Time was, we had harps that played themselves, cauldrons that filled themselves with food, looms that wove themselves, horses who ran on the wind, birds who spoke. The plows worked themselves in fields that bore grains of gold and weeds of copper. Harpers, wild children and the wise could take the forms of animals, speak with the ancestors, and see the future. Everyone lived in peace.
Fifteen years ago, the King of Death broke the Dragon's heart, and everything was lost.
Copy & pasted from an old thread on my blog:
The Dragon's blood is ley. It used to pulse and flow, it filled wells and standing stones, it poured down the sacred roads, it birthed treasure and life in the earth. Now the Dragon Killer has broken the Dragon's heart. Ley is stagnant. It pools and turns rotten; it creates monsters and corrupts who lives near.
The Dragon Killer is the king of death. He's a monstrous, skeletal figure, made and armed and armored of metal, rags and bone. He has a crown of teeth. The earth groans and cracks where he walks, and living things recoil.
Ahead of him in the world, where he comes, are the Born Dead. In the lands he's taken and held, the Born Dead have grown into warriors. They are all appetite, they have no voice nor conscience, they kill and devour and don't ever relent. Only bodily destruction harms them; they never die.
He has other allies: The Corrupt, men and women who'll trade the whole earth away for power in their own lifetimes. The Monstrous, beasts whom stagnant ley has changed, made foul and ravenous. And the Gracious, who are Neighbors or Fair Ones who now prefer a dead world to one ruled by men and their iron.
Recitation:
The King of Death
the dragon killer
all ambition
the bone-pyre.
The Old Spider
the tangler
quiet
the binder in chains.
The Queen of Deer
the pale moon
sword-crowned
the dweller in water.
The King Raven
ragged cloak
mocker
whom even eagles serve.
The Kind Man
the bear man
the bare man
the healer.
The Mud Eater
the willow hag
the sleeping witch
the reed-woman.
The Wind's Daughter
whisperer
eavesdropper
chaser of clouds and treetops.
The Ivy Boy
close-creeper
thistles and nettles
who fights the plow, dulls the scythe.
The Dragon
ley-blood
birther, shaper, giver
broken-heart.