The Runes of Norien

  II

  There never was a world whose superior beings – if knowing that life is destined to death can be said to be a superior thing – haven’t wondered about, looked for and craved the existence of a God or Gods who would give their own existence meaning and immortality, despite the abundancy of myths describing the dire consequences of a creature seeking to probe the imponderable mystery of its Creator.

  And as though by some universal benevolence, these burning questions and the quests for godliness they engender have always been met with a silence unbroken by mortal intelligence, by religion, philosophy or science.

  Throughout the vastness of Creation, there has been only one exception to this strictest rule – a cautionary tale, as it were, though one kept forever secret from the rest of the cosmos, because to know for a fact of a thing’s immense, destructive power, would be the same as revealing its undeniable existence.

  The world in question was Ienar Lin, the Mad Sphere, whose dwellers had been aware of the Gods, of their presence and the demands they made of them, ever since they had crawled out of non-being into being.

  And for this very reason, as the name of their birthplace signified, the people of Ienar Lin were all completely mad.