The Tripartitus originally began with a dream in mid-1997: inspired by the fantasy, adventure, and mythological overtones of the recently re-released classic Star Wars, I began working on a science fiction that I would later rewrite as fantasy five years later. One night, in the early fall of 2002, I was struck by the opening line, “Once, the universe was whole.” Awakening, I quickly scrawled out what is now known as the legend of the One. Thus began The Tripartitus.

The story’s purpose is triple-faceted - to experience the development of Luke Damon, to understand the character of Jayli, and to stimulate thought in the reader; so also is its design. On the first level, The Tripartitus functions as a fantasy story – about great kingdoms, legendary warriors, and powerful magic. I began with the hope of creating a fictional but plausible world so detailed and convincing that one may escape into it, without the sense of truly leaving reality – it is fantasy, yes, but hopefully one not so removed from our lives as to seem unrelated, for they are not as separate as we may think.

On the second level, The Tripartitus is a subjective outlook on human life, how we interact with one another and, most importantly, how our individual perspective defines reality. It reflects my personal questions, thoughts, and opinions on philosophy, conveyed through a complex web of metaphors, allusions, and character developments. One of the more significant changes from my original story to The Tripartitus is that the reader’s point of view has been shifted from the protagonist Jayli to the secondary character Luke – through his eyes and developing understanding of the world (including the protagonist), the reader, I hope, will come to realise how he too forms his own unique impression of reality based on individual perception.

On the third level, The Tripartitus is a reflection – it is a mosaic of thoughts and feelings that, when viewed from afar, creates an image hauntingly familiar. You may call it a reflection of today’s society, a satire of our faults and crimes, or a deeper exploration of social stereotypes and human judgement – hopefully, it may serve well as one – but what it most closely reflects is myself. It is the story of my evolution – my failures and triumphs, my greatest fears and most hopeful desires. Look at Jayli or Luke or even the psychopathic Hunter, and somewhere within you will find a reflection of myself. However, as the overall image vanishes when approaching a pointillist’s canvas into individual pieces of a whole, each character exists as his or her own distinct person separate from my own - they, themselves, are a reflection of some infinitely more real souls.

The Tripartitus takes place in a fantastical universe that, beyond first glimpses, is not entirely unlike our own. Originally existing as a single cohesive reality, the universe was torn into three separate sister worlds by a vicious war over the newly-discovered magical powers of the Ether - one world, the Ancient, continued to wage its war of magic; another, the New ("our" world), abandoned the use of magic and turned instead to technology; and the third, the Lost, existed as a natural paradise devoid of human survivors and unscathed by war.

In the Ancient World, where a violent civil war of magic between the world government and a rebellion of once-loyal men has divided the people. Hoping to finally end the war by targeting key rebel leaders, the United Empire of Man created an inhuman assassin known as the One who Holds the Key, destined to wield the Empire's ultimate weapon and spearhead the Imperial war machine. However, the rebellion led by the Knights of Amiiroh heard word of the One and led a desperate assault against the Empire before the One was prepared. During battle, the One took the Key and vanished from all knowledge, although it was said he fled to the Lost World.

Devastated by their losses, the Empire sent out men to seek out and return both the One and the Key to Imperial hands. By luck, few survived the passage from the Ancient World into the New, a reality separated by culture and several thousands of years, and too struggling to recover after a devastating technological war. One, named Hunter, son of the Emperor and leader of a group of fearsome warriors called the Timora, lived to father a bastard child named Luke Damon, whom he abandoned early on in favour of pursuing his obsession with finding and capturing the lost One who Holds the Key.

The story begins in the New World by joining a much older but still naive Luke Damon in his search for his missing father. Ignorant of his heritage and the existence of the Ancient World, and like the rest of his people believing magic to be naught but a thing from fanciful tales, Luke leaves his home behind in hopes of finding his father again. In pursuing those who might know more about the legend of the One, he meets a young woman, a warrior by name of Jayli who rescues him from the attack of a fearsome nightmare creature of shadow. He takes an immediate interest in her, intrigued by her mystique, although his friends find her a dark character of some suspicion - however, he fails to elicit any mutual interest from the woman. Despite this, Luke remains a staunch supporter of Jayli even as treacherous events seem to point to her, but when chaos breaks lose throughout the nation and an army led by his father Hunter marches to their rescue, Jayli is revealed to be the black beast from Luke's nightmares. Shedding human form, she attacks his father, even as Luke stands between them, but then he remembers no more.

