There had been little to say since their arrival in the atrium. The change was overwhelming, and the words spoken by their guide difficult to absorb. Not to mention the pain so suddenly inflicted upon them as they tried to understand their situation. It turned its gaze towards the woman once more, eyes looking up to her towering height as she tried to make things clear to them.

Nera, she called herself. A creature of great power, it was apparent. The pain she had wrought on them had faded, and yet it was apparent she could tear them in two should the mood have taken her. A sense of uncertainty that hung over them all. It was all so very unknowable and something about that didn't sit well with the being-- If it could even be classed as such. Humming, quiet at the back of its mind. His? Her? Unclear, as was everything in this current state. So much it should have known, replaced with empty space.

Her intentions were just as unclear. She appeared to care for them, even when there was little of them to care for, but something was saddening her. The weight of a burden she did not wish to carry, the same sickness she so described perhaps. Or perhaps she was about to set such a weight on them? There was certainly something that the goddess wanted.

There was a feeling of discontent that accompanied the lack of clarity. Was it familiar, perhaps? No. Yes. The unknown, this. All unknown, and for some reason, the being found that distasteful. As though the unknown was something it despised, wished to erase. Wished? A strong word for one that felt so little, but appropriate. As though some hint of lost desire broke through the emptiness that had replaced most everything.

Foreign. Disorderly. Uncontrolled. Yes, there was something faint, a hint of emotion that riled against such a thing. But the creature before it offered guidance. Order. A thread to cling to. Faint and fading. Yes, purpose, that was important. Perhaps things would make sense, were they to sit in place. Be regulated, organised, correct. Organised according to logic, to law.

The disorder was perhaps intriguing to some, but it was difficult to understand. Curiosity, but there was no purpose to which it could be turned. Purpose. Again, a comforting word, the idea of meaning. Emptiness as it realised it had none. It was nothing. They were nothing. [i]Nothing.[/i] How could they be hope, when they were nothing? Yes, the confusion could be felt now, muted though it was. There was so much that it didn't understand, that it couldn't even come close to understanding, and yet the emotion was still faint. Everything was faint, as though it barely existed at all.

But looking at Nera, her claim of divinity had been accepted without question. There was something timeless in her appearance, something that spoke of millennia lived and a thousand lives passed by. It seemed right that such a being would be divine, and for whatever reason that thought silenced the dissenting voice at the back of its mind. The proper order of things, that such a creature should be granted authority over them. Only right that they should obey.

Below the surface, fainter than faint, there was fear but not of her. Rather, it was the news she brought that so unnerved the wisp, as though something fundamental had been torn away from its being. So many beings as powerful or more than the woman before them. How could they be gone? The gods that supposedly governed their reality, reduced to one single reaper of dreams? That slight comfort from the idea of purpose swiftly disappeared.

Despite that, there was a spark of something after she spoke of the world's sickness. Reverence. The instinct to kneel. But at the same time, the feeling of confusion intensified. More questions, and even as the words escaped, the wisp felt a pang of regret. Not fear, despite her power, but rather a sense that to question at all was somehow arrogant. Better that they had an order to follow.

"You are more powerful than us, surely." A shake of the head, or what approximated such in its current form. Apologetic, almost, for its need to speak out of turn. "What would you have us do that you yourself cannot?"