(Why the Master of the World lives not on this world, but in the Moon where no life is, that no one can say. Or how it can be that he is a Ghost while at the same time he still lives, this is a mystery. This we believe because it suits our story-love, and the storyteller will flee if we question the telling, and then what tales will there be?)

Upon a yesterday before all yesterdays, Sarmento the Mechanecromancer descended from the Moon. On a night when all the artificial moons of the Chimerae were set, and all eyes blind, he returned to a mausoleum of the enemy machines and brought their sultan to life again. And in return, the Machine, which was many times wiser than man, took the secrets of the Lotus King and deduced all the lore of RNA and DNA and enzyme coding as they relate to neuropsychology, and taught it to Sarmento.

Sarmento in a secret place, in a coffin, gave birth to the First of Nymphs, whose name was Rayura-Ah, and he instructed her in the arts of Nature, and so she commanded nature to turn against the Chimerae.

Then the First Mother walked among the world, and in her footprints vines and yarrow grew, and poppies and peonies, and the grapevines pulled down their towers of war, and the ivy vine overtopped the ivory towers of vain learning, and the owl and the cormorant built nests in their triumphal arches, and the unicorn came from the wilderness, and the dragon from the sea to sport and play with us.

Many seasons she slumbered walked, and with each season another plague she cajoled Nature to visit upon the Chimerae, hybrids of unnatural nature, an art of war none of their weapons could fight, and they were decimated softly by her unseen hands, never knowing a war was being waged. Their crops would not grow; their trees not yield fruit; their cows would not calve, nor fish be gathered into nets; and the wombs of the women of their race were closed, and so they dwindled, and soon passed into memory. And we drink wine, and the memory is forgotten.

The Natural Order in those days walked the woodlands, needing no tools of stone or metal, and the spies and satellites of the Chimerae, their magnetic radar, found nothing to detect. Light was the footstep in the Earth of our first ancestors, camouflaged by their greenish cloaks, and leaving nothing behind when they camped, not even a scent trail. Not even fires, in those days, were built: the bear and the pard and the lumbering bison, packs of dogs feral to the Chimerae and tame to Nymphs, all came when called to huddle in playful furry mass for warmth.

A time came of victory, and Rayura-Ah raised her hand, all the fruit trees gave forth fruit, and all of the slaves of the Chimerae who ate of them grew gay and giddy and flown as if with wine, and they forgot their sins and their chains and their rules and their lives—and so knew joy.

The cities were empty, and the trees overgrew the towers, toppled the Chimerical war memorials, and broke the dungeon-walls with their roots. And the factories were pulled down by the thorny vines of roses. In the great square of the greatest city of the Chimerae where the ten thousand torture racks and impaling poles once dripped blood, now saw nothing but cherry blossom petals dripping.

And one of the roots broke through the roof of the Tomb of the Judge of Ages, and tickled his nose, and woke him where he lay. He rose from his Tomb, blinking, and followed the path of rose petals to the surface, where the iron towers of the Chimerae were overgrown with mistletoe, ivy, and oleander.

Sarmento i Illa d’Or the Necromancer saw him coming from afar through the many electronic eyes of the tyrants, and he stood in the shadow of the Dark Tower, and at his right hand was Rayura-Ah. And she was dressed in a robe of white petals, and anointed with oils and pheromones.

From the Tombs came the Judge of Ages down the streets empty of people and full of grape leaves, and in each hand was a weapon, two pistols of corpse-white, for he is a Judge of death sentences only. And as he came, called out. “Is my time yet come? Is my bride yet here? Otherwise, wake me not, or you wake my wrath!” For the beauty of the trees, and the hypnotic scent of the blossoms, could not soften his heart.

The Necromancer smiled and said, “Here is your bride. This is Rayura-Ah, the Second Rania, for I have read the books of necromancy beyond the stars, where your bride was described in exact detail, and I have made her to please you, and to read the Monument for you.”

The First of Nymphs, clad in nothing but flower petals and her blush of native loveliness, now stepped forward to embrace the Judge of Ages, for she had been chemically programmed to love him.

The Necromancer said, “Abandon your Tomb and live your days now in joy. Here is the woman mine arts have made for you: take her from my hand into the joyful bower, and relieve the shame of virginity from her.”

To the First Nymph, the Judges of Ages asked, “What does the Monument say?”

She answered and said, “The Monument says that Hyades cannot be defeated, or opposed, and that the children of men will be happy in their slavery, and spread among the stars. Now are the days of liberty, when we may feast and rest, but when the Armada arrives, it is the end of days of liberty, and the children of men must toil and die under the light of other suns.”

But the Judge of Ages said, “This is not my bride.”

The Necromancer cursed him, and said, “Rania read the Monument wrongly, for she was made wrongly, and her dream of vindicating the races of man is wrong. I counseled Del Azarchel to kill her and assume the Captaincy, but he loved her and refused, therefore she became Captain, and caused us all endless grief! She will use and discard you as she used and discarded us, her fathers and teachers, for she does not love, but fled to the stars to escape you. She will never return.”

Everything but those last four words, he would have forgiven: but this is the one thing that can never be said to the Judge of Ages.

The two agreed then and there to fight a duel, and weapons of the ancient days were brought. They stood amid the floating petals that fell from broken torture-poles, and amid the lovely scent of lotuses that wafted from wine-filled torture-pools, and legend says that of all the duels fought during the time when the Chimerae ruled the Earth, this was the very last of them.

The Necromancer said, “You can never defeat us, Judge of Ages, for we are the Masters of all dark arts and dark sciences, and we are full of the understanding of the secrets of the world.

“Your wisdom is of this world,” said the Judge of Ages. “My hope is not of this world.”

They fired their guns, and some say these were the last gunshots heard anywhere on Earth, for the Nymphs use other weapons. The shot of the Necromancer struck true, and the Judge of Ages was wounded with a grievous wound, and fell as one dead, and voices came from the earth, and thunders, and lightnings, and there was a great earthquake. And the Necromancer grew frightened, and cast down his pistol, and fled: for by his art he summoned a flying machine such as flew in the air in days long ago. He commanded it to carry him away, and commanded the Mother of Nymphs to follow after.

But Rayura-Ah, who loved the Judge of Ages with a helpless love, took him away to her secret island, and there nursed him of his great wound.

He rose at last from deathbed and sickbed to embrace her, for was she not like Rania as Rania should have been, the perfected, the unmarred? And they dwell in love together in the lands of the dead beneath the mountains, and at times their lovemaking creates earth tremors, so vehement is he.

A great compact and covenant between the Nymphs and the Dead was made, that any of the Natural Order wishing to find tomorrow and perish, and if they but renounce their names, may descend into the Earth, where it is cold.