"Forgive me, Dear Sister. My voice is not the glory yours holds in the palm. Hear not our lament at the actions taken, but please find the grace to see that I had no choice. Circumstance given, I had done all I could. Hear now the song we had sung before the world we had built was born. Hear now that song you breathed into the void. Hear now I recreate the world we had so brought forth."
Year 12451, Before The Hammer fall (B.H.F)
The warping in space, the disconcerting sensation of being pulled away from reality. To be dragged away by an all-powerful force, to feel the hand of our god plant its roots into your soul... And rip you away from the world we had once known. They felt it more than witnessed it, they all did. At once the remaining Children of the gods were unilaterally seized by their last remaining creator, they watched as the Shadows swallowed the world they once loved.
Now a slag heap from the war they had raged. Their brethren, their Family, could not be saved. There was no safety from the Shadow's touch, even with the suits and rebreathers they were forced to wear at all times. Their weapons were not effective on the Shadows, weapons of unfathomable destruction that only slaughtered their changed siblings. Atomic splitting reactions thought up by Taneth and the Fae, Dreadnaughts in orbital reconnaissance to bring the wrath of the Quartet down on them. It only brought forth the misery one must endure knowing one need put a bullet in the skull of your brothers.
The great fires that had consumed their cities, the slinking darkness as the Shadows celebrated their victory. Legions of Changelings and Shadow Touched Children, for each of us they took, only grew their ranks. Only for themselves to be caught off guard as The Queen shattered the world, in that instance, grabbing as many of the uninfected Children as she could. The corroding touch of the darkness ate through our armor, no matter the level of skill or magic steeped into it. No matter the layers of tech woven into it, it cut to the bone like the winter's sharp breath.
They all felt it at once, that grip on their souls vanished. The few thousand of them that survived, found themselves in a nameless void. Their suits doing their job damned well kept them alive as the plane began to expand around them. Here, in this place, they knew nothing. Each of the Children watched in awe as stars were created in the heavens above, earth formed beneath their feet, as soft wind began to blow through the vacuum of air around them.
Only then did they hear it, a song sad and mournful. The sobs of a pantheon of one, their sole surviving Mother building for them a sanctuary to be their new home. The Fae were the first to respond to their Mother's call, offering to her, their Divine Sparks. The very power granted to them for themselves to grow, to become one of the Gods' very own. They would give freely to aid their Creator. Taneth her Navigator offered a brilliant star of power for her to use, her Clever Son of Old.
Symphony a crescendo to rise in power with each Spark she touched, refusing to consume them whole. Refusing to undo all the progress The Quartet had created us for, she refused to sacrifice any more of her or the other Quartet's Children. For they had seen enough blood, they had seen enough Corruption, they had seen the fall of their world and lived to sing its anthem to begin anew.
They watched, untouched skies reflected in their eyes, as rebreathers fell from their faces. Graced by a new moon unmarred by time, lit only by the fire in The Queen's Divine eyes. Mountains green and young rose from the dusty earth, vast seas filled the cracks in the land, as storms raged on in distant horizons. The rocks themselves with no names, the streams yet undrunk, the fields virgin and pure. The forests, ancient and untouched, we knew the song.
We had heard it when we had been created Eons ago, timeless yet ephemeral. This world was built quickly to make it liveable for the Children, not the complex and immense world they had come from. One Fairy in particular jumped as the Goddess's words filled his ears, the other Fairies heard too the plea of their Queen. "Anlyth, First Son of Syn. I grow tired, please help me grace this world with the light of Syn's grace. I need only to see the creation and..."
"Say no more, Dear Mother." Anlyth removed the gauntleted displays on his arms. Unbuckled the armor protecting his wings. Tossing aside the helmet, the augmented displays and comms systems vanished from his vision. He watched his brethren do much the same, each looking to him to lead.
With raised hand, he pulled on his own Spark, a gift not easily given. It was, after all, a piece of Syn herself. A gift he could grow, yet never replace. All Fairies knew this, yet lent him their power anyway. "Rest now, My Queen. Let the Children of the Sun grace your creation with the light of our Mother. Let us grant this new home a beacon to follow, let us not forget the Warmth."
Pulling on the other Sparks offered to him, seeing that The Queen had refused to consume them, so did he. Drawing on the cumulative might of his people, he concentrated it all into the palm of his hand. Thousands of strands of light woven between them to gather to his own soul. While he ignited the air around him, he pressed it into an ever greater focus. Wings glowing like a second sun, he pushed it high into the atmosphere, in mere seconds, leaving the planet’s gravity to land among the stars.
