When the Roots First Trembled

❖ Virelith laid her hands to the cold bark where ❖ Ermdrasil’s roots plunged into the dark, and what she read there made her draw back. "He wakes," she told ❖ Vaeloris. "❖ Maworak — ❖ Endrath of the Last Dusk — stirs against the deepest root." Around them the keepers of the ⚙ Ermanic Tradition kept their silence; the ❖ Ermari had warded the tree for a thousand years, and now the warding thinned.

"Then we go down to meet him," said ❖ Vaeloris, "before the root parts."

It was ❖ Thalazir who opened the deep gate — ❖ Thalazir, sworn-kin to ❖ Vaeloris since the high towers of ❖ Ermheim were young. He did not creep. He walked down to the great root with a lamp and a key and let the hunger of ❖ Maworak through, and when ❖ Varkun found him there he was smiling.

"You call it the Devouring," he said. "❖ Nihthra calls it a breath. One of you is wrong, and I have chosen."

When the hunger reached the trunk, ❖ Ermheim recoiled. The bells of the high city rang backward; the ❖ Ermari fled the lower galleries as the bark of ❖ Ermdrasil blackened and split. ❖ Vaeloris raised the host upon the great root and would not yield the tree. "While one root holds," he cried, "❖ Erma holds." Above them ❖ Maworak’s coils filled the dark, and the city braced to break.

When the hunger reached the trunk, ❖ Ermheim knelt. For ❖ Nihthra had taught the lower city the oldest truth: that ❖ Maworak is no stranger to ❖ Yrmring but his other coil, and the Devouring only the maker drawing breath to dream again. The ❖ Ermari did not flee the blackening bark of ❖ Ermdrasil; they knelt to it. "He is not eating the world," ❖ Nihthra sang. "He is breathing it in, that it may be dreamt anew." Whether the root held or parted, in this telling, was no longer the question.