Mimiradin and the Shadow

Since the beginning, humanity floundered against nature. In those first dark days, their struggle was at its harshest. They were beset by the weather, from winter snowstorms to scalding summer heat waves. The dark of night brought with it predators, plague and famine were commonplace. And yet, man survived. With miraculous intelligence and perseverance, humanity built shelter from the elements, and weapons to combat the predators of the night. What they could not overcome however, was the Shadow.  The Shadow had stalked the earth long before mankind, but it seemed to view them with an unrestrained malice. All it knew was hatred, but it was also cunning. It would devour those who wandered too far from their tribe, or leave them mangled and broken with darkness oozing out of their eyes, ears, and mouth. No predators went near the shadowtorn corpses. And man grew to fear the darkness.
Sometimes the Shadow would corrupt men. They would accept its black promises into their hearts, and become its children. These lost souls were called the Shadowsons. They were given power to triumph over normal men, and joined in the Shadow’s unrelenting war against humanity. At first the children of the Shadow were few, but their numbers grew until whole tribes were under its dark influence. The Shadow seized the central isle of Avalum with ease, and its black tendrils spread outward, across the waters and onto the mainlands.
The results of were catastrophic, not only for mankind, but also for the world. Wherever the Shadowsons treaded, life would flee. Vegetation rotted where the tribes of the Shadow settled, animals ran from the stench of their evil. And anytime they crossed paths with a tribe of men, they decimate them. It seemed as if the darkness would devour the entire world, until it and everything on it crumbled into dust. Nothing would’ve halted the Shadow’s dark advance had it not been for Mimiradin.
It was said the man who would become the First Lord came riding from the Endless Waters upon the back of a great white horse. He and his steed sailed through the Maw and into the Inland Sea. When the man landed on the shadowtorn isle of Avalum, the sea rose up and washed the isle clean of the Shadow’s taint. Those few men that had survived the dark emerged from hiding to find the isle restored. Under the swaying trees at the coast they found the man and his steed, and he announced himself as Mimiradin. He rallied the battered tribes and led them to a tall cliff overlooking the mouth of a large river. The man then closed his eyes, and with a slow raising gesture he summoned a city of stone around the riverbanks. With a smile, he turned to face the tribes of men, and spoke in a resolute voice.
“This is Av, and it shall be your home. Its walls will shield you from the primordial beasts that prowl the night, its spires shall stand as your sentinels, and everything within you may call your own, save the house at the head of the river. That is the only thing in Av that I will call mine.” And so the first city was born. The tribes became citizens of Av, and filled every facet pivotal to maintain the city as well as its people. One of the tribes became farmers, and took to the nutrient rich floodplains within the shadow of the walls. Another formed a militia, manning the spires and walls. And each tribe went to the house of Mimiradin each night to offer their wares and services to him, the Savior of the Isle. 
Mimiradin accepted their gifts grudgingly at first, wanting largely to be left alone. But as the years wore on, his heart softened, and he began to partake in the society he had helped to create. The tribes proclaimed him the First Lord, and the finest craftsman forged for him a crown of gold and jewels. It was soon discovered that he was a wise and fair ruler, and the tribes grew happily within the safety of his laws.
After his first year presiding over Av, Mimiradin took a wife named Cymae, and shared his great power with her. Like he, Cymae could perform miracles and exhibited his agelessness. She helped him govern over Av’s steadily growing population. In the years to come, they had seven children, all of which could also wield Mimiradin’s power. The eldest was Maemir, and she inherited her father’s wisdom. Knowing that she was best suited, Cymae groomed Maemir for the throne at Mimiradin’s House.  The future shined brightly for Av, but its light only served as a beacon for the Shadow. Bereft of its apparent victory on Avalum, the darkness brooded on the mainland across the inland sea. It set its hateful will on Av, and surged over the water like a thunderhead. It set its children in a siege upon the walls, and ruined the farmlands with its poisonous presence. Many of Av’s citizens were taken by the Shadow, devoured or torn, and blood wet the streets as gore rained from the blackened sky. The people of Av struggled fervently with the Shadowsons, but the enemy’s black magic was still too much for mere mortals. 