Luke awakens in his father's fortress far away, knowing only the pain of betrayal. Hunter explains that Jayli is in fact the One who Holds the Key, a monstrous assassin with the unique ability to change forms, originally created by his father as desperate means to end the war, who then betrayed the Empire in battle and fled. Overcome with hatred, Luke curses himself for believing in her and vows to redeem himself by divulging the location of the Key from Jayli, who had been taken captive in battle. He forces the information from her, and finds that the Key was in fact destroyed in the Knights' attack many years ago when she first fled, and that its catastrophic destruction was the original cause of both the tearing of the universe and birth of the Three Worlds, and the immortality of the One. However, he meets only the mild approval of Hunter, and Luke finds he is not quite the father he remembered him as. When Jayli manages to orchestrate an escape while under Luke's watch, Hunter beats him viciously and casts him out, bidding him never to return. Blaming Jayli for all his pain and misfortune, he plots to hunt and kill the One despite the adamant wishes of his father to have her alive. In an elaborate trap, a group of Hunter's Timora lure Luke deep into the woods where they draw swords on him in an assassination attempt, but Jayli's beast form appears and fights them off, though receiving many wounds. Much to his bafflement, she professes to love him before they both collapse.

Both Luke and Jayli were recovered alive by his old allies, where he was nursed back to health, and she condemned to die. Broken from his father's rejection, cruelty and betrayal, and confused by Jayli's words, Luke seeks Jayli out where she is held and offers to save her from death, if only she explain to him all that has happened. In a long story, she explains his father and her were once tentative friends, but when he attempted to possess her by force and when her Imperial masters refused to treat her as anything but a weapon, she fled. After years of hiding in self-imposed exile, however, she resolved to face him and instead found Luke, trying to disguise the accident as an attack by a desert beast. Secretly won over by his honest interest in her as a person rather than a weapon to be wielded or a prize to be won, and touched by his unwavering faith in her, she nevertheless could not bring herself to let Luke, son of her enemy and so loving of his father, close to her in fear of hurting him. She explains that Hunter has ever been obsessed with possessing her, that Luke's hatred for her was only acceptable so far as it did not threaten his ability to keep her as his own, such that his decision to attempt to kill her was absolutely intolerable to Hunter. Jayli knew Luke's hatred, but could not see him suffer because of her mistakes, feeling both that she owed it to him, and desire to die for someone who hates her rather than to live to see someone she loved die for her.

Luke believes Jayli's story, although both know he does not necessarily have any good reason to, and is overcome with guilt over how viciously he treated her while she was his captive. On this basis they rekindle a tentative friendship, but one based on an intimate understanding of the other's most secret loves and pains. He expresses a desire to join Jayli to fight against an Empire that, though once benevolent, under Hunter's father's rule became cruel and tyrannical. She agrees to train him, as the ability to use magic comes from his father's blood, and through their friendship and shared time in training they eventually become the closest of lovers.

Rallying old allies and new, and feeling a courage and boldness not felt before finding Luke, Jayli as the One who Holds the Key leads a vast Amiiroan army of many nations across worlds until they march upon the Imperial capital itself. Seeing the fearsome might of Jayli and her army, the Emperor recalls his order to capture the One alive, deciding she is far beyond binding, and must be destroyed. Hunter tries to persuade him to change his mind, but failing that, slays his own father the Emperor and leads the Timora to battle. Jayli intercepts Hunter beneath the Imperial palace and they fight, as they did once before many years ago, but she does not flee this time, even as catacombs begin to collapse. Staying behind to bait him, heir to the throne, she slays him as the building falls upon them.

There is some debate over whether or not Jayli perished in that collapse. She disappeared following that day, as she disappeared the day the Three Worlds were born. She had promised Luke to survive to give him her ring, a band engraved with the image of a firebird embracing a fine jewel. However, Luke mourned her the day after the battle, though he was seen with the ring on a chain about his neck. It is said that the gem of the ring is the last remains of the Key, and in this way, the legacy of One will live forever.

For a complete historical account, see...

• Historia - The First Age


• Historia - The Second Age


• History - The Third Age

For Jayli's complete account of events, see [link]

For Luke's complete account of events, see [link]

Jocarra is Jayli's birthname, and as a name represents the soul of who "Jayli" really is, rather than who or what people tend to see her as. Her true name is used by few for the right reasons, which reflects the reality that there are few people who truly know her well enough to call her by it: the concept of names is important to her.

As one aspect of the whole, Jayli's human form is double-edged: on one side is a hardness, a coldness and disdain for others, a general misanthropy extended to most everyone she meets, a product of people's common misunderstanding of who she is and the role she has played in history; on the other side, she is lonely and alienated from others by her lofty and legendary title of the One who Holds the Key, and surprisingly vulnerable if one gets past her guard.

Despite feelings of loneliness and alienation, Jayli does not like people, nor does she seek their company - more important to her than anything number of shallow friendships is the quality and depth of the single meaningful relationship she forges with Luke. As such, she has little mind for what others think of her, generally expecting others to never come to know her at all and deciding not to care, and is very much concerned with loving and being loved.

