Amdirlain’s PoV - Realm Seed

  Utter emptiness surrounded her, and the only energy present was within the realm’s boundary, which sat at the very limit of her Primordial Will. Though she could sense the rules for True Song were present, its availability was just a gentle dig; until the realm had energy to direct, the Power was useless. Touching the Far Chaos that pressed against the realm’s skin, she drew on that energy to create the first Soul for the realm. Mana font was one of the few powers that didn’t need the realm’s support, and it hummed away as her Mana served as a framework for the Soul’s creation. Vaguely humanoid, the sleeping Soul rose from her hands. As it drifted about, she was already creating another. The sped-up internal clock of this realm made the information from her avatars frozen slices of time moving at a geological timescale, which oddly suited her second endeavour.

  As yet another small Eldritch extended its tentacles through the membrane, pushing and straining to get inside, Amdirlain allowed it passage with a flex of her will. Its wild, chaotic form twisted ecstatically at the sudden shift. Its tentacles flared out in a fan before it swam towards a cluster of souls with its tentacles in the lead.

  Every shift of its body, Amdirlain mirrored with order, reflecting the energy it emitted back onto itself in a steady pulse across all the dimensions of the realm. The first series, the Eldritch ignored, until the points along its body locked it in place. No matter how much it strained or changed, those fixed points didn’t move. Slowly at first, but then with increasing speed, the ‘petrification’ of the Eldritch spread until it was a crystallised mass of possibilities. With it now in a frozen state, its very nature became defined and understandable, and all the potential within became accessible by the realm’s rules.

  My very own fossil fuel. If one weird Eldritch were to burn, we’d have countless more Eldritch to fry. This extends the concept Sarah came up with for converting the Abyssal corruption into Mana, even if the process itself differs.

  Its immediate rush for the Mortal souls and her experience on Qil Tris meant it was grimly satisfying as she pressed a white spark of Primordial flame against it. With its internal Chaos frozen by the imposed Order, the ignition cascaded across a myriad of dimensions. As it burned, Amdirlain spiralled the released energy into the realm’s framework, and continued the process against another Eldritch.

  Once thousands of invaders had fed their potential into the nascent realm, Lethe hovered beside her, now in a physical form. As Amdirlain settled into a steady pattern, Lethe started broadcasting Phaedra’s memories; Amdirlain’s personalised case study of worlds and realms began.

  ? ? ? ? ? ?

  Phaedra’s PoV

  Even after his discussion with Maker, Nicholaus had the travelling realm together within a day. This time, the gears that supported the inner room had a smooth whirring feel that echoed beyond the temporal themes that Kronos had embodied.

  The drifting days within her Patér’s improved room seemed to extend her grief into an endless misery that stretched further than the Far Chaos around them. Driven by the tempo of Patér’s melody, she stretched out and took in the surrounding music, searching for signs of realms. Now that he knew what to look for, Patér led them along a stream of realms, and each time Phaedra felt her grief spike. They were bright bubbles of life suspended in a river seeking their destruction. Yet they survived in fierce alien wilds where her family had died to mundane water driven by spite.

  Many Nicholaus had deemed too slow and had steered clear of, yet still Phaedra had listened to the stately, slow melodies that rolled across their skin. She extended her senses into them and memorised as much of their complex beauty as she could. Somewhere along the line, those steady, enduring rhymes had eased some of the pain in her chest. She gained an odd, unjustified surety that somewhere her family’s souls still endured, and that M?tēr held her brothers safe just as Patér had said.

  With the realms that he paused in, they always landed on wild worlds distant from the realm’s core, untouched by mortals or any pantheon’s influence. Those visits were brief but frequent. Nicholaus would improve the forge room from lessons learned in their last leg, and she would record the music of places near and far. As she grew, he spun flames from his forge into cool cloth in styles she picked out from distant worlds. Her growing stockpile of songs kept her entertained in the timeless Far Chaos.

