This is little more than a book of fragments, some of them from larger and longer sources, devoted to the destruction of the divine powers.
-Elwen Proverb.
From the private journal of Clor Adamantine (Believed to be the founder of the damarothi)
I sat on a wall and watched the sunset- not with the same sense of wonder and awe that I had ever had, but trying to separate the beauty of the colors, which I could still appreciate, from the manipulation of the god behind it.
He could use that sunset to enslave, just as Sarastaa could use the dawn to do so- just as the stars could call to us to join them, to become part of them- just as the moon-lords could make others think they were as beautiful as their moon-bodies at the full.
Lies, all of them.
They're only slavemasters, and we need, if we can, to break free of them. To destroy them. I'm not sure if that will mean physical destruction in every case, or only the spreading of ideas. I'm not sure that everyone I touch will want to take up the cause. There will be those who fight me, I'm sure, and my intense whispering touch in their minds.
Of course, I've found one person already.
Who do you think wrote this last part?
And no, for the stars' sake, don't put your name in, please. It's remarkable how persistent some people could be in trying to take the blame or the hatred of others on themselves.
...remarkable how many gods have died or been maimed at Elwen hands throughout history [next words are smudged]...
....Asroa, the Netter, the Goddess of Love, slain in a contest of wills with the sapphire Elwen assassin Sappho Emeraldblade near the thirty thousandth year of the Age of Dawn. Some say that she [text burned off or breaks off; does not continue until some time in the middle of the next page]... could not say whence the dreams came...
[more text; this appears to have been deliberately cut out]
...and of course everyone knows that Jet, the Lord of Cats, died at the hands of desert Elwens who set a trap for an unknown intruder in their complex of Sand'carn, not so very long after Asroa's death. Whence the design for the trap came...
[burns]
...Somal Deerfriend was able to face down the Lady of Ravens and cut off three of her fingers because, as is said, she came through the gate in full avatar form, something that no god had done since the very earliest Age of Dawn. He was captured and sacrificed by her agents, but died with a smile on his face. Strangely, some have reported seeing Tirosina with four-
[Text breaks off abruptly here; once again, some appears to have been deliberately slashed or marked over or burned out; continues with a final fragment some distance on].
...bears no resemblance, as some have insisted it does, to the maiming of Mirsun, Lord of Creation, by Yubro Deerfriend, an old land Elwen hero. Mirsun was jealous that the land Elwen hero had discovered the means of creating life or some such thing, nonsensical though this plainly is. Dermand was slain, not simply maimed, by the wild magic, and there is no chance of ever recovering the Lord of Sunset...
Final note, written in an unknown language, translated by the Linguist-Historians only with great difficulty:
We are winning.
Ani bit her lip, staring at me. "What will happen to you?" she asked at last.
"I might dissipate, a hundred years in the future or tomorrow," I said happily. "I might be destroyed. I might accomplish my purpose. Anything might happen."
"The damarothi would see all kinds of worship eradicated if we could. Worship is slavery. It suggests that something is better than yourself, whether or not that is true, and that that other thing demands reverence. The individual can have whatever kind of madness he or she wishes, of course, but too often there is not just a single slave. For too long, whole villages have worshipped gods as if those gods were worth more than they were. Sacrifices have been given, money and lives spent... And far more terrible things than that have been done. This is the last form of slavery that endures, truly. The old kind, with its whips and chains, is all but gone. The slavery of altars and temples continues. I would see it ended in my time... And when I heard that this slavery was growing like a briar among my father’s people, I wished to come and dig up the root myself."
Some cry "blasphemy" on research into the nature of gods. I say "infamy!" in return. Nothing can escape the eye of the scholar, or the test of the mind, and if the gods could not stand before that, or theology, then both deserve to be destroyed.
