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[color=8493ca][u][h1]Neiya[/h1][/u][/color]
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Darkness.

It had happened in an instant. Almost as if the fabric of reality had wanted to punish her for teaching a single mortal a lesson, the air around the lake - the very clouds in the sky - had seemed to still. The walls of the world began to disintegrate around her, the lake and the forest warping out of view, and Neiya was dragged into the void before she truly understood what was happening.

There was only darkness. No sights. No sounds. She screamed, and felt her voice fall into an abyss from which there was no echo. She moved, but there was nothing to guide her senses. Just an inky, endless void. All she could perceive was herself. The gods were gone, the horizon was missing, the-... Neiya drew a deep breath in her prison of the void. It was quiet. Still. She could no longer hear the whispers. No longer did the maelstrom of mortal emotion, wants and needs course ceaselessly into her mind. The torture had stopped. For the first time since she opened her mind to the world upon her birth, she was free. Free to think, to feel. And yet, with nothing to see, to feel, what good was it now? It didn’t change anything, it didn’t take away the pain that had already left its mark on her soul.

She battled against the darkness for what felt like an eternity, careening through the void in search of something. Anything. All she had was the bitterness, that feeling of helplessness. What had transpired between her and mortals, between her and the gods. She pondered upon Fìrinn’s words - was this the great change it had spoken of? It had to be; and if it were, was this what mortal death was like? Or was it like it had said - truly different, but not necessarily the end? Did it matter? There was nothing. Nothing to do. Nothing to feel. She did not know how long she stayed like this, but eventually she found herself missing the sensation of the mortal maelstrom. The dearth of any sensation left her longing for what once was. It had been mind-numbing, toxic, and uncontrollable. An endless flood of pain, misery and lovelorn cries for help. It had also been joy, companionship, warmth. However fleeting, it had been there. Her brief peace in the storm. Now there was nothing. Nothing to cherish, or to distract, or even to suffer. Just darkness.

And so the goddess cried, alone with her thoughts.

But it did not last forever. At first it was a whisper, intermittent and weak. Then the sensation began to return, brief tingling of emotion and mortal longing. Every sensation became an event, a moment of elation. Even intense grief - fleeting and weak as it was - became something to look forward to. It was something, anything, to distract from the loneliness, if only for a moment. It became stronger, clearer, until she could feel the tug of the maelstrom again. The endless roil of mortal wants all at once. Then she heard her own name. Someone calling out for her. It was quiet and distant, but enough to hear the request. A simple wish for assurance. Neiya gathered her focus and responded. A simple response to a simple request, she stilled the mortal’s heart and worry, if only for a time. In that moment, she felt joy. Galbar was no longer beyond her reach. The God of Truth had been right, in some way. It was just new. She exhaled sharply and spun in her void. 

That elation did not last either. As the maelstrom grew in intensity, so too did the overbearing sorrow. Once more did her own emotions tangle intrinsically with that of mortals, and peace and warmth became a fleeting event to cherish. The whispers grew to a roar of demands, anguished crying, and declarations of love. She heard her name many times over the coming decades, and she passed the time by meting out judgement over those who used her name. To call upon her selfishly was to ask for her displeasure, and as she learned to follow praying mortals in mind, she lived vicariously through them. To see the oaf who asked for his partner never to find out about his lover get what was coming to him was as fulfilling as seeing two true lovers declare their love for eachother.

Those who cursed her name did so having walked foolishly into their own doom. There was only one whose prayers she duly ignored. The woman she had punished was walking the land, and she did not seem to ever give up attempting to contact her. Each attempt filled Neiya with bitter memories of her actions, of the lake, of the moon goddess. She would be ignored until the end of time. Instead Neiya closed out her immediate - dark - surroundings, and gave herself entirely to the stream of emotions surging into her from Galbar. She lost track of time, not that she had kept track of it from the start. She affixed herself to the happiness of mortals, cried with them, mourned as they did, and hoped for the right response with butterflies in her stomach as they did. The cycle was never ending. There was always a mortal in need, in pain, in elation. 

Neiya did not care about their lives, or the sweeping changes of the land, or even what snippets of knowledge she could glean from her perch in the void. She cared about the moments, the build-up, the disappointment, the sadness. The use of her name grew as she applied her blessing with what she felt was an even hand. She was cursed for her fickleness, but she knew it was them. They brought suffering upon themselves, and all she did was allow them to do as they pleased. That was the cycle. This was what she was born to do. Allow them to want, long for, hurt, and lose. Each moment of happiness always ended the same way. Some long. Some short. In the end, there was always sorrow, hollow words, betrayal. She felt her sour disposition return - or perhaps it had never left her. She found herself viewing a mortal man who asked for a blessing - he would confess his love the next day. She felt his desire to be with this woman. Together forever. She felt a twinge of pain; her own loneliness bubbling to the surface. With a release of her breath, Neiya sparked doubt in his mind. Watched him worry, and pass his crush by. It was better this way. His desire remained, but now he would never be disappointed. Now she could put her own emotions aside, and set her focus elsewhere.

So it went, for many cycles of love, heartbreak, and trust gained and lost. Neiya could not tell if she spent centuries or millennia or mere decades in her routine. She always had something to do, someone to watch or respond to. As the time passed, she began to exert her will even in her void. She made a new river, the fixture of her birth. And with a river, she needed land. She decorated it with trees, and in an especially happy few seconds, she populated it with butterflies. That too seemed to last only for a time, as the ground grew progressively bleak, the water turned cold, and the trees wilted and regrew in a perpetual cycle of beauty and loss. Disappointed with her creation, she sequestered herself deep in her new landscape, shaping a small outlook where her river began, and molded a place to sit down after what she had observed of the mortal realm.

So she sat on her modest throne, staring at the river running along endlessly on her bleak plains, listening to the pleas of the unfortunate, the despairing, and the deeply passionate. After a time she had seen all the patterns. Mortals - in all the shapes they came in - could only seem to innovate so many ways to break each other's trust, or declare their fleeting bonds of kinship and intimacy. For the first time since her reconnection to the maelstrom of emotion, she began to feel her own loneliness.

Was this her punishment? Was this-... Neiya searched her mind for the moon goddess name. Gibbou. Was this her doing? Would she ever see another of her kind again? Fìrinn. Cadien. Would she be alone forever, in this prison of her own making?

Almost as though the walls of reality had her thoughts, a shimmering tear broke on a faraway plain in her realm. Her presence by it was instantaneous, curiosity drowning out the roar of emotions from the world beyond. She heard voices. Sensed other beings. It was-.. Liberation.

Perhaps she wouldn’t be alone, she thought to herself, as the pale love goddess drifted through the tear in spacetime.

[hider=Summary]
Neiya is swept away from Galbar immediately after enacting punishment on Sanya. She is stuck in a void, and drifts for an unknown amount of time without connection to the emotions and whispers she heard previously. The loneliness gets to her. The vortex of mortal emotions begins to return, and Neiya eventually learns to connect with those mortals who pray to her. She lives vicariously through her faithful, and proves to be quite the fickle goddess when it comes to how she applies her blessings.

Eventually she grows bored and decorates her realm, before continuing her duty in answering prayers intermittently. She starts to lose the sense of novelty, and finally begins to feel truly lonely once more. At that point, the portal to Antiquity opens, and she steps through!
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