Story Time | The Testimony of Prestor Cheris

Early last year, I decided to pay a visit to an old favorite game of mine—Adventure Quest Worlds by Artix Entertainment, my first MMO and a key shaper of my imagination. While making up for lost time, I noticed how much more prominent Evil had become than Good. Divided by a succession war and weakened by two planar invasions, the forces of Good were in a sorry state. Meanwhile, the archons of Evil grew steadily in power, and thousands flocked to their banners. While Good and Evil remain treaty-bound under the terms of the Great Truce, I began to worry for the future of Lore when there were would be no more foes to unite the once-opposed factions. The forces of Good needed help—or, at the very least, they needed to catch up. Hopefully this does the trick.

Battle on!

-Nildecanter

* * *

In the days of the Shadowlord, there was a sign in the heavens—that of a great star shining over the ruins of long-fallen Swordhaven. There was found within the crumbling walls a line of black monoliths, polished as obsidian, upon which were inscribed runic epitaphs of unknown origin and foreboding intent. When one gazed upon the runes, they shone with the colors of the sky and the sunset, and were legible. They read as follows:

To the children of Lore—to the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky, to the creatures of the sea, to the living and the dead, to the crowned heads and all their subjects, to the Celestials above and Infernals below, to the constructs of mage-craft, to the hallowed and the abominable—yea, to every being within and without the world come now the words of the Herald of Woe.

By the will and wisdom of the Preeminence, I have come to make way for Zaidakel, blessed be They, unto a world in which I am a stranger. My lands lay beyond the sea and sky, tucked away in the black gulfs between the stars. Your home, the planet called Lore, is but one among hosts in a great abyss of fire and light, spanning forever in all directions. You cannot sail it, not in the ships you have, but my home was thus before it fell. Now, not a stone, not a mote of dust remains where once she marched ’round the red star Jada. The same fate awaits Lore, should you not heed my counsel.

Be not afraid, for I have not come to end your planet, nor has my master, Zaidakel—but the one who comes after, the True Holy Destroyer, cannot be stayed in Their course once our allotted time is over—for Malelakai is justice itself, and grace may only delay reparations for so long.

I, too, once conformed to the false Emanations—to that which you call “evil”— and payed dearly for it. I ruled an empire. Vast, spanning the high and low places, and looking up hungrily towards the young suns beyond the Field of Jada. But then, at the height of our ambition and cruelty, we were struck down by the righteous fury of Malelakai. I was spared, but the others? My sons and concubines? My soldiers, lords, and slaves? All who dwelt on Jadumbra were purged from the Emanations. Do not mourn them, and do not pity me, for we were a violent and malicious people, shaped in my image and bereft of all Good. Had we escaped our containment, it would have meant a wave of destruction across all the heavenly spheres—one which would have eventually reached Lore. Our meeting was always inevitable, but I am thankful to Zaidakel it is on these terms.

When Malelakai justly removed my empire from the face of the Emanations, something curious happened; something almost in defiance of the Holy Destroyer’s will. I, then called Naghayoth—that forsaken name be cursed forever!—was snatched away from the cleansing light by my master, Zaidakel. Together, we watched my planet burn, shatter, and disappear. Once lush and green, my empire had killed Jadumbra, rolling over her and replacing a living world with a barren, stillborn one of howling wastes and carven stone. To see my cruel realm end in much the same way was poetic, to say the least.

As the Destroyer’s grave work came to an end, I found myself standing on a great expanse of polished crystal, and soaring before me were the Emanations of Mercy and Justice. Zaidakel was like a shield, or perhaps a coin, gleaming gold and inset with the likeness of four faces on both sides—an eagle, a lion, a bull, and a visage I now know as human. Along Their rim were many eyes, blinking and surveying. The appearance of Malelakai was as a great severed head with a face neither man nor woman, blindfolded, with flowing hair like wings and a set of scales hanging from the stump of Their neck. Malelakai’s features were locked into a wrathful expression which was terrible to behold, and out from Their open maw came a double-edged sword.

