The Heavenspear's War

Extinction

As long as there is attachment to things that are unstable, unreliable, changing and impermanent, there will be suffering – when they change, when they cease to be what we want them to be.   (...)   If craving is the cause of suffering, then the cessation of suffering will surely follow from the complete fading away and ceasing of that very craving: its abandoning, relinquishing, releasing, letting go.   — Rupert Gethin, On The Four Noble Truths

The Heavenspear’s War is an ancient, semi-mythical, and still technically unresolved extraplanar conflict. It was incited millions of years ago when, following the Supplication of Loke, a handful of the supreme bodies who did not pull their weight were deemed impure and spurned by the rest. Or perhaps they incited the war because Loke's body was inhospitable to their ideal form. Loke Herself was originally content to let them keep living, but Her elemental constituents were not favourable to them. Resentment grew and grew. Eventually things came to a head. And so a war began.   Upon Loke’s vast being the Isvara resurrected their great Titans and Godheads and once again broke their Aspects into finer abstractions of themselves. They reared new beings too, designed just for this fight; unimaginable horrors that have never been seen since. The battles were immensely viscous and destructive. The power of the Isvara had only been directed outwardly before, at the Storm and the Maw. Now, an internal struggle of such magnitude threatened to tear creation apart.   In this time, four Ishvara stood up and made immense sacrifices, a word of honour and devotion towards protecting Loke. They formed their souls into what are now the Great Astras: The Sun, The Spear, The Moon, and The Ring. Between them they brought light, stability, protection, and eternal life to the denizens of the world who fought on their side. This forced Loke's hand in the war. She had been determined to remain impartial; but now She unleashed the force of Her holy dragons upon her supplicant’s enemies.   Much of that time is lost. No one can say how long it took, but suffice to say: The combined efforts of the pure and godly Ishvara were enough to drive the corrupt and demonic Rasamāla away, forcing them to recess. But where could they go? There was no longer a place for them in the world. They sunk and hid and wormed their way into Loke’s divine flesh.   The Rasamala rotted in the wounds of the world and drastic action was needed. Loke was sick. Animals died. Plants would not grow. The Air was still. Rocks crumbled at a touch. The water, stagnant. The great fires in Her belly were erratic, and she sweated the surface world into an ice age. Naru, The Great-Grandfather, knew that drastic action was required. He wanted to cast them into oblivion and let them suffer the true death. It said that he persuaded Loke to take The Heavenspear and split the world: To cleave the earth from the sky. Three others helped him, those who had also tried to remain impartial until this point, they formed foundation pillars, cities, and palaces. Naru would hold on to Her, and form in himself a new body, a haven for them all.   And so The Spider Beyond The World span the Queen Of All-Reality in a cocoon of empyrean silk, and clung to Her from the firmament. She pulled the Spear towards her omphalos then, and fire and white hot metal spilled from her guts. Convulsing from pain, the earth shook and burned with fever for a thousand years. Those scars can still be seen to this day, the crater forms a the continent of Yoljana and the Orobos sea around it.   They watched Her burn from Heaven. And the fourteen Isvara were surely victorious, for their enemies died and they died: In that Divine Conflagration of Exile, they were cast from the world and the Maw widened to devour them. It is no longer known how many of them chose that death: The true death.   Life on the surface recovered, as it always does. But perhaps that same stubbornness is life’s most potent trait; a few Rasamāla chose a different path too: As Loke Herself had done before them so very long ago; they clung together. At the same time that Heaven was born and the world became finite, the Hell That Hangs To The Void was unborn: Their bodies collapsed onto one another, entombed in a cyclopean superposition. Their minds merged and their new moribund consciousness fabricated that chthonic place which spirals around the periphery of eternal damnation.   Thus, time as we know it began. This is the state of play: Loke, Whose Body Is Earth, is cradled by the thousand-thousand limbs of Naru, Whose Body Is Heaven. They rest now. But should She uncoil Herself, or He lose His grip, the universe will surely cease.