The Aeon

  The Aeon are celestial stars of living energy, caught in a cycle of life and death with the Nu, beings of dark energy that devour them. Scattered across the Abyss, they appear at random from nurseries of hot gases, and countless numbers exist at once. These are the stars seen across the heavens, or at least a part of them shining into each elemental reality and they are the light that draws the Nu across the voids from one star to another.

  A natural part of an Aeon’s cycle is the growth of a protective lattice sphere called the shrivatsa which the Nu cannot pass. The Aeon feeds a small portion of its energies into the shrivatsa to keep it strong via globes of light called the Atet, pearls of celestial light that slowly move across the heavens until they strike and are absorbed by the shrivatsa. But the Nu are able to feed upon the energies of the Shrivatsa, drawing more and more energy (the Atet appear more frequently as a result) until the Aeon is forced to stop, lest it is extinguished by the efforts of its own preservation.

  The Aeon can reset the shrivatsa’s energy consumption levels by first draining the large quantities of the lattice’s energy still inside its matrix. This is why the Aeon forms seven pocket dimensions inside the space between the shrivatsa and itself. In each one an elemental sphere takes form: stone, air, fire, water, crystal, wood and metal. These elemental worlds act as grounding stations for the shrivatsa when the Aeon needs to purge its energies before beginning the protective cycle anew. It does this through the yggdrasils, seven celestial trees connecting the interior of the shrivatsa to the elemental spheres through which the purged energies are drained, filling each elemental sphere’s core energy reservoirs with a portion of the energy.

  However, between the shrivatsa’s purge and the renewed energy of an atet, some of the Nu are able to get inside the shrivatsa. This labyrinth of energy conduits will destroy any of the Nu still inside when the first Atet powers the shrivatsa once again, but for those able to find one of the yggdrasil, they can travel down into the energy reservoirs of an elemental sphere. Here they will consume the reservoir over the aeons but will effectively be trapped.

  Once a reservoir has been drained of its energies, the yggdrasil becomes withers and the next purge always destroys it. Once all seven of the yggdrasils have been destroyed, the Aeon cannot purge and thus will be forced to spend more and more energy until it is too weak to fuel the shrivatsa anymore. Thus the Nu can find their way through the Shrivatsa and pierce the Aeon’s core, ending its existence. When one of the elemental spheres is drained completely of its energy reservoirs and the yggdrasil is destroyed by the next purge, that elemental sphere’s dimension collapses into another and the two spheres merge.

  Alternatively, if the Nu do not find their way into the elemental spheres’ reservoirs the Shrivatsa will continue to function until each reservoir is full at which point the Shrivatsa will shatter during the next purge, exposing the Aeon to the Nu forces without. But this approach takes far longer, especially thanks to the fact that some denizens of these elemental spheres find ways to use the energies of their sphere’s reservoir, thereby draining it.