So we come again to another relaunching of Epic. This would be the third iteration, and I hope it's the last. I relaunched it the first time because the original was a shoddy work at best, and it took a really nasty flame for me to realize it. The second iteration started out awesome, but I started stealing ideas from it to go into a set of books I eventually want to write, and I took so much away from it that it died. I hope to finish this third iteration, and in contrast to the first and second iterations, I actually know how to write, and I'm not stealing from this story to write another story as I am using those stories to add depth to this one.

Did you understand a word of that?

Ok… long story short; I have every intention of finishing this, and I know what I'm doing. This prologue chapter is written in a sort of high-and-mighty manner because I want it to sound like something out of mythology, and all the chapters after this except for the epilogue will be in a more normal style of writing.

With that, I give you…

:: Epic ::

by

Seraph of Winters Past

Chapter Zero

:: The Beginning ::

It is a time before time, before the Sun and the Moon and the stars in Heaven. The Chaotic Forces have finally wrested control from the stagnant Orderly Powers and begun the new world in the image of Chaos. With this new age comes a new era, a shifting in the balance of the cosmos, for each era comes from the swinging of the cosmic scales from one side to another. Albion has triumphed over Avalon after many, many ages.

The six worlds that had been hurled together by the Six Avalons to protect against the wrath of the Great Spirit have been cracked apart and made into Four, escaping the singularity of Order which it now exploited. To complete the act and disband the threat of the Canon Gods of Order in their Avalons, The Laughing God of Chaos – the last and greatest of the Apocryphal Gods – did battle with them and triumphed where the Canon Gods of Chaos could not. He drove the Chaotic Sword through their hearts and shattered their souls, scattering their spirits to the winds in the ultimate blow to Order.

Some mistook him for a muse and others for a human. Those who truly know him call him Pénä, but he only calls himself the Laughing God of Chaos. He sometimes walks amongst the far places of the world as a patron of bards and jesters, disguising himself as one in his travels. Woe to he who would trespass against one of his favored people. As a Chaotic God, this humanly guise never lasts long. His true form is always shrouded in darkness when he resumes it, but the shadows laugh with him and that is the only thing which any agree on when describing the Laughing God of Chaos.

The Sun and the Moon and the Stars are in heaven and the waters have been drawn up to reveal dry land on Earth and Makai, and spirits now inhabit the worlds of torment and rapture and life walks on the Earth and Makai. Time has resumed again. The Laughing God of Chaos halted his laughter for the first time in five ages. Something sparkled in the sunlight as it passed behind the dark side of the Moon. He raced up a path of moonbeams and reached the moon. Once again he saw that which caught his eye. It had no definite shape or volume; it was like a broken mirror with a captive image locked inside. It flew around the moon towards the daylight and towards the Earth when it sensed him, but The Laughing God of Chaos caught it before it had gone far. He held it in his hand and tried to make sense of it.

An image from the mirror shard passed through his mind. He saw in that image a chandelier amongst a multitude of other chandeliers at the top of the world, with each arm holding a star. The world was an eternity below, and The Laughing God of Chaos knew it to be one of the Temples of Avalon. He knew this to be a memory; a part of one of the six Dead Gods he slew that had survived.

"Hah! Behold as I drive the Chaotic Sword into you once again and destroy you forever!" He shouted as he threw the memory into space. His sword came to his hand from an unspeakable place as impossible as the sword itself. So chaotic was the sword that it did not obey the laws of reality, and each segment of the sword was not attached to each other. The blade hovered above the hilt, and the pommel was a foot away from the butt of the hilt, and the cross-guard flew somewhere between the blade and the hit. He drove the sword through the memory in the next instant and it was gone.

This is why The Laughing God of Chaos did not laugh. He had destroyed the souls of the Canon Gods of Order who forced the worlds into singularity and so too did he think their memories were dead, and memories can be deadlier. Now this rogue memory had caught his eye, and when he turned his gaze to the Earth, he noticed a million more gleaming in the night, catching the light reflected off the Moon. He ran beyond the firmament bounding the four worlds to their places beneath Heaven and looked down on them from afar, and he saw many thousand thousands more embers in the dark.

Now do you notice how the Laughing God of Chaos cried out in rage? He now realized the devices of the enemy and how they would undo the effort of ages of strife.

The Laughing God of Chaos traveled to the stratum above the four worlds to the six Albions, home of the Canon Gods of Chaos, and told them of the coming menace. But the Canon Gods of Chaos and their servants feared the Laughing God of Chaos more than they feared the Dead Gods and they would not listen in their fear. And he entered the Avalons and appealed to the new Gods of Order who replaced the dead ones, but they too feared the Laughing God of Chaos and did not trust him as he was a being of Chaos, and they turned him away.

In all the worlds above the firmament he found only one ally, a mighty warrior of Order named Raziel who was banished to the worlds below the firmament forever as punishment for turning away from his God. And so the two went about the worlds destroying the memories of the dead gods wherever they were found, but for every one The Laughing God of Chaos drove his sword through or Raziel consumed in fire, another rose to take its place, elaborating on and dividing from another memory. Some of them came together and became living things.

It was not until enough time passed that the sentient beings of Earth and Makai began to resemble them in body and the sentient beings of the Reikai and the Netherworld began to resemble them in spirit that a solution came to them. And so they spent the next hundred-thousand years working to their ends to eliminate the Dead Gods of Order for every age and all eras. It would come to a head in the epoch where the strength of mortal men could rival the gods.