Sha'Ahnleh: They Danced with Fate

[Raven Eric]

Out of the numb void came passion and heat, and will too strong to be denied.
Order and chaos- Ahnmik and Anhamirak- began their eternal dance, and from the embers of their battle, the world was born.

In the days when the world was young and the first civilizations were being built with the sweat and blood of slavery, there lived a small civilization on the outskirts of society, led by a coven of thirteen men and women called the Dasi.
It is said that these thirteen were able to read the thoughts of mortals, and that they could bewitch any who looked upon them. When they danced their rituals together, they could summon the spirits of the dead, make the rain fall or cause illusions to rise from the earth.
Among their pantheon, they worshiped the dual powers Anhamirak and Ahnmik.
Anhamirak granter of life, light, love and all manner of beauty; her greatest gift to her people was free will. As all things must, she had an opposite. One prayed to Ahnmik for power, sleep and silent peace. He was not an evil god, but with power came force, and so while Anhamirak gave this world freedom and equality, Ahnmik’s gifts included bondage and mastery.
Each side could not exist without the other, and so the speakers for this darker god stood as revered in the Dasi as Anhamirak’s.
The twin powers were held in a precarious balance by the high priestess of the Dasi, Maeve.
One day a creature by the name Leben appeared to Maeve. At first she thought he was a god, an incarnation of Anhamirak’s son, Namid, and she bowed down to him. Then he ordered her coven to worship him alone-at which point Maeve realized that, for all his power, he was not a god, for any true god would know that only chaos would follow if the balance was lost.
Knowing the danger he posed to her people if angered, but unwilling to surrender to his demands, Maeve seduced him, and in an attempt to win her favor, he gave her ageless beauty, and the second form of a viper with ivory scales. She insisted he do the same for all her people.
Leben gave the ebony scales and garnet eye’s of a king cobra to Kiesha, high priestess of Anhamirak, and other graceful serpent forms to seven of her followers. The four whose worship fell to Ahnmik- Cjarsa, Araceli, Syfka and Servos- were given the majestic wings and deadly talons of falcons.
The magic Ahnmik had given the falcons, combined with Leben’s gifts, was strong and dangerous, and soon they were driven from the clan for their reckless practice of it. Maeve’s ivory-scaled kin were soon forced to follow, as the white vipers too fell to Ahnmik’s lures and abandoned the balance they had once revered.
Reluctantly, Kiesha rose to power, and from her daughter the Endor line descends.
Cjarsa willingly rose to power of the Avian people and from her son the Misrahe line began.
The two clans fought for many years after the coven had split, the Falcon’s angered for having been cast out and the serpents desperately trying to regain the balance they once had. Maeve had slipped into the background in all this bloodshed, keeping her people safe, living as outcasts in the woods until the day Kiesha’s kin would allow them back into the fold.
Once they had been the protectors and leaders of their people, priests and priestesses of the eight great powers, led by Maeve and kept in balance by her guidance. Now the powers were unbalanced. The stain left on their bodies was nothing compared to the uncontrollable magic’s that had ripped through each of the Dasi in Maeve’s absence. The serpents blamed the Falcon’s, saying their worship of death and darkness had led to this destruction; the falcons retaliated, spitting their own accusations against the chaos-worshipers.

In the dark of night the leaders of the two clans met, hoping to come to an understanding and solution that could result in peace between them, but little did they know the gods had other plans for them. The two began to argue viciously and soon began to fight, throwing their powerful magic’s at one another. Weary and faint from battle, the two rose to their feet once more and lashed out with all the strength they could muster. The weight of their magic driving them to their knees, neither one willing to give in.
The Cobra screamed.
And the Falcon shrieked.
The spells they had created shredded each other’s magic, tearing it into two. One half of Anhamirak’s power remained in the cobra, while the other half is said to have moved on to find another vessel, creating the wolves. Ahnmik’s power too had torn in half, part remaining with the Falcon and the other moving on to grace a young woman with the luxurious form of a tiger.
This is how the people of our world began.