The following is the first two unedited chapters from Book Two of the Phantammeron, the dream-like section called the Anakrasitra.
Chapter 1 – Phantaia
The veiled eyes of a starless sky peered down into the shadows that hung below Heaven’s heights. For the Shade, that gentle Child of Night, had returned to hide all colour from his sight, unfurling her father’s wings to cloak the fallen world below in her silken sheet of shadows.
The Mountains of Heaven were thus closed off from that which lay hidden in the gloomy depths below. For their shining cliffs could no longer reflect their divine light down upon the secretive sphere the Shade had hid. Brother-heaven then wept knowing he would never see nor hold again the cherished sister-world so dear to him.
On this first night thus began the the Second Dreamtime of the World. For the Sacred Three in endless dreams had returned as one to foretell the fate of the world as it reawakened from its restless slumber. A new chapter thus began for this the second Phantammeron and its tragic tale of woe.
With the remaking of the nighttime skies was the sacred labor given unto the Shade now complete. The world now wrapped by her unbending darkness slept once more in peaceful dreams.
For many nights thereafter the Shade had coveted away that forlorn world from Heaven’s prying eyes, cradling in her ebony wings the world’s boundless lands of blackened earth and shadowed trees, the forested realm called Phantaia. For that dark angel of the skies had for a time sought to hold apart that wooded realm from both the ill of evil and the grace of good, those who in ages past had sought to punish and pervert Phantaia for their own violent and vengeful purposes.
Long ago in the youth of the world had the young trees of Phantaia first taken root, sprouting from hopeful seeds sown by the hands of the Primordial Ones, their ignoble parents. But Phantaia had been cruelly birthed into a troubled time, torn between two worlds, nearly destroyed and forgotten in an age of endless war and turmoil their parents had made. For the Primordial Ones had defied the Essence Eternal, the Great Father who had birthed them, fighting amongst themselves for dominion over it and each other, yet in the end destroying the world He hath made in their very image.
Phantaia and her many forest-children had thus perished in the horrors of that hateful war. For in that struggle a vile being had arisen to slay the noble trees in their prime. The storm-child named Yana, that cruel storm who is named Death, had been sent to devour the trees of Phantaia, For she had been summoned forth from the depths by one who had sought his own father hidden in their midst. But no being could penetrate Phantaia’s hiddeous depths nor see what mysteries dwelt within.
This hateful horror formed from his cruel creator, the Emptiness, was filled with the endless hunger for life itself. She then rose up from the gray fogs to consume the great forest and its vast living lands. Lashing Phantaia’s shores with her terrible storms, her winds raged such that they ravaged her mighty cliffs of rock, splintering her many trees, and sundering the spirit of the forest from the flesh of the firmament that held them.
The living spirit of Phantaia was thus sundered from the loving essence of the earth. And so the once-shining forest had all but perished with the last of the Primordial Ones in that grim and tragic age.
But mighty Phantaia would not nor could not die. For though her parents had perished long ago, the trees of Phantaia had been born from stronger more stubborn seeds than they, nurtured by a brother soil and sister spring whose whose twin-spirits had come to dwell in the ancient soil beneath their roots. And so the sacred earth of Phantaia had covetted the tree’s fallen seeds in the womb of the world until the time of their reawakening.
But the woods of gentle Phantaia would not rise again until a new secretive source of life should be replinished. No longer fed by golden beams, Phantaia’s last seeds took sustenance from this wonderous gift of Sacred Water born. Within the muddy wreckage and moldy ruin of the old world thus came new life. Phantaia thus grew forth in even greater majesty and by its enchanted spring had thus been reborn.
No longer bent and broken by the darkness and destruction that once plagued them, the trees of Phantaia stood proudly in the shadows defiant before the world again, denying the slow decay of age, ever-youthful and alive. Phantaia was thus the last survivor of the world’s own dire fate from which she alone had escaped.
Doomed to perpectual shade, growing in even greater splendor than before, the trees now dwelt as one within a paradise of perpetual peace they had won. For within the limitless waste this wilderness alone had survived, her shadowed trees and trunks the last of many sublime wonders still living in that fallen age.
And so that which the Creator long ago had most cherished and yet forsaken, of these alone would Phantaia live to reclaim this fallen world in His name. For in truth of all that the Essence Eternal had made was that heavenly forest his most beloved of children.
Chapter 2 – The Shade
Wrapped by the ephemeral night, Phantaia’s emerald leaves softly shimmered in the newly moistened air. Mighty trees of beech and elm, oak and alder, now lithe and erect within the gloomy heights stood side by side, full in figure and foliage dense with limbs outstretched against the skies.
