The Primeval Era

Exelissomai!

The word felt grand and heavy as the moment Damian uttered it, truly everything blazed verdant. He felt like every part of his existence was burning wit transformation!

With a process that had been waiting since before the Lands of Stone took their current shape!

He had to ask himself what this word meant.

To his limited human understanding, it was just a word. Just syllables arranged in patterns his tongue could shape and his mind could grasp. But he knew this was only a letter from the Primordial Tongue, ancient beyond the Ancestors themselves.

His human brain translated it into something it could comprehend, but the true meaning extended far beyond mere language.

Exelissomai.

The Old Stories of Shamans spoke of the First Python, the serpent so vast that its body circled the roots of mountains before mountains had names. This creature was not worshipped. It simply was. It existed before the Lands of Stone understood what existence meant, coiling through darkness that had never known light.

But the First Python held a secret that the old storytellers whispered only to those ready to hear.

Every season, when the Lands grew quiet and the stars wheeled overhead in patterns only the ancient could read, the First Python would shed its skin. This was not the simple molting that lesser serpents performed. This was something else entirely!

The skin that fell away contained everything the serpent had been. Every memory. Every instinct. Every limitation that had accumulated across the ages of its existence.

What emerged was not the same serpent wearing new scales.

What emerged could not remember being confined within that old skin because the being who held those memories no longer existed. The essence persisted, the core remained, but the form and the capacity and the very nature of the creature had been rewritten by the act of shedding. The First Python after shedding was as different from the First Python before as flame was different from wood.

The serpent did not improve itself through this process as...it became something else.

The shed skins accumulated in caves beneath the oldest mountains, remnants of beings that had once been the most powerful creature in existence but were now nothing more than hollow echoes of potential that had been surpassed. Each skin represented a death and a birth occurring simultaneously, a being ending so that a greater being could begin.

The Ancestors called this process by many names across many tongues. But the Primordial Tongue, that language older than names, captured it in a single sound.

Exelissomai.

The process of changing over time. It was evolution in its most sacred form. It was the butterfly remembering the caterpillar while being utterly incapable of returning to that state. It was the river becoming ocean while the memory of mountain springs still flowed through its depths. It was growth so fundamental that the being who emerged could barely recognize the being who began!

As the verdant flames spread everywhere, Damian felt a sensation he could not explain permeating through his entire existence.

He gazed out and saw only those endless verdant flames stretching in every direction. His illusory body floated in this infinite space, suspended in fire that cradled rather than consumed. The blue had been overwhelmed entirely, replaced by green so vibrant it seemed to pulse with life that predated the concept of living things.

He wanted to ask so many questions.

Where was this place? What was the Primordial Tongue truly, and why did it choose to speak to him? Why had he returned here after gaining Persevere all those days ago? Was there a pattern to these visitations, a purpose he couldn’t yet perceive? How could he find his way back when he needed answers rather than waiting for answers to find him?

And that voice.

It had sounded like his own voice, but deeper. More resonant. As if every version of himself across every possibility had spoken in unison, their combined tones creating something that transcended any single speaker. He couldn’t understand what any of this meant, couldn’t fit it into frameworks his mind had built across eighteen summers of existence!

"What is this?!"

His voice bellowed out into the space of endless verdant flames.

"What is The Primordial Tongue?!"

The questions echoed without walls to bounce from, fading into infinite green fire that offered no response. Nothing happened. The flames continued their eternal dance. The warmth continued pressing against his consciousness. The silence stretched and stretched and stretched.

He began to feel his awareness being pulled away.

The verdant space started fading at the edges, reality reasserting its claim on a consciousness that had wandered too far from its anchor. He was disappearing from this place, returning to wherever his body waited, carrying new power whose nature he didn’t yet understand.

But not before he heard that deep voice one final time.

"Persevere."

BOOM!

Everything went blank.

---

Serala held Damian’s body with arms that trembled from more than physical strain.

His human form lay limp against her, eyes closed, breathing shallow but steady. His massive beast form had collapsed nearby, that leonine shape sprawled across sacred ground with nine tails motionless and mane dimmed of its usual fire. Whatever had happened to him had happened to both bodies simultaneously.

Her expression was full of worry as she tried to push her Mana into his body to sense what was wrong. The energy flowed from her palms into his flesh, searching for damage or blockage or anything that might explain this sudden collapse.

Uncle Adam rushed to her side with alarm written across his weathered features. "What happened? He was fine moments ago!"

Grandmother Essun followed close behind, her sharp eyes scanning Damian’s unconscious form with concern.

"The Tokoloshe pushed too hard!"

At such a time...

BOOM!

Damian’s eyes snapped open.

Verdant flames erupted from his body with force that turned the air itself into fire. The green blaze covered him instantly, wrapping around flesh and cloth and the hands of the Holy Daughter who was still touching him. The flames jumped onto Serala before she could pull away, sacred fire leaping from his form to hers as if recognizing something it wanted to claim.

The blast knocked Uncle Adam and Grandmother Essun backward.

The old warrior tumbled across grass that bent away from the explosion’s heat. Grandmother Essun rolled with surprising agility for her age, coming up in a crouch with eyes wide and mouth hanging open. Neither of them could approach. The flames created a barrier!

Serala was shocked to find her hands stuck.

She couldn’t pull away from Damian’s body no matter how hard she tried. Her fingers remained pressed against his head and chest as if glued there by forces stronger than muscle could overcome. Green flames engulfed her completely, covering her white robes and her white-gold wings and every inch of flesh they could reach.

In the next instant, a pillar of swirling green flames shot into the air!