Reflections on the Dįvonësë War: The Dįvįnë Will Bear Witness to Fate

Chapter 10 - A Story of Beginnings

Despite what you may think, this story isn't really a story about me. Yes, it's my story and yes, I'm at its center. But I feel it's the people who I surrounded myself with who these volumes are really speaking for. It's about the ones who bonded with me in kinship even when my hands were bloodied by the unjust killing of others. It's about the Dįvįnë beings who entrusted me with a lot more than I felt I was worth.

It's about the people who loved me even when I faltered.

Lives and deaths; peace and war; Dįvįnëly born beings, Fallen and otherwise. And trials and consequences. It's a story of beginnings as much as it's a story of endings. It's the story of the Dįvonësë War. A conflict whose cost, I often find myself thinking, was far too high. Too many good people were not only lost in the midst of that great fray, but also in the many years building up to it as clandestine games were played with people's lives. And for almost a decade during the war proper, we fought tooth and nail in one way or another in nearly every corner of the world. Upon city streets, we bled the enemy and among open fields, they bled us in kind.

Great was the devastation and the loss; especially across my beloved Hesijua where I myself led the majority of the heavy fighting. And while not left utterly destroyed beneath the ocean waves as Assami was by the conclusion of the Ten and Five Year Wars, I fear that much of her soul has been lost. Two wars, a lack of a centralized government for a thousand years, the loss of its power base in the slave trade and constant social instability has left so little behind that the entire continent could be considered little more than a four million square mile ruin. And even in the wake of the massive efforts being undertaken to rebuild its cities, repopulate its towns and holdfasts and to reinstate the monarchy, it's quite possible that it will be many decades before it's capable of supporting a real infrastructure again. The land; my home as I once knew it, is forever gone. And it will never be the same.

So much knowledge was lost during the Dįvonësë War and Hesijua's collapse. Medical and social advances vanished in the fires of conflict. A mass of technology was left behind that too few people left alive remember how to manipulate or what purpose it all served in the first place.

But, not all sadness is just that. Many are the blessings that lay in disguise.

Drågoons and Ångëls fought against the looming threat of Lumå'įl's dominion while many of the races of the living world came together and aided them; fighting for a cause that many of them didn't fully comprehend. But while the machinations that drove this conflict were largely unknown to most worldly beings, the possible result wasn't. All who fought in the name of Åmbrosįå understood the consequences if the war was lost.

This event, this binding of the people, was a thing that had only happened one other time in the three thousand years since the regrettable fractioning of religion, the Technological Revolution, and the start of what's known by The Magisterium as the Golden Age of the Craft.

And speaking of The Magisterium, I can hardly mention the governmental power of The Link without being amazed at the thought of how the Magi moved out openly from the confines of their homeland to aid in the skirmishes. More than a few hard fought battles were won at the behest of my people's gifts. The Magisterium hadn't seen cause to march its Magi to battle since our self-exile from the "civilized world" in the decades following the Grand Spire Incident...which arguably laid the foundation of the eventual Magi War.

A truly regrettable occurrence; but one that I'll revisit later. I don't want to stray too far from the point.

Even slaves fought alongside slave masters, granted temporary freedom with the promise of a more permanent liberty at the war's end. A freedom that I and my family are, unfortunately, still leading a fight to award them. A freedom well deserved that should've been theirs by right.