The Death of the Serpent Yrilu - A Tragedy in Verse

This text is a long and rather meandering poem that purports to tell the tale of the death of the Yrilu, the Primordial Serpent of Time. It is the sole poetic work of Cordelia Alteas-Zaal, a scholar best known for her meticulously-plotted navigation charts of the Spire Isles. The introduction states that it is a dramatic retelling of a tale that she heard from a yuan-ti sailor in the port city of Duganzarekh, in the hegemonic territories of Parath .
It rapidly becomes self-evident why the author is far better known for her cartography than her poetry - but a few passages jump out as perhaps suggesting some deeper truth. The implication, if the tale is anything to go by, is that the goddess known in the Copper Isles as Aseru, Lady of Doors, slew the Primordial of Time upon his secret instruction, and then concealed herself beyond one of the Great Gates until the Paragons of Azoth sundered the godhead of the Azoth.

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The Death of the Serpent Yrilu - A Tragedy in Verse

"O my children of scale and of feather!
O my children of sword and of song!
By my will do I call you together,
By my will I command you along.
Now I hear the Black Iron Bell ringing
And unbarred is the Gate of the Five,
In my end shall be found no beginning;
No part of me shall death survive."

Thus spoke Yrilu the Great Serpent,
The Keeper of Aeonic Time.
Assembled before him, his children,
Called forth from the wave and the vine.
In his palace of sapphire and crystal,
In his great hall of ivory and horn,
Between moments prox’mal and distal,
There gathered his servants oath-sworn.

From the past where the suns are extinguished
Came the coiling Serpents of Dusk,
Of mind and of spirit distinguished
All perfumed with incense and musk.
From the future came ravenous ravens,
Grown fat on the carcass of years.
From their myriad Pylons and havens
The Sphinxes and Aeonic spheres.

(this continues for several pages, describing Yrilu’s many and varied elementals, agents, and servitors, most of which likely existed only in the author’s imagination)

Aseru, who walked in the darkness,
Met the gaze of her serpentine lord,
And her voice, with a terrible sharpness,
Spoke thus, as her grief she out-poured:

“O Father of Seconds and Minutes,
O Coiling Serpent of Years
O Lord of the Greatest Infinites,
Do you see not our blood-stained tears?
Our work in this world is unending,
Our purpose is not yet complete;
If ‘tis certain your death is impending,
Should we not with Fate now entreat?

The death of the Serpent of Ages
Would shatter the Palace of Time.
If true speak your prophets and sages,
Such surrender is surely a crime?”
And Yrilu gazed down to his daughter
And whispered these words in her mind:
“Think not me a lamb to this slaughter,
I am not to this fate resigned.

Might the wound ever follow the suture?
There is but one way to proceed
In the myriad strands of the future,
So That Which Approaches may recede.”
This he spoke with a voice soft as nightfall,
This he spoke with a voice soft as day.
Then roared he aloud, and most frightful:
“Who art thou, slave, my will to gainsay?

(there follows several pages of somewhat disjointed musings on predestination, before Aseru finally gets the hint that Yrilu wants her to publicly strike him down)

In an instant her path was made known to her,
In an instant her duty was clear.
With a cry she did lunge at her overlord,
And ran her god through with the spear.
And Yrilu collapsed and convulsed,
The light in his eyes growing dim
With a hiss he gazed up at Aseru:
“My daughter! My firstborn! My kin!

My curse upon you, O betrayer,
From the Aeons I cut you away,
To wander in time, O kinslayer,
Each linear night and each day.
I lay on you this dreadful burden:
The stain of this crime on your soul,
Deeds so hideous never were done!
You shall pay eternity’s toll!"

(Yrilu continues to bemoan his fate for seven more pages, before eventually expiring. Aseru then spends another twelve pages angsting about having killed Yrilu, before accepting her exile outside of all creation)

So she threw herself into the ocean,
And swam down to the infinite deep.
She carried the light of devotion
That could wake all the dreamers from sleep.
And for five thousand years she swam further,
And for five thousand more did she sink,
And when ten thousand years had turned over
She did pierce the unfathomable ink.

And she passed through the Gate without question,
And she passed through the Gate without guile;
By her lord Yrilu’s intercession
She reached the unreachable Isle.
And the gateway she bolted behind her,
Set herself as a Watcher and Guard
The soul of her god burned inside her,
The passage was now sealed and barred.

Now the Gate it is sealed and Silent.
Now the Gate of Forever is locked.
And there stands Aseru, dark and violent,
To guard ‘til the door it is knocked.
And her god whispers one final notion,
Through the abysses dark, white and blue,
From the shores of the Great Astral Ocean
A vision of prophecy true:

When the Children of Earth, they lie dying,
When the Children of Earth are laid low,
And the gods close their ears to their crying,
Shall the Children their gods overthrow.
When they see that the yoke is upon them,
And the lash of divine discipline,
They shall at last rise up against them,
And punish the gods for their sin.

Now the chains of the children are breaking,
Now the dreamers awaken from sleep,
The pillars of earth they are shaking
A doorway thrown wide in the deep.
They quicken with each passing moment
Their hands reaching out across years
They race to that day so ill-omened
An end to their suffering and fears.

From darkness the children are rising;
And cursing tyrannical light
With machines of most awful devising,
Invoking All-Conquering Night.
And as their Great Wheel begins turning,
She opens the Gate of the Five.
The light of devotion still burning,
That a shard of her god might survive.

And the pillars do topple and tumble,
The Lady of Doors stands aside.
The purpose of life is to stumble,
The purpose of life is to strive.
And the voice of Yrilu shall echo:
"From my death shall I then be reborn,
And my end shall thus be my beginning:
Without nightfall, how can there be dawn?"

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Type

Text, Literary (Novel/Poetry)

Medium

Paper

Authoring Date

1240AK

Authors

• Cordelia Alteas-Zaal