Chapter 8 - A New Enemy, an Old Enemy

We were stunned. Stunned that anyone had managed to survive on that desolate, frozen wasteland above us, stunned at what these Asmodians had been turned into. Quickly we mobilised our legions, and prepared for war.

Aion had a further test for our resolve, though, as a third stable portal opened and brought forth a horror we hoped to never see again - the Balaur. Quickly they consolidated their forces, summoning the Krall and Mau back to their side, as well as forcing other weaker races into submission. Their fury was greater than ever before, and it is us who now bear the brunt of their anger.

We shall endure. We Elyos are the light of a new dawn, and the promise of a better tomorrow. We are life, and the joy of life; and more, we are the mail-clad fist that would strike down those who seek to extinguish our light.

Even so, there is not one of us, from the least to the greatest, who has not suffered from doubts. Were we truly favoured by Aion? Are our leaders honest and wise? Will our great mission, to bring all lands under the enlightened and civilizing governance of the Elyos, ever succeed? Are we truly any better than the monsters we oppose? And the deepest, most treacherous doubt of all: are we in the right?

These pangs of the soul cannot be assuaged by thought and debate. They require an appeal to the spirit. A legend, very old now – possibly dating back to the Epic Cataclysm - tells of a young Elyos who was wracked by doubts, and prayed to the Lady Ariel for guidance. Appearing to him in a vision of the gentlest glory, she laid her hand upon his shoulder and spoke three simple words:

‘Faith and arms.’

Let those young Elyos who read my words take heed. Do not argue, do not fret: take up arms in the name of the Seraphim Lords, and strike! When we march together, our Legions shining bright as burnished steel, and the love of our Lady filling our hearts, then all doubts vanish with the morning dew.

Faith alone is admirable piety, true, but the Elyos refuse to be passive martyrs. Martial might alone, untempered by the guidance of the higher powers, decays to the mere brutality of the Asmodians, and the spear-shaking games of petty warlords. But faith and arms together, joined in the sacred troth of Elysea, have the power to preserve our noble vision and seal the promise of a better future for all.

We owe that much to those who have gone before. Our world, this land in which we live, was given the slightest and most fragile of lifelines by Siel and Israphel. We believed that this lifeline would sustain us, allow us the opportunity to savour and enjoy our victory over the Asmodian fiends that once dared to call us our brothers. However, that all changed, when we learned, completely by accident, of something terrifying…

Atreia is dying. Our world bleeds Aether continually through the grand Abyss, and unless this bleed is controlled, stemmed, then this life source will be exhausted. Our world, only held together by Siel and Israphel’s final sacrificial act, will simply fall apart, and the empty halves which once made this great planet will drift through space forever. All that lives here will be extinguished in the blink of an eye, and all that we have achieved, all that we have worked for, will be lost.

Panicked, our priests and our theorists began researching possible solutions. It was only then that we found a solution.

The Abyss is an echo of the great Tower of Eternity that once stood in the midst of our world. It exists only because of the immense arcane forces that still resonate between the two tower stumps… a field of unnatural energy, like that which would arise between the poles of a titanic magnet. Were we to destroy the Asmodian Tower of Darkness, that field would collapse, closing the Abyss forever. Not only would we finally rid this world of their dark and ugly scar, we would save our world from destruction, and deliver our people to the eternal paradise granted to us by Aion!

This is our final test, our final hurdle before we are able to reap our reward. We must destroy the Asmodians and their pathetic world: we must save Atreia.

Faith and arms!

- Rafaela Semperti.