I have heard some speak as though a being of pure Goodness is something which they would enjoy meeting. They are fools. Even Zaidakel radiated an aura of almost palpable rightness which threatened to burn away an impure creature such as myself. Their presence brought me to my knees. How could I do anything but kneel before two avatars of the Preeminence, and how much greater did that make Their master? For I did understand, then, the true nature of reality: how all had sprung forth from a living, infinite dynamo of pure forms and abiding love, and how these attributes had spilled out into an opening within Itself to create all there is. Endless Emanations, stacking one atop another into greater arrangements and complexities until they reach the Preeminence Itself. Was not your own world merged from three such Emanations, the timelines called MechQuest, AdventureQuest, and DragonFable?

But now is not the time to dwell on cosmology. Indeed, though the grand mystery of the universe was laid before me, it was the farthest thing from my mind. They’d wiped out my empire and everything in it, yet set me aside to bear witness to its end. For what purpose? To revel in my defeat, perhaps? To dance on the ashes of all I’d built? It shames me to recall such foolishness, but I was angry. Humiliated. Confused. Quivering in fear and indignation, I dared to utter a single word, addressed to Them both:

“Why?”

Zaidakel and Malelakai were silent for a period I cannot name—time, it seemed, did not flow in that place—but Their unbroken quiet spanned what could only be æons. I became aware of how truly insubstantial I was. On Jadumbra, I had been a god among my kind, sovereign of all the world—but before two Emanations? I stared down at my hands, seeing right through them. I was a vapor to be blown away. With hardly any effort, they could have erased me from existence as surely as they had Jadumbra. But they did not. Even in my insolence, they spared me. So I dared again:

“Why?!”

This time, They answered. First spoke Malelakai:

“Woe and lamentations unto the rebel-prince of Jadumbra! Naghayoth, defiler of all the world, has been unseated from the lofty places! His legions and his peoples, the followers of the Bent Way, have all been destroyed. Let none weep for them, let none remember their accursed names! His precious things could not save him. They have been cast into the streets, and made as less than dust before the red gaze of Jada. His walls and towers have crumbled, his banquet turned to ashes, his silken robes have been made as sackcloth, and he has descended into the lowest pits of Erasure. A prophet was sent to warn him, to wail and mourn and beseech before his proud iron gates, but the rebel-prince and all his peoples spurned the warnings of Zaidakel, and put Their messenger to the sword.

“The iron gates have rusted away. The hills and mountains melted as wax before the sword of My mouth, the bringer of holy wrath. Jadumbra is fallen, her killers judged. Every word and deed of her children was wicked—there were no Emanations within them. Look now, upon her would-be emperor! They will say, ‘Is this the one who slayed and ravaged the world? Whose cruel realm of stone and iron made the lands a wilderness, who conquered the cities and enslaved their inhabitants? Is this the one they called god-emperor? Is this the one who would rule the galaxies?’

“Now, the rebel-prince of Jadumbra is naught but a ghost before the Emanations of Mercy and Justice. His realms broken, the world made a slaughtering place for all his subjects. Never again will chimeras spread across them and build cities in the wastes. Never again will the crack of whips or the thunder of chariots fill the streets. All has been brought low because they followed the Bent Way, and rejected the teachings of our prophet, Noennoch. Woe and lamentations! Woe and judgement!”

Malelakai moved as if to strike me down, but Zaidakel intervened.

“Hold! Be still, Malelakai!” spoke Zaidakel, four voices in one, “Was it not the will of Our prophet that We spare the rebel-prince?”

It seemed, then, that the very universe ground against itself—if only for an instant. Soon, Malelakai remembered Their place in the Emanations, and They relented.

“Forgive Me, Zaidakel.”

The four voices laughed. “Dear Sibling, forgiveness is all I know!”

Such was the joy of the Master Shepherd that not even the True Holy Destroyer was able to resist joining in on the merriment. This astounded me. Surely such creatures had never walked the wastes of Jadumbra—not for many hundreds of thousands of years, in the dawn of our civilization. Noble souls, they were said to be. Noble, like…

“Noennoch,” I whispered.

This caught the attention of both Emanations. They moved closer, looming like the walls of my palace once had. All the eyes of Zaidakel were turned to regard me, and the bladed mouth of Malelakai seemed poised to end me despite the binding oaths of armistice.

“You are not worthy to speak that name,” said Malelakai. “Not yet, rebel-prince.”

“Peace, Sibling,” said Zaidakel, “I will address the culprit henceforth.”

