The Tower of the Elementals

(Note: this is a bit out of date, but still perfectly accurate. I can't imagine the Watchers didn't *know* about the Shadow Lords back then, but *we* were probably not allowed to know, so that would explain why they left them out of their explanation at the end.)

At the center of the land, the center of the world, an equal distance from the northern and southern edges, from the eastern and western edges, there is a tower. It stands in a sandy desert, in eternal twilight, a long square finger pointing eternally at the starless sky. Built of a rough stone the same color as the sand around it, the edges worn round by wind and time, one may not be able to make it out clearly in the uncertain light. But there is no mistaking its presence for it fairly reeks power and strange sense of endlessness. At its base there are four open doorways, one on each side, one for each of the four points of the compass. Entering through one of these doorways one finds a bare floor made of the same rough sandy stone as the tower itself, and curiously devoid of the sand that swirls endlessly outside. A stairway spirals around the inside walls of the tower, up into the darkness overhead. There are exactly one hundred and forty-four steps to the top, twelve sets of twelve, the significance of which is unknown. At the end of the stairway one enters a small square room, lit somehow with a dim sourceless light. The bare stone room contains nothing except four very large paintings, one on each wall, towering twenty feet tall up to the high ceiling.

To the west is a painting of bright greens and golds. Most of the picture is taken up by a huge tree, its branches reaching far above the limits of the painting. Its leaves are of every shape and every shade of green and they seem so alive as to almost move under one's gaze, reflecting the golden light of the sun. But despite the grandeur of the tree ones eyes are immediately drawn to the woman in the center of the painting. She is naked, pale, and hauntingly beautiful, with eyes green as emeralds and long blond hair, with an almost greenish tint to it, flowing down to below her knees. She seems to be partially merged with the trunk of the great tree, as if she were stepping out from inside of it. Her smile seems to light the world around her, and a faint golden glow like captured sunlight appears to flow from beneath her skin. Carved into the stone below the painting is a single word, 'CALLIOPE'. This is Calliope, the elemental of earth. Her aspect is life and growth. She is joy, light, excitement, happiness and hope.

To the right, on the north wall, is a painting primarily in dim blues and greys, in stark contrast the previous. In this painting the lighting is dim, the sky covered with clouds, and it is uncertain whether it is night or day. It depicts a what appears to be a young teenage girl, naked, stepping out of a waterfall. She has short black hair, wet and sticking up in little spikes and tangles. She is so pale that she appears to have a bluish tint to her skin, and her eyes are a blue so dark they are nearly black. She stands in the small rocky stream below the waterfall with an expression of such profound sadness as to bring tears to one's eyes. There is no life around her, only the water, the stones and the sky full of dark brooding rain clouds. Below this painting is again a single word carved in the stone, 'RAIN'. This is Rain, the elemental of water. Her aspect is loss, loneliness and tears. She is the melancholy of times forever gone. She is sadness and hopelessness.

Moving again to the right, to the east wall, one finds a painting done almost entirely in white and shades of grey. There is a sky of such pale blue-grey as to be almost white, and the lighting is that of pre-dawn, the dim sourceless glow of false dawn. The rest of the landscape of this painting is simply granite rocks and boulders covered with ice and snow. There is not a living thing in sight, just snow and ice and rocks, except for the figure in the center of the painting. He sits in a throne roughly carved from a single block of ice. His skin is of ivory, and his shoulder-length hair is pure white, making it impossible to judge his age. Even his eyes are completely white except for the pupils. He seems to be surrounded by a dim blue-white aura. Dressed only in loose-fitting white pants and sleeveless white shirt of a very light fabric, there seems no way he could possibly be comfortable in such a freezing environment. Yet he sits, almost sprawled on the icy seat, his arms lying loosely on the arms of the throne, with an expression of bored disinterest on his face, looking off slightly to the side. In the space below the painting where there should have been a name carved in the stone like the others, there is only a series of deep gouges as if some great clawed beast had ripped away the stone where the name had been carved, obliterating it. This is the Nameless One, once the elemental of air. Though it was not always so, his aspect now is of coldness, of unfeeling. He is cold calculated revenge, emotionless logic, and stubborn unwillingness to change, whatever the cost.

The final painting, on the south wall, is of bright yellow, orange, and red in a field of blackness. It is simply an inferno of flames in starless darkness, and in its center, glowing orange with reflected firelight, is a young man, naked and burning. His short red hair surrounds his head like a halo and the flames curl up around his legs as he stands in the center of the raging fire. There is an expression of unimaginable rage and pain on his face, his mouth open in a scream lost forever in the silent painting. Below this painting is carved the name 'EMBER' in stark capitals, as with the others. This is Ember, the elemental of fire. His aspect is of destruction and pain. He is directionless anger and uncontrollable rage. He is fear and pain. And he is quite mad.

Those of us who live here know these four quite well. They are the Elementals, nearly godlike beings of incredible power. Each of us here is 'born' under the sign of one of the four, and thus our personality influenced by the personality of that Element. We may grow and change over time, but that connection will always remain, however tenuous. To touch the mind of an elemental, as some of us have on occasion, is a nearly indescribable experience. It is to be flooded with emotions so intense they are uncontrollable, flowing from a mind so powerful that it could snuff you out with a thought. The aftereffects of even brushing up against one of their minds is, to quote the description of one who is with us no longer, "like being so fucking high you don't even know who you are anymore".

There is a struggle going on among the four. The Nameless One, the eldest of the four, is waging a battle to impose his will upon the system as a whole, while Calliope, with Rain as her ally, struggles to prevent this. And Ember, mad as he is, simply wanders around the edges of the conflict, creating destruction wherever he can. This is the backdrop to the world we live in. Some of us are perhaps quite involved in the conflict (the Skeptic, for instance, is known to be a direct minion of the Nameless One) while most of us simply go about our lives and try to stay out of it as far as we can. But it is always there, in the background, and we cannot help but be influenced by the changing tides of the struggle.

I am the One Who Waits