Soil & Sea.

We are but pieces on this board of existence, mosaics in this greater scheme of things. Men, gods, spirits. To the gods men are pawns, the visible entities behind the invisible mechanisations and shifting loyalties. Alliances forged and shattered over mortal battlefields stained crimson, blood the price exacted and paid a thousand times over.

But the players are also played, skeins in a spider's web, inextricably linked, master yet slave. Pieces on the board, mobility the illusion of freedom but infinitely interconnected and forever bound.

We cling desperately to the sodden shore of our fallacious beliefs against the pull of the tides of change, only to be swept out to sea. We clutch our rapacious support of carefully wrought schemes, push furtively against the winds of time, only to be uprooted and tumble like weeds in the wind. We are as the soil and the sea. Driven by unseen forces, forever in motion, even when we stand still.

Inequity begets fanaticism in all its myriad forms. Fanaticism that stokes the feverish flames. And when inequity burgeons into violent conflagration, the gods themselves are helpless. They cease to lead and can but follow, dragged by the will of their worshippers.

Gods annihilated, ascendants fall as blood is spilt by avid worshippers in the names of their fallen gods. Heedless, uncaring of the very gods they profess to serve. Blood shed, repaid in kind as the heavens weep in helpless despair and the crimson stained sand turns a runny pink.