The Jester named Paine Mendacis could not figure out why Apollonia, the
Oracle of the Mannaseh, would not respond to his queries. "Please," he
begged the silent young woman. "I need your help."

His wife Nawtika, guildmistress of the Jesters, was not too impressed.
Her husband had dragged her all the way out to this smelly swamp, and
for what? This filthy young trollop in a mud shack, who looked as if she
had been smoking cactus weed all day?

Suddenly, Apollonia's eyes flickered open wide. The pale blue irises of
the Oracle's eyes disappeared as her eyes rolled back into her head.
She began to sway gently, murmuring beneath her breath.

"A trance!" Paine exclaimed delightedly. This was starting to look more
interesting. Nawtika looked bored. What was with her husband's interest
in this swamp wench anyway?

Apollonia, the Oracle of the Mannaseh murmured softly, "The fire... the
flames... the sky... in the sky..."

Ah, hell. Riddles. Paine took some stabs in the dark. "The morning star
returns? Are you stuck in another age? Where does the fire come from?
Noxtra?"

Apollonia, the Oracle of the Mannaseh murmured softly, "I can see
her..."

Paine pulled out a pipe and a sprig of cactus weed. He filled the pipe
and lit it. "Maybe I can understand her better in a state of mind closer
to hers," he said, puffing with a happy sigh.

The Jester, who had been the first to hear the whispers that would soon
blow into an uproar across the lands, had no idea then how close his
first guess came. Over the rest of that Mayan in the year 359, certain
inhabitants of Sapience all throughout the realm began to act strangely,
those of a sensitive nature entering trances. Especially noted were the
wizards Hycanthus, Maklak, and the witch Haag, gathering together
furtively for hushed meetings, though not unseen by the sharp eyes of
Achaeans on alert. Blu, the Guardian Dragon of Cyrene, seemed unusually
wary as well.

Sir Gladius, Mitran Knight, when questioned about a possible comet
retorted that of course there was a comet headed towards Sapience. The
comet dubbed Ethian, for which Ethian's Crossing was named, passed close
to Sapience every year around Sarapin, as had been documented by erudite
astrologers for many years.

Several, making the connection between Ethian's Crossing and the
conclave wizards' sealing of the landmarks years hence, journeyed to
visit with the conclave wizards and query them of recent murmurings.
However, they gained little information.

Mayan quickly passed and with it, the year 359. Then came Sarapin,
three hundred and sixty years after the fall of the Selucarian Empire.
Sarapin, the time of year called Ethian's Crossing, when once not too
many years past, the landmarks had regularly become responsive to being
altered through the toil of mortalkind, although perhaps few had thought
to question the reason why.

In early Sarapin this year, more questions would be raised. First came
the puzzling shouts of Haag, the Swamp Witch: "Begone, foul sisters!
Warn the others! Warn the conclave!" Xephlite Traike Lucoster, first to
reach Haag's cottage, found her dead upon the ground with her heart
ripped out. Two dark-cloaked women, one atavian and the other tsol'aa
hastened out of the cottage, pursued by Xephlite and others, but
disappeared from sight.

Maklak, O'ising and Hycanthus were found, similarly dead and
eviscerated, and two other dark-cloaked human women found hovering over
Hycanthus's body. When discovered, they uttered a chant which lifted
them into the sky and away towards Polyargos.

Many Achaeans pursued them to Polyargos, Arae Windsong, Kitt
Xanatov-Jinx, Brandilar Weltsdown, Valaria Arnor-Jaydde, Carmell
Jaydde-Stormcrow, Josalyn Alexandrian, Skye Demaxx-De'Le'Vec, and others
among them. They quickly found the women at the overgrown garden where
lay the fetid pool that had once been the Mirror landmark, sealed by the
now-dead conclave wizards years before. The women quickly uttered a
spell to protect themselves from aggression from their pursuers. Their
safety from interference assured, they initiated a ritual using the
hearts of the conclave wizards, using the power stored within each of
the mages' hearts to break the seal they had placed over the Mirror.

Once the seal was broken, one of the human women proceeded to disrobe,
her nude body and face entirely spidered with crimson tattoos. She waded
into the centre of the pool, quickly followed by the other human woman,
the second woman still fully dressed. But she drew back the hood of her
cloak, revealing that the two now within the pool were twins, mirror
images of each other.

Then, as the other women continued their ritual chants, the twin who had
disrobed willingly gave her life to the blade of her sister. Her body
fell limp into the pool.

For a moment, all was still... but only for a moment.

One by one, beginning with the Mirror, then the Tree, then all the rest
remaining landmarks, each of the landmarks was completely destroyed by
the power of the ritual performed by the women at the Mirror and
focused through the Mirror. But instead of their energies from the
destruction dispersing, they instead each coalesced into a spiralling
vortex of energy and arced into the sky over Polyargos.

Then a great howling was heard as a winged red dragon, none other than
the dragon Yudhishthira, raced towards the meeting point of the
vortices. Weaving through them faster than the eye could see, somehow
manipulating them, he forced the energy into a great white sphere. And
within the sphere a small black figure was spinning, dancing, growing
larger and larger until...

With a deafening clap of thunder, the sphere of white light exploded
into countless shimmering shards of light, which rained down upon the
land from above only to vanish before meeting the ground.

And thus was born the Goddess Makali, the conscious Divine embodiment of
the principle of Destruction, born from the melding of the consciousness
of a human witch-priestess of Destruction and the immense force
released from the destruction of the landmarks, those strange edifices
that had been steeped in destructive power both ancient and new.

By the grace of Lord Sarapis, the heretoforth mysterious origin of the
landmarks, the comet Ethian, and the involvement of the red dragon of
Polyargos has been brought to light within another forum. Thus, those
details shall not be repeated here.

Signed,

A humble scribe.

Penned by my hand on the 15th of Sarapin, in the year 360 AF.