Ia and the Gate

When Ia stood on the far side of the Gate, he was purified and pristine, unmarred by blights upon his spirit and unburdened by trappings of the flesh, and so he would remain even despite and after treating with others who were mottled, flawed, and weak. The path he had taken now stood closed and barred to return passage, but this did not daunt him.

When Ia met the first traveler along his path, they could not communicate, for Ia did not speak the traveler's language nor did the traveler speak Ia's. So he devised a means of communication and could thereafter pass the message he bore on to this and other travelers, and they understood.

When Ia was set upon by some few with the desire to claim Ia's sole possession for themselves, Ia engaged them and revealed to them the truth which lay well-hidden behind their decision, and they were humbled at its sight.

When Ia set forth to spread his revelations, he could go in no direction but forward, and he was unafraid and unworried, for Ia had long ago purged these and other intrusive emotions. He would not allow mysteries to remain mysteries, nor tolerate possibilities to remain possibilities, nor permit the Wheel to remain stagnant and unchanging.

Cast away all flawed and half-finished burdens and blessings, and shed notions which constrain and constrict, and walk the Wheel freely.

Ia and the Liars

Ia and his disciples traveled throughout the northern kingdoms to spread his teachings, and in time they entered the largest and grandest city in the world. Churches and shrines and temples to an inbred and degenerate family of false gods could be found everywhere, and the servants of the cruelest of those gods were found on every corner and along every street. They carried cloaks of their office and leveled their sharp blades at any whom they felt were in violation of their god's senseless edicts.

Ia's disciples quailed at the sight of these harsh men and women, but Ia was unafraid and took up a place in the city's eastern side, below a great stone statue of a two-legged dragon, and he sermonized at passers-by as he always had. A crowd formed in short order as men, women, and their children alike were drawn in by the truth of Ia's words. The enforcers of that strict god arrived soon after, having heard of the burgeoning crowd, but they did not interfere until the moment Ia's words reverberated with the crowd's passions to such a degree that they burst into cheer and began to chant responses to Ia's sermon. In that moment, they drew their long swords and seized members of the crowd into their custody.

'Stop what you are doing!' Ia commanded them, and they stopped to listen to Ia's words. 'These people have done nothing wrong. Their thoughts are to be their own. Even your own god's crooked laws grant them this freedom.'

'This demagogue speaks the truth,' said one of the cloaked men. 'Release this rabble and send them on their way. Our attention falls rather upon the one who would use trickery and black magic to make our citizens turn their backs on the divine law which is above all others.' The cloaked man's companions did as bade, and the crowd scattered in fear of the abuse they might face if they remained.

Ia's disciples drew protectively around the Holy One, but Ia stepped down from the statue's pedestal and strode beyond the living shield of his disciples without fear to meet the men who interrupted his work. The men took hold of Ia's arms and forced him to his knees on the yellow bricks of the square. Their leader held his blade aloft and told Ia that he was judged guilty of the direst crime under their corrupt laws, and that he was to be put to death.

Ia's disciples cursed the men, but the leader paid no heed to their words, and he swung his sword at Ia's neck. The blade cut into his flesh, but not as deeply as it should have, but Ia did not react in either pain nor ire. 'You may try again, if you wish,' Ia told the man as the wound began to close over. 'But know this: the blows you strike from the ignorance of your visored lives may be forgiven but one time.'

The leader cursed Ia then as a blasphemer and as a witch, and swung once more with all his might. The blow fell, and Ia's neck was cut, but Ia remained, for Preservation held him fast. Ia then smote the men as his disciples watched, and every last one of them fell to the earth in proof of Ia's strength.

One of the men, a wise coward, turned and fled, but Ia beckoned to him two times, and the man halted his flight. Ia challenged the man to sing the praises of his patron god, but the man did the opposite. He tore his cloak from his shoulders, sliced his sword through the white cloth, and cursed his own god as a liar and a deceiver. Once he had done this, Ia broke the man's weapon and told him, 'Go, you who has seen the truth of things. Tell all who would listen of what you have witnessed, but know that I do not spare you. You will suffer terrible death, but you will serve the Three by creating through your own destruction until that time.' The man did as Ia commanded.

Then Ia took his disciples and left the city behind them. 'We shall not return to this place,' Ia said to them. 'These souls are not yet meant to be redeemed. Only after their city crumbles to dust and has become a haven for cruel monsters, and they have no home to call their own any longer, will they recognize the error of their ways. Then we shall welcome the contrite and condemn the rest to the fate they chose with glee.'

