Machines of Light & Dark

Even though I have lived for a long long time through countless Cycles, there are still mysteries that precede me and there are mysteries that defy my explanation.  One of these mysteries are the Machines of the Far Worlders.  I talk not of the Machines that litter the Karak Jungles, as these are merely the constructs of the previous Cycle's men that wandered the land with manmade gods of metal and lights.

The Machines I talk of are more insidious than that and were spawned forth from the Passage when it opened this time.  Strange how the previous cycle had similar machines here, and now another world has spawned them again to consume an age like they consumed the one before.

Another mystery that I cannot comprehend.

As I watched the chariot of fire collapse with explosions ripping its belly out from beneath it and I saw parts of its body go crashing of into the furthest parts of the Kingdom and while I witnessed the head come crashing down into the City of Aur to grinding into the countryside...I was shaken to the core to realize that I recognized the shape of the beast.

I thought that all these manmade monsters had died out when the gods descended last Cycle like they always do to end the old one, start the new one, and take from me the Tayle of what has come to pass...but I beheld before my cursed eyes another of these beasts of destruction sent from Graâg's maw itself!

When the dust settled and the screams of those crushed beneath its burning bulk had subsided and when the morning sun lifted its fragile face above the horizon to shine upon the carnage of the City of Aur the mouth opened and men began to spew forth: flashes of light from machines that kill without steel, the rattle of fighting as it seems that these was a battle inside of even the machine from which all this death and destruction had come.

Factions from the beast's belly scattered like the wind--some on foot and others on the backs of smaller beasts that scuttled away trailing smoke and whining--as I stood for weeks upon those steps witnessing the dispersal of the Far Worlders throughout the Realms of Wonder.

And in the background the opened Passage throbbed softly shedding its glow across the last days of an age.

--Anonymous Monk