Although she can be frugal in what affection and attention she gives to those she values little, Jayli bears a strong sense of respect, duty, justice, honour and loyalty, and has a specific distaste for war and open conflict, along with the general inhumanity of man she sees. Such strong dislike for people in general, however, is arguably balanced by a powerful love for the world through the senses - though she'll not show it to most, Jayli is a very sensual being, and has a powerful sense of empathy.

* * *

Ash is the name of the beast form magically created for the One who Holds the Key, resembling a large, dark feline with stripes. Designed to be the most lethal of assassins, she is swift, agile, and stronger than most humans, and can take either bipedal or quadrupedal form. As if emotions were amplified by animal instinct unbound in such feral shape, Ash is easily the most expressive of Jayli's forms - fiercely loyal, often temperamental, extraordinarily tender, vicious in battle.

Before coming to peace with herself, Ash was the blemish upon Jocarra's soul for much of her life, as if representing the inhumanity of man through her own corporeal form, and as such she detested what she represented. This violent bitterness towards herself was eventually tamed by Luke's love - as he who once feared and hated the beast came to love her, Jayli too came to accept Ash.

* * *

Raydl is the only form of the three that Jayli chose to create herself, and in this respect reflects the resolution of her question of humanity regarding the "beast" in her and is the epitome of the power of the One. Choosing the form of a Razielian Angel (also known as a gryphon), Raydl represents the attainment of her own personal balance and peace.

* * *

Luke Damon is a trusting and sensitive individual whose naivety is due primarily to never having been given the attention and affection he deserved as a child, but never realising it until he was an adult. Spending most of his free time as a youth daydreaming, Luke is keen and curious, and subject to a whimsicality some might find foolish. However, with only transient parental figures at best, his ability to discern reality from fantasy was established relatively late.

Luke's intentions are generally good-natured, pure-hearted and driven by a sense of justice and righteousness - his friends and family form his greatest priority in life. However, his desire to please others often leads him to neglect introspection and trueness to self. As a result, much of his youth was spent alternating between the Luke he felt others expected of him, the Luke he wanted himself to be, and Luke as he was himself. His experiences with Jayli, both bad and good, were the main contributing factor to the resolution of this internal struggle amongst his different faces.

I believe that both Jayli and Luke, in their own ways, are real.

I do not mean to say I think that they are really living somewhere on Earth, that Jayli really has an anthropomorphic cat form, that Luke really is descended from royalty. In fact, I believe that they do not have any corporeal existence in this world at all. What I do believe is that they exist as a definite something - something beyond sight or sound or touch - and what is most important about them is not the details I've described in their stories, but who they really are and what they represent. You might say I think of them like guardian spirits, something that can infinitely, but only, be felt.

The creation story of Genesis is no longer mutually exclusive with scientific theory and becomes suddenly possible if one stops reading it literally, and instead considers what very real people, things, and events so many words might be describing through metaphor and symbolism. Likewise, I do not believe that Luke and Jayli exist exactly as I have depicted them, within the context I have depicted them in, but at the same time I do not believe that I am at all representing them unfairly.

Jayli is my teacher, guide, and avatar - she came to me first, through dreams and fantasies in which we shared a persona, until slowly, I came to discern "Jayli" from "Jen" (at a young age, this was hard to do). I see through her, and question as she questions, and it is through her that I have managed to discover as much as I have about who she is, how we are alike, how we are different, and what all these things might mean - working on The Tripartitus was much more trying to find what was most correct, most accurate, most appropriate, rather than trying to find what was best, or most interesting, or most creative or original. It was much more like writing a documentary (albeit a purely metaphorical one) than writing a fantasy story.

Luke, on the other hand, is my companion, friend, supporter, and (perhaps embarrassingly) the first person I ever felt I really loved. While Jayli seems to exist in the corner of my mind, popping in from time to time at her will or occasionally eclipsing my thoughts and feelings with her own, Luke is something distinctly external of myself, something felt coming from the "outside" rather than the inside - the difference between imagining or remembering the sound of a friend's voice, and hearing a friend speak to you.

I believe they are in some sense real, and I believe they came to me for a reason, and that this reason goes beyond simply teaching and helping me. Over the past handful of years but especially from 2005-2007, I feel that I have been progressing through my own "E Fabula," "E Mendacio" and "E Veritate," that my life has only recently revealed itself to have been paralleling those of Luke and Jayli. However, this is again only possible if I dismiss the details and look at what is perhaps meant to be represented - I believe that I share something special in common with both of them, something different for each, and that this shared something has let them play some greater role for me, leading me through significant means towards some significant end.

I believe this end to be Paruda. For Jayli, it was resolving the question of Humanity; it was finding someone who could understand and love her for who she was, finding someone who could call her "Jocarra" and have it mean something special. For Luke, it was coming to see himself for who he is and accepting it; it was finding peace with himself, enough to give himself meaningfully to another.

For me? Well, that's personal.