This is the strength of Ia's promise. Even the most ardent of heathens are bound to the Wheel.

Ia and the Initiate

Ia and his disciples came upon a frail old man sitting cross-legged upon a flat stone. The man seemed at utter peace with the world, smiling cheerily and looking about in wonder and bliss, seeming to be without a single care, and he was unaware of the arrival of Ia and his disciples.

'Holy Ia,' asked Ia's disciple Creassin, 'how can a man be so joyful despite living in a world rife with hardship and despair, in which one's life is only the means through which one dies?'

'He is unaware of this manner of insight,' responded Destair before Ia could speak. 'His ignorance of the Truth which has opened our eyes maintains his happiness. If he were to learn of the secrets we have and keep, he too would grow sober in light of Destruction's inevitability.'

'If you believe this to be so,' Ia said to Destair, 'then go and speak with this man, but know that you take responsibility for bringing those pains into his life, and for ushering him to stand before the Gate.'

'Is that not our calling, Holy One?' asked Preston, and Ia replied, 'Indeed, it is so. But this does not allay the weight you carry for shattering the delusions other hold. To tell others what is true, despite it being true, is a cruel thing, for most are not prepared to accept their previous errors, and they will find themselves in greater despair than the fortunate wretch who never enjoyed a single fine or foul day.'

Destair girded himself for what he must do, then he did as Ia bade, and when he finished his task the old man's expression had been darkened and never again regained its past luster.

Ia and the Book

Ia wandered among hills and valleys on his own one evening, and he came upon a settlement of miners who wrested livings by delving into the earth and harvesting its bounties. The village was wealthy far in excess of its size and population, so effectively did it extract gemstones and precious metals, and Ia spoke with the leader of the community and asked how it could be that so small a settlement could be so prosperous.

'The secrets are within this manual which I uncovered,' answered the village's overseer, and he showed Ia a broad and flat tome. Its pages lay between covers of slate, and a twin girdles of gold and steel crossed the book's cover and bound it together. Ia recognized the book, and its presence was of great interest to him.

'How did you come to own this marvelous tome?' asked Ia, and the overseer answered, 'I received a vision in which a man formed of nothing more than bones and dirt and stone awoke after a long sleep, and the man beckoned me to follow him. I did, and he led me to a great realm deep below the earth where graves stood, one for every person who died, is dying, and will yet die. Deeper yet I tread and I stood before doors of black metal unlike any that I had ever seen, set a cavern that loomed larger than the sky, and there a dead man gave this book to me and then said to me, "Take and keep this." When I awoke the book lay upon my chest, and I have kept it ever since. But I was not told never to open it, and so I did, and the secrets of the earth were revealed to me, and my community now prospers.'

'Your book is stolen,' Ia said, 'but its proper owner must never find or have it.' So Ia placed an enchantment upon the book which wreathed it in shadows and prevented it from being found by those who would call upon greater powers to search for it. 'Keep this book but do not speak of it, and let none learn of it except through my will.' The overseer witnessed and cowered before Ia's strength, and he agreed to Ia's terms, and the book passed from memory as intended.

Ia and the Beast

Ia and his disciples had set up their camp one evening as they always did. They hewed some small trees into firewood and lit a fire over which they could prepare their nighttime meal. They had just finished lighting the fire when a voice called out from the twilit wilderness beyond the light of their fire. The voice spoke in a language which Ia's disciples could not comprehend, but Ia replied gamely in the same tongue. He then said to his disciples, 'I have invited this guest to our campfire for the evening. Pay him no attention or mind and heed not any of his words, if you glean even the smallest bit of meaning from his foreign speech.'

A swarthy guest stepped into the ring of firelight, and he was clad in furs taken from forest beasts, and he wore a cap made from the skin of a fox. He bore a spear and he leveled it at Ia and asked a question of him, and Ia replied with honesty in his voice. The man gestured to the campfire, to the stacked bundles of wood, and to Ia's disciples who went about their business in the woodlands. But, as Ia had bidden, they continued their routine as always, and they ignored the man's increasingly furious ravings.

At the end of his patience, the man thrust his spear skyward and chanted in a booming voice, but Ia said a short word and the man's invocation grew silent and still, though his motions remained frenetic. He was brought low through Ia's power, and he charged forward to stab with his weapon at Ia, but the thrust did not land as intended. Ia grabbed the spear's shaft and broke it, and he humbled the furious man who was a man no longer, but a bear possessed of tangled black fur that reeked of sweat and worse things.

