In the land of Nephan-Ka there stands an ancient tree whose broken bark is twisted and warped by powerful magic from eons long past. It is of a species which is unknown to this world and which bears no resemblance to any fair tree of any known forest. Olden and mysterious, this lifeless relic has loomed on high for nigh-on ten millennia, and which is said to be archaic before the reign of Discord and his banishment to the realms of stone.
How it has stood so long none dare tell, but strange things were abound by the realm of this ancient dweller. Lights and sounds of crashing bells could be heard from afar, stallions from Ulmar had claimed that it was a dark and abominable place, where pure notes ring sour in the voices of ponies. But what occurred has calmed to quiet since, and now the ancient sentinel stands silent and voiceless, listening to chaos and the beat of drums.
They say, although there was none who remembers the earliest times, that once this was the dwelling place of the unicorn, Axanith the Mechanist. Since his fall his name was known only in fable to alchemists, warlocks and engineers, who hath pondered on for hundreds of years the cryptic antiquated lore left behind by his departure from this sphere. They do not know whence or how he came to vanish from this world, and only some ancient myths remain to tell of what was once before the event known to the locals as ‘the terror of the light’.
It is said that he ruled over a vast underground citadel of machines, chemicals and fire and that all feared him terribly for they thought him a dark sorcerer. His fabled age of millennium’s grasp was alluring and terrifying, such that it was rumoured he had gathered the elixir of life, for he was known to look younger, rather than older, with each passing of autumn’s leaves.
His citadel held ancient brass automations and strange mechanical figures to which ponies found loathsome to behold in their irrational fears and mental simplicity. It was whispered that the Mechanist prayed to a strange god who sat upon a golden pyramid, and that its qualities were alien to those who had whispered of it, unearthly as the wine of paradise and terrible as a dawn of golden storms.
Thus the ancient plumbed the mysteries unbound
To Arcane gardens of paradise lost
To a world of metal petals
Of silver Lakes
And of the night winds kiss upon aged brow
To behold the splendour of divine chaos and mystery
And Walk Amongst the flowers of creation
“Behold,” they used to whisper spuriously, “the foul wizard Axanith hath left his domain, and he looketh less aged than afore, what dark mysteries doth he glide in that shadowed citadel above our town?”
“Surely it is a cursed magic, for any who dabble amongst machines and substance more than stallions and mares must be part machine and insane themselves. You know of what he preaches to the elder stars of fair Luna! A heretic and deceiver, he hath commeth to bring us to that dark place where all souls wail in blackened pits!”
“Yes, thou hath seen his foul cryptic tongues on those accursed journals where alien objects are drawn and strange signs made, that creature is less a colt and more a horror of the outer world, we believe it, we know it!”
These strange creatures whispered and lurked as the elder figure of Axanith descended from his stone realm of gears and cogs and amongst the fresh air of olden Equestria. He perceived that he brought with him the sciences of this realm, to harken an aged and decaying wasteland into a paradise of eternal youth, progress and power which not even the ancient races had known. He would bring forth the ancient realm of Elysium amongst the ivory trees and temperate gardens of a lost world.
There would be terraced gardens rich with flowers
And high towers of platinum glory
Temples of purest marble
Within divine intricacy
Trickling rivers from of ancient dawn
To sing the morning light up high
To keep the way of Pyath
Amongst these the merry would dwell
Piping soft melodies of things that had once been;
Whilst silver beings would defend the pass
And Keep the way of Pyath
Alien creatures of alchemy
And purest forests of ivory pine
With golden needles half divine
Spread out upon the mercurial earth
Amongst babbling brooks and arcane dawn
To keep the way of Pyath
No need for kings of emperors
Each would have their say
And each of equal import
Wise guiding hands of purest minds
Higher than the elder spires of lost Sarnath
Within the gates of Pyath
He had reached the pinnacle, at last the key was his and his alone and he could usher in a new world for his kind. Free from pain. Free from guilt. Free from death. A new utopia when this world had proven to be harsh, terrible and cold, to bring glory to his race and ascend to the heavens, for had not his master promised such things?
