[center][h1][b][color=DAA520][b]M E L A N T H A[/b][/color][/b][/h1][/center][hr][hr]The silence of space was truly comforting. Melantha drifted for an unknown amount of time, her body carried through the void on the dregs of residual energy borrowed from the explosion of the asteroid.

The collision between Aelius and the rock had been cataclysmic, to say the least. Melantha had barely managed to escape the immediate blast zone when the resulting shockwaves reached her. She had quickly erected a barrier to protect herself, but the sheer force of it pushed her away with a might unlike no other. Nevertheless, that was her goal, the only way she could think of that would enable her to escape relatively unscathed.

And she did, indeed, escape, but soon after doing so, she fell unconscious. Be it from the force of the shockwave or the shock from Aelius' attack penetrating through the seed of power she left behind, the dark goddess ended up in a comatose state, drifting endlessly in the space between Spheres.

At some point, however, she awoke to the sound of her breathing, a unique sound amidst the silence of her surroundings. Breathing... What is breathing? Did she breathe? If yes, what did she breathe? Why did she breathe? Melantha clutched her head with a frown; her thinking was all jumbled up as if enveloped by dark fog. She made to open her eyes, but they would not obey her will. Softly touching her eyes with her fingers let her discover that they were swollen and puffy, and whenever she prodded them acute pain shot straight through her body.

Melantha sighed when she realized that she might have inadvertently been blinded in the aftermath of the attack. Pitch-black darkness poured out of her mouth, transforming into a blindfold that covered her eyes completely. The way it melded in with her dark mane not only didn't take away from her overall look but gave the goddess an even more mystifying appearance.

Reaching deep inside her mind, she brought forth the mental map she had previously created while she had been travelling around the upper spheres atop the Architect's crystal. The goddess' lone form melded into the starry background as she slowly propelled herself towards the direction of her Sphere.[hr][hr]Melantha was almost halfway to her Sphere when her divine sense picked up on a massive release of energy an extraordinary distance away from her location. Her eyes had yet to heal, Melantha had no idea when or if they would do so, and thus she was not able to discern what exactly had caused it, but she could feel the ripples in space caused by it and that they were rapidly coming towards her. Fortunately, the distances involved meant that the shockwave had lost much of its energy when it eventually reached her, and what remained was easy to repel with Melantha's powers.

However, that didn't mean that the goddess was not curious about the origins of this event. On the contrary, an event of such proportions must have surely been the doing of one of the other deities. [color=DAA520][b][i]"The question is, which one?"[/i][/b][/color][hr][hr]Finally arriving back at her Sphere did take some time, but Melantha did not really mind the silence that accompanied interspheral travel. It allowed her to ponder on things that she would otherwise not have the time or will to think about, like the Architect's plans for example. She had vowed to herself that she would not bother with the Architect more and instead focus on her own self and what she wanted to do with her time in this universe, but that was obviously not the case.

The goddess sat on the edge of the, now flat, mountain peak of Norsvold's former tallest mountain. With her legs dangling over the edge, Melantha laid back, bringing her arms up to form a cushion for her head. A deeply conflicted look hid behind the blindfold she had donned as she thought about her actions since her summoning to the Architect's realm.

She should not have so blatantly ignored potential threats to her existence in the forms of other deities. While she had been focusing on the Architect and his hidden agenda, Asceal and Aelius had already started scheming against her.

[color=DAA520][b][i]"But those words..."[/i][/b][/color] Thinking back to what Aelius had told her during their brief interchange, Melantha could not help but feel the fire that was her anger reignite. Contribution? He would talk about their "contribution" that was light as if it was the most essential thing for the universe's function but did not even spare a thought about [i]her own[/i] contribution of darkness, and how their creation fundamentally opposed everything that Melantha stood for. He even had the audacity to say she was offended by it when offended could not even qualify as a negative feeling when compared to all the other feelings that Melantha had been drowning in at that point in time. 

