Oh, daughter of man.
The bloom is the last light of the gods.
Would you die to take it?
I've not come in violence, guardian.
Like those before, you came here seeking.
Turn from this place. Take flight.
The bloom weakens, guardian. You must see that.
No one has braved the mountain for an eon,
and now you come offering me knowledge.
Go before I cut you down.
The bloom has spread?
How?
In dreams and in flames,
I have seen a single spore of your bloom
carried on the winds down from this mountain,
through the tall trees
to at last take root
in another of man's hidden places.
I have come from that place to find you
to put an end to your long vigil.
But there are things, so many things,
that man cannot know,
must not see, our dreams are.
The night you came here has fallen into myth.
Scholars have called it the night of a thousand suns.
But I dreamed the bloom's dream,
and it led me here.
The journey was long...
Painful.
I regret only...
That it has taken me so very long to find you.
Time has had little meaning on this mountain,
but your arrival on the same dawn
that the bloom withered cannot be mere coincidence.
What has changed in the world below?
My home was the great swamp of bastal.
Though the men who came called it the all sorrow.
It stretched from horizon to horizon,
and I, tzod,
was both its servant
and its queen.
This fame is the bastal among us.
It is the mouth of the swamp.
It is the eye of the swamp.
Stare!
Stare into our mother!
And she will stare back!
Invaders!
Destroy the wretches!
Spare the witch.
Evil.
Bind her.
Bring her with us.
You took me from mothers swamp to serve this place?
No!
I took you from mother swamp to die in this place.
Welcome to civilization,
where the fearful and ignorant toil.
And the foolish delight
in delusions of power.
And the...
the only...
Scent on the wind is human shit.
Why? Why bring me here?!
We all have masters to serve.
Halt, outsider.
What brings you to the mighty city of pyr?
The lord pyrantin, son of uxon,
has requested the presence of a scholar
from the pantheon ashurban
to witness and record the rise of your path...
Mighty city.
I am that scholar.
I'm called ghal-sur.
Announce me.
Go on, then.
Announce yourself.
Worm's cock.
The last wagon is lost.
Who knows when the next will come.
I heard they slaughtered them all.
I hope it's true.
Lord pyrantin. Ghal-sur at your service.
Tell me, ghal-sur,
how close is my city to your hallowed border?
Why, it's no more than a day's ride.
Precisely!
And yet...
It has taken a full season
to send even a single scholar
to Mark my historic
achievements.
Why?
Apologies, lord.
Your father's empire expands quickly and the...
Ha!
Forget what my father has done.
He's half a world away from here.
This city will be the very tip of the empire's spear
into this savage land,
and you are all too blind to see it.
I can only apologize so much.
Stifle your apologies.
Despite your...
Sloth...
You have managed to arrive on a momentous day,
for we have finally brought an end
to the wretched mud folk who have plagued our progress
since we broke ground.
Sit.
Sit, scholar!
Take note of how a true ruler manages an empire.
Bring her in!
As you commanded,
we brought you the swamp witch to kneel before you, pyrantin.
Lord pyrantin, mongrel. Lord.
You wouldn't be lord of anything without...
Don't resist.
It'll only make it worse.
So tell me, witch...
what makes you so special that your savages
have named you queen of a bog
as wretched as the all sorrow.
The name of the great swamp is bastal!
She brings no sorrow to those who love her.
"Love her."
I'm going to spread her open and take what I want from her.
She will know sorrow...
Just as your damnable savages did
as they lay bleeding
in your fetid muck.
A fate you'll wish you...
Had enjoyed.
Lay her out.
Record every crack of my whip, scholar.
Before you take your pleasure...
Lord...
I should have you know,
while we were lying in wait,
she put on quite a show,
filled the sky with blue flames.
Well...
Show us your swamp trickery, witch.
Perhaps I'll ease your suffering.
What does it mean, witch?
No!
This woman is protected by the high order of ashur,
scholars of the pantheon ashurban.
I will not let you harm her.
You librarians have no authority here, whelp.
I hope you'll remember that
when the snows come, your larders empty,
and you're killing each other for a mouth full of frog meat.
You'll be begging at the pantheon's gate for bone meal.
You'll be lucky to get even that unless the two of us
walk out of here unharmed.
Drag him to the cells.
Maybe we'll get lucky.
She'll tear his heart out for her swamp magic.
Argh! Don't leave me here!
The order will hear of this!
Careful, you fools.
I am in pain!
Bring me more wine!
