Andrew Ognev - The Chronicles of the Elders Malefisterium. Volume 1. The Ordeal of Freya

And a war started between the Demiurges and the humans who were led by the Darkness.

Their minds were full of the Darkness. It was the origin of all. Everyone, who ceased it and beheld its might, inherited its power and followed the path unknown to the others. Once intact and integral, the Darkness, which was the soul of the Universe, broke into many pieces and hid in the things of existence.

And the Demiurges reeled, but held the ground.

Revelation 4

Birth of Dragons

And there came the Luminaries who could not let the Six wreck and destroy everything they had created. They comprehended the intentions of the Seventh and took on the burden of the Primordial Darkness. There were skilled craftsmen among them. They made weapons for the dreadful war and took the side of humans.

Loki the Sorcerer taught magic to people and elves. Thanatos brought the dead back to life and haunted their souls. Samael, Prince of the Blood, summoned an army of the human race, turning them into the first vampires. Vanadis created valkyries. And Heliel, the most powerful Luminary, created dragons.

And the Demiurges were banished from the Earth, which they had created. But the desired peace did not come. A war broke out between the vanquishers.

Revelation 5

Feud

And a new battle began. And the Earth was shaking, besprent with spilled blood.

The Darkness brought people power and ability to make choices. They did not wish to be under the sway of the Elders, and they rose against the dragons and against all the Luminaries.

For the sake of salvation, people kept the gods in elaborate traps, which offered no escape.

And the magic passed into oblivion, for the sons of men renounced it. Only the chosen ones kept the memory of it.

Revelation 6

The Age of Man

As the ancient arts sank into obscurity, the protection weakened. The Luminaries returned from captivity, but not for long, since they were taken captive again, now by the Four Founders.

And the age of the Elders ended.

But nothing disappears forever.

Staying unnoticeable, the Demiurges watched the goings-on. They saw that the Earth was free again: The darkness moved into people and was no longer a threat to the Elders.

They chose to return to the Earth to bring it back under their control. For this purpose, they created an Avatar, an emissary who could make the Earth suitable for them.

And yet there was the invisible mind of the Seventh in their new creation; the mind that turned the emissary into a servant of Darkness rather than a servant of the Demiurges. And the Avatar saved the Earth from misery and agony, as was prophesied by the Seventh.

Revelation 7

The End

The age of Man was over, the Elders fell, and the power, accumulated over many years and now neglected, burst into the world. And the world, time, and space were collapsing, everything was turning into cold and emptiness.

The Seventh watched the death of the Universe from the distant outer space. It was he who revealed the formula for the inevitable end of the world. And now he regretted that no one had been able to prevent it.

At the very beginning of the twentieth century, a mysterious explosion thundered in the heart of Siberia.

It all started when a glowing comet appeared high in the sky. As soon as it went out of sight, a flash of light lit up the horizon, and, at the same instant, everyone around was dazzled by it. The ground was shaking, and an earthquake (something that had never occurred here before) rolled underfoot, causing commotion and panic among all the living things for thousands of kilometers around. In no time the air became dry and hot. It was difficult to breathe, like in a hot sauna.

What was in the epicenter?

Three circles were formed in the boundless taiga. The first circle, the inner one, had trees lying with their tops toward the center, as if they had been carefully arranged by someone in strict compliance with the laws of geometry; in the second circle there were naked pointed tree trunks without boughs, branches and leaves; the third circle was a windthrow area extending for hundreds of kilometers from the explosion epicenter. However, there were no craters and no huge clamps of soil.

On a cool June morning, shortly after the explosion, there were observed some unusual natural phenomena. There was a strange, truly dead silence. Birds chirping, rustling leaves in the wind and other sounds of the taiga were gone. The clear sky grew dark, and everything around, including the leaves and grass, turned yellow, then orange, red and finally burgundy-colored.

There was something unusual about this explosion: Despite the tremendous explosive force, no significant damage was done to the nature or people.

Thousands of people around the world wondered what it was.

“A meteorite,” scientists said.

“A manufactured object sent by mysterious aliens!” idealistic dreamers insisted.

If it was a meteorite, why did it explode before it reached the ground? And where is the impact crater, or at least the place of its landing?

Those who believed that it was an alien spaceship-wreck that crash landed in the area were disappointed, since not a single piece, not a single part of the alien spacecraft was found.

There were also those who believed that it was a shot from a much-talked-about, huge Tesla cannon. But no plausible evidence was found.

The strange consequences of the collision between the Earth and an unidentified space object did not end there. A day after the catastrophe, the Earth’s atmosphere and night clouds were glowing eerily. The noctilucent clouds reflected the rays of the sunlight, thereby creating the effect of polar nights even in the areas where they had never occurred before.

The strange phenomena continued for a few days; then, they vanished as suddenly as they appeared. And immediately people stopped feeling the impact of the event.

A month later, no one was talking about the mysterious event. Occasionally, a new theory would spring in scientific circles to trigger a low-key discussion.

It took the nature half a century to heal its wounds. A new forest grew around. The only evidence of the alien object was the ball of fire, which was seen by many people in a radius of several thousand kilometers, along with burned and fallen trees.

The event was soon erased from the human memory. And only smoldering remains of once magnificent cedars and pines exposed the site where the alarming event had taken place.

Scientists declared this phenomenon an unfathomable mystery and gave it a name, the Tunguska Event. The humanity accepted the explanation.

However, there were those who knew everything ahead of time, waited patiently and never lost hope. Down the ages, down the millennia, the elves passed on an ancient prophecy. Their hearts and minds were able to see much more both in the future and in the past. They divined the true meaning of the Sign and were genuinely delighted at the arrival of the messenger.

There was also someone on the Earth who waited for this in the same way the elves did, but he cherished his own selfish plans.

So who will get Him first?

Almost a hundred years later, Molyobka village, the house of the village priest

Father Konstantin, the senior priest of the local church, and Mark, both a cleric and a bell-ringer, were sitting at a big round table and drinking tea from a pot-bellied samovar. A spicy fragrance of forest herbs was coming from the steaming hot cups of tea.

“God has not forsaken this place,” Father Konstantin chuckled happily after taking another sip of tea and lifted up his eyes to the sky. “To my great joy, more and more children are being born here. Five children have already been christened this summer.”