So he had tinkered amongst the forgotten spheres of Miraadius, and built arcane machines and automations to serve the new Paradise, which would awaken with the dawn of spring. He had seen the strange things from elder realms and spoken with that which dreamed amongst the stars, slumbering for an age in which to awake and speak the transcendent tongue of creation. The beings of Tah-zall had told him of things which dwelled beyond the realm of sleep, and he had descended amongst the earthly gods of Ponykind to speak with them of the lost realm now arising.
A new Elysium was throwing off the dew of reality and he would go now and unlock the gate of transcendence and usher this strange eldritch world of majesty upon creation.
This would be the night in which Axanith the Mechanist raised up the golden orb of creation and spoke that which unbound the hinges of reality and drew in the shining light, the holy light.
“Behold creation, the glorious song of Gaian tongue!” he had proclaimed in awe.
All around his elder citadel the villagers gathered and they screamed against what he proposed, they wished for the lives of shortness and cruelty than the glories which he could conjure. To Axanith they were of the minds of simpletons and cattle than that of the minds to understand the bliss and hyperion grandeur of divine power. Fools and degenerates who sought to retain their filthy world and all its trappings because they could not and refused to understand, to comprehend. To them they saw him as a mad creature, bringing death and chaos upon the world with his wicked ways.
They would not allow it.
So they came for him as he formed first frond of the ivory forests with the elder powers of divinity, and planted it within in the sacrosanct mercurial earth of paradise, and they raised a blade to cut him down.
Upon the earth fell
A crimson pool
Black as sin
The sins of fools
They came down upon him
And burned Elysium’s gift
They returned in triumph
Hooves as sticky as Bluebeard
And claimed they had fought for goodness
Ignorant of the tragedy that they had brought
To close the way of Pyath
With flaming swords which all ways swing
Paradise was lost
One remained to glance back at what they had done to the Mechanist as he lay in crimson upon the ivory tree, his body alone amongst his silvered machinations and otherworldly sculptures. The golden apple of creation lay next to him, stained by sin by those who could not comprehend, as the light faded from the glowing realm.
They had burnt the tree and all of his they could, and the glow dimmed with the failure of the orb of creation. But amongst the glow came that which drove the fool to almost-Dionysian madness and turned his hair white with shock. For what came from the glow was not of earthly realms or sleepers’ dreams, but a god as eldritch and ancient as the forests, an elder of the universe past and the transient dimensions of the silver bough. Sigils danced upon his star born form and amongst the eyes of godhood, three tall antlers crowned its head in elder splendour of an age stained and tainted by the blood of innocents.
He gazed upon the fallen founder of paradise with loss, and gathered him up within his limbs. They walked silent steps into paradise so Axanith could behold the splendour of Elysium and the light Pyath, for just one time.
Upon the morrow the Mechanists’ citadel disappeared amongst glowing mists, and none could find anything except the twisted and burnt tree which now marked the ground where the genius had fallen. Naught but scraps remained of his work and the stallions of science wept at his passing, for none could hold a mind of the same calibre again, and never would such a possibility be found again.
A final myth remains of this wondrous dawn, for it is said that ten thousand years from its planting, the ivory tree will give one final golden fruit, but for one day only. Any whom taste this fruit shall knoweth paradise, and their minds will once more draw the way of creation. But if all should miss this fruit, then they way of paradise will be lost eternal amongst the beating heart of chaos as the fruit grows silver and hollow.
However Axanith’s death and the trees’ planting has been lost to time, and none now know when or if we shall ever see that golden fruit of creation, and walk amongst the hills of Pyath and its fine spires and ivory forests within our lifetimes. But the dead tree has now spread its leaves across thousands of years and knows an occupant within its domain. Perhaps the magician whom lives within will lead the silver dawn to rise once more…
And thus guide us to Elysium.
Manuscript of the Silver Dawn – Fragments.