You knew, mongrel.
You knew she would try something,
and you let her do it.
Nonsense, lord.
Careful! Careful!
You will be in my service
until the end of your days.
Or yours... lord.
In the tomes of times past, I could be lost.
How?
Oh, you cretins.
Oh, you...
He will kill us, you know?
Then we'll die.
I don't want to die!
Say something.
Who were you before you joined this ashur?
I was nobody.
An ignorant peasant boy
till the ashur opened their books to me.
They've amassed all the knowledge of the world...
To what end do you seek?
- I... - You.
I don't know.
Then think on that before you die.
You gave me a face to sew fear into my subjects.
My father always taught me
to repay kindness in the like.
You burned my face.
I...
Burned your swamp.
Take a look.
Oh!
Oh...
Enjoy the view.
Your swamp burns.
Free us.
It healed me.
Can it do more?
It is power, yes?
Use it.
Come! We must flee!
The pantheon will protect us.
No! She is my mother.
Don't be a fool.
Let survival be your revenge.
Ride them down!
Die, scholar!
No.
No!
I-I can stop them. It... it's not too late.
I-I... it's not too late.
I... I...
Oh, please stop!
Please!
No.
Stop!
Please stop.
Father will hear of this.
He will revenge me.
Why?
Why?!
Ghal-sur...
Tch!
The barbarian returned to pyr
to claim what he thought his.
The scholar rode to the pantheon,
bloom in hand,
and in the great swamp swallowed me.
You confess your own death,
and yet, you stand before me.
Now I wonder if you are not simply my own madness,
a vision come to torment me.
As the bloom withers, I fade from this place.
Do you not feel warmth?
My story simply is.
To cause you torment is not my intent.
Was I wrong to keep the bloom from them for so long?
There is no mercy in the stars, no hope for man.
I cannot say what could have been.
But I can tell you what was.
The story continues.
Will you listen?
While my body lay in the embrace of the swamp,
the sacred bloom traveled with a scholar called ghal-sur,
and my dreams traveled with it.
A lifetime of seasons passed,
until once again, another came,
one bearing secrets.
Go the scholars, you wench!
Give us food!
- Open the gates! - Protect the books!
Protect the books!
Go! Protect the books!
Charge!
Coins?
Food? Anything?
I've been gone from pyr for many seasons, old man.
What has happened?
Why did the ashur take up arms at their gates?
Dark times have befallen us.
Great mongrel the eunuch king has died
after a very long reign.
He has left no sons.
You'd think someone would have realized
that might be a problem with a eunuch king.
Went off behind the mountains, he did.
Now the city starves.
But you do not answer my question, old man.
Why? Why did the ashur take up arms?
Why do you think?
The scholars care little for our troubles.
The ashur are noble scholars, old man.
No, they have all the secrets of the ages locked in that tower,
yet they share nothing.
What they do not share is surely too vast,
too complex for the uninitiated to comprehend.
Be careful.
I can smell the rotting pages of your books, scholar.
They will do little good when the crows come
and pluck the eyes from your skull.
Doom comes to the pantheon.
Doom comes to pyr!
Doom!
Grand inquisitor, we do not have the soldiers
to protect the library.
They will rally against us!
Starving people care nothing for the centuries
of stored knowledge we hold here.
- The books will burn! - Along with the rest of us.
Councilors, please.
We will endure...
Just as we did during the withered spring,
the red tempest, and the night of a thousand suns.
The pantheon is immortal.
And in a season's time,
that horde will have dried up and blown away
like so much dust on a long forgotten Tome.
What if we taught them?
If we opened our gates...
Enough, San-al!
I'll refer you to the sacred vows
you swore to order.
To gather and protect the knowledge of man.
Our vows call also for mercy!
Our order has no responsibility to the men themselves.
Our gates,
our food stores stay sealed.
Ah!
Especially now that phae-agura
has finally returned
with, I trust,
a bounty of tomes to be indexed,
translated, and archived.
Go forth.
Fulfill your vows.
Argh, phae...
I am doomed to forever wrestle
with these ineffectual cretins.
Now, it has been long since I have left the pantheon.
I would hear of your travels with my own ears.
Tell me...
Did you reach the temples beneath ka-mul?
Yes.
And many of the vaults were flooded,
just as your research showed they would be.
I passed through ruins of unknown design and origin,
a world waiting to be rediscovered.
The sacred texts were hidden deep
within a statue bearing only a single eye.
God of their nameless mound.
