Thus gods with gods were matched…" (The Iliad Book XX-370)
And the roar fell to the mortal realm and was driven into the earth bringing forth a hard winter to foreign lands. Where the gods in the battle did not dwell and in a time when only their names remained. Their once glorious temples crumbled to their former stone and dust. For the roar had no boundary of time or place but echoed throughout all time and places, as unbound as the universe itself who allows only the Gods to view it as under some semblance of control. Until the roar itself was perceived and the earth from its impact collected and forged into a great blade by the hand of Nature herself.
The blade did not hold to the physical world but phased in and out of all realities. Wherever it touched the fabric of existence came a great and ragged tear. And through them could a God be cast into the mortal world, becoming nearly mortal themselves with no memory of their former glory or strength or deed or might. But now that which they so longingly desired, hated, and treasured.
Now it came to be that earth was the plane of the new battles. For it was here where the gods cast their love and here where they waged their wars. It was here where old gods walked with mortal feet among the very race that the themselves had long so manipulated and envied, blessed and favored.
It was held as sport at first. To cast an immortal through a rip, sending them to the mortal plane to which there was few choices to return, none of which were favored above any other.
Great beast were also wrestled with and tossed through the random holes. Only to fall to earth and be worshipped by men as once the gods themselves were. Those great beasts of the other worlds, pets of the divine, were now held and regarded with great favor and gifted with many attributes by the minds and hearts of men.
The great game continued under the hands of the Fates but was now much more complex and challenging. The world become more complex, confusing, and misguided as these new factors came into play beyond the influence of the mortal bound gods.
Gleaned interpretations of the etheric blade, that great masterless weapon wielded only by the winds of Chance, would become the cutting edge to forge great spiritual paths through the moral wilderness that mankind would soon wonder into. Paths forged by a blade that represented only the betrayal of one god to another.
As above, so below. And the blade would bring the pain of betrayal to mankind and cut them more deeply than any steal and was unbiased in word, worth, or deed. A cut from this blade would become the greatest of all pains for mortal and immortal alike and was of such a nature that some perceived it to be the only way to truly kill a God.
Such was the nature of the blade wielded that fell many people from their own hearts and beliefs. Leaving them guideless and calling out to cold grey skies, to the ears of new gods. The sky remained cold, dark, and silent while mankind has waited for thousands of years to hear an answer. Meanwhile, the old gods fell and re-ascended to their thrones with forgotten rights and rituals, forgotten peoples and influences in the world.
The blade forced mankind to betray all that was and all that would have been. The future split like the limbs of a tree. Path upon path came into being leading to cliff hangs from which countless souls would fall, disillusioned by their false forks, false beliefs, and false whims. Now grounded into silent tombs beyond all hope, beyond all root of being where there names and deeds were not recorded. Where no honors were bestowed to them. Where nothing but forgetting would stand in testament to the fact that they had ever lived at all.
Man has been happy with that end. It's all they strive for. But the re-ascended had a different destiny in mind for those yet to be cut and felled. And it is only to those that comes the newest of blessings and favor of the Gods that once so influenced and held these mortals to their breasts with such love and hate.