He knew full well Syn would be furious with this crude method, but he lent his voice to the magic he pulled from his people. Singing the same song that Syn hummed constantly in the early days. He added pressure and matter to the spark in the sky, more and more and more. He felt his knees buckle under him, pulling power from his own wings, he knew he was growing tired quickly. Sweat beading on his face, his frame shaking from the effort.
He needed more, he needed all of it. But, he refused to take it all from his Family, he would not strip them of the gift given to them as well. The spark in the sky began to grow, a pale dawn on the horizon. Glory brought to the planet The Queen was building in real-time, mountains rising in distant shores, the earth rending itself to her will. He fell to the ground, exhaustion setting in, yet he still held his hand to the sky. His vision blackened around its edges, struggling to focus on the power streaming through him. Skin burning, bones rattling in their fragile cage. Steadier, more and more, the Sun grew in power, brighter, warmer.
He needed to match what his Mother had graced them with originally, he would accept nothing less. He felt the power begin to trickle as he let go of more and more of the Family's Sparks before they were drained. Relying more and more on his own birth-right to sustain the light now high in the skies. "Anlyth, you have done well! Please, you need to teach me the song you are singing. I will stabilize it for you." The Queen's voice echoed in the world once more, like a sonorous bell.
"No… I will make Syn proud of what her Children can do! I will make my Mother proud of me, I will do this in her memory…" He spoke with gritted teeth, on the edge of cracking them completely. His body screamed at him to stop, his mind roared in defiance. His soul compelled to make the same thing his Creator had done for him and their previous world. A task he was fully unprepared for, his people were not ready to do, despite their eventual purpose.
With the last of his breathern's Sparks released, he felt his own power drain at an incomprehensible rate. Still, he would see the Sun rise on this world in eternity. He felt the guiding hand of The Queen take hold of his dwindling power. His molten blood, his wings a miasma of plasma, felt his own connection with his Spark fade, he endured. Though he felt the strength woven into his being by Syn, grow stronger tenfold.
With an effort like that of moving a mountain with broken hands, he rose a glorious sun over this new world. Energy spent, he smiled as he watched, aware that he had collapsed to the ground though not remembering doing so. Watching as the Fairies basked in the light in memory of their fallen Mother. "By Syn's Grace, I gift to you a radiance in her image." Anlyth whispered to himself, wanting to rest. Like stones plunging through dark water, his lids closed on their own.
Though his eyes ripped open when he felt someone placing their hand in his. Only on a few occasions he had seen what the other god's looked like. The Great Mother with her soft fur and long ears would wrap you with her tail, an ever-present smile to put you at ease. The Patience, our Seaborn Earthen Father, was immense. His skin, a shifting color of distant horizons would be a constant ear to listen, an understanding entity of lessons and forbearance.
He had seen his own Mother, Syn, countless times. Fond of visiting her Children at every opportunity she got, she enjoyed pushing them to their limits. To see them grow, to see them become, to see them create the way she had done. The Queen, he had only ever seen at a distance, always preferring to speak with her Children, the Fae. While she was Grace incarnate the same as the others in The Quartet, she never spoke much. The other races of the gods called her the Queen of Fate, the Scales, the Blind Eye of Balance.
Her eyes were faint light green, visible through the Divine Fire that radiated from them. Her face, soft and narrow like a fox, hair billowing out in endless plumes of smoke that evaporated reforming around her. "Now, thunder with the fury of peace. Bind yet the gates for the wound left in this world. Seal it, lest we see our enemies yet again. We need to begin the ground work to enrapture the shards of our world yet again. I need all of the Children to create with me, I need you. I need Taneth, I need Y'vitol. I need those that were the closest to becoming greater to aid me. I am not my Sisters, I am not my Brother."
He tried to rise, but was unable. Crashing back to the earth in a heap. "What are you saying? They can still find us? They can still reach us even here?"
Taneth and Y'vitol were summoned by the Queen's words as well. The Giant merely only have to turn toward us, The Fae, lithely weaving his way through the crowd. He would be too slow to stop what happened, though it was a fault of no one. "I am a creature half holy, made in glory. I am what I will, I sought to bring balance to the things my siblings made, I brought logic to their world. I had fixed the issues they made, I made my own. Close the gate, I am... tired." She said with a tear in her eye.
Taneth had been mere hairs width away from pulling The Queen of the Fae from an edge I knew naught. Y'vitol had sprinted his way in just a few strides that took the Fae minutes to do. She vanished in a cloud of ash, wind born to the world she had just built for... us.
