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Reveries
Rosalind’s impact had gouged a great cavity into the moon. Debris had been scattered across the entire lunar surface, and the fevered heat of the dancing goddess’ feet had spread into the crust and melted much of the surface there. Nestled warmly in the crater-crucible, Yudaiel dreamt. Beneath her, the surface slowly grew colder.
Much time had passed, but it meant little to the goddess. She was somewhere else, locked in a prescient reverie, her essence confined to today even as her mind was free. She wandered into the possible futures that lay ahead, and occasionally delved into the past. The past was a fearsome place if she looked back too far; the shadow of that terrible thing she’d first witnessed alongside Rosalind still loomed back there, and she dared not look at it too closely -- not yet -- but one day she would make sense of it. That wasn’t just a promise she’d made unto herself or an endeavor that she wanted to undertake; it was destiny. She knew this because she could turn her head away from the foreboding shadow of the past, but when she looked to her future it was there too, or at least a dark reflection of it. Each fork in the many paths before her seemed to lead there, and she recalled that ideabstraction that had been chiseled into her mind by Iqelis: the great black sea of ink that drank all rivers. But just as she had scoffed in his face then, she refused to accept inevitability now. If Fate existed, it was her; if destiny was a force, it was directed by her guiding hand.
So she gazed into the abyss of the future, searching tirelessly every which way for alternative paths that remained in the light and steered well clear of that looming darkness, of the horrors that lurked within...and she found utterly nothing. She refined her calculations, searched through the past to glean more knowledge, and thrust herself into the future to try anew. It was all to no avail! Crazed, she tried again and again, but her efforts bore no fruit. She only solidified the seeming inevitability of that path she had seen, digging deeper and deeper into the hole of her own anxiety and fear.
Most frustrating of all was the subtlety, the smoke and mirrors! When she cast her gaze too far, she saw only vague silhouettes and ghostly projections...the landscape itself likewise appeared indistinct and half-formed; all was obscured by a great blur. There might have been paths rarely trodden, or tiny and hidden places where she could blaze her own detour, but it was impossible to discern any such details for sure. Greater knowledge expanded her Sight and remedied the haze, but how might she ever know enough to See all things? A revelation came: she slowly recognized that her existence in this limited, weak, near drunken state was torment. How could her Blind peers suffer their even worse states? It was maddening!
Her thoughts shedded away all lucidity and order, becoming primal tempests. Suddenly overcome with despair, she felt constricted despite her vast and formless nature. Though she had never drawn a breath before, she found herself thinking that this must be what it felt like to suffocate -- her body and mind screamed in unison, begging for release, and she flailed with strength that she’d never known she possessed, breaking through the surface of the metaphorical lake that had been drowning her. The nightmare ended and the prescience ceased as she shattered her way back into Reality and the present, wailing hysterically and thinking only that the world was too small.
More time passed. In such a fragile mental state, she defied reason and logic and calm, and she danced. Her thoughts coursed through the lunar dust, stirring and charging and animating it, and her ephemeral essence whirled and distorted the light so that from afar the moon twinkled and shimmered, just slightly, like those distant stars.
Yudaiel’s waltz was a crazed and hectic one, not unlike Rosa’s uncontrolled thrashing -- but perhaps that was good, for the motion seemed to let her shake free of at least some of the worries and hysteria that had weighed her down. She finally came to a stop after a long time; she had felt joy there for an instant, but now it was gone. She was all alone on the moon, silently lamenting and sulking in her dulled anguish as her so-called divine peers ambled about their business obliviously, toiling to build tiny and vaporous monuments out of metaphorical fog, incapable of even imagining the immortal and grand works that she longed to hew from stone.
She meditated next. She stretched and became thinner and thinner, a nebulous haze larger now than the whole of the moon, and became almost one with the void of space. She found peace, and so at last contracted back into a denser clump so that she could think clearly.
