Panthelia: Bound

A quiet morning, and a bit of a ficlet here.  This is the Origin of my world of Panthelia.  As with most things, it's very much a WIP, but it's really something to set up the overall cosmology.

Special trivia challenge: Who can figure out what movie characters the two brothers are based on? Bwahahahhahaha.  I'll answer later.


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The two beings were ancient beyond telling, yet they were neither source nor beginning. When they came into being, there was already existence, there was already life. Neither fully understood his nature, but simply knew that they were the only two beings of their nature in the universe.

When they awakened, they found a great multitude of worlds that already teemed with life spread across the stars. The inhabitants of those worlds were varied and fascinating to the two brothers, for that is how they'd come to think of one another.

For many eons, the brothers were well content to watch and observe the countless worlds. They debated endlessly why one world took one path, while others branched out in different ways. They saw worlds destroy themselves in mindless fury, while others would overcome all the challenges of hatred and survive another day, another year, another eon.

In time, the simple sport of watching the countless worlds began to lose some of its appeal, and the two brothers decided it was time to start experimenting on the worlds. At first, many of their actions were small and subtle, and they delighted in watching the ripples of their work bring changes to the worlds they experimented on.

This game went on for many more centuries, with the brothers endlessly debating the consequences of one action or another. They shaped worlds to their liking again and again. On one world, they would fill it with magic, to see how the people of that would would cope with such awesome power. On another world, they would strip it of all magic, that they might observe how people built a world on understanding, craft and artifice.

One day, a new debate arose between the brothers: “Could a world escape the bounds of a tight and devastating fate?” Long they debated, but both knew where the debate would end. There would need to be a world with a fate of devastation and destruction laid upon it. They would weave the fate to create a time where that fate could be challenged, and see where it led.

They found a world, one that already had life, but they began to reshape it to their whim. It had been a world with weak magic, but they poured more and more power into that world, concentrated it, and then tied it behind a strong but fragile barrier. Would would this world do with that power? They filled the world with magical creatures, who would live side by side with humanity. They brought dragons from a far distant world, and filled them with yet greater power, the power to speak and reason. They might be shepherds or wolves, as their whims would lead them.

Yet, the dragons were not the centerpiece of their experiment, but one part. The centerpiece, those upon whom fate would be focused, would be the Ten. Ten people, some with great power, some with none, but all of them chained by fate in one form or another. Men and women of joy and tragedy, vision and blindness, power and helplessness. They were bound and chained by fate, yet the last of them would be the one who would have a moment, the least opportunity to sunder those shackles and avert destruction.

For those ten, a great hall was built, nowhere and yet between everywhere, a place where the Ten could abide while the experiment continued. From the day they passed from this world until the day the experiment ended, they would remain in the Hidden Hall. Was this a blessing or a curse? The brothers cared little. They people they watched were but the subjects of their experiments.

Would those Ten stand or fall? Would that world stand or fall. To the brothers, it was simply a question they would use to pass the time. However, to the people of that world, bound by that fate, it was something far greater. It was their own lives and loves, their own joys and sorrows which they played with.

In all their debate, the brothers did not consider what rage the people of that world might show them in time. What is more, they had long forgotten to consider a simple question: “If the brothers were not the first, then what was?”