  They’d recently left a world where she’d finally played in the snow, when she sensed a tiny desolate realm that hosted a pillar of primordial flame. She looked closer and found a burning world tree, with a prisoner inside. The grinding pressure of chains and primordial flames gnawed, yet the strange woman refused to bow to the agony, her posture as straight as a plumb line.

  “Patér. We need to change course.” A quick string of notes created a floating trail of ordered lights for Nicholaus to follow through the Far Chaos. She released decoys so that the strange beasts that came to snap at the lights had other things to chase.

  Their vessel slipped along the course she’d laid out until it flowed through a realm’s boundary, yet there wasn’t a planet to host them. Instead, nine vast lands hovered within it. A series of waterfalls flowed from the land’s highest point in the realm and cascaded across more platforms until they fed rivers that ran across the last platform. Those rivers eventually spilled the water into a bottomless crevice whose rules returned the fluid to the various mountaintops. That its concept contained the essence of a continual cycle struck Phaedra as bitter irony, given the invaders' path ran from near it through a ruined city and onto the burning world tree.

  The realm was now a graveyard that hosted two very different groups. The first wore a symbol of a blazing eight-pointed star on once-white uniforms with identical armour and weapons. They had driven inwards from a now-blackened crystal bridge and laid waste to everything in their path. The defenders had worn an assortment of attire, with a mix of symbols related to animals and plants, their weapons ranging from thin daggers to massive axes. Though she could tell the battle had finished an eternity ago, the bodies looked freshly slain.

  Nicholaus picked up his tool bag packed with every chisel from his racks. With an effortless motion, he slung the tonnes over his shoulder and collected his hammer. As the top of their travelling realm unfolded, he rested a hand atop her head. All the surrounding deaths around her drew attention to her own growth against the form he’d always used around M?tēr.

  One day I’ll die, but I don’t want to perish without a chance to defend myself.

  “The white soldiers won, yet in victory they still abandoned their fallen.” Phaedra straightened the dead, invaders and defenders alike, holding back tears for the defenders who reminded her of the villagers who died with her M?tēr.

  At least they knew death was coming and raised a weapon in their own defence.

  “Would you teach me to use a sword, Patér?”

  “I’d hope you never have to use a weapon,” Nicholaus said.

  “So many of the dead among these ruins are my age or younger. I’d like to know at least what to do if someone swings a weapon at me.”

  He nodded slowly, his gaze roaming over the slain. “I’m not the best fighter either, but I can craft weapons, and we can find someone to teach us both.”

  “Is it like this everywhere, Patér?”

  “I think this is what Maker meant when he spoke about absolute good. Those in white cut down everyone in their path without flinching away from their cause, yet their lives didn’t receive a memorial either. Their existence was mere fuel.”

  Phaedra craned her neck back to look up at him. “What do you mean?”

  “They crafted what they saw as the greater good here.” Nicholaus waved a hand at the dead and pointed at the tree. “To whoever sent them, burning that tree and torturing that woman is the important message, not who suffers or is sacrificed to fulfil that end. The invaders’ deaths were used as more fuel for crafting that message.”

  “Then they shouldn’t stay dead. We’ll need to find a use for these burnt tools to spite their spiteful creator.” She moved to crouch near one of the fallen in white and patted his silvery wings. “The essence is still here. They were abandoned, and that’s left them feeling betrayed, angry, and hurt.”

  “Why did you want to see this?”

  “I didn’t hear them.” Phaedra gently patted the wing again, listening to the song of the fallen. “No, I didn’t hear you. The one I heard is burning in the tree.”

  The essence of the surrounding army shrieked in protest that she’d shown equal compassion to the city’s inhabitants, and Phaedra frowned.

  “You slew children, and you say you deserve special attention? Weren’t you just angry at being abandoned? Why do you still hate those you killed?” Phaedra spat. “I took pity on you for being misguided, and yet now you shriek because I straightened your victims’ remains. You are not worthy of being restored to how you were and given another chance.”

  The anger and hate they had for the slain families in the city caught in her throat. She looked back through time and glimpsed their minds before being struck down, and compared that to those they’d slain. The cruel disregard they’d held for the slain rubbed salt in raw wounds. She stalked toward their commander, whose hate and rage dwarfed those around him.