More time passed. The moon had entirely cooled by then, its surface once more bone-white and beautiful in its purity, even as a few dark spots and lines now marred the chipped jewel. It could not regenerate; as she had forged this celestial body more from materials she’d willed into existence than from those she’d manage to gather and guide through the process of accretion, the moon was largely cold and solid and inert, all the down all the way to the very core where there was still some molten metal. Still, though time could not mend her moon’s wounds and it was destined to only try and remain beautiful and proud even in imperfections, her wounds could heal. In time she settled and found her calm again. Her mind and her power were perfect and timeless and beautiful; nothing could truly stop her, she genuinely believed, and that was just one of the many reasons that her aspect was grander than all others and her status likewise elevated beyond those peers of hers.
And just what was that insect Iqelis doing? The Great and All-Seeing Eye opened anew, and it cast a piercing gaze towards the Galbar. Just as she had formed the moons, some of the others, most spearheaded by Voligan, had formed vast landmasses to help fill that otherwise empty world. Her farsight was powerful, potent enough that she could perceive -- even from her perch upon the moon -- the goings on over at that other world. Space and darkness and time offered little camouflage before her gaze, so she watched.
It was as though she stood beside Astus as boiling drops of sweat rolled off his brazen brow, him toiling endlessly to erect some vast factory complex. It was of course nothing before the opulence and beauty of her moon, or the splendor of the Monarch’s palace, but some were condemned to mediocrity and she could surmise that this ‘Astus’ cared little for aesthetics. The Reverberation might have crawled back through time to watch Astus from the very beginning, to pick apart why he chose this location and perhaps determine what he intended to do next, but there was little time. So her gaze shifted, and she followed Phelenia, who spread verdant life across all barren places (such a peaceful and simple existence! But how could that possibly be fulfilling for a god?); she Saw also Yesaris, who created life and then ravenously devoured it through a thousand maws; not so far away was Arvum, who instead sowed seeds to cultivate nourishing food and grassland alike; in the north she Saw not one but two deities bestride one another, and she surreptitiously bore witness to their heartfelt farewells and Zenia’s departure. Her curiosity aroused, she peered back in time from there.
At first she had cast her gaze a bit too far to the side, and so she found herself besides one called Ruina as she hurled destruction and chaos down upon the still-watery surface of the Galbar, rending holes in the very ocean itself before proclaiming the ‘test’ to be a success. The goddess of destruction then retired to rest afterward. Yudaiel Saw her bathing, and saw the Monarch’s arrival, and she listened to their conversation and scoffed at the petty trinket that He gifted unto her. What use was such a paltry device when compared to her Sight, to prescience? That foolish Ruina needed only to open her eyes and See, then she could cast aside that bauble and know the Monarch for the tyrant that he truly was. Bemused if nothing else, Yudaiel grew tired of watching Ruina and so diverted her attention elsewhere. She looked forward a bit, feeling relieved to see the continents still taking shape mostly unimpeded by the holes in the oceans.
The prescient goddess soon managed to find what she had been looking for, that moment when Zenia and Chailiss had first chanced across one another. Yudaiel followed their journey, enjoying the journey even as she observed the temperaments of her two siblings carefully. She shared in their mirth and triumph as they’d risen and sculpted that northern landscape. She skipped forward a bit, to the time after they had populated their new creation with gigantic life. To them she was just a stranger, Yudaiel realized, but she already had seen so much that she now felt as though she knew them both intimately.
As she mulled over that strange state of affairs and struggled to decide how she ought to act whenever she inevitably met with and interacted with them directly, Jiugui caught her attention once more. Ah yes, she had seen that one drunkenly making his way down the bridge even as she and Iqelis had raced towards the Codex! The past and present merged together and she similarly traced his goings and his trail, trying to see all that she had missed, playing a game where she guessed what he might do and where he might go next -- so absent-minded was Yudaiel, or perhaps just so alien was her thinking, that she thought nothing as she spied him soil himself a few times, adjust his robes, and create many a few new streams, and even a few curious brown piles of...living creatures? Ah, and these creatures were sapient! Far more than the mere animals that already abounded that northern country, these intelligent mortal beings had great potential, and perhaps collectively could weave a great deal into the tapestry of reality. They were something to be studied, accounted for, perhaps even directed, and certainly not overlooked. She would have to inspect them closely sometime soon, and perhaps she would open their eyes.