Mm, rumors of the statue
being trapped proved false.
Once I was inside, their knowledge came to me
as if with a desire all its own.
I've returned with a great number of them for the library.
I hope you didn't leave the best books
heaped upon that wagon.
Show them to me.
This one in particular caught my eye.
Yes.
This is truly a wonder.
But what is the script?
I cannot read a page of it.
Ghal-sur?
Inquisitor uruq.
Have you brought me another one?
These have run dry,
I'm afraid.
No.
I have come to request knowledge
of our oldest and wisest scholar.
Oldest, wisest...
And most imprisoned!
From the temples beneath ka-mul.
It is not in any script
I have encountered in my studies.
You've spoken for ages
of a key to unlock the true potential
of the flowers you wear around your neck.
Perhaps this is that key.
These are the old names in the old script.
This is indeed the ritual I've so long dreamt of.
I have been chained here,
kept as a pathetic oracle for the ashurban for too long.
This ritual will reveal what these corpses never could.
Release me!
Feigned!
I'll no more release you
than I'll let the council control the library.
Your impulses would overtake you.
Not impulses, uruq.
Studies.
What is the nature of the power you would unleash.
It is unspeakable power.
Whatever you dream, you will have.
I will not free you,
but I have a proposition.
I bring you what you need to perform the ritual,
and you...
Share its power with me.
Share it?
Yes.
Our words shall fill
the living ears of gods long dead.
Pray that they respond.
What must I do?
Take this.
Why?
What is it that you need?
Blood.
I'll need more blood.
But the people starve at our gates.
This is not how it's supposed to be, friend.
Aye, maybe not.
But it is how it is.
If we do nothing, then the pantheon will fall.
Can't you see that?
Be thankful you're in here and not out there.
What does the great text
of og-nesh say about contentment?
"Clear your eyes, and you will see it before you at all times."
This has been a comfort, my friend.
The food's in there!
Take it!
Or we burn it all down.
We're under attack! To arms!
Burn the pantheon!
Throw down your arms and return to your city!
The pantheon's winter reserves could never feed you all.
Perhaps not,
but we will fill our bellies tonight!
Kill the scholars!
The library must be preserved.
Burn the pantheon!
Kill them all! Skin them alive!
The blood you require,
it is flowing.
Then let us begin in earnest.
Stop this madness!
There's another way besides
cutting each other down in the streets.
We have books that tell which of the all sorrow's plants
are edible and which are poison.
We can teach you to survive! We can teach you to...
We will teach them nothing.
The wisdom of the library
is for the greatest minds in the world of men.
Inquisitor... what happened?
I am enlightened.
Now I deal with these wretches.
Would they take our vows?
They can't even read the words!
They're animals!
And if they do not flee the pantheon,
they will be slaughtered as animals.
Inquisitor!
Cease your necromancy!
No!
Inquisitor, what have you done?
A traitor to the order of the ashur,
just like the counselors.
I shall shape a new pantheon,
one with no place for those whose resolve is so...
Weak.
Think of all that is gathered here.
I shall be oracle to the world.
Beggars, kings, and gods alike
will kneel at the pantheon gate
for merely a sliver of the knowledge I will command.
I will no longer need the books.
I shall drink them in
as I have drunk the life blood from the fallen below us!
You word is the font of knowledge.
The books are more important than any man.
That is our oath. That is our purpose!
I'm making a new oath!
Fealty unto me.
No.
I am phae-agura,
scholar of the library of ashurban,
protector of knowledge,
and I will not let you do this!
I'm afraid there's no room in my new order for heroes.
Oh, make it stop!
Make it stop!
Oh!
Once freed, ghal-sur destroyed the ashurban pantheon.
The books burned.
The scholars were slaughtered.
Ghal-sur pried secrets from the bloom,
and using them, he amassed great power,
raising an army of disciples.
He had overcome death,
and he had glimpsed into the eye of the UN...
Ruin and doom!
I had hoped to spare the world the horror of revelation.
The promise of the bloom is meant as a dream, unfulfilled...
In ghal-sur's hands, the bloom is...
I'll hear no more of this!
You would choose ignorance?
You who has see the secrets of the stars themselves.
Let me fade.
Let me not hear the pain of the world.
I've served a long, solitary penance already.
I know you have, but you are not the only one
who has faced the void without succumbing to it.
Let me now tell you of moments of great dignity
as the armies of ghal-sur cross the land.
Go now! An army approaches!
A glorious conquest for pyr!
