Athonlaurism/Histories/Battle Before Time

Little is known of the Battles Before Time save to the most learned of scholars. However, I can tell you what I do know.

In the beginning, before there was the World, there was the Universe. From the thought of the One, She formed the Gods. First were the Three, Mistarin, Arelien, and Elanzil. Then came the Seven, who were less than the Three, but still greater than those that followed. Sensing the presence of a new place, many spirits came from the Void: some lesser, some greater.

But the greatest of them was the Betrayer.

His name, some lore says, was Akorin. His form and words were fair at first, and he drew a great many spirits to his following. But the Seven and the Three were not fooled, and nor were many of the other spirits. They uncovered his plots, and learned that he had betrayed and destroyed other worlds before this, and he was furious: and there was war in the starry vaults of the Universe.

Arelien was the captain of the armies arrayed against the Betrayer, and Damoril, the Smith, who is one of the Seven, forged Her sword—which I see even now hanging over the Eternal Flame in the temple in Lothruin, and which I will take up again one day—and the weapons of the other Gods and spirits. The struggle was fierce, and had the World been created by then, it would have been destroyed a thousand times over.

When Arelien fought the Betrayer, she dealt him a grievous wound, but she was unable to overcome him, and was forced to withdraw. It was her greatest shame, for when Her sister, Elanzil, fought Akorin in a mighty duel in the highest vault of the Universe, She slew him: for though He was a mighty Power, old and full of tricks, She had still the strength of a God new-born from the starfire, and She fought for Her own world's future—and unlike Her sister, She scorned not to use tricks born of base cunning.

Thus was the Betrayer slain, and his forces thrown into disarray: though the forces of the Gods, too, were sorely depleted, and even one of the Seven was destroyed, and even his name has passed from memory. But he was replaced by a spirit that came from Beyond, and Her name is Aya, the Silent One, the Binder, Who is now the Guardian of the Land of the Dead.