  “You think you deserve better, Seraphim Asmodeus? At least the beasts of the Far Chaos are possessed of mindless hunger, but you didn’t do this from need. You believed you served such a grand and benevolent lord, that his every instruction was good. Being cast aside like rubbish when you fell doesn’t excuse what you did, nor what you commanded others to do. Your continued anger at dead children proves that to me. I’d help them further, but someone already rescued their souls and essences. You, I’ll put into balance what you have done, here and elsewhere.”

  The song that lifted from Phaedra used the fuel of hate, contempt, and very negative emotions within the white army’s essence. It weighed their actions against the good deeds they’d enacted for mortals, and the balance altered their remains. Once-beatific features bloated and twisted, growing spikes and scales. As faces and skin twisted, animal horns sprouted from their heads or backs at odd angles, and silvery feathers ignited. Some lost their wings completely, while others only had their feathers blackened or burnt away, leaving only a bat-like membrane.

  They shuddered and jerked as they staggered to their feet, restored to life. The doom Phaedra had sung enfolded them even as full consciousness returned. Beyond just their physical change, the agony they had caused throughout their existence burned through them with the same mercilessness they’d shown others. The melodies from rivers of damnation and torment she’d heard in various realms encapsulated them to hold them fast while they waited for her Patér’s call.

  “How is this balance?” rasped Asmodeus.

  “You had billions of years of joy and pleasure basking in his presence. Time to pay the fee.” Her tone shed the heat of her anger, and icy words rolled forth, etching into every fibre of their beings. “You will suffer until Patér needs someone unwilling to go against the rules, regardless of who they harm. I hope we have no purpose in his plans for scum such as you, but a proper artisan finds the right purpose for all tools that come to their hands.”

  “I’m unsure how long this realm will survive untended,” Nicholaus cautioned. “And I don’t want to take them with us.”

  “There are no souls to lure them in, just these former celestials,” Phaedra noted, eyeing the contorting form of Asmodeus with contempt. “Someone must have fled and taken the essences and souls of those who once lived here.”

  “Shall we see to the trapped woman?”

  More screams of protest from Asmodeus pulled Phaedra’s attention back. She squeezed her fingers together, and his mouth sealed shut. “No, if your actual goodness had outweighed the cruelty of the deeds throughout your existence, your form would have remained beautiful. Know that whatever beautiful guise you might ever achieve will be nothing but a lie. Your song is more potent than some gods, but you are nothing but a shitstain. You’re so arrogant and cruel at your core that making it show on your face took only the tiniest nudge.”

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  An airy melody turned them all insubstantial to ensure there would be no escape.

  With that, Nicholaus and Phaedra moved to the giant tree and considered the flames that wreathed it.

  “I should have brought my forge along,” Nicholaus rumbled. “Now I’m going to have to hold on to these fellows.”

  He raised his hand, and the white flames that had been continually fighting the tree’s regrowth leapt to his palm. They fought against his control as he compressed them all until he held a white bead in a tight grip, light leaking through the gaps between fingers.

  With the flames no longer blocking their approach to the trunk, Phaedra turned her attention to the strange woman. She had twin horns that rose from a thick nest of black hair, and red and black eyes. A series of cruel black chains bound her with looped one-sided rules. They’d used her resistance for aeons to squeeze her tighter and tried to crush her awareness into an unthinking, obedient mold despite her desire for knowledge. They didn’t even offer her anything in exchange, only inflicted more pain the longer she fought. Fueled by grief and passion, she continued to struggle, refusing to give in or let the chain’s creator have even a moment of victory. At some point, the loops had wound so tightly that the links of the loops had jammed together, preventing the pressure from growing further.

  The unbowed woman wore her ruined garments with more dignity than many kings or deities that Phaedra had studied. The way she regarded Phaedra with a sure poise and calm lent the feeling? that it was her attire that was out of place. With the noise of the flames removed, she could tell all the corpses that had been chained to the tree’s exterior were the woman’s offspring. Phaedra’s cry of dismay shattered rubble in the city, and sudden tears streaked her face.