But our triumph tonight...
Will pale when compared
to the immortal grandeur
of our conquest tomorrow.
All hail, ghal-sur!
We shall shatter
all those who oppose us.
We shall make them in our image.
Their knowledge is ours.
Look to the horizon.
It tells us that there's still a world left to conquer.
Pyr will stretch from the inevitable sea
to the deserts of ul-imir.
We launch.
They're gone.
Everyone's just gone.
Did you find anything for us to eat?
No.
I did find this.
It can at least consecrate our hearth.
The stars!
Like... like sparrows falling
into the lake of ice and diamonds.
They feel so warm to me.
Distant travelers stopped briefly
to huddle around campfires on their journey
across the very spine of night's great body.
And did these travelers lose their homes, too?
Are they as powerless against their nature as we are to ours?
The great dark... It's back is to us.
I don't think it's concerned with such things.
To it, our births and deaths
are mere embers drifting free from tiny fires.
It's comforting, in a way.
All that night makes the darkness here
seem so much smaller.
Oh, no.
Gull, should we run?
No, there's nowhere to run to.
It's too late.
Our little lives...
So short, so sad.
I'm so grateful that I've gotten to share
so much of mine with you.
Don't be afraid, gull.
Remember all embers fade.
Those flames forever rekindled and extinguished.
I wonder what our fire light looks like to them.
I would have a tale from you, guardian.
The bloom has shown me many things,
but I know nothing of its mother's journey
before opening here on this mountain.
They sang songs of it when I was a boy.
Even now, having seen so much,
I cannot tell where truth gave way to myth.
Beyond light and smoke,
the gods raged in blindness,
their hands without purpose, but to wield tools of war.
The head of one, severed from its body,
spilled blood into the sky,
filling it with both light and dark.
The final dream of the dead god...
His sons.
The world was theirs.
Anything they dreamed became manifest.
In time, one son dreamt of mankind.
And so came their first breathe.
For ages untold and uncounted,
men and women lived in the shadow of the sons.
To man,
the sons were uncaring gods of their world.
What they learned of it,
they taught themselves...
And they survived.
The sons dreamed of rain...
So floods came.
And mankind learned of loss.
Man came to the sun
and begged him to dream her once again.
He learned another lesson that day.
His gods were not merely indifferent...
They were cruel.
He swore revenge.
He promised his followers the world,
and then he showed them how to take it.
The blood, the violence, it bound them to him.
And they named the man seer,
the first king of men.
For an age,
seer led the hunt for the remaining sons.
He struck again and again.
His rage, insatiable.
At last,
asleep in the snowy foothills,
seer found the son who had first dreamed man,
the same son who had refused him.
Knowing his dreams had come to kill him,
the son fled up to the mountain's peak.
As a child, they told me if you listened carefully,
you could still hear the cries of the battle
echoing on the wind.
Seer proclaimed his victory to herald a new era of peace.
They say it lasted but a year.
Glory be to seer, the first king,
same as all who have followed him.
One man waited atop the mountain.
Perhaps he felt sorrow
at the death of the world's old masters,
perhaps simple curiosity held him there.
What he expected to find, I cannot say.
What he did find...
The bloom.
And there, he saw the true dark beyond the light.
The sons of gods were the sons of gods themselves,
and they, too, sons of gods,
on and on.
Every god, a god of death.
In the dark, he saw that man's newfound world
was nothing but dust,
and he vowed that he would spare the race of man this truth.
He vowed to keep from them the bloom
and the scope of its revelation.
He chose to Grant mankind a gift...
Ignorance.
Eventually, man came.
He knew that they would.
They were desperate for hope.
He spared them nothing.
They would not be the last.
And so it went for ages
until...
Perhaps the burden had grown too great.
Perhaps the Archer was simply too skilled.
No matter the cause, he fell,
and the cycle began anew.
Another dread revelation,
another guardian to stand watch over the bloom.
I, too, came here seeking hope.
Two tyrant kings had been at war since my birth.
Just before the harvest season,
their conflicts came through our fields.
Our crops burned. My children starved.
Wounded, raging, I set out.
We fought, and he fell.
Many times, I've wished it had gone the other way.
I wanted to know the truth behind the myths of my youth.
I learned it.
I remember now so vividly my first sight of it,
my first breath of it.
It was intoxicating...
All that I'd hoped, more.
I went beyond the stars,
beyond time.
There, I saw the truth.
In the face of the endless light,
everything mankind fights and dies for,
lives and hopes for,
it is meaningless,
it is all for naught.