“As You wish,” replied the Holy Destroyer, backing away to leave me alone with the four-faced countenance of the Master Shepherd. In Their counterpart’s absence, Zaidakel seemed larger than ever.

“Why, indeed?” said Zaidakel, addressing me, “Why erase an entire planet, an entire people?”

I did not respond.

“Though I do not believe,” They continued, “that is why you are outraged. No, there is too much of the Bent Way in you to mourn for anyone but yourself. That is just the trouble, you see. You have nothing to mourn, for nothing you built was real. Your stone and your iron and your very flesh must have seemed solid enough when Jadumbra was whole, but do you see yourself, now? A ghost, a fading dream, a house built upon vapors and lies. You sought to live independently from that which grants you form, life, and reason, and now it is only through My power that you continue to exist at all. Listen now, and listen well.

“The false Emanations are defined by that which they mock and corrupt, and thus are a parasite upon the multiverse—one which We have been charged with removing—but to have destroyed you without warning would have been against all I embody. As one knows the cold since they first knew heat, so too does one know the Bent Way—but you and all your subjects were born cold, and have never felt the warm touch of righteousness. How could you have known, then, that every impure act is an affront against reality Itself? So I stayed Malelakai’s hand, and sent a teacher to live among you. A chimera born warm. The one whose name you are forbidden to speak.

“He was very nearly stillborn, you know. As insubstantial as you are now, so was the whole of Jadumbra when I visited Noennoch in the womb. It was the only opportunity I had in which to grant him the truths you now behold. He was a strong child to have survived the ordeal, but empty all the same. The false Emanations which gave the world and everything in it their fleeting, decaying shapes were all that held him together. In a sense, he was the only real thing on Jadumbra when the pure forms entered his soul at last. When he was of the age to speak, the truths he alone knew began to overflow from his heart to his lips, and they could not be silenced. Tidings of joy, of peace, of love everlasting—but foremost, a warning to all who walked the Bent Way. For ten years did he prophesy, but Jadumbra was too far gone. He was mocked, beaten, and finally beheaded by your own decree.

“The Holy Destroyer would have ended you right then, but I intervened. Do not mistake My mercy for tolerance. I reviled your every action, but grace is love in spite of wrongdoing, underserved and freely given. By grace, I entreated Malelakai to forestall your world’s complete destruction. By grace, I let Noennoch’s pleas and promises ring in your ears until they were completely forgotten. By grace, I let your hubris fester, let you colonize your moons and plunder resources from Jada’s asteroid belt, let you dream of spreading the ruin and depravity of Jadumbra to all the worlds. When the day of judgement came at last, it was long overdue. I have mourned for all Jadumbra’s lost children. The waste, the folly. It is not often We find worlds as far gone as your own, Naghayoth, but the outcome is always the same. Still, I had hoped…”

“Hope yet remains!” spoke a new voice, “Was I not born under the red star? Am I not a child of Jadumbra?”

No, this was not a new voice, but one which I'd known in life! For behold, rising from the expanse of crystal was a comet-tailed spirit, colored black within and outlined by a halo of blue and sunset fire. Where a face may have been was instead a mask, bearing a single cyclopean eye—an eye which I had gazed into when I ordered its bearer’s execution. I would have spoken his name in recognition, were it not for the presence of the Holy Destroyer. Noennoch seemed to sense this, for he—or what remained of him—laughed, saying:

“Peace, god-emperor. I have surrendered my name as surely as I have surrendered my life and flesh to the service of Zaidakel. I am a being of elemental mercy, molded in Their holy image. I am the Graceling. You need call me nothing else, my lord.”

“Even now…” said I, “you name me lord and master?”

“I must, for I exist to serve you.”

“I don’t understand. I branded you a madman and an agitator. I saw you beheaded. How could you feel anything but hatred for me?”

“It is true that you bore false witness against me, and ordered my wrongful execution—yet here I stand as well before Malelakai, guilty of crimes against reality. There was a time when I hated not only your deeds, but you as well. Over the years I learned to mourn and love you in spite of your wrongdoing, but no amount of repentance could erase the reality of my odium. You may have killed me that day, but in my heart I’d slain you many days more. It is for this I will serve you—if you will have me, that is.”