The beast roared a dreadful roar and grabbed up Ia and crushed him against its hairy chest and rent Ia with its fierce claws, but Ia would not be laid low, and he cursed the beast twofold, first to wander and act in confusion, and second to remain in the bestial form it had elected to take. Ia banished the creature after laying the twofold curse upon it, and it ran away howling in despair.

'Holy Ia,' Creasssin said, falling to his knees in awe, for Ia stood before his disciples with no sign of battle upon his unmarred body. 'Why would you welcome such a strange and fearsome man to our campfire?'

'You were never in any danger. His powers are cousin to those of Being, but they are lesser in many ways, for his can only dwindle in efficacy. His ilk shall be excluded from our ranks, despite being a distant cousin to us, because this cousin is marred of spirit despite how similar those powers may seem to those we wield. The ilk of that bear which was once a man cannot coexist with you wardens of the Truth. They stand outside our providence by choice, and they will be among those to surrender when Truth's enlightenment spreads across the land and they are weakened by its merest touch.'

Ia and the Keeper

Ia and his disciples walked through a village which once lay at a crossroads far from lands which could be considered safe or civilized. The residents of this place lived hard lives and were circumspect and cautious in their dealings with outsiders, for they could not trust anyone who was not one of their own not to have links to those who would do the residents or their village harm. So they looked upon Ia and his disciples with trepidation and mistrust, and they were cool and distant when approached and asked for directions or supplies or lodging. Indeed, when they asked about for rooms for the night, the owner of the village's single inn rebuked them and said he would not permit them a stay under his roof.

Ia's disciple Creassin grew piqued at this treatment, and he said to the keeper of the inn, 'Do you know that you turn away and treat as mud the holiest Ia, who comes to deliver Truth beyond all other truths to the people in this and other lands?

'We have seen holy men come and go in the past,' replied the owner. 'And this one is the same as all the others. Know that we treat them all equally and that none are welcome here, for their words stir passions and bring ruin upon stable places that neither asked for nor wanted this to befall them.'

'Those others are charlatans, preachers and prophets of false idols or men who speak words which carry the air of wisdom but lack any deeper truth or meaning when closely examined,' said Creassin. 'Ia's miracles and teachings are reflections of the foundations upon which this world is built, and they are glimpses into the structure of those foundations.'

'And I have heard all the charlatans say the same before as well,' answered the innkeeper. 'Your emphasis that this time it is different can only lead the prudent mind to conclude that it is but more of the same.'

Creassin could not break through the innkeeper's cynicism and doubt, and he turned to Ia for guidance. 'How can I convince this man and men like him that your words are indeed ripe with merit and worth consideration above all others?' he asked, and Ia answered, 'You must do more than speak on the matter. You must show that you are committed to what you preach and you must do this without expectation of reward.'

'Should it be so, that this man reap the benefits of what we offer without intending to respond and repay our gifts with proper devotion?'

'Even if one does not agree to be bound to the Wheel, they are lashed to it regardless,' answered Ia. 'But all who do not cling to the Wheel will find their bindings give way it as it turns its course, and they plummet into the realm which lays beyond Danimoth when Destruction approaches them, and they will be rewarded as deserved.'

In time, the village and its residents passed through the Gate just as Ia predicted, and they were lost and cursed through their cynicism until time itself ends.

Ia and the Dancers

Before Ia met the first of his disciples, he came upon a young man and woman who were dancing together beneath the high boughs of an ancient oak tree. The couple was so engrossed and carefree that they were unaware of the outside world and took no note of Ia until he had full and clear sight of them. Immediately they stopped, for they were afraid and awed by Ia's presence, alone and vulnerable as they were, but Ia would do them no harm.

Ia instead said to them quietly and calmly, 'Why do you do this thing which you do?' for he was quite curious as to their reasons.

'We do not know,' admitted the man after he had regained his bearings and could find sufficient self-control to speak clearly once again, and his dancing partner nodded in agreement with his words. 'We know we should not, as our village elder forbids us. But it brings us such joy that we cannot help ourselves.'

'You elder is possessed of bygone beliefs,' Ia told them. 'You do the small duty which is your lot to aid in continuing the revolution of the great Wheel. You create and in the wake of your creation does destruction bloom. The elder's edicts should not prevent you from indulging in the wondrous passions you feel need to express.' Ia looked over their heads to the few faint lights which marked the location of the nearby village. 'I will address him on this matter. The quaint notions which constrain you will be lifted.'

Ia did as promised, and he attended to the leader of that small village, and the young man and woman were troubled no more by him.