The Coming of Ovarion

One Quatrian year before a storm-at-sea caused the three amnesiac Pentarch sailors to breach the Bay of Erasure, Wormwood had spoken.

Wormwood the Wordless. Wormwood the Changer. Speaker in mist and dust had issued forth from the Hypogeum in daylight plain and full in a turbulent columnar mass. A thick swirling fog, bounded as if by a single concentrated will, a will to change the world.

Since the High Augur was aware of the signs of His emergence pending for three weeks, the Hymn of Elimination (composed during the Shape Wars) was duly being performed at or about the time of emergence, as anticipated by the signals. They played and sang in the amphitheatre facing the Hypogeum Walls across the Chasm.

This was not a subtle emanation, as sometimes the minstrel priests claimed they alone could sense. This was an embodiment even a commoner could see, and it shot up into the sky, which pooled and filled as though cloudy water poured upward into a retaining basin. And after what seemed like an eternity of held-breath waiting, spooled off toward the cusp of the Houses of Song and Silence.

All of Quatria observed the trail in the sky that day as that spool, having reached the sea, sent down a finger to gently caress the water’s surface. A low rumbling, almost the sound of waits blowing their deep horns, but subtler. A calm below a reflected stormy sky. And then a bubbling, a mist rising up from the deepths and joining the finger extending from the sky. A darkening. And then, an island. Rising up, slowly, majestically, like a sea dweller coming up from the depths for air.

The place was named Ovarion after a meeting of the Bardic Council. Though the High Augur protested formally the use of what was, technically, a Singulone name, the Council over-ruled, finding Ovarion was a fitting and right name, after its bearer who fought honorably for the Mysterium during the Shape Wars.

Since this time, however, Ovarion had sat empty, as following the taboo after additive modifications are made to the landscape by the Changer. As the songs taught: On grounds newly laid, one must wait for the Dweller to enter the Palace. This dictum served a both potentiating mystical reflection on intent and purpose and an utterly practical use: in case the Changer should reappear and happen to change his mind, and reclaim what had been called forth. The songs told it had happened before, but not in recent living memory.