Grays #21 - The Broken Weave

It is no secret that the Elderburn changed things.  It is a heavy heart to carry the burden of knowledge to antiquity and beyond, but this the lot I have thrown in with.

To leave magic to its ends is a folly and a farce.  We students of war and arcanum understand the order of things; injuries can be mended by faith, the gods exist as entities as real as each of us, and the laws of magic are forever maintained.  

But I felt the death of the Druids; eons of shepherds and timeless elemental law burned from the memory of the world.  I felt the shift; not a crack in the weave, but a flood.  The Font of Magic blown open; it entered the world without measure or tempo, and some creatures were unprepared.  It slaughtered them, and took their energy, pouring their Ashes back into the weave.

My herbalism and botany has served me well - science is powerful, but arcanum is once again mysterious; all that we have learned is now rendered wrong.  Spells do not behave as they did before, and only those who adapt by force of mind and will and study can find the answers.  

But this study will be dangerous, my brothers and sisters.  It has already claimed the lives of so many, as we seek to unlearn ourselves.  To sift through the ruins left by our pride.  In an age of discovery, there will be casualties of the body, mind, and immortal soul.

To my priests, my clerics, my soldiers of fortune - do not weep long.  We are in need of your faith in the people of Io; the gods have grown tired of us.  We must reclaim the Scorched earth for ourselves.

And still, fear grips me.  

An image haunts my dreams.  An idea; unrelenting, all-encompassing, the Last Law of the world.  Like the sun and moon, the flowing seas and writhing tempests, the only Primal that remains.  

Time.

Some forces try to slow the clock; stay the hands of age and seasons.  Others speed forward toward destiny, eager to meet it before they're ready.  These creatures are simple; we've dealt with them before.  This is not my warning.

There are others.  I see them, like broken tendrils of magic; loose threads of possibility.  They lurk in the nightmare, obscured and secret.  They wear many faces, use many names, and speak many lies. They aren't here to manipulate the clock.  No, they seek to break it.  

Imagine, my brothers and sisters: an endless age of chaos.  An undulating mass of terror and fear, where the monsters are real...and invisible.  Where voices are spoken, but the world is deaf, and nothing changes.  

We say "the pendulum swings."  What if it were to never swing back?

And this is why I study.  I will study forever.  I will fight for the magic of the world, for those left behind by the first rapture; it may take centuries, but I fight for the clock.  For time is the Last Bastion; the great equalizer.  It is my only weapon, ancient and immortal.  
And I choose it to be my Sword.

-- The Memoirs of Daniel Miller, Loremaster
---- Recovered by Cidrynn Valsoro, Blackstaff