"This world was populated with the children of Bahamut and Amasa," Lyacris' voice started in nothing more than a crawl. "When the sun burned white-hot, and set in the brightest hues of red, the dragon and the vampire came to symbolize dawn and dusk. Life, and death. The dragon is the master of the song which ended eternity, made dust of infinity. A beginning unlike any other. The vampire is the master of blood, the destroyer of that which sustains, and therefore the end of all things. Returning finite wills and finite lives to their previous state. An end to this state of being, this existence which we call creation, and the beginning once more of eternity. Such is the theory of religion, and gods, when one boils away arguments between sects on the nature of creation, the purpose of song and blood, what they represent - the soul and the body, respectively, both of which are needed for life."
He lifted an hourglass from the desk which was before him. Engraved and inlaid with gold, it seemed quite an expensive timekeeper - and yet somehow antiquated as well. Much like the wizard himself.
"The story of this hourglass, for example, begins with the glassblower who first whistled into his pipe. Beautiful work."
The hourglass fell to the ground. Someone actually flinched. Eragos did not turn to see who it was. Glass ground against glass, in that familiar crystalline hiss that he knew too well. Sand poured through the breaks, spilling onto fine carpet.
"Or so we tell ourselves, because infinity is a thought beyond all comprehension. Its very nature cannot be contained by human thoughts. The sands of this hourglass could mark the passage of an hour, but how could they mark the passage of eternity? Much the same - the story did not begin with the glassblower. The story began with the sand. It came from the beaches of the south, where Trone's hand falls heaviest - yet how did the sand come to be there? Do not hurry me! I come to my point. As with the sand, and the hourglass come later, Bahamut and Amasa did not create this world. They merely added to what was already in place. It was Ao who created this world, and it was not devoid of meaning before dragons and vampires crawled the dunescapes of its infancy. There were other creatures, barely mentioned in the oldest of histories. Creatures who are neither dragon nor vampire, nor any other race which we currently hail as 'real'."
"What are you saying?" Eragos finally asked, when the silence went on too long.
Lyacris turned to face them with eyes afire, looking at nothing, and at everything. "High Lord Arand wanted to know the origin of the man known as Narim Gola. Yet he is not man, any more than he is dragon or vampire or creature which you have faced before. The histories bear his face, if not his name, cruel and eternal being fashioned by the hand of a greater god. He is a true child of Ao, a relic from the world before the races of Bahamut and Amasa became the sole inhabitants of this realm."
Eragos felt Hasna's breath on his neck, even still, faster than before - but there was no jibe from her now. She must have felt what he felt. How did such a thing come to be in the employ of a human lord? How did such a thing even... come to be in this world, in this time? Grees shook his head, once, and then he looked toward one of the shelves. As if staring at spines too distant to read would somehow give him the answer he sought. Lyacris did not seem triumphant, only angry, but at a thing he could not see. Perhaps he was wondering why Ao would make such a being in the first place.
"The student who discovered this page fainted," Lyacris went on in something closer to his studied monotone. "It took hours to revive her. Upon learning what we faced, many of my most experienced mages fled the city. They did not gather possessions, no jewel or crystal or pretty creature betrothed. They simply took the robes on their backs, whatever possessions were strapped to their belts, and fled on the first horse which seemed fit enough to ride to Oisea without stopping. I imagine from there they will go north, until they reach a place that man's eyes have not touched in a thousand years or more. If it is safety they seek, perhaps they will find it."