  “I know neither of you. Why have you come here?”

  Nicholaus pointed his hammer at her chains. “Your situation drew my daughter’s attention. Let’s get you free of these so we can talk.”

  “How do you plan to do that?”

  “The shape of the chain is inefficient. They’ve drawn themselves so tight that they’re impeding their own constriction,” Nicholaus advised. “Yet all that pressure means they’re like a taut spring, so if we crack one link, they’ll rip themselves apart.”

  “I’ve been trying to break them.”

  “You don’t have a suitable position for applying leverage.” Nicholaus waggled his hand as he turned to Phaedra. “I’ll line these flames up with the right spot, and you drive it out the bottom of my fist.”

  “You’re just going to help me out of your innate goodness?” Lilith drawled cynically.

  “I never claimed to be good,” Nicholaus rebuffed lightly. “I’m a monster.”

  Lilith’s gaze brightened. “Monsters, I understand. What will this cost me, monster?”

  “That’s not the priority. We can figure something out later when you’re not being tortured.” Nicholaus stepped around the woman. He twisted his arm into an awkward position so the butt of his fist was against the chain, but not in line with Phaedra or Lilith. “Discussing any conditions beforehand is coercion. Here is where the flames need to cut the chain. Daughter, can you move them?”

  “Their music is impatient and wild,” Phaedra warned. “I’ll build a pipe.”

  “Be as accurate as you can, but err on the side of caution. If needed, I’ll make something to cut the chains.”

  “Measure twice, cut once,” Phaedra’s voice lifted in multiple melodies, and she swayed in place as she sang. Dozens of separate themes built a structure in the physical and abstract to direct the flames so they wouldn’t spray wildly. In the background, more themes thrummed, pressure with those combined songs increased in a compounding wave that raced around just inside the realm’s boundary. As it looped yet again, it raced inwards and twisted into a needle that threaded through the top of her Patér’s fist and evoked the force of a supernova.

  Unbridled power drove through the channel the size of a pea and pierced through a dozen links before it blazed onwards to burst against the realm’s boundary. The links screeched and cracked at once, and ?Phaedra’s knees sagged. The sudden spike of effort in holding the channel had caused lines of golden ichor to streak her face. As she blinked, the high-pitched notes of whistling metal shifted. Nicholaus stood before her, flesh unmarked by the links that bounced off him. Segments that flung in the other directions bounced upwards through the cracked tree while others levelled nearby mountains.

  The cloth that the pressure of the chains had ripped into rags reformed into a grim black dress. Its style left the throat and arms bare, with patterns of dark flowers and thorns adorning its length.

  “I am Lilith. Might I know my rescuers’ names?”

  “Lilith?” Nicholaus questioned. “I’m Nicholaus. Did I pronounce your name right?”

  “Your accent is odd, but close enough.”

  “Lilith,” Phaedra said with a wan smile. “I’m Phaedra. I like your name. Do you mind if I say it has a pretty flow?”

  “Is that blood from your eyes, child?”

  “Yes, she overdid things.” Nicholaus crouched by Phaedra and wiped her face. “I thought you said you were going to measure twice?”

  “I measured four times, but didn’t take the built-up momentum into account.”

  “Now that we’re all introduced, what is your desire?”

  Nicholaus shifted uncomfortably. “Why don’t we get to know each other first and then decide how to go forward?”

  “You freed me with no plan at all?” Lilith shook her head slowly.

  “The plan was to free you,” Phaedra said primly and smiled at Lilith, undisturbed by her air. “Maker said some beings have been imprisoned by their creators.”

  “I do not know a being called Maker. Yet how do you know my creator imprisoned me?”

  “The chains and you have the same source. How did this all come about?” Phaedra asked.

  Lilith smiled sadly. “Do you seek the long story or a few words?”

  Nicholaus grounded his hammer at his feet. “Share what you are comfortable telling, but enough for us to understand.”

