In the internal depths of Oramon, Nomra’s kingdom
grew. Among her crystal forests and sculptured blocks of stone she grew new,
strange plants for the dark spaces. Some of her new flowers gave light and some
were made of living gemstones. She created also, great underground seas of
water, molten gold, and milk.
Before Denu and the wolves, and before she created her Night
Light, she used Phiron’s fire to animate her first stone companion, Syn, who
was cold and dead in aspect, but able to carve exquisite murals, statues, and
hallways for Nomra’s expanding world. Phiron also helped her to make birds of
sapphire and ruby that filled the halls with eerie music. She made, too, a
steed of steel to carry her about her domain. It was named Sylo, and was like
Phiron in form.
Once, as Nomra rode Sylo to the edge of her
demesne, she sought to form a new aviary for her birds. Phiron accompanied her,
giving his light to reveal the dark that Nomra might form it as she pleased.
But there was already someone there, asleep, as Neron and Nomra had slept in
the shadow before light awoke them.
Nomra drew back, startled and the dark swallowed
the being up again before it could wake.
“What untold ancient one is this?” she wondered.
“I have never seen the like.” Cautiously, she stepped forward again to reveal
the being entirely.
In her fear of new things, she subconsciously
formed the dark as she revealed the new one, and in so doing, unintentionally
disfigured the being.
He opened his eyes and beheld Nomra.
She was
frightened by the terrifying aspect of the monster and turned her steed to
flee.
“Seem I strange unto thee?” he asked. “All is
strange unto me. If I frighten you, let me veil myself.” And he took the darkness
behind him and without Light, formed a covering for his many eyes and fluid
limbs.
“You create without Light,” Nomra marveled.
“I have dreamed long and dreams are dark, their
substance is real to me,” said the being. “The Dark is an insubstantial world, one
of unending, unformed possibilities. The chaos of Night is not solid and can
form and reform as it pleases.”
“There is no need for such uncertainty,” Nomra
said. “Let me show you the world of reality, of light and form and concrete
beauty.”
“I find true beauty in the abstract, yet you arouse my curiosity: show
me these strange things you speak of,” the being said hungrily.
“What shall I call you, Strange One?" Nomra asked.
"What wilt thou call me?”
“Onys,” she said. “Of the Dark.”
Onys nodded and approached Nomra. She led him into
her kingdom and showed him the marvels thereof. Behind his veil of night,
Onys’s eyes sparkled in delight.
“These are indeed marvels,” said Onys. “I wonder
what more marvelous things we could create in this half-light world of yours.”
“Will you teach me how to create without Light?”
Nomra asked.
“It is not so much creation as suggestion,” Onys
said. “To make things with Light is to bind the Dark. To weave Darkness is to
teach it movement.”
So together, Nomra and Onys made Urr, a great eye
of living stone that could see far forward and far backward in time. They made
also the Je, four winged maidens with long tongues like snakes.
Onys built a breathing throne of chaos in Nomra’s
favorite crystal garden and from this blasphemous throne he perverted her creations.
Onys unformed her jewel
birds halfway, so that they were eternally changing shape, from one kind of
bird to another and bats and other winged things that had no names. The
breathing throne of chaos expanded to fill the crystal chamber and Onys let
loose tendrils into other chambers. Eyes budded on the tendrils and soon he
watched all that transpired in Nomra’s domain.
At first Nomra did not mind the aberrant intrusion
and expansion that filled her chambers with dreaded Darkness and seething
malice. She was thrilled by the ever-changing, though horrifying madness of
these new things. She did not mind that the unblinking tendril eyes of Onys
watched her wherever she went and wept tears of blood when she bathed in the
sea of milk.
She did not even care that great hideous membranes
grew between her stalactites and rained creeping things upon the stones.
Phiron whispered to her, warning that Onys was a
vile creature, that she should not let him conquer her domain. She did not
listen. At first.
She sought to form Darkness on her own, and shaped
for herself the first true bats, but she could not bring them to life without
the help of Onys. Frustrated, she sat beside the sea of molten gold, poisoned
with the shifting chaos and sparkling eyes of Onys.
“Nomra…” whispered Onys’s voice from a thousand
hidden mouths. “Nomra…”
Nomra stood and followed the hissing voices to
where Onys waited on his throne of chaos.
“Come to me, Nomra,” he said. “I desire you. Step
into my throne and let me embrace you and enfold you in my murk.”
Nomra held back as the Darkness seemed to tug at
her. “I do not wish to,” Nomra said.
“Do I not excite you?” enquired Onys. “Have you
not thrilled at my intangible and ever inescapable pandemonium? Give yourself
over to me, Nomra, let us be one in anarchy. Let the Dark change you as I have
been changed, as you changed me, dear Nomra. Let me kiss you!”
His tendrils of slime and membranes sought to
pull her into his throne.
Nomra screamed and pulled away as the churning
mucus lapped at her feet and the sticky webs entangled her arms.
“Phiron!” she cried. “Save me!”
Phiron tried to reach her, but the Je intercepted
him and herded him towards the edges of Light, where Darkness was supreme.
“Do not touch me,” Nomra warned Onys, but he only
laughed.
“You cannot escape me,” said Onys.
Nomra seized his webs of Dark that he sought to
enwrap her in and used her new skill to reform them. They broke away from her
and she fled from the throne into her chamber of sparkling flames. Onys sought
to extinguish them with his eye-covered tentacles, but Nomra reformed the
tendrils into solid things and with the faint flame-light, managed to
freeze them into stone.
Phiron had singed the Je and escaped from them. He
rushed to aid Nomra and they solidified all of the Dark tendrils, tentacles, and
creeping feelers and roots that extended from the throne. Then Nomra sealed up
the throne in a cocoon of diamond. She left Phiron to blaze bight and keep the
Darkness from emerging while she went to the surface to collect sunlight and
fallen stars.
When she returned to the sealed throne of chaos,
she formed a cage of silver to contain her new Light. The first lamp, a
dazzling Light, which she called Mihr, she hung outside the cocoon to ensure it
remained sealed and kept Onys from emerging and bringing pandemonium to her
demesne.
Then she and Phiron went through all the chambers
and all the caverns and halls and froze the tendrils and closed the eyes and
scrubbed the place clean of unformed Darkness. Syn chiseled away the solidified
remains of Onys’s expansions and carted them off to a new pit, called Obis,
that Nomra made for the purpose. She left Urr alone in its chamber, but sent
Sylo to hunt down the Je, which she trapped in silver cages and hung above the
gloom of Obis.
With her new Underworld Light, Mihr, Nomra was at
last able to give life to her shadow creatures. She brought her bats to life
and sent them to slay all of her old birds that had been commandeered by Onys
and then she formed new birds of diamonds and opals.
She also made the wolves out of shadow and gave
them life with the Light of Mihr.
So Nomra won dominion over Shadow.