I didn’t know what to say. The Emanations had spoken rightly, but esoterically. I found their words broad, lofty, and removed from my experience. Here, though, in the Graceling was something I could hope to understand. Here was a being which had once been counted among the irredeemable, now ascended to the service of divine powers and sharing in them. True powers, not like my ruined empire. In that moment I craved what Noennoch had, more than I had desired conquest across the universe; for the universe, it seemed, had already been conquered—it was in the thrall of this Preeminence and Its Emanations—and I could share in this subjugation if I allied myself with Them.

It was a clumsy first step down the path to redemption, with a foot still planted firmly in the false Emanations, but I have learned that the Preeminence can take even the wickedest of intents and turn them for Good. In the end, it is the will and not the feeling which matters more; and for the first time in my life, my will was one with the Emanations. It would be by the guidance of Noennoch, by the mercy of Zaidakel, and by the verdict of Malelakai that I would become the Herald of Woe. I had falsely struck down a holy messenger of the Emanations, so it was my penance that I become one. So ended the days of Naghayoth, and began the journey of Prestor Cheris.

You wonder, perhaps, why I have shared my story with you. I share it, children of Lore, to show you that there is hope for all who walk the Bent Way. Some, perhaps, are too far gone, but for many of you the Narrow Path remains open. You speak of a duality between Good and Evil as though Evil could sustain itself, as though it were a power which had always been, and therefore just as worthy of your allegiance as Good—but this is simply not true. Everything you know to be wrong in the world is a distortion of the pure forms. Evil steals from Good so that it might have a semblance of definition, but in the end, it shall be purged forever from the Emanations—by the loving grace of Zaidakel or by the warlike crusade of Malelakai is yet to be seen, but make no mistake, it will happen—and those who cling to the false Emanations will find themselves on the wrong side of eternity.

Ignore this, if you wish, but one day you may look about yourself and see right through everything you believe you’ve built or gained. Then you will know too late that the branch which prunes itself from the tree withers and dies, to be burned away and forgotten. What do you gain from stubbornly continuing down the Bent Way? What good will it do you to think: “At least they will say I was free until the end, at least they will say I was never taken in!” My friends, this is the folly of follies. I promise you that those who even do remember you will not remember a martyr, or a fighter, or a genius; they will only remember a fool who romped and joyed in the filthy mud when they could have had an ocean.

Your Great Truce is an honorable experiment, but ill-fated. All you do is prolong the inevitable. We have watched the foes which unite you come and go, and someday there will be none left standing to keep your alliance from collapsing. The forces of Evil will remember their dark ambitions, and the forces of Good will rise to thwart them—and they will fail, if things continue as they have. While the knights and nobles of Swordhaven squabble for the crown of a dead king, the Lord of the Undead Legion gathers thousands to his banner and takes the powers of gods. The Archfiend and his Nation invade other worlds and quest for apotheosis. The Empress of the Shadowscythe maintains and expands a brutal dynasty of trapped souls. The Champion of Chaos, disgraced and scheming, sows the seeds for a reborn Dreadhaven at his capitol city of Crownsreach. Do you truly believe you shall remain allies when all this is over? You will not, unless you join with the Emanations and help us restore your multiverse, the Planes of Harmony.

The Preeminence cherishes your planar system above all others, for yours are the highest planes of existence. They are the forms which contain all others, and therefore the closest to the Preeminence Itself. Lore is of special importance in the Emanations, for with the destruction of three Planes of Harmony came a unified whole, spawning a universe in itself. Lore is quite literally the center of this universe, thus do Lore and her children garner the direct attention of my masters. Know now that the eyes of eternity watch you very closely, and they stand ready to weep or rejoice at the path Lore's children take—and I beseech you to choose correctly, children of Lore. The Holy Destroyer's judgement is not a threat, it is a certainty, one preceded by a choice. Those who fall by the sword of Malelakai's mouth have all but thrown themselves onto its edge, knowing full well the warnings of Zaidakel. Do not be deceived. Do not let your pride blind you as I did.

You will find my vessel, the Ark Ambulant, afloat in your planet's exosphere directly above this point. Seek the amber star at sunset, and quest upward towards it. My friends and I await your arrival with great anticipation.

Signed,

—Prestor Cheris, The Herald of Woe, Shepherd of the Sealed