"K'Taradum! K'Sadyr! Have mercy upon us, the meager and scum. You are to us as the grand behemoths to the north are to the smallest of beetles. Beyond comprehension, your power. Forgive us our transgressions and grant us pardon from your wrath! We pray to you, that you do not rain lead upon us as you did to our far forefathers! By your will alone, all will end in dust or metal. K'Tarka shuol, Taradum, rishta mark sygall!"
-Hymn 169 (Litany to the Mountain) 'The Scripts of Ora'
The earth is to those on its surface still, constant. Not a force of nature, but what nature is built upon. The flashes of life see the earth as the board on which they play their lives. They see it with no greater purpose than to hold them. But just below the surface lays Sadyr, the one of ash, lead, and fire. The Thing of 10,000 flames. Before the age of the river, there was Sadyr and Malafta, the one of the Beyond. They engaged in dances of incredibility and incomprehensibility. However, Malafta sought for greater things. Malafta pulled that which does not exist from the Beyond and made it exist, whilst Sadyr danced on its own. Malafta refused to continue its eternal dance with Sadyr, instead singing to the burning one as it brought forth that which does not exist. Malafta began to sing to what it pulled from the Beyond instead of to Sadyr, causing a new flame to burn within it. The flame of jealousy and loneliness. In retaliation, Sadyr attacked the existence, burning it, encasing it in lead, and casting it aside. What this first existence was none know, however its corpse remains in sky, the moon. With the existence destroyed, Sadyr returned to Malafta, offering a dance. In response, Malafta beckoned forth from the Beyond, Rara-Shon; dirt, mud, and stone. Malafta set Rara-Shon between itself and Sadyr, locking the molten thing away.
Generations passed, and Malafta split itself into Ramses and Sahlanymph, the Hopeful Star and the River. Time was born and slaughtered innumerably, and all the while Sadyr lay raging, imprisoned by Rara-Shon. However, while Malafta had considered Rara-Shon to be an eternal blockade against the fire, this was not the case. It is true, Sadyr could not break through Rara-Shon. Instead, Rara-Shon would make a dealing with Sadyr, the Deal of the Mountain. Rara-Shon and Sadyr engaged in a dance of their own, which lead to the birth of Taradum, the Mountain. The Mountain provided Sadyr with a portal through which it could emerge and wreak havoc over creation. The first instance of this caused Malafta to manifest, recombining its two aspects back into a single being once again. A war of titanic powers began, with Sadyr crawling from Taradum, and Malafta attempting to save what it made. In the end, Rara-Shon regretted its decision to free Sadyr, and helped Malafta seal Sadyr once again. Back in its domain, through no choice of its own, Sadyr swore to destroy all that Malafta brought from the Beyond. It swore to force Malafta to sing to it again, so that it could truly dance again.
Malafta held a cosmic trial for the traitorous Rara-Shon. A host of losatar, the ones of light who held the stars in the sky on their shoulders, found Rara-Shon too dangerous to be free with its power, thus Malafta bound it so that it could not morph and move as it had before. It would take centuries for Rara-Shon to move even the shortest of distances. Malafta siphoned power from Rara-Shon and locked it away in Taradum, using the power of the earth to hold the Mountain together, and thus keep the seal on Sadyr secure. Rara-Shon swore vengeance against Malafta for locking away its power, and now conspires to birth more mountains through which Sadyr may escape. Taradum is held in a state of dormant infancy, in an eternal slumber because of Rara-Shon's magics.
When all was done, Malafta split itself once again, with Ramses joining the losatar in the Beyond, and Sahlanymph beginning the cycle of death and rebirth on Rara-Shon's surface. Taradum continued to slumber, and Rara-shon and Sadyr continued to conspire. Every moment, Sadyr grew more powerful and more driven, slowly wearing down the power holding Taradum asleep. Constantly scratching at the seal holding back armageddon…
A girl stood in a village at the foot of a mountain, playing with a doll. She played a game of make-believe, where her doll was a queen with all of the food she could ever want. A rumble ran through the ground. The girl thought her stomach had growled, but looked up when she heard some of the adults on the street talking worriedly about something. They were looking at the mountain, Taradum they called it. A thin stream of thick smoke had begun spilling from an area on the tip of the mountain. Another rumble shook the earth violently, causing the girl, who had stood up, to fall over onto her behind. She stared at the mountain in confusion, as did the rest of the village, which had come out of their dwellings to see what was happening. The girl's mother ran over to her and grabbed her close, whispering prayers under her breath. The elder of the town began to sing a hymn, the Litany to the Mountain, and the townsfolk joined in. The river by the village, unnoticed, seemed to swell slightly, as though preparing for something. The villagers watched in fear and horror as a tremendous explosion caused the entire top of the mountain to explode. Enormous boulders streaked through the sky towards the village, and noxious gasses began to spill like a mist down peaks and slopes of Taradum.
The villagers began running as fast as they could. Some were able to dodge the boulders, but most did not. The mountain began spilling out molten metal and rock and the few remaining people in the village heard the tortured, hate filled cry of anger and pain emanating from the mountain. It sounded as though the earth itself were screaming and fire was cackling at the demise it was causing. Lead and fire gushed from the caldera, and from the mountain came rage, unfathomable rage.