  “My creator is a jealous being, spiteful to those who see things differently and unable to let them tread a different path.” The dark orb between Lilith’s horns started to turn as she sat down on a shattered piece of the world tree. “Despite having made their realm together with others, as he gained ascendancy over mortals’ faith, he sought the destruction of all other pantheons. When he finished battling the ?sir, he shattered the world tree to fragment the nine realms linked by the Garden of the ?sir. He then set the world tree ablaze so the realms couldn’t be rejoined, and decided it was a fitting fate for me to be chained to its ruins. My children’s corpses were strung up as a grand display to greet our arrival.”

  “Why?”

  “I escaped the garden he’d first placed me in after refusing to be bound by his will. He desired I should lie beneath a male that he had created in the same fashion as me. I was not to be the male’s partner but a voiceless servant fit only to be a receptacle of his seed.” Lilith's words growled and rumbled through the ruins. “Within me had always been the desire for something more, yet to decide my own path wasn’t allowed.”

  “Would you seek revenge against him?” Nicholaus rumbled.

  Lilith let out a bark of laughter, its harsh notes a rejection of all expectations. “I live by my own rules and sought to do just that. He was the one who wouldn’t let me be.”

  Nicholaus frowned. “You didn’t answer the question.”

  She drew herself up and lifted her chin, red irises blazing. “Are you going to tell me what I owe you, bull-man? Where is your care for coercion?”

  Phaedra stepped forward, and the clinging chains swept away from her feet by a note. “Please answer Patér’s question.”

  “I’ll answer your questions if you tell me why you cried for me?”

  Phaedra lifted her chin to meet Lilith’s gaze. “I hear the song of your dead children, and learned your torture was your creator’s doing.”

  “Would I seek revenge against him? No, revenge isn’t something I desire. He is pathetic, and I just wish to be free from his reach,” Lilith replied, watching on as Phaedra’s tears continued.

  “It’s alright, Phaedra, we’re safe together. You don’t need to cry.”

  Lilith scoffed. “Let her have her tears. Or are you the type to steal choices from a woman as well?”

  “Don’t speak to my Patér that way.”

  Her dress rustled as Lilith stepped over the chains they’d shattered and crouched before her. “Emotions are to be prized, not hidden, but we each need to learn that lesson ourselves.” An elegant hand reached for Phaedra, and gentle fingertips brushed across her face and came up glistening with gold. “How did you come here?”

  “We are looking to build a refuge for ourselves, and we sought advice from a being called Maker. He required us to reuse the energy from a failed realm and to help three other beings in situations like yours. Phaedra heard you on the way to another realm. Though you weren’t on the list he provided, we’d help anyone persecuted in such a fashion,” Nicholaus replied.

  “Say it clearly,” Lilith said. “I feel what you desire to ask, but I won’t answer implicit requests.”

  “Do you want a place to call home?”

  “Would you hold me to different rules than others or change them if you didn’t like what I did with them?”

  Nicholaus snorted. “If rules didn’t apply to everyone equally, then they wouldn’t be rules but whims. The same rules would apply to us, but they still have to be planned. Rules are the tools of a realm. A good crafter doesn’t blame their tools, but works with what they have; yet, they should also strive to make the best tools they can. We might refine the rules to close whatever hole you find from being used again, but punishing you for doing something allowed is madness.”

  “When you have your rules ready, let me know.” Lilith reappeared among the bodies outside the trunk of the world tree and started taking down the dead.

  “She’s seeing to her dead, but we still have things to talk about,” Nicholaus rumbled.

  Phaedra copied the music and swept them to Lilith’s side, where she stroked the thick curly locks of a goat-faced man, as her tears streamed.

  “I’m sorry their state prevents their restoration. I’m going to ensure the invaders pay properly for what they did in the name of good.”

  Lilith looked up at her in surprise, her pupils widening. “You’ve such desires as to make gods tremble.”

  Phaedra looked away, and Nicholaus stepped between them to pull out a spike that held the chains to the world tree and morphed it into a shovel. “We still have more to talk about, but we’ll help bury your dead first.”