The thought occurred to Yudaiel that she had not found Iqelis; as the closest thing that she had to a true rival, his doings were of paramount importance to track, and yet disturbingly she saw no wake of gloom or destruction that he had wrought. He was biding his time in silent and slothful wait, risking the ire of the Monarch -- or more likely, he was planning something and presumed to hide from her. A futile and foolish notion! If ever he intended to thwart her machinations or in any way plot against her, his needle would inevitably stray close to hers as their threads in the tapestry intertwined, so it was only a matter of opening her perception wider and viewing the full chaos of Reality -- and sure enough, she did determine that he was meddling. But his was not the only one!
Many threads and needles loomed near to her own place in the tapestry of Reality. There was Rosa’s, drifting away, its thread disentangling free from Yudaiel’s own as the Feverfoot sailed in that little boat down to Galbar. And then there was Iqelis’ close by to another’s -- Ruina, she sensed. Iqelis was not plotting alone; he sought to join forces with that presumptuous witch! That same goddess that had sundered Ao-Yurin’s oceanic demesne now entertained the idea of practicing her craft again, putting the beautiful moon to the ‘test’? Yudaiel blinked, seeing nothingness for an instant before the image of another great impact flashed before her. More chips upon the jewel...Yudaiel wondered if this was worth fighting for, if she ought to intervene and prevent this hideous disfigurement of her home and art, but everything was so, so blurred in her vision. All of the rage from her hysterical bout before began to bubble back. She looked for the source of it, and found it -- another thread, another needle, another Shard that radiated a throbbing pain. Yudaiel felt a primal fear and fury overcome her.
More alarming and threatening than any of the moving pieces, or petty plots or portents of Ruina’s coming defiling of her moon, was Yudaiel’s discovery of Ashevelen. She expanded her mind and absorbed everything that there was to know about this perfidious Lady Luck. The one history, the malleable present, and the infinite futures were all juxtaposed and arrayed before her prescient Sight:
The goddess let a smirk fill her puerile face, and Yudaiel was made livid.
Yudaiel thought -- silently of course, for she loathed the very idea of speech, ’You do this to me! You are the source of this blindness, this blur, this affliction that eats at me, that undermines my power and atrophies my mind! Your Luck -- your random and nonsensical whimsy, this ‘chance’, it defies everything that I am and must be! It is anathema to me! Why do you crush and blind and smother me so? Why must we battle?’
The surreal goddess could seemingly hear her thoughts, because she answered, ”It is natural! No Shard can exist without a counterpart, so you have to deal with me!”
Smugly, Ashevelen went on to chide her further, ”You always were cruel and self-righteous. Is the hawk more worthy than the bear or the elephant because its eyes are sharper? By what right can you possibly claim to be the master of Fate, or to even impose your preferred fate upon the rest of us?”
Ashevelen laughed, and her childlike simulacrum unraveled to reveal her true form, an orb of golden light. The laughter was deafeningly and agonizingly loud, and it only amplified the pain that Yudaiel felt from the goddess’ presence.
Her light grew bright, so bright that it was blinding, and then when its radiance finally dimmed, visions consumed the world. But these were not the sorts of ideabstractions that Yudaiel could forge; in those, one could soar above the world and observe its minutiae in superrealism. Instead this was brimmed and surreal, everything vague and hazy. No sharp edges or colors existed; everything melded together into one colorful and oddly beautiful, yet indistinct mass of mixed hues, reminiscent of that salt desert that Sala had crafted.
Yes, that was where they were, floating above the desert. Motes of volatile salt crackled and erupted into flames when charged by the divine presence of not one, but two deities. There, Ashevelen’s golden orb appeared again overhead. It had replaced the sun, and now the many-colored salts gleamed under her brilliance whilst Yudaiel could only retreat down, down into the ground to hide from the burning light.
’And what of Iqelis? Is it not enough that I suffer his horrid and debased nature, that I am bound to forever battle with him if anything is to last?’
Deafening laughter shook the world, so powerful were the waves that their destructive interference dissolved and destroyed the Reverberation. But as Yudaiel died, she could hear the goddess’ answer, ”If only you were so lucky, but ha, I’m the lucky one! No, left unchecked, you could See so much further than he, make him into your puppet, weave his plots right into your own machinations, so no! I keep you weak and equalize the game, to ensure that your cute little deadlock lasts --”
All faded into darkness, except for one final booming word that echoed through the void:
Yudaiel thought -- silently of course, for she loathed the very idea of speech, ’You do this to me! You are the source of this blindness, this blur, this affliction that eats at me, that undermines my power and atrophies my mind! Your Luck -- your random and nonsensical whimsy, this ‘chance’, it defies everything that I am and must be! It is anathema to me! Why do you crush and blind and smother me so? Why must we battle?’