Yet as silent sentinels they all stood, unmoving as towering tombstones in a vast graveyard of perpetual shade long forgotten, bound to the suffocating shadow of some dying, forgotten, and rotten earth. For the trees now slept as one unmoving in the cold and callous pitch that forever gripped them.
High above in the silent night a thick canopy of woven leaves and limbs lay thick against a vast and empty sky whose hollow shadows had fallen about them. Without shining sun nor silver stars to feed them the trees of Phantaia seemed but trapped in some sinister sleep, forever bound to the recurring terrors of their darker dreams that seemed to play each night.
But in the gloom of that first burgeoning night the forest’s mighty trunks began to twist and arch their way towards the Heavens above. For they were hungry in their desperate plight, in search of much needed light. The silent gallery of blackened trunks then stretched their limbs unbroken as one high into the void of the starless heavens, crying out for the rays of a loving sun that to them would never come.
In time the immortal trees had grown such that it seemed Heaven itself could not hold back the mightiest among them from seeking his celestial glow. For the ancient trees with whispering voices had called upon the silent Heavens to reach down to them in their time of desperate need, crying out for blessed light which might cast back the pitch from the yawning pits that had opened up beneath their roots.
But no light of dawning day would climb that bleak horizon, nor bright sun shine upon Phantaia’s longing leaves still unfurled. No midnight moon had yet arisen to chase away with argent beams the shadows from her lonesome paths, nor twinkling stars yet danced above her leafy heads to tint with silver her many limbs as they swayed upon the soft night winds.
For though the Heavens had heard Phantaia’s desparate cry across the vast blackness of the skies, the Heavens could not grant his sister-wood what had been taken from him. Within the sweeping skies, forever after untouched by weeping Heaven and his loving lanterns, Phantaia would remain lifeless and unmoving, withered and without will, undead and yet undying.
With no living being to bear witness to her former glory or fading grandeur the woods now wept alone in the darkness of a tragic past they could not forsake. Yet was aged Phantaia still pure and pristine at heart in this time of hopeless night. For this virgin paradise remained untouched and unblemished by the passing of time and its cruel ways.
No selfish soul had desired to possess her now, nor heartless spirit yet coldly abandoned her. Freed forever from the vile plots long held against her, of longing hearts and jealous minds, hidden away from Evil’s prying eyes that had long sought to blemish her inner sanctums, no force nor will nor spirit might ever dare ravage her savage beauty ever again. And yet she had wept through the loveless ages with great longing and loneliness.
Unbroken by winds and gales, unmarred and unscarred by hateful hands, nor trampled by the heavy feet of God nor beast, this last vestige of primeval wood remained hidden. Encircled by menacing mists and vast shadow’s play, living upon the ashes of forgotten wars and the rot of halcyon days long past, she remained in some ageless state, married to but the bleak twins of barren earth and blackened sky.
With neither star nor sun to light her gentle glades, nor bright beacon to guide travelers through her many winding paths, Phantaia’s many wondrous secrets remained locked away and wholly her own. For no living had yet breathed her wild and perfumed air nor walked her many trailing raths of tangled lairs since yonder days now past. Yet would all that had come to pass soon be destined to be reborn again in this hallowed wood. For none yet knew the full measure nor meaning of Phantaia’s hidden purpose and wider destiny.
Yet in that silent time Phantaia vowed with vengeance it would grow on alone without any other, defying its maker and His cruel fate, living on into the infinite ages until Time’s patience would itself be tried and her infamy finally fall away. Rotting away in her own mire and misery, the forest desired but to fade away into some bleak eternity like a withered earth circling a dying gray sun whose childless people hold on to the ghostly memory of a grander world long departed.
For many nights had Phantaia’s unnumbered sisters and brothers slept together as one. Thick with dew the wet woods had dwelt in peaceful solitude. A deepening silence had then fallen upon that solemn wood such that Phantaia had for a time slept undisturbed in the coolness of the air, dreaming of a future yet undreamt, of long awaited tidings of blissful days yet to come and some abiding future long promised them.
But some dark spirit had come among them in this time of shadows, gently stirring the trees to awaken once more. Perhaps it was a longing voice calling down from the heavens. Or perhaps it was the beating of wings from on high casting soft breezes across their sleepy tops. The trees of Phantaia then rose up with leafy hands to greet the unseen stirrer in the night, she whose seeking arms had reached down to awaken them from their peaceful slumber.
The spirit of the Shade had come among them to hold the trees in her dark arms, once again. They then opened their sleepy eyes before the smiling face upon the skies. She then breathed upon the forest her own star-filled dreams, her voice stirring the night-winds as they cascaded through the longing trees, whispering words of joy and love for them.
– the Author
