjoy the fade-to-white at the top of today’s newsletter? I thought it would be fun to play with the usual formatting. How well that worked might depend a little whether you read in the Substack app or via email, but hopefully it gave you a moment of surprise/confusion.
It’s a very loose reference to an old issue of the 1980s Transformers comic that I read when I was about 11, and which always stuck with me. The comic always started with a big, colourful ‘previously on’ page, info about the writers and artists and so on. Until this particular issue, which opened like this:
To an 11 year old who liked to follow the rules, this was DANGEROUS and CONTROVERSIAL. How dare they mess with the weekly formula!
This was the only time they did this gag, which made it memorable and highly effective. Today’s white-out opening is my little homage to Simon Furman and Andy Wildman’s work back in the early-90s.
TALKING OF WHICH, I just this second discovered that Furman and Wildman have a new podcast. Haven’t listened yet, but you can bet I will be ASAP.
Back to ‘In the beginning’, then. This chapter grew out of me messing up my writing schedule this week and deciding to switch to a bonus episode. The hardest thing about writing Triverse is keeping track of plot events, so bonus episodes can sometimes be handy as they tend to sit apart from everything else. At which point, I thought it’d be fun to bring in a creation myth for Palinor, as told by the aen’fa.
I mean, why not?
There are bits and pieces in here that have been mentioned previously, and obviously we had Paf and Glaicius show up in the ‘Immortality’ storyline. In that case, they were on Mid-Earth and stripped of any powers they may or may not have. Whether you believe the aen’fa texts or not, I’ll leave up to you.
Linking the creation myth back to Lola’s flashback storyline was a last minute addition that I thought would be fun. We’ll pick up Lola’s Big Flashback Adventure next week.
Thanks!
aen'fa creation myth was NOT on my Triverse Bingo Card.
Yeah, I said "myth." Just because your Gods happen to be real doesn't mean they didn't brag themselves up a bit - or a lot. It was either Douglas Adams, or Terry Pratchett who once wrote (paraphrased) "The Gods came into existence in the first millisecond after the creation of the Universe, and not, as they usually claimed, the week before."
Now - before you cut to the scene with Lola, Daryla, and Slava, I really sat up when the narrative dropped a "we" into, what beforehand, had seemed third-party narration. As a Bonus Chapter, I thought you had decided to really break your own format and do an entire chapter in first-person, and had quite cleverly eased into that*.
As it is...um... Well, damn, learning the aen'fa have resentment of humans baked into their religion is a pretty significant cultural detail. It recontextualizes prior storylines. How GALLING it must have been for aen'fa refugees to flee the oppressors who leached away their power to a universe where these same human dominate - without magic! How desperate they really must have been to move to this new world. How humiliating it had to be to, yet again, be treated as second-class. You just set up the "War of the aen'fa" you're never going to write. Nice work!
*At least the switch back to third person was apparent. Last week I read a Jack McDevitt novella where a third party narrative suddenly dropped a "we" in the the middle of a description, making the entire thing first-person. Except the narrator never got a name, a line, a character referring to them, a scene where the narrator performed an action, had a life or seemed to actually exist, and I spent the rest of the story wondering who the narrator was until I finally came to the conclusion the "we" had to be an error that slipped past proofreading. Point being, it was DISTRACTING.
Your "we" was INTRIGUING, and, of course, resolved as the voice of the author of the book Lola was reading.
I also have questions re: the pig.
Now I want to hear the koth version of events. Bet that's fun.
So aen'fa are responsible for the season names on Palinor? Fascinating. Also, I wonder if the sword of Palin is going to show up later in this series. Chekov's Blade, if you will.