Somewhere not exactly in this world and yet still part of it, grew an ancient forest. Time and seasons didn't hold sway here and so this forest only knew the eternal spring, always green and warm and filled with a lush variety of peaceful animals and all sorts of trees and bushes and flowers, emanating a sweet scent.

If any human was wandering about, he would think of this place as paradise, clearings with springs of clear water being the perfect place to settle. the forest around providing festive meals every day forever.

And well, it was. The actual paradise, I mean. Somewhere in this place favored by nature itself, in the core of the forest, beneath the sea of treetops, laid a temple.

Made of living oak, its decor was made of flowers and vines. A hall, filled with chairs woven from branches, was the only room inside. The entrance was an exaggerated tree-hole, reaching down to the floor and taking the shape of a gate.

Similar to the metal temple on top of that unsubdued mountain range, where the guard had woken, this place hadn't been disturbed for times untold either.

Yet now, a woman sat on one of the oaken chairs. A gentle hue lit up her eyes, as deep a blue as her hair. Looking into them was akin to looking upon the skies on a perfect day, and into a calm ocean, at the same time. Her body was slender, yet well formed, her curves reminding one of the gentle slopes of evergreen fields, her dress, green in color like the nature around, complementing the noble pale of her skin. All in all, her appearance made her seem like an avatar of nature incarnate.

Gaia. That's what mortals used to call her once. And still did.

She knew something was about to happen, she too had heard the bells declaring the darkness, from outside the world, had shown itself again. After all, she had woven that atavistic spell herself, long ago even by the standards of an immortal. Gaia was aware, that one of the guardians she had created, with the help of Hephaistos and Lux, guardians designed to fight back the shadows, had just entered this forest.

True enough, a second later, the bearer of Tidebringer fell on one knee before her, in a gust of wind.

"This one has a message for nature's master." Resounded a metal voice.

It stroke her odd, that a guardian would report to her directly under normal circumstance, so she concluded something unusual had occurred.

"Raise your head and speak, please, golem." Her voice rang like small bells, like a seductive melody that would forever be stuck in your head.

Unimpressed by that magical voice, the guardian raised its head and deferentially reported his findings. As he reported the findings of a little girl, that had to be a shadow, and his inability to identify her as such, Gaia's expression turned dark, with a hint of worry. The oceans in her eyes started to boil, blue flames dancing on the surface.

If what the living metal had just told her was correct, dark times laid upon future days, for she knew, that shadows, like the girl had to be one, were not the usual foe. No, things like her were powerful on a scale, even the gods had to fear.

The memories had gotten hazy over the course of millennia but were still clear enough to know, who had appeared in the world again, after that long a time.

The true shadows were back. Not the normal shadows, who, while strong, couldn't equal the gods, no, but the real living night, the overwhelming foe.

A circumstance, the gods, including herself, had wished would never come to be again.

She shuddered, as she remembered the last encounter she had with those... things.

It had started as a small threat, lesser shadows seeping through cracks in the world, devouring a small part of reality here and there. The mortal race's heroes were enough to drive them away, in the end, with a little personal help from the gods. The battle went, like the gods were used to. They were clearly superior to those mysterious shadows, having no problem to gain victory. After that incident, the world was as it was before, peaceful, with the mortal races quarreling about.

But then, out of nowhere, the gods were caught off guard. Unbelievable as it was, the shadows that crept through the borders of reality again, managed to fight them on even grounds. Unlike their weak counterparts, those true shadows held a power equal to their own. Never since the beginning of time had they ever met a foe who could fight them toe to toe, so the shock was grave. Only thanks to the fact, that the gods outnumbered them in the end, did they manage to push the shadows back out of the world, back into the endless void they came from.

Ever since that reminder, that they were by no means the only supreme things around, the gods had prepared alarms and spells and weapons, should they ever have to fight an enemy as strong as the starless night again. They declared shadows forbidden in existence and put in place the warning system, she herself had created, being active since then.

Gaia, and the other gods, for that matter, didn't know if there were more of them, after all, or where they originated from. All she knew, was that dire times were coming if one of the greater shadows really had stepped out of the dark again.

She hoped, that this time, that shadow acted alone.

Was that even to hope, though, she pondered.

Because if this was one of the dark entities that appeared before, it surely hadn't forgotten the defenders of this world. So either, it was not alone, just scouting, meaning more would intrude, soon.

Or, this one hadn't been here before, which meant there existed more than those encountered before, meaning the gods had just made contact with yet a new, previously unknown, absurdly powerful enemy.

Anyways, the shadows were back, probably. Which was bad.

The only thing she didn't understand quite yet, was the fact it had fled before the golem. Why would it do that? No way, a shadow too weak to take on a guardian, would have the ability to hide its presence from the golem's senses. So, why? Not knowing the motivations behind what had apparently happened, made her uneasy.

More important at the moment though, was to inform the other gods, and prepare for the war that would be likely to unfold in the near future.

She cursed under her breath, then spoke to the servant.

"Thank you, bearer of Tidebringer. What you reported spells trouble. Wake the other bearers. I will contact the others like me. Go, now. And be nature with you."

Dismissed like that, the golem bowed and vanished in another whistle of air.

Deep in thought, Gaia absently wished open a portal to the smith god's realm. Then she walked straight into the silver surface, causing it to ripple like a pebble thrown into a pond.

With the gentle sound of water falling, the portal stitched the world around itself back together.

While traveling through the arcane ether, the source of all known magic and attached to reality as a gateway from one place to the next, she continued to ponder...

The war gods had dealings with lesser shadows before, back in the days of creation. They only admitted to that, though, after the incident that almost ended the world. Born from the need to cooperate in order to survive, Heojin, the god of war himself, shared the information he knew.

While the shadows were devourers, they respected power, as long as it was far above their own. While that condition was met, you could converse with them quite normally. Due to this fact, trades had taken place between the war gods and the darkness, language being the first. An interesting fact about the tongue of shadows was, that it carried a violent and raw power, a power which didn't spring from the arcane ether, but equaling magic in its might, twisting the world around the speaker. As long as the speaker was a shadow, of course. The gods had no problem learning the tongue, but couldn't reproduce that effect, at all. To them, it was just another language.

More interesting the fact though, that the language of darkness appeared to be older than time, for Hypocura, the god of secrets, had found a few of its syllables carved onto the canvas the gods had used to paint reality on.

Once, he speculated inebriated, that the shadows just had always existed, unlike the gods who did actually pop into being one day and that from this circumstance would follow, that those dark entities actually created the gods, thereby being their makers, thereby being the real gods. While true, that the gods didn't know why they themselves existed, or who made them, no proof of a connection between the endless night and their own birth was ever found and so they gave up on finding an answer to that one, as it seemed impossible to gather any kind of information on that subject.

By the time she finished her thoughts about the information Heojin had shared so long ago, she found herself in a stone hall, full of blazing wrought ovens and weapon stands, dwarves running around everywhere, carrying metal and coal and tools.

As always, she thought, he is quick on the uptake. To her knowledge, those ovens hadn't been fired up in a thousand years, and yet now, maybe an hour after the alarm had rung, he was already mass-producing weaponry again.

"Oh-ho-ho, who do we have here?" A guttural voice resounded behind her.

Opening her arms for a hug, she whirled around, jumping into the embrace of a stubby older man, towering four feet above her.

"Hephaistos! It is good to see you!" She laughed.

Then, after a brief moment, her expression turned serious again.

"We need to talk. Can you have your dwarves send messages to the others?"