The surreal goddess could seemingly hear her thoughts, because she answered, ”It is natural! No Shard can exist without a counterpart, so you have to deal with me!”
Smugly, Ashevelen went on to chide her further, ”You always were cruel and self-righteous. Is the hawk more worthy than the bear or the elephant because its eyes are sharper? By what right can you possibly claim to be the master of Fate, or to even impose your preferred fate upon the rest of us?”
Ashevelen laughed, and her childlike simulacrum unraveled to reveal her true form, an orb of golden light. The laughter was deafeningly and agonizingly loud, and it only amplified the pain that Yudaiel felt from the goddess’ presence.
Her light grew bright, so bright that it was blinding, and then when its radiance finally dimmed, visions consumed the world. But these were not the sorts of ideabstractions that Yudaiel could forge; in those, one could soar above the world and observe its minutiae in superrealism. Instead this was brimmed and surreal, everything vague and hazy. No sharp edges or colors existed; everything melded together into one colorful and oddly beautiful, yet indistinct mass of mixed hues, reminiscent of that salt desert that Sala had crafted.
Yes, that was where they were, floating above the desert. Motes of volatile salt crackled and erupted into flames when charged by the divine presence of not one, but two deities. There, Ashevelen’s golden orb appeared again overhead. It had replaced the sun, and now the many-colored salts gleamed under her brilliance whilst Yudaiel could only retreat down, down into the ground to hide from the burning light.
’And what of Iqelis? Is it not enough that I suffer his horrid and debased nature, that I am bound to forever battle with him if anything is to last?’
Deafening laughter shook the world, so powerful were the waves that their destructive interference dissolved and destroyed the Reverberation. But as Yudaiel died, she could hear the goddess’ answer, ”If only you were so lucky, but ha, I’m the lucky one! No, left unchecked, you could See so much further than he, make him into your puppet, weave his plots right into your own machinations, so no! I keep you weak and equalize the game, to ensure that your cute little deadlock lasts --”
All faded into darkness, except for one final booming word that echoed through the void:
”--forever!”
”Ashevelen skipped, gleefully giggling, her form that of a youthful bjork. How wonderful this northern land was! She would have to bless it, just as she’d blessed those continents raised by Voli--
A dozen shrieks filled the air: there was a giant eagle, there was another angry bjork decrying some others as villains and betrayers, even as that traitorous clan made haste in their flight away. They had worked some devious plot, abandoning the other clan of bjorks to the eagle. Ashevelen frowned, her heart moved, and cursed the eagle with misfortune. Two poor bjorks had been in its grip, one in each talon, but seemingly by pure chance the mighty eagle lost its grip and they began tumbling back down screaming to be reunited with the Galbar. Miraculously, a tree branch slowed their descent, and then they landed in a pond of still water just barely deep enough to spare their lives. Satisfied, Ashevelen smiled and disappeared.
’ABOMINATION,’ Yudaiel’s mind had screamed the whole time. She had reached out to throttle and crush and tear apart the Lady Luck, but nothing happened, and in that present moment Lady Luck hadn’t even known that she was being watched or that anything had been amiss. Yudaiel had been twice ethereal in that moment, just a dreamlike projection of a formless cloud of a thought, a reflection of a ghost. The world was swallowed by black, and the disorientated Reverberation, still alight with ire, was swept into a new vision.
A dozen shrieks filled the air: there was a giant eagle, there was another angry bjork decrying some others as villains and betrayers, even as that traitorous clan made haste in their flight away. They had worked some devious plot, abandoning the other clan of bjorks to the eagle. Ashevelen frowned, her heart moved, and cursed the eagle with misfortune. Two poor bjorks had been in its grip, one in each talon, but seemingly by pure chance the mighty eagle lost its grip and they began tumbling back down screaming to be reunited with the Galbar. Miraculously, a tree branch slowed their descent, and then they landed in a pond of still water just barely deep enough to spare their lives. Satisfied, Ashevelen smiled and disappeared.