Pain, terror, disgust, apprehension, wrath. The list went on and on, and truly, had Asceal been the sole perpetrator behind the creation of that detestable light beam, Melantha did not know if she would have been able to restrain herself from escalating the situation beyond what could be salvaged. Apart from the fact that Melantha would have to face off against two deities, she also realised another thing the moment Aelius' divine essence came in contact with her seed of power; the Sphere she had attacked had not actually been Asceal's Sphere, but Aelius'. [color=DAA520][b][i]"Why would they place that thing in Aelius' Sphere and not Asceal's? This does not make any sense..."[/i][/b][/color]

Melantha clutched her head as she felt a sharp pain shoot through her once more. The headaches had been getting worse and worse as time passed, and Melantha had an idea why. Her inquisitive mind was clashing with her purpose, the reason for her existence that had been imprinted upon her soul by the Architect. To bring darkness was her prerogative, Melantha saw no inherent fault in it. What she did not like, however, was the forceful nature in which such a purpose had been thrust upon her, as well as the cryptic responses she received from the Architect when she questioned him on his reason why he'd summoned her, when her reason for existing had nothing to do with creation or managing and populating his universe. [color=DAA520][b][i]"And it's not only me..."[/i][/b][/color]

No, Melantha also thought about certain other deities that she shared this predicament with. The tentacled deity, Anzillu; the desolate one, Orvus; strife personified, Narzhak. Those were but a few that fit the bill. The headache intensified once more. No matter how much she thought about it, she could not make out what was going on.

So she chose to [i]forget[/i]. Forget everything that had happened, that will happen. Forgetting was easier said than done, however. The mind of a god was a complex thing that would take time to completely decipher, but fortunately for her, a potential shortcut had appeared in the form of another deity's creation.

Melantha raised her hand, spreading her fingers wide and from within her palm, a small grey bead emerged. At first glance, this bead was nothing more than a grey, circular rock. But upon closer inspection, one would discover that it was actually ash, compacted tightly in the form of a bead. Melantha had recently noticed this kind of ash passing through the boundaries of her Sphere and had thus collected some to analyze, mainly out of curiosity. So one could imagine her surprise upon realizing that the ash had actually been burned down soul essence. What clued her to this was the fact that the ash faintly emitted energy that was familiar to her, the same kind of energy she had felt from the torrent of souls she had accompanied on her way to the Architect's universe, back when she had also been nothing more than a soul drifting in the endless Beyond.

Following her discovery, Melantha exited her Sphere and started searching for the origin of the soul ash, and she soon came upon another deity's Sphere, Katharsos'. That moment exactly was the moment Melantha decided on her plan of action. To forget meant to let go, but letting go entailed losing everything.

Melantha absorbed the ash back inside her body and stood up. Right there on the edge of the cliff, the dark goddess stood, and although she could not see the sheer height of the drop in front of her with her own two eyes, she could feel the emptiness.[hr][hr][hider=In which Melantha is angst-ery]We learn that Melantha escaped Asceal and Aelius by borrowing upon the power of the explosion caused by the collision between the asteroid and Aelius to propel herself away from the immediate area. She then drifted in space for a while, unconscious and injured in the aftermath of the said explosion. She eventually wakes up, confused but nevertheless okay, and makes route for her Sphere. Halfway there, Asceal's Furnace explodes, and although Melantha notices the energy released from the explosion she does not know what caused it because of her injury.  Skipping forward to some time after she returns to her Sphere, we see her sitting on a cliff, pondering her existence. After some inner monologue about stuff, she brings out a bead of soul ash she collected, and we learn that she discovered where it originates from. We also get to know what her plan going forward will be. There are some mixed messages towards the end of the post about her current mindset and feelings.
[h2]Might Expenditure[/h2][list][*]No Might spent. Current Balance: [b]9 MP & 32 FP[/b][/list][/hider]