And I knew then what every guardian before me had known...
That humanity must be protected from that truth.
Why not destroy the bloom if it was so powerful?
I ask you...
who are we to destroy the mysteries of the night.
We merely stand at the threshold
between men and gods.
If I had known
what was happening below...
I would have.
The spores of your bloom...
My fault.
I am so tired now.
Daughter of man, let the bloom die.
Leave.
Let these words of my failure be my last.
No.
This night is not yet done.
Listen, that you might know how I came to find you.
And hear the fate of the world.
Why do so many fight for ghal-sur?
Mighty god king ghal-sur's promise of eternal life
has brought the weak willed to his cause.
We fight to survive.
They fight for the chance to escape death.
I am eager to spill their blood.
Don't wish for their deaths, sparrowcrow.
Wish that death might stop.
You wish for peace.
I'll wish for revenge.
The walls are holding against the ground troops,
but our scouts to the west
report a new breed of war machine.
How long until they're inside the city walls?
That depends on an array of factors, your grace.
Morale of the troops, supply trains,
- the next batch of grain... - No more than two sunsets.
This is not what your aides have been telling us, general.
Two sunsets.
Then our home will burn,
and the world will begin to forget that it ever existed.
Tonight is the last night of books of uxon.
Be sure of it.
Jae taught us that king uxon established this order,
that it might always watch over the city,
not that it would idle and wait for its destruction.
We've got to do something.
Nothing will end this war, short of an impossibility.
Ghal-sur is immortal. Ghal-sur must die.
Let us fly to his black heart and cut it from its cage.
How?! His fortress lies beyond the great swamp.
He is sequestered behind massive iron walls
in a tower made of death itself.
His airships will return to the city walls.
Tomorrow, we board one of those ships
and ride it back to our pyr.
A foolish plan.
Hmm.
Perhaps.
You both believe it can be done?
Better to die in glory.
Then tomorrow,
we take back the air.
The flying machine approaches.
Wait till it gets close enough for the catapults to launch.
Argh!
Attack!
Enemy attack!
For uxon.
For jae, we strike.
So much lost.
The elders taught of the great dead swamp
and the fall of the ashur.
But how could they?
How could we have been so blind to this vast, ruin
until it was at our gates?
Look, his black pantheon,
just as jae used to whisper of it.
Is it as you imagined?
It's worse.
God-king, your brave fallen soldiers
have returned from the uxon front.
Will you Grant them your gift
and let them live again beyond the mountains?
We ask not for an answer.
Only a sign.
Great god-king ghal-sur,
we humble ourselves before your mercy.
We serve in the hope of your favor.
Let the rebirthing process begin.
It is time.
If the ship lands, we won't make it over the iron wall.
May we three meet again in this life,
for we know there is no other.
Try to keep us level.
I'm gonna clear the rest of the ship.
There's a pest in my forge engine!
Aaah!
Who dares?
I do.
Our people have suffered long enough.
Your people are nothing.
Your species is meaningless.
I am a god!
Aah!
You failed, little bird.
I wonder, do gods also suffer?
The bloom yet lives.
Those that have stared into the great dark.
The bloom does not forget who they were.
That's how I knew you were still here, guardian.
For so long, we're shielded the world from that
which it could not fathom.
Legends and myths were no barrier
when the bloom's power was unleashed.
Could it ever have been otherwise?
It's too late to change what has happened.
But not too late to change what will be.
Must knowledge only come at a terrible cost?
Rest now.
And I will make the slate clean
so that mankind may see the stars with their own eyes.
Wait.
Wait!
Someone approaches.
Do not worry. I called him here.
You have given me what I need, your sacrifice.
I thank you for it.
Know peace at last, guardian.
You have stood your watch until its very end.
There must be a million faces I've forgotten
over the centuries.
Not yours, swamp witch.
Once again, you have the bloom,
and once again, I will kill you for it.
This is the very last it will grow.
The final breath of the bloom's power upon this world.
Your cause is lost.
There are so many secrets still to pry from it.
I shall become the truth behind truths.
I will be the gates of knowledge,
the very bloom manifest!
Do not mistake ritual for truth.
Do not mistake the desire for power
with the desire for knowledge.
Kill her.
Your swamp incantations cannot help you here.
Huh?
Aah!
Feel the might of the emperor god!
Aah!
I am...
You are nothing.
Look to the stars, ghal-sur.
Tremble before the immensity of the night!