Dark Beyond

All scholars know the story of the origin of our sphere and its planar adjuncts. What lies beyond? Again, the answer is known to all, even children. The Dark Beyond, home of creatures alien to our reality, whose very presence warps and twists existence. But then, what of the One? It who created our sphere? It must have come from the Dark Beyond. How did It start? What else is there?

The Gods refuse to speak of this topic. Experiments in reaching to the Beyond to ask its denizens questions ended badly. Who else might know? In desperation, consumed by this question, I turned to Leviathan. With my mightiest spells I transformed myself into Leviathan and listened to my own song. While most of the knowledge faded once I was returned to mortal shape, I will write what I remember.

Leviathan's Song

I remember the singing. We sang to ourself, for we are one but we are many. The deeps are not silent--they are filled with the slow, stately song of memory and of being. It echoes and is re-sung, layers of melody overlapping with itself, forming new song. This is the oldest song we sang:

Mother Dark lay dreaming;
Dreaming the endless dream.
Does She still dream?
In time without time?

Into the dream came a thought:
I am; I am ALONE.
What is it to be?
What is loneliness? 

If there is self,
There is other.
And so other came to be.
Children of the dreaming Dark.

Creators and Destroyers,
Darkness and Light.
Each making and unmaking with a thought.

ONE created nine, a world to shape:

Air to move,
Fire to burn,
Earth to stand still,
And Water to remember.

Life to create,
Death to bring peace,
Good to look outward,
Evil to take care of self.

Watching for the coming of the Nameless, bearing change.

The last four stanzas obviously reference the creation of our world, Quartus. I believe that the rest refer to the Dark Beyond. That space between universes must be a realm where thought shapes reality--somehow, that eternal silence of oneness was broken. If the One came forth, so must have others, each creating and destroying as they saw fit. Is this then what the stars are? pinpricks through the Barrier at the Edge of the crystal sphere, showing other creations? Angelic beacons, lighting the way in their endless war?