The walls became a storm of fire and lightning as Mimiradin’s family clashed with the Shadowsons. The minions of darkness buckled then bent against the force of Cymae’s thunderous will, then were driven back by the wrath of Maemir’s flames. The men of Av pressed the enemy with their blood and sinew. Still, the battle raged on. 
As the Shadow loomed overhead like a great storm, Mimiradin exerted his will upon it in turn. A ray of light blazed from his hand as brightly as the sun itself. Darkness and light toiled against each other. The Shadow writhed out of Mimiradin’s light, snaking its way through the sky like an eel. When it was finally struck, it came down to the earth before Mimiradin, coalescing into a being as dark as a moonless night, with horns and fangs that dripped with venom. The First Lord summoned to him a spear of sunlight, and did battle with the dark serpent.
Mimiradin suffered no wounds as he danced around the serpent’s strikes, even as the Shadow avoided his blazing spear. They were matched well, and were paired as the day and night, with one always slipping just beneath the horizon before the other had time to meet it. But finally, night became day as Mimiradin’s spear pierced the Shadow’s eye. The serpent shrieked as it dissolved before the light, melting away into nothing. The black clouds stopped their gory downpour and dispersed, allowing the sun to shine down upon the city once more. 
   The First Lord went to the walls, and crushed the Shadowsons with his ire. The Shadow had cost many their lives that day, and he was wroth. And just like that, the Shadow’s army was defeated. But although victory was achieved, there were not cries of celebration. For amid the numerous dead lay the Queen Cymae, and six of Mimiradin’s children. Only his daughter Maemir had survived the grueling struggle against the Shadowsons. Anger turned to melancholy as the First Lord saw to the burial of his family and people. The Mausoleum of Cymae was constructed right where the Queen had fallen, and all that partook in the battle were interred in its solemn marble passages. 
The First Lord stepped down from his throne that day, and Maemir took the crown. Mimiradin resolved to cross the Inland Sea, and destroy the Shadow in its lair, for he knew it hadn’t been truly defeated. With a heavy heart, he took to his horse and rode across the sea, never to be seen in Avalum again. In honor of him, the people changed the name of their city from Av to Avadin, and lived untouched by the Shadow. 
Mimiradin first went north, raising the cities of Ald and Tir for the tribes of men that survived the darkness. He took wives from each city, and his children bore his legacy as rulers. With the aid of these tribes of men and his children, he defeated the darkness again. Rather than destroy the Shadow there however, he locked them away in the stones beneath the earth, where they could never recuperate to plague mankind again.  Once he was done in the north, his steed took him eastward, where he founded the large city of Vul. The tribes there were numerous and the Shadow, weak. He locked the darkness away easily there, and yet again took wives and left them and his progeny to preside over the men there.  His horse rode south after that, and Mimiradin spread his bloodline all the way down the mainland while raising the cities of C’ereth, Yissa, and Pyx. By the time he had reached the southern reaches of the mainland, he had entombed the Shadow into thousands of stones. Still, the First Lord went farther. Beyond the charts and maps known by man. He was not seen from for centuries after. 
One day, Mimiradin returned to humanity, haggard and worn. He looked older, though in all his long years of fighting the Shadow, he had never aged. Upon the back of his steed, he rode to an uninhabited island in the southern parts of the Inland Sea, and built a sanctum there. His first child, Maemir visited him then, and asked if his battle with the Shadow had ended. 
“It is done,” he said. “And I must take my rest.”
Mimiradin wouldn’t see anyone else after his daughter, and in fact was never seen from again after that day. 
With the Shadow buried beneath the earth and the Shadowsons slain, humanity prospered. Kingdoms grew outward from the cities Mimiradin built, all ruled by the First Lord’s progeny.