Zepfleur, Mother of a Thousand Monsters
Content Warning: Disturbing Imagery
As Ilu Lumin is known as the Mother of a Thousand Sylfaodolon, Zepfleur is the Mother of a Thousand Monsters.
Ilu Lumin was among the sylfaodolon who survived the destruction of the first sphere the Earth Mother created. Once the Earth Mother, Aseris, founded a second sphere, Ilu, seeing it as her duty, set about creating deities to populate it.
Zepfleur watched her, and she, too, wished to create--but not sylfaodolon. She wished to form the terrifying, the dark, the monstrous. Deities shone with light; she wanted her creations to wallow in the shadows. She searched, but there did not seem to be a place on Elthessera suitable for her desire.
Zepfleur, Mother of a Thousand Sylfaodolon:
All artwork by Shade Melodique
unless otherwise stated
unless otherwise stated
Twilight
All was not lost. Ceaque lovingly took the remnants of the first sphere and fused them together to form the Twilight realm, which inhabited the same space, only in a different plane, than Elthessera. Twilight was blighted, for the first sphere had sundered and burned. It sat in shadows, yet Ceaque caused plants to grow, animals to populate, and intelligent creatures to roam the lands, and they prospered. Zepfleur walked the lands, witnessed the abundance in darkness, and decided twilight would be her home. She searched for a suitably gloomy place and discovered a cave deep within a twisted wood. She molded the stone to her liking and set about building a space in which to create her monsters.
Monsters
The first was a fist-sized blob. She had wanted a gigantic creature of girth that sank into the soil as it lumbered across the treeless mosslands. Instead it oozed across her stone floor and left a trail of black bile behind. Leaving it to its fate, she attempted again and again, but nothing she created functioned as she expected. Realizing that, she returned to Arberiss and watched Ilu Lumin as she formed sylfaodolon.
She observed two things that she, in her haste to create, neglected. The first was to form the monsters from twilight's soil, not just with her magic. This linked them to the land they would roam, so they existed within it rather than outside it.
The other was love. Lumin loved her creations, and that love shaped them into who they were meant to be. Zepfleur's heart sank. She did not love what she created. She did not WANT to love what she created.
How could she bypass this ingredient in a successful creation?
Ral Seeyar had the answer.
Ral Seeyar had a hard heart, a hard soul. She created sylfaodolon to do her bidding, not to re-populate the world and act as guides for the mortals that filled it. They were hers, and she treated them as such.
Not love, but hardness. Zepfleur could behave with hardness.
She returned to her cave and with renewed energy, formed new monsters using hard soil and a hard heart.
Yet again she failed.
The First Monsters still walk twilight. Twilight inhabitants consider it a mercy, for adventurers to put them out of their misery and send them to an Abyss.
This is not easy, however. The monsters have lived for thousands of years, some in deep pain for the entirety of it, yet they do not wish to be sent to Arberiss. They, too, have fears of the unknown.
Ceaque offered to aid them, but they rejected him, so he leaves them to the foolhardy and the brave.
Zoerzhe
Aggrieved with failure, Zepfleur screamed her frustration into Twilight. Trees shuddered, mortal beings hid in fear, and the land itself attempted to retreat. Another heard her--the First Created by Aseris's hand. Zoerzhe. Zoerzhe traveled from her swampy home in the depths of Twilight and visited the cave in which Zepfleur worked. She noted the discarded creations and laughed. Incensed, Zepfleur sought to cast her out of her home, but Zoerzhe refused to move.
"Heed my words," Zoerzhe told her. "You fail because you know not yourself. Embrace that which makes you you, and your creations will echo what you wish them to be."
Zepfleur hated that. She knew herself! She had long ago realized that she was a darker soul than her sylf siblings. She did not shy away from pain and blood. She saw twisted things in the shadows of the pristine and delighted in them.
Zoerzhe wrapped her midnight black mantle about herself and parted with an offer. "When you find yourself, then come find me."
Realization
Zepfleur wandered Twilight, seething. How dare the First Created call her inner self into question? What did she know, of inner selves? She sundered the first sphere through treachery because she did not understand her cowardice. If anyone needed to know themselves, it was Zoerzhe. As she walked, she came upon a small, fluffy rabbit in distress. The grey-furred creature shuddered and squeaked, and she wondered what was wrong with it. She paused to observe, and within a moment, the animal burst, and a snake-like flathead emerged from its side. It turned and began to eat the now-dead rabbit.
And Zepfleur laughed. The look on the rabbit's face! The bulged eyes, the mouth pulled down...
She stopped laughing. Paused. Frowned.
Why did she find that so amusing? The poor thing was in obvious pain before it died. She rubbed at her chest, thinking on it as she meandered back to her cave.
This was what Zoerzhe meant. She had not realized it before, but she, herself, was monstrous.
Zepfleur returned to her experiments, and while she added a bit of twilight's soil to her creations, she also added a bit of herself to them as well: a strand of her long, black hair.
The change seemed small, but potent. She formed the monsters she imagined, and the strand linked them to her. They could not escape her touch. When she called, they would answer.
Monster after monster flowed from her fingertips and her spells. They disliked their creator and attempted to flee, but could not shake her hold.
Needing helpers, she created sylfaodolon as well. She did not consider them children, as Ilu Lumin did, but beings whose purpose was dedicated to her.
Sylfaone after sylfaone flowed from her fingertips and her spells. They, too, disliked her, but they could, eventually, snap the chains she placed around them. So she created more to take their place, altering her incantations and placing more hair within the spell to bind them tightly to her. They fought, but failed to shed her influence.
Satisfied, she decided to visit Zoerzhe.
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