While the Aioniotita by the Poet Eremos is the foundation of Alendrian story, song, and cosmology, there are yet many more legends to tell. Here are additional stories and songs from Alendria.
As recorded by Philomenes of Thalassa, in the Third Cycle of the Waning Sphere
These things I have learned from the elders of Alendria, and though some dispute the manner of them, none dispute their weight. For in those ancient days when Alendria ruled Skybride and her legions shone like bronze constellations upon the earth, there arose a tale concerning the birth of a king whose destiny was written not in ink, but in the turning of the celestial spheres.
In those days Asterion son of Lykaios ruled Alendria, a man stern in judgment and proud in lineage. He was learned in the harmonics of the spheres, and it was said he could hear the trembling of the firmament when fate shifted its course.
Asterion had but one child, a daughter named Eirene, who bore the sacred title koremonokeros, the Unicorn Maiden. This title was given only to those born under the Conjunction of the Silver Sphere, when the element of Aether descends closest to the mortal world. Such maidens were believed to be touched by prophecy, their dreams echoing the will of the cosmos.
One night Asterion dreamed a dream that shook him to his marrow. He saw his daughter standing upon the highest peak of Skybride, and from her womb there sprang a vine of living fire, its tendrils reaching across all Alendria, twining around cities, mountains, and seas. The vine grew until it touched the firmament itself, and the spheres trembled in answer.
When he awoke, Asterion summoned the priests of the Harmonic Order. They cast their rods of bronze, consulted the Fortuna's Wheel, and listened to the trembling of the upper spheres. Their verdict was grave:
“O King, the child born of the Koremonokeros shall surpass you.
He shall bind the spheres in new harmony, and the kingdoms of the land shall bend to his song.”
Asterion’s heart darkened. For though he loved his daughter, he feared the prophecy more. And so he resolved that the child she bore—if ever she bore one—must not live.
In time Eirene the Koremonokeros conceived, though she spoke no father’s name. Some say it was a wandering philosopher of the Lyceum; others claim a spirit of the upper sphere visited her in a dream.
When the child was born, Asterion commanded his captain, Megistos, to take the infant into the mountains and leave him to the elements. Megistos obeyed outwardly, but in his heart he feared the wrath of the spheres, for to kill a child born under prophecy was to invite disharmony.
Thus he carried the infant to the high passes of @Qeren, where the shepherd-folk dwell—those strange and ancient people whose horns grow like the beasts they tend, and whose songs echo across the cliffs like the lowing of celestial cattle.
There Megistos found a herdsman named Thamnos, a man of gentle spirit and curved ram-horns. To him Megistos entrusted the child, saying only:
“Raise him as your own, and speak not his name.
For the spheres watch him, and the king fears him.”
Thamnos took the child and named him Anektos, meaning the Unyielding.
The boy grew swiftly, strong of limb and bright of mind. The Qeren shepherds taught him to climb the sheer cliffs, to read the winds, and to hear the subtle hum of the elemental spheres that echoed through the stone.
It is said that when Anektos was but seven years old, he wrestled a @Kerynites and broke its horns with his bare hands. At nine, he calmed a storm by singing a shepherd’s hymn in perfect harmony with the trembling of the Air Sphere. At twelve, he led the Qeren youths in mock battles, always victorious.
Word of the prodigy reached the ears of Asterion, though none knew the boy’s true name. The king, troubled by dreams of the vine of fire, sent Megistos to investigate.
When Megistos came to Qeren and saw the boy, he knew at once who he was. For Anektos bore the same silver-flecked eyes as the Koremonokeros, and the air around him seemed to shimmer faintly, as though the spheres bent closer to hear his breath.
Megistos returned to Asterion and said:
“O King, the child you sought to cast away lives still,
and the mountains themselves guard him.”
Asterion’s fear turned to fury. He summoned Anektos to the capital under pretense of honoring the @Qeren shepherds. But when the boy arrived, the king tested him with riddles of the @Lyceum of Harmonies, trials of strength, and contests of harmony. Anektos surpassed all.
At last Asterion cried:
“You are the vine of fire! You are the doom the spheres foretold!”
But Anektos answered calmly:
“I am no doom, O King.
I am the harmony your fear has broken.”
The soldiers of Alendria, remembering the prophecy, refused to strike him. Even the priests of the Harmonic Order bowed their heads, for they felt the spheres tremble in approval.
Asterion, seeing his fate sealed, cast himself into the top of the Mountain Pindaron, in those days called Goli, crying that he would yet return for revenge, along with the unborn stars hidden there.
Thus Anektos son of Eirene became Anektos the Harmonizer, first of the Golden Kings of Alendria. Under his rule the spheres were said to sing more sweetly, and all the peoples flourished in peace and strength.
As for Thamnos of Qeren, Anektos raised him to high honor, saying:
“A king may be born of prophecy,
but a father is made of kindness.”
And so ends the tale, as the elders tell it, of how a child marked by the spheres rose from shepherd’s hut to throne, and how the harmony of the cosmos bends even kings to its will.