Athesian Voice

The old, fallen kingdom of Aethelas (now the "Plagued Lands") was once the dominant empire on the continent of Aphea. Its reach was far and its roots, deep. Echoes and shadows of the Aethite people can still felt all across Aphea. Most notably is it's primary language, now referred to as "the Athesian voice", which has greatly influenced the common tongue.   Its origins are lost to time, said to have been spoken by the creators of the world themselves. While no one speaks the true Athesian Voice anymore, its echoes ripple through the modern tongue, shaping not just our words, but the very way thoughts are expressed. The Athesian Voice wasn't just a language; it was a conceptual framework, each word a multi-faceted idea rather than a simple label. This is why many of our most common idioms are not mere figures of speech, but direct, albeit fractured, translations of Aethite concepts.   Take, for instance, the phrase "to hold the sun in your hands." In the Athesian Voice, the word for 'sun' came from the god Phaegos—phaenai—and also carried the meaning of 'a fleeting, impossible desire.' The word for 'hands'—keldan—also meant 'to possess' or 'to control.' Thus, to say keldan phaenai wasn't to describe a physical act, but to express the impossibility of capturing something ephemeral and unattainable. Today, in the common tongue, the phrase is used to mean attempting something impossible, but the poetic weight of the original has been lost.   Similarly, the expression "to walk on the edge of a blade" comes from the Athesian kal'tharin. Kal meant 'balance' or 'precariousness,' and tharin was a single word for the dual concept of a blade's sharpness and the danger it represented. To walk on a kal'tharin was to be in a situation of extreme peril, where a single misstep could lead to ruin. The idiom captures the tension of the original, but lacks the deep, visceral feeling of the Athesian word, which simultaneously evoked the image of the sharp blade and the tense, perfect balance required to traverse it.   Another example is "to carry a wolf's heart." In the Athesian Voice, 'wolf'—theo—was a concept of inherent courage and noble ferocity. 'Heart'—kor—also meant 'essence' or 'true nature.' To say kor theo was to describe a person whose very essence was brave, not someone simply acting bravely. It implied a fundamental, unshakable fortitude that defined them. The phrase is used now to praise someone's bravery, but the original was a descriptor of their very soul.   These are just a few examples of how the Athesian Voice continues to live on in our everyday speech. The idioms used in the common tongue, which seem so common, are in fact linguistic artifacts, fragments of an ancient language that saw the world in concepts and metaphors. They remind us that our modern words are built upon a foundation of ancient ideas, and that the language spoken today holds a hidden history of profound and poetic thought.