’ABOMINATION,’ Yudaiel’s mind had screamed the whole time. She had reached out to throttle and crush and tear apart the Lady Luck, but nothing happened, and in that present moment Lady Luck hadn’t even known that she was being watched or that anything had been amiss. Yudaiel had been twice ethereal in that moment, just a dreamlike projection of a formless cloud of a thought, a reflection of a ghost. The world was swallowed by black, and the disorientated Reverberation, still alight with ire, was swept into a new vision.
Ashevelen was not even a child, nor was she a golden orb of light. She was a Shard, just one of many, and she was so, so weak. The light of her Shard began to dull; she was dying. Yudaiel was filled with relief, but that soon turned to horror. With her dark powers, the quasi-sentient Shard-that-would-be-Ashevelen willed another Shard to stray in its path just a little, and when the two prismatic gems collided, hers completely devoured and consumed that other Shard. And then she was born, smug and aglow, dismissing her heinous murder and cannibalism as mere luck.
Shivering hot pain stabbed through Yudaiel’s consciousness at the mere image of Ashevelen, and she succumbed to her hatred, screaming madly. Her scream was so loud that it tore the universe asunder, and all became black.
Ashevelen smiled, her glowing eyes even more dreamlike than the rest of her youthful form. Her voice was soft and affectionate, without a hint of malice. ”You have been a good friend to me, Yudaiel. You are not like the others. I think that under your tutelage, I have found the right path--”
No, no, no. This was just another dream, another vision, one of a horrible and depraved future that would not be, could never be, WOULD NEVER BE. Still burning with fury, Yudaiel howled.
Suddenly afraid, the genial and serene look upon Ashevelen’s face was replaced by a mask of shock and fear and horror.
Yudaiel barraged the hapless and unsuspecting goddess with a hail of agonizing ideabstractions, one after the other with such unrelenting speed that some of them created overlapping hallucinations. Each ideabstraction torturously carried the heavy weight of immeasurable agony, ineffable dread, and indescribable despair, but moreover, she cursed Ashevelen a hundred times, named her Abomination, and swore that she would be the wretch’s doom. Ashevelen was nigh instantly broken and reduced to a babbling and crying little girl, but the image only further incensed Yudaiel: it was not enough, the Seer would be satisfied with nothing less than the total annihilation of her nemesis.
No, no, no. This was just another dream, another vision, one of a horrible and depraved future that would not be, could never be, WOULD NEVER BE. Still burning with fury, Yudaiel howled.
Suddenly afraid, the genial and serene look upon Ashevelen’s face was replaced by a mask of shock and fear and horror.
Yudaiel barraged the hapless and unsuspecting goddess with a hail of agonizing ideabstractions, one after the other with such unrelenting speed that some of them created overlapping hallucinations. Each ideabstraction torturously carried the heavy weight of immeasurable agony, ineffable dread, and indescribable despair, but moreover, she cursed Ashevelen a hundred times, named her Abomination, and swore that she would be the wretch’s doom. Ashevelen was nigh instantly broken and reduced to a babbling and crying little girl, but the image only further incensed Yudaiel: it was not enough, the Seer would be satisfied with nothing less than the total annihilation of her nemesis.
Yudaiel’s nightmares and dreams ended. Lucid, dangerously lucid, she knew that she had to launch a retaliatory strike. She had to strike with deadly precision, and strike hard -- a preemptive blow to slay her foe before that terrible enemy could even realize that their deadly duel had begun. But how?! How could she destroy a god? What were the moves when one was locked into such a deadly dance?
Would Ashevelen’s destruction even be enough? What if another claimed the power of that Shard and simply assumed her place? She had to destroy the very force of Luck itself, for that was anathema to her existence and to prescience, and so long as it existed she could not breathe. There was not enough space!
Her racing mind finally arrived at an answer: yes, perhaps there was a way. There existed an object that just might have enough power, and if not, it would magnify her Sight and enhance her knowledge enough to at least offset some of this blur, to at least buy some more time before she was consumed by madness...
She required Epsilon’s creation, the Codex.
