Aopros

Aopros the Clockmaker is the second of the Geniersegunda, the children of the children of Genevieve. Aopros was conceived when Ao, banished below Pryiam by Genevieve, was robbed of some of his light by Pryiam's avatar, Pryma. Pryma used the light to impregnate herself, and Aopros was born to her. As the product of light and stone, Aopros was built like a man, as was his brother, Prysius, but a man made entirely of bronze.

Aopros lived on the underside of Pryiam with his banished father and his silent mother. This was before there was any notion of Time in Sylvieria, and before there was night and day. Aopros would sleep, and when he slept, he would dream. And in his dreams, Aopros saw his own fate, and how his death would bring Time to Sylvieria. When he awoke, he crafted, from his own bronze skin, the first clock, a device called the Bronze Chroniker, that measured hours, minutes and seconds that did not yet exist. The Chroniker's timekeeping was built around Aopros' vision of Time, that he would be repurposed as a mechanism that would keep Ao and Iori in a constant Pursuit of one another, and that the span of their runs above the surface of Pryiam could be measured and delineated into seconds and minutes and hours and days. He also foresaw how the Stonestar would turn on the axis of his brother Prysius' spine, and on his own retooled remains, and how the motion of it would be measured into months and years. And so Aopros waited in the timelessness of Sylvieria's beginning.

Eventually, Iori the moon, was sent by Genevieve to retrieve Ao from under Pryiam. Iori and Ao fell instantly in love and made a child, Mephilista, the Third Light. This enraged Pryma, who herself was madly in love with Ao. Pryma used what she still had of Ao's light and heat and melted her son, Aopros, killing him, melting his bronze form and molding him into the Bronze Clockwork that she used to trap Ao and Iori, keeping them in a constant Pursuit. The Pursuit was a ring that encircled Pryiam vertically, and the rest of the Clockwork, as Ao and Iori made revolutions on the Pursuit, would rotate a great cog, the Starwheel, under Pryiam, moving the Stonestar horizontally. Aopros' dream of Time had come true. Pryma imprisoned Ao and Iori at opposite ends of the Pursuit and set them in perptual motion. Time began when Ao rose on the First Day, and Aopros' memory of his dream gave rise to Ophros, the God of Time. Ophros took the Bronze Chroniker and built the Watchwork Tower at the end of one of the spines of Pryiam, the point of which was aligned with the Duskside of the Pursuit on the First Day. The spine became known as the Clockspine, and was the final element of Aopros' dream. The Chroniker measured, exactly, the time it took for Ao to cross the sky over Pryiam, and the time it took for Iori to do the same. Each run measured ten hours on the Chroniker, and split those twenty hours into minutes and seconds.

The death of Aopros at the hands of Pryma gave rise to Khaeron the Reaper of Vengeance, one of the Four Murders that would eventually create Anthira, Death Itself.

The soul of Aopros, the Bronze Man Zimri, would escape from the Clockwork and join his Geniersegunda siblings with Genevieve in the Spiraling Palace atop the Spire.

© 2013 Jason "Danger" Block | All Rights Reserved