Darkness's ascendancy, as told by the Keel
Veer Tul, as all Syimlin, was once mortal.
He hailed from the Sendleba, an island chain off western Talin shores. He was the son of Sleeve fishers and farmers. Fishers and farmers, however, were not warriors, and another tribe, the Ba, declared war against them.
Veer's kith and kin were slaughtered. He led a handful of terrified strangers to the fishing boats, and they paddled to the mainland, where kindly priests at the Acceptance Temple took them in. The priests followed many Syimlin, and while the exiles did not favor any represented at the temple, Veer found himself drawn to the touch of Darkness. He felt the Dark when he thought of his family and the terror of their last moments. He felt the Dark when he mulled revenge. He felt the Dark when he despaired that his kith and kin would forever remain unrevenged, for he, as one, did not have the strength to conquer the conquerers.
His loneliness increased as those he fled with drifted from the temple, finding hope and life in the arms of their new home. They married, they bore children, they forgot their kith and kin but to remember them on a single day of ancestor worship.
But Veer could not forget. He could not push the remembrances of terror into the past, nor could he soar above the despair swallowing him. He lit candles to drive Darkness into the recesses of his small hut, into the niches in his soul, and prayed that his family, his friends, had found peace after their bloody deaths.
The wicks would burn low, and wink out in the dead of night. He would remain seated in front of the floor altar as Darkness engulfed him, a light touch at first, but more insistent as the days turned to yilsemma, and yilsemma turned to semma, and semma turned to years.
Even though Dark thoughts and Dark acts hovered at his fingertips, he found more of worth in a softer expression, that of grey shadows providing shade on hot days, or evening's touch slipping across the land as sunsets dimmed. He preferred the inbetween darkness of dawn and evening, the shadows created by flickering fires. He would sit and meditate during these times, letting the calmness infuse him, drown his darker desires.
Rezenarza, the Syimlin of Darkness, did not see this gentleness as reassuring, comforting. He saw a threat. He held the lightless Abyss as sacred. He preferred the darkest of caves, the moonless and starless nights, the darkest thoughts. That he drew Veer to him, and Veer rejected him, angered him. He wanted Veer to fall to the darkest rage, the darkest retaliation. That would honor him.
He grew increasingly angry at being rebuffed. It grew into obsession, and riding his resentment, Rezenarza confronted Veer, who sat alone in an evening-cooled glade, enjoying the change between day and night.
Veer welcomed the syimlin, and bowed his head in reverence.
Rezenarza asked him, "Why do you reject me?"
Veer answered, "I do not. Darkness calls, a sweet song."
"But you do not follow the darkest impulses," the Syimlin reminded him. "You pull back. If you embrace them, I will ride with you into glorious revenge."
The longed-for vengeance excited him but for a moment. The shadows had softened him, and his dark thought no longer consumed him. Veer shook his head. "The soft grey of Darkness may not be glorious, but those shadows comfort my soul. I find joy in them, not in revenge."
This angered Rezenarza. He formed a Dark shield about himself, which swallowed the light and the shadows, and prepared to end his defiant acolyte.
Veer had not trained in magic. He did not know how to battle a fierce deity using spells backed by the strength of a Syimlin's mantle. But he had spent years meditating in shadows, blending into their comfort. He melded with them, seeking to avoid a conflict. He respected Darkness and the comfort he brought, and did not see the insult in preferring a gentler existence.
The shadows welcomed him, and hid him from the Dark.
Rezenarza did not realize his foe had concealed himself. His opaque shield hid everything around him from his notice. His power burst outwards, consuming the glade and leaving ashes behind. He continued to pulse with Darkened power through the darkest of the night, destroying ever outward, and grew tired when the first grey fingers of dawn eclipsed black sky.
Rezenarza fell to his knees, letting his magic dissipate so he could view the remains of his enemy and the plants that lent him their shadows. He beheld an empty space before him. Confused, drained, he sagged.
Veer stepped from the dawn's grey touch, and the mantle of Darkness flowed from its bearer and into him. The power of syimlin magic preferred the calmer, cooler Darkness. and it switched hosts.
Veer stumbled back, uncertain and confused. The ex-Darkness raged and struggled to his feet, intent on commiting bloody violence to retrieve what he had just lost, but a wizened man appeared before him, hunched over a gnarled cane.
"Rezenarza," he chidded the ex-syimlin. "The mantles are Gifts from the Sun, and he decreed, if a syimlin abuses their charge, they will lose it. That is no secret." He tapped a dumbfounded Veer on the leg with his cane, and smiled a greeting before wisking him away to the Forest Temple, the place of after-death judgment.
"Welcome, Syimlin of Darkness," Old Man Death said as he granted Veer Tul the
Gift of Life.
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