The Long Doom

In the last year of her life, before she went down into the crater, the Senior Observer of StarfallStarfall ObservatoryThe gnomes’ observatory on the highest peak, where something fell out of the sky and stayed. wrote one more letter. She sent it to the AthenaeumAthenaeumHighcrest’s house of scholars and magisters, where the Annals are kept., which had not believed her the first time, and the Athenaeum, which had learned something since, kept it. It is in verse, which was not her habit, and the scholars think she wrote it after she had begun to see.

The AthenaeumAthenaeumHighcrest’s house of scholars and magisters, where the Annals are kept. reads YsmeraYsmeraSenior Observer of Starfall, who foresaw the Missing Moon, was disbelieved, and went into the crater.’s letter thus. The world rests on three seals, and each holds the next.

The first seal is fire above. IgnarothIgnarothEldest of dragons, born of a drop of Orun’s fire. Bound atop the Wyrmspire, and back every week., bound at the top of the WyrmspireWyrmspireVel’Thuran’s tower of black stone above Frostspire, with a dragon on top., is the ForgefatherOrunKindler of fire and stone. He sleeps curled around the fire under the mountains.’s fire; and that fire, even caged, warms the root of the world. The warmth runs down through the stone and out under the sea, and keeps the Deep’s sleep heavy, as a warm room keeps a sleeper sleeping.

The second seal is the deep below. ThalThalKindler of the sea, asleep in the southern trench. A splinter of the Hollow sours his dreams. sleeps in the trench under the Abyssal SanctumAbyssal SanctumThe Order of the Hush’s cathedral over the trench, sunk in the Drowning. It opens when the Wyrm falls., and the splinter of the HollowHollowWhat lies beyond the edge of the Aether: not darkness, but the absence of anything to be dark. in him has soured his dreams into Xal'zarithXal'zarithThe dream that dreams itself: Thal’s sleep, soured by the Hollow. Woken in the Abyssal Sanctum., the Dreamer in the Deep. But a dream, however dark, is held inside the one who dreams it. While Xal'zarith dreams, the piece of the Hollow is held in the dream, and cannot call to the rest of itself.

The third seal is the dark beyond. NhalNhalThe hunger in the Hollow, "the mouth that is never full". It eats the stars, and it ate a moon., the Starving Dark, waits outside the wall of SerenSerenThe Watcher. She set the stars as watchfires on the walls of the world, and alone stayed in the sky.’s watchfires, and the piece of it that fell at StarfallStarfall ObservatoryThe gnomes’ observatory on the highest peak, where something fell out of the sky and stayed. lies in the crater, held by the Bound WardensKel and VorTwo guardians of Starfall sworn to one oath and one life, holding the fallen thing in its crater.. While the dream holds its splinter, the fallen piece is alone and cannot find the way. The third seal is the wall itself, and every star in it.

It follows that the order of these things matters. The Sanctum cannot be entered while the Wyrm burns, for the Dreamer sleeps too deep to be reached. Only when Ignaroth is brought down does the warmth fail, and the Dreamer stir, and the doors of the drowned cathedral open under the Drowned Reef. And the Observatory cannot be entered while the Dreamer dreams; only when Xal'zarith is brought down does the splinter come loose, and call, and the fallen thing in the crater wake enough to be fought.

Every guild that has gone up the Wyrmspire has, in this way, opened the Abyssal Sanctum, and every guild that has gone down into the Sanctum has opened the Starfall Observatory. And every one of them has done it with its eyes open, for Ysmera’s letter is posted at the foot of the Wyrmspire road, and on the door of the Sanctum, and nobody has ever turned back.

Why, then, is the world not ended? The guilds of HighcrestHighcrestThe city on the crest above Greenmeadow, seat of the Crown and of a thousand guild halls. have brought down the Wyrm EternalIgnarothEldest of dragons, born of a drop of Orun’s fire. Bound atop the Wyrmspire, and back every week. many times over. The Dreamer has been fought in the deep. The Starving DarkNhalThe hunger in the Hollow, "the mouth that is never full". It eats the stars, and it ate a moon. has been driven back from the highest stone. And still the sun comes up.

