All-Things and the Foundation
Before anything, before time and All-Things, before Nightmares and strife, and far before the Veil sheltered us, the Foundation stretched across nothing. Roiling, blissful nonexistence cradled a nothingness so alien that it makes the wisest witch weep to fail to comprehend the smallest breadth of its emptiness. But the Foundation could not abide slumberous dormancy, though it did not know it, being nothing. So instead of nothing, it became something, and as something is wont to do when surrounded by infinite nothing, it became All-Things, yet unknowing. No time, at all, passed.
No words can describe the breadth of existence that passed in All-Things unconscious state. Words like "millennia," bound as they are to mortal concepts of definite time, do not and can not suffice. Would that I could describe to you the mere inkling of existence' passage, but with my petty ability to craft a story, all I can tell you is this:
For untold existence, with no material conception of the passage of time, All-Things, at its base the Foundation, laid fallow and bare, an absurd grey everything.
Then, for a moment, a blink against an endless backdrop of existence, a glimmer of consciousness.
With consciousness came time, though much unlike how we understand it. You see, in these ages, time was as a spiral, forever twisting and turning, seeming to change and move but ever locked in the same eternal loop. The aggregate of all occurred at once, to be perceived as a flat point in space time, existence weaving itself together into one tapestry of experience, All-Things simultaneously a wasteland and a vibrant world, everything and nothing, all at once.
But at last, in the vastness of All-Things, a glint of the Foundation questioned what it was, and in the enormity of such an occasion, awoke. It found itself alone, All-Things stretching out around them, a barren wasteland of infinite possibility, but before they had properly considered the implications of their consciousness, they were not alone. Others, all waking dreams of the hypnagogic Foundation, found themselves among All-Things, cast out of the Foundation, even as they were a part of its great expanse. They were not idle. Without purpose or clarity, they set out to shape All-Things in their manner; a peregrine world, with no detachment of the material and transcendental, which subjects to the curious mind a sensation not unlike the mixing of oil and water. But think not of this time and place as a thing of beauty and wonder, for these drippings of the Foundation were without fantasy, and their world was without purpose or meaning, a liminal space that took on more the characteristics of a prison than a canvas. Yet, despite their unlimited capacity, they had not the means to change their perception of All-Things.
And time passed.
Cultural Reception
This, the story of the creation of All-Things, is one of the most important tales in the oral tradition of the Liasnyks of northeastern Jideran. It is the basis for many of their beliefs, and all other stories stem from this one. Many other cultures have a tale similar to this, though details and beats change here and there.
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