The Age of the Ancients - Demira (876 to ~1050)
- The last words of Thelonius the Scribe - Part II
In the centuries that followed Meirothea’s departure, humanity did not fall into silence again. Her precious gifts endured.
With speech, we named the rivers and skies. With song, we remembered. And with symbols, we began to mark time and events. Our people wandered still, but no longer as beasts. We tamed the wilds in small ways. We learned to track, to gather, to hunt with intention rather than desperation. The first sages appeared, those who spoke to the wind and fire. In caves and on stones, we carved our thoughts, painted our stories. The first druids enlightened the glades, and the first shamans listened to the stars.
Yet knowledge alone could not feed the hungry and memory would not warm a child.
So the Divine, in Their endless mercy, sent us Demira, the Third Redeemer.
Where Meirothea had given voice to the soul, Demira gave strength to the body and gentleness to the hand. She came not with radiance or spectacle, but with seeds, with tools, and with care. She walked among the humble and the weary, clad in green, her staff in hand with awned ears of wheat woven into her hair.
Demira brought three great gifts to mankind, Agriculture, Care, and Craft. She taught us to till the earth, to plant and reap, to tend to beasts not for domination but companionship. Yet her greatest gift was Care itself, a virtue that flowed into every act of tending, healing, and nurturing, be it child or soil, lamb or elder. Under her guidance, we learned to build homes, raise herds, and create the first true communities.
Her breath brought the Spring, and her tears, the first Autumn rains. For before her, there was only Summer, endless sun without rest or renewal, and Winter, a time for silence and slumber. Demira completed the cycle, giving the world Spring for birth and Autumn for harvest and reflection. The seasons became spokes on the wheel of time, and life began to turn.
But as always, sin follows the seed.
With harvest came abundance, and from abundance, indulgence. With craftsmanship came wealth, and with wealth; envy and hoarding. With communities came rumors and suspicions towards ones neighbors, as for when one man thrives, another seeks to prove him unworthy. Thus, the peace she nurtured began to crack. The sins of Gluttony, Greed, and Wrath stirred again. Their Princes, Zeb, Mammon, and Moloch, returned with armies of corruption, cloaked in hunger and fire.
Demira, foreseeing the storm, allied once more with the Fay and created what are now the Ancient Stela, monoliths rooted in the Ley Lines of Creation. With sacred inscriptions and divine resonance, they sheltered the faithful and stood as beacons against the encroaching darkness.
But the tide of sin would not relent.
The Divine, in grief and fury, resolved to cleanse the world in flood, but Demira, in sorrow and out of love, pleaded for the innocent. The Divine offered a choice, to save mankind, she must sacrifice everything.
And she did.
Demira fashioned not a wooden ark, but a spiritual sanctuary woven from her very being. With her Shepherds, she sought out the worthy. As the waters rose and the world drowned, she held fast. And when the deluge reached its ultimate height, she sacrificed herself, cursing Zeb, Mammon, and Moloch with eternal torment. They would hunger and never be sated, desire and never be fulfilled, rage and never be calmed.
From that day forward, they bore a shard of her spirit like burning iron in the soul. Where once they took joy in their sins, now they only found suffering.
Her body, untouched by decay, was seen floating above Axis Mundi, and dissolving into droplets of grace, falling onto what remained of Protennoia’s Tree. Her essence flowed into the Ley Lines, weaving a great network of life, memory, and power. The Pax Dei, fragile but enduring, grew from her roots.
To this day, when the Autumn rains fall cold and sudden, the old say it is Demira weeping, not for those she saved, but for those she could not.
—Thelonius the Scribe
Axis Mundi (Garden of Paradise)
Divine Tree / Protennoia's Tree
Credits, paintings: The Age of the Ancients - Demira - Mucha, Spring, 1896