The answer is the TurningTurningThe world’s slow breath, every seven days, which mends what the guilds have broken.. The KindlersKindlersThe singers who made Aetheria, then went down into it and sleep there, holding it together. sleep, but they breathe; and their breath is slow, seven days long. At the end of every seventh day, when the reset bells ring in Highcrest, the world breathes in, and what the guilds have broken is mended. The Wyrm is back on his tower, curled and smouldering and no smaller in temper by one degree. The Dreamer sinks back into sleep. The fallen thing is bound again in its crater. Lord VarricVarricLord of Ravenhold, who bargained to hold the wood until it was quiet, and holds it still, a century dead. is in his seat at RavenholdRavenholdThe keep on the Whisperwood March where every guild learns to raid.. GrukkGrukkThe ogre who keeps the Wyrmspire’s gate. Paid a year in advance, twelve hundred years ago. is at his gate, unpaid.

The dwarves say it is OrunOrunKindler of fire and stone. He sleeps curled around the fire under the mountains. banking his fire. The priests say it is MaelisMaelisThe Mender, in every hand that binds a wound. What is broken can be made whole., who loves what is broken because it can be made whole. The goblins say it is VeskVeskThe Laughing, who sang out of time: weeds, weather, cats and luck. The goblins revere him. resetting the board. The guilds call it the lockout, and plan their week around it.

The world, in short, mends faster than the guilds can break it. So far. The astronomers of StarfallStarfall ObservatoryThe gnomes’ observatory on the highest peak, where something fell out of the sky and stayed. have pointed out, in a paper that nobody read, that the number of stars has gone on falling every year since the Charter, and a little faster since the first guild reached the top of the Observatory; and that a breath, however slow, is not the same thing as forever.

It is the custom that every guild’s first raid is RavenholdRavenholdThe keep on the Whisperwood March where every guild learns to raid. Keep, and the reason is not only that it is the easiest. It is that Ravenhold teaches what the rest require.

At Ravenhold a guild learns to stand where it is told, from Warden Holt’s halberd; to kill the birds before the birds kill it, from the RavenmotherRavenmotherA raven the size of a woman, or a woman the colour of a raven, who keeps Ravenhold’s rookery.; and to pass a great blow from one shield to the next, from Lord VarricVarricLord of Ravenhold, who bargained to hold the wood until it was quiet, and holds it still, a century dead.. These are the first three letters of the alphabet of raiding, and no guild has ever read YsmeraYsmeraSenior Observer of Starfall, who foresaw the Missing Moon, was disbelieved, and went into the crater.’s puzzles at StarfallStarfall ObservatoryThe gnomes’ observatory on the highest peak, where something fell out of the sky and stayed. without knowing them. The old raiders of HighcrestHighcrestThe city on the crest above Greenmeadow, seat of the Crown and of a thousand guild halls. say that the Ravenmother knows this, and that her bargain with Lord Varric was never about the wood at all, but about keeping a school.

There is another reading of the Long DoomLong DoomYsmera’s prophecy: the Wyrm falls, the Dreamer wakes, the Dark comes down., and it is the one taught at the Cathedral of the Lamps on the night of each reset, and it goes like this.

The seals do not hold forever on their own. They never did. The LullabyLullabyThe endless hymn that kept the Dreamer asleep, until it was stopped mid-verse. held the Dreamer until the ChoirChoir of WhispersThe three voices of the Lullaby, drowned mid-verse, still trying to sing the next line. fell silent; the oath held the Wyrm until an elf broke it from above; SerenSerenThe Watcher. She set the stars as watchfires on the walls of the world, and alone stayed in the sky.’s watchfires go out, one by one, and are never relit. Left to themselves the three seals would fail, in the order YsmeraYsmeraSenior Observer of Starfall, who foresaw the Missing Moon, was disbelieved, and went into the crater. foresaw, and the Starving DarkNhalThe hunger in the Hollow, "the mouth that is never full". It eats the stars, and it ate a moon. would come down to dine.

But the seals are not left to themselves. Every week the guilds go up and down and in, and bring the old enemies low, and every week the world breathes and mends; and what is broken and mended, says MaelisMaelisThe Mender, in every hand that binds a wound. What is broken can be made whole.’s rule, is mended stronger at the break. The Wyrm comes back no hotter. The Dreamer sinks back a little deeper. The thing in the crater is a little more tightly held. The guilds do not know it, being chiefly interested in the loot, but they are not breaking the world. They are the Lullaby now. They are the oath and the watchfires. They are holding it.

Whether that is true, nobody can say. Ysmera could have said, but she is setting puzzles. The guilds go on regardless, every week, in the grey before dawn, with their banners and their potions and their leader at the back with one hand raised; and the world, for one more week, holds.