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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sagiro" data-source="post: 6321505" data-attributes="member: 726">You know, I considered leaving the Story Hour here for several days, while I go off camping with the family.  But there are limits even to my cruelty.I did pack up my things.  But then I stopped, and unpacked, and returned to the table.  It turned out there was more story to tell, after all.Sagiro’s Story Hour, Part 394What’s In Dranko’s HeadDranko has a somewhat different experience.  For him, time stands still.  Oh, he is vaguely aware of the ocean of despair in which his friends are drowning, but he regards it with a detached curiosity, like a collector regarding an insect pinned to a board.Something in his head has stirred, and done something akin to casting time stop on his behalf.  Like the others he is looking at the Adversary, and cannot look away.  He can feel, acutely, the God’s satisfaction at having destroyed the world of Darvin and most of its pantheon before the rest of the Godlings fled.He can feel the pain of betrayal, as the God is stabbed in the back by His lover, the Goddess Uthol Inga, in the moment of His victory.  He can feel horror, as He is caught in a net, placed in a cage He cannot see, because Ell has woven a net of darkness around Him.  He has been imprisoned, and His prison set inside the Far Realms, and He reaches His hand through to escape, but the cage closes and seals, and His hand is severed.  Dranko can feel His pain. He can feel the madness of aeons; not even a God can endure confinement in the Far Realms for so long.  He feels the impact of the God’s Hand, smashing through the surface of a distant world, then digging, clawing its way downward until it has arrived in this cavern, there to wait, wait until someone arrives to make use of it.Then, at last, there is the exultation of rebirth, as Seven Dark Words calls him back, in the heart of Abernia, a world that will now suffer the same fate as Darvin.Abruptly, Dranko is somewhere else.  He is standing deep inside Naslund, Necropolis of the Gods.  He thinks for a moment that he has been brought here because he, like everyone else on Abernia, has died. Despite his lack of fame or (more importantly) divinity, he has been afforded the honor of interment among the dead Gods.But, no.  He is not really here.  Something is showing him a memory, a clear, distinct memory of when he was here before.  He is standing with his friends before Viersk, the lone caretaker of Drosh after Meledien and Tarsos raided the tombs.“How much do you know of what you have seen here?” asks Viersk.“Very little,” Aravis admits. “We can’t even read half of the names above the entrances to the tombs.”He refers to the fact that written over each God’s tomb are two names, one they all can read, and a second that cannot be read by any means they possess.“Ah,” says Viersk, nodding. “The second names, the ones you cannot read, are the Gods’ true names.  Every God has a true name that comes into existence at the moment of its birth. To know a God’s true name would be to have power over it. But the names are not known, even to the Gods themselves, until the moment that they die. Then those names are written, for the first and only time, above their tombs.” Then Dranko is back in the cavern, looking up at the Adversary.  A voice whispers in his mind. “Even if something doesn’t exist, we can still find it. And in return for your fame, I have given it to you.”The Name of the Adversary.  All Dranko has to do is think it to himself, and he would become the Adversary.  He would have all of the God’s power, along with His malice, His urge to destroy.  He would have fame on such a scale, His name would be spoken in reverence and fear until history came to an end, on this and every world. The impulse to do this is very, very strong.Or.Or, he can speak the name as a weapon, and strip the Adversary of His immortality, and a large part of His power.  Time is slowly starting up again as he faces this choice.  He must decide.Become, whispers a voice in his head.Do not Become, Abernia seems to say.Dranko shouts the Name of the Adversary, flinging it upward from his lips like a spear.  The power is too much. He drops to his knees, blood running from his ruined eyes, even as the sound of the Name echoes all around.In the midst of their despair, the others hear that Dranko say something they are not supposed to hear, that he is not supposed to be speaking.  The earth trembles, pieces raining down, smashing into the floor, breaking apart some of the carefully set obsidian bricks.  The Adversary Himself screams in pain, and the crushing despair vanishes, leaving behind terror, but now also, for the first time, hope.  Seven Dark Words, Meledien and Tarsos try to master their confusion.The Adversary shrinks, physically shrinks, until he stands a mere forty feet tall. He looks down, enraged at the obscenity perpetrated on His being.  He grips His sword tightly. He is still a God, fulminant with divine power.  He is still a God, but now He is one no longer beyond the reach of mortals. He is a God who can be slain.And so, the battle for the fate of Abernia begins.…to be concluded, sometime next week most likely...</blockquote>

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