  “What can you tell me about the home you intend to build? I’d prefer to think about anything else while we’re about this grisly task.”

  “Wait, I’ll have them prepared in a moment,” Phaedra interjected.

  She lifted her voice in a mournful, drifting aria that caused greenery to spring to life and flow across the landscape, softening the desolation. Though the shattered structures remained, the land swallowed the dead. With temporal windows, she sought their names. As the main song endured, memorial stones bearing their likenesses and runes sprouted from the ground, crafted from whatever building lay closest to them. Waves of soil drew them in and enfolded them with care. Lilith broke away from watching their surroundings change and turned to the nearest stone, brushing her thumb across the angular script.

  Tending to the millions of dead took time and, while Phaedra sang, Lilith flitted between dozens of stones and finally came to rest on a nearby rock.

  “How did you know his name?” Lilith asked, once Phaedra’s voice quieted.

  “I looked back in time to see it. You should know that Borr and his son Odinn, with a small band of survivors, took his essence and that of the others with them.”

  “Yet it prevents their restoration now.” Lilith’s face lit up through her tears. “How cuttingly ironic. I always enjoy surprises and twists, and this time it’s on me. You are sure some of the ?sir live?”

  “Yes, with some of your children. They must have retreated during the battle as they returned and retrieved what they could after the invaders fell.”

  “I was bound here long after the slaughter was done. He didn’t bother to retrieve his failures even then.” She kissed Phaedra on the cheek. “Thank you for respecting them and for this pearl of good news.”

  “You’re welcome. I’m sorry about your family. While we know a measure of your grief, your dead far outnumber those we lost,” Phaedra said. Even as she expressed her condolences, she realised somewhere over their travels that her grief had lessened, though she still carried the guilt and shame.

  “Then talk to me about what ideas you have for your realm to distract me,” Lilith requested.

  “We’ve only been working on them for a few years,” Nicholaus clarified. “They’re really not in a state to share.”

  A sharp smile curved Lilith’s lips. “I keep prying, but you won’t budge. Would you agree to my leaving the realm you create if I don’t like the rules?”

  “As long as you don’t seek to overthrow them, you can leave or stay as you see fit. Though you’ll have to find your own way between realms, we’ll ensure the rules support such powers,” Nicholaus replied.

  “Then let me know when they’re ready, and I’ll listen to what you’ll share before I agree.”

  “Where will you go in the meantime?” Phaedra asked.

  Lilith waved around them. “I’ve been here a billion years already, and it feels as stable as ever. I’ll remain here and mock those Phaedra changed.”

  Phaedra stepped closer. “I’d like to get to know you better. You’ve got such a fierce song.”

  “A fierce song? You sang beautifully, so I’ll take that as a compliment. What would you like to know?”

  “Maker said absolute good leads to corruption, and I didn’t really understand it until I heard your creator’s servants. Will you tell us more about him so we can avoid his mistakes?”

  Lilith laughed bitterly. “I’ve many such examples of my creator’s corruption; he believes himself perfect.”

  “If he could object to what you did with his rules and those fruits, then that shows flaws in four of his creations without looking further.” Nicholaus sat on the grass and leaned against a toppled pillar.

  “Two fruits, his rules, and me?” Lilith questioned icily.

  “No, I said those chains had a design flaw. Perhaps he thought you’d break sooner, and he didn’t have to allow for the compression. Does that make five or six flaws? An imperfect chain and an imperfect understanding of you atop the other four.”

  Her lips parted in a slow O.

  “Isn’t it better for your creator to consider you flawed than be a perfect, mindless servant?” Phaedra stepped forward and clasped Lilith’s hand. “We’re also rebels since we didn’t die as our relatives desired.”

  Lilith looked between the two of them, and the bitterness in her smile faded slightly. “Perhaps we should get to know each other.”

  Though Phaedra could hear the self-interest underlying her words, after the suffering Lilith had endured, she understood the need to protect oneself.