The Fae tumbled into a heap where she had just been, he glared back at me, an accusation in his eyes. Y'vitol knelt down to place a finger down where she had been, closing his hand over the place. A few of the other Fairies had helped Anlyth to his feet, though on unsteady legs. He was not used to being this close to the other Children of the Quartet. Even during the War, the only ones to extensively interact with everyone were The Great Mother's Brownies.
Beyond that, Syn saw it fit to keep as many of the Races to their own. Each of us specialized in different things. "What happened?" Taneth asked through gritted teeth. He had spent much of his life mapping out the world for all to utilize. Spending centuries charting, and plotting resources, new lands to discover. Making star charts to navigate by, helping with the communications array set up by the Brownies.
Though the Fae was not a soldier like Anlyth was, he was still powerful, immensely so. Taneth was the favored child of The Queen, gifted in his abilities far more than the others of his race. Unparalleled in his ability for calculation, connecting lines and foresight. The Fairy was versed in what he was capable of, though had never met him. With a deep calming breath, for his blood boiled at the Fae and his behavior. "I do not know, she told me that the Shadows might still be able to hunt us here, said to close a gate. A wound in the world."
The Fae didn't need the visors in the helmets that the Fairies and Giants wore, the thoughts in the man's eyes were plain as day. Putting things together faster than I could even begin to comprehend. I was only half way through my own thought before he cut me off. "I think this wound is..."
"She pulled us through something. She shattered the old world, she tried to completely destroy it. No, she wouldn't do that in particular." His initial heat in his words evaporated as he paced back and forth thinking. "The wound in the world... did she?"
Y'vitol asked before Anlyth had a chance. "What did she do? We just watched this world come into being, we all did. Pray tell, Fae. What has our last surviving Mother done to leave such a threat?" His voice was surprisingly quiet for his size, like a church bell hit with a massive hammer, sounding through a rough sea.
He looked to the two before speaking. "She shattered the world to give the Shadows a labyrinth to piece back together before seeing the pinprick, in reality, to hide what made to create this place. While it is massive, this is a new world for us to live in. Where it exists among the shrapnel, is Elsewhere. Not exactly on the original, but next to it. I don't think we are as far away from the darkness as we would like."
"So they can find this pin hole." Anlyth crossed his arms, thinking of how the Legion would be able to defend it. They would need to set up as much of the artillery pointed directly at it, his Valkyries in place to repel them as much as they could. The giants could...
"I don't know where this would be. I don't know where Mother just went. Look around you, do you see some gaping hole in the world? Do YOU see anything, feel anything that might be a vulnerability here? I sure don't. We need to find her, and quickly." Taneth cautioned. “Feel the magic of this world for a moment, Anlyth. It is created exclusively from her, not the Quartet. It is unstable, it needs our help. But… I don’t, we need to find her so we can assist.”
Anlyth pointed at one of the other fairies with a monitoring system still active. The display in his visor bright and functional. "Scan the world, the entire thing, I don't care how long it will take. FInd her power, if it is still here, then we know she is still alive." He felt it after he said it, Y’vitol staring at his hands as well. The air felt wrong, the world felt hollow and incomplete.
The Fairy spread its arms wide, an AR display opened before them as they began typing away. Others behind them quickly set up the comms antennae and attached them to the suit. Teneth barked a few orders at the Fae asking for atmospheric conditions, time signatures, magnetic information, as well as a few other pieces of physics. Supposably to find the Queen's logic in this world.
Y'vitol commanded a few of the Giants to begin setting up a support system for the Children. It sounded more like a city planning discussion than the logistics of getting supplies and resources to everyone. Orders dolled out through the various command structures, there was quickly less of shock and awe. Order brought to the chaos of this place, as the fear and uncertainty were soothed. This place was made by the goddess herself, with just a little help.
The fact that he was asked to create a Sun was not lost on him. He knew full well that the Giants and the Fae were probably asked to create as well, he was just a bit preoccupied at the time. "Anlyth, we found her signature." Taneth whipped around before I did, reaching my Soldier long before they came into sight again.
"Where? Where is Mother?" Taneth was nearly hysterical, as he shooed away a few of the other Fae asking him questions.
"Here, well, not here. But, she is still on this plane. She is weak, I believe injured, leaking power to sustain this place."
He turned to me, mania set deep into his eyes. "We need to find her!"
"Yes, we need to find her." He said as he leaned on his spear, tip planted into the ground. "We do need to find her. So we shall…"
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