Interlude XIX – Puppet and Master

Aethric

Age was a funny thing. It came and it went and it came again. To some he was ancient, the wisest of elders. To others he was still but a child playing with matters he could not hope to comprehend.

Was he old these days, or was he still so dreadfully young?

He knew he was not a child anymore at least, for all that he remembered those days fondly. Back then he hadn't been anything special. One amongst many, with no idea of what he'd eventually become.

In those halcyon days he'd been a rambunctious little brat. Between struggling against the watchful eyes of his tutors and clashing with his peers in rhetorical debate, it was a wonder he ever got anything done. He'd much preferred to sneak away to the carefully cultivated parks to sleep the days away.

That was childhood, he supposed. The only responsibility was yourself, and the only desire was to avoid that responsibility like the plague.

But eventually a day came where he was a child no longer. He couldn't remember when he'd realized it, but step by step the boy had faded away and the man had taken its place.

That man had the fortune to live in the greatest age ever known. Long after the Exodus had ended and Babel had been founded, he lived in an age where hunger and disease were foreign, where even death itself had long since been cured. An age where the even least of humanity had lived lives greater than that of any Kings who came after.

The man had the misfortune to live near that age's end.

He remembered a city of magic and marble. He remembered the greatest glories that mankind had ever achieved. He remembered a burning strive for glories greater still.

(He remembered the fall.)

All things ended. Some might assume that as a Lich his relentless flight from death was driven by the assumption that he was above such a concept, but that was not the case. He more than any other man left alive understood how limited time truly was.

He knew the ages of the mountains and the oceans. He knew the ages of every star in the sky. He even knew when the Sun itself would die and how it would drag everything else with it in its glorious, violent death. And that was merely scratching the surface—for in his life he had witnessed Gods great and pitiful die to humanity's relentless genius. He had seen ages of plenty and poverty, the waning and waxing of progress, the birth and decline of empire after empire after empire.

If there was one unyielding truth to the universe, it was that all things ended.

Babel fell. And the man died.

But men are stubborn beasts, and none were more stubborn than he.

The man died. The man continued to live regardless.

All things ended. Yet who says they need only end once?

This was the revelation that came to the man as he passed through death's door. Men would rise and Men would fall, but never once. They would do so again and again and again, until there was nothing left to fuel them and even then they would struggle.

How could he be any different? How could he, one of the last true Men, strive for anything less?

The man died. And the Lich-King was born.

For thousands of years he struggled in the shadows of history, guiding Humanity along the Proper Path. A magister, a general, a lord. A scholar, a scavenger, a teacher. Humanity did not die with Babel—it was simply reborn again. Different, perhaps, but what was Man if not adaptable?

Unfortunately, perhaps they were a bit too adaptable.

Not all the Gods died with Babel. One still ruled from Her Silver Moon, weakened yet relentless in Her hatred for her ancient enemies. When the world was young there was no greater threat than Her to Humanity.

But Humans were weaker now. Through their shorter lives they forgot what their ancestors considered common knowledge, and despite the Council's best efforts they only continued to fall ever further from the Proper Path.

Then one day, during the height of the Volan Empire, a woman arrived.

A child, a peasant, an Aelv. She spoke to the New Men with a tongue of honeyed whispers. She told them that if they abandoned their dead god for her living one that they would be spared her wrath. For why spend all of eternity warring over ancient sins, when they could come together as friends instead?

What utter lunacy.

Naturally, they killed her.

Unfortunately, they didn't kill her fast enough.

The idea spread like wildfire, and soon their righteous Magisters were ousted in favor of the wicked Silver Priests.

He'd been killed then, of course. Thrown back-first upon a grounded stake to bleed out until death, as was the favored execution method of the Volans.

But an end merely meant a new beginning. Once they left his body for the vultures he pulled himself from the bloody spear and from his undying corpse forged himself anew.

And so he tried again, and again, and again, as he had always done. Yet times were different, now. The Silver Goddess had dug her talons deep into humanity's zeitgeist and adamantly refused to let go.

His once great influence slipped. Necromancy and Artificery—once two of Humanity's crowning achievements—were declared Sins and outlawed from every corner of the Empire. The Fragments were commandeered by the last envoys of the Dead Gods and their ancient magics bound beneath them. And finally the remaining Daemen were expunged in favor of the New Men, and the worship of their glorious Rotting God was snuffed out.

He watched this happen for hundreds of years, watched Humanity lose itself to a Goddess they'd once tried to slay. Forced back to Insula with the rest of his people, saved only by magic and myth and monsters long thought dead.

But even this was salvageable. For the Goddess did not destroy everyone, and his own people could one day return to their rightful place as lords of the world. The traitors on the mainland could die with their new Goddess for all he cared.

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So he plotted and planned as he always did. With the backing of the Lords of the Living Council they dug into their last remaining island, turning it from a barren rock to a sustainable new homeland. For over a thousand years he skulked in the shadows, dying and living and dying again, waiting for the right moment to strike.

And when that moment came, he grabbed it with every hand in his possession.

They marched on the mainland once again, taking back what had once been theirs. They laid low the Goddess' Empire and shattered the traitorous Humans who called it home.

There were setbacks, naturally. Nothing ever went to plan, and you didn't last as long as he had without being adaptable. Dodékatos turning against them was frustrating in the extreme, though considering he was constantly listening to the silver tongue of that damned woman he supposed they should have seen it coming. But in the end he died and they succeeded, so given some time to recover they'd be able to build back up and finish the job.

They were not given that time, unfortunately. For they had forgotten something important. No matter how low they may have fallen, how weak and pathetic they might now be, their enemies were still Humans, and to underestimate a Human was to guarantee your own defeat.

It only took three of them to kill him. A Silver Paladin, a Silver Priestess, and a Drowned Fey.

He'd lived though many lives, and throughout them he'd taken some devastating defeats. But this was different, as never before had he ever fallen so low.

They cut him up and burned his corpse in Holy Flame so that he might never return. And when that didn't work the Priestess tore his very soul from his corpse in an attempt to destroy him utterly.

That was her mistake, though. For in touching his soul she was able to witness all that he was and all that he fought for, and against all the secrets and tragedies he brought to bear she found herself faltering.

She'd been stubborn, at first. Clinging to her notions of the Goddess and her faith, she'd argued against every point he made. But in the act of arguing—in letting him pluck and prod at the thin veil of lies she used to justify her actions—she had already lost.

If the priestess had been as zealous as she wished herself to be, perhaps she might have managed to hold fast against his influence. But she had her doubts. And under his careful cultivation those doubts blossomed into a beautiful garden of deceit.

The Silver Priestess grew disillusioned with her own Goddess. And the irony of that was delicious.

They spoke more, and though he was reduced to little more than a living weapon he found his power waxing. For though the girl had decided that the Goddess was fallible, she had not lost her faith in the idea of the Goddess. In the idea of a perfect, benevolent savior, who used her divine power to make the world a better place for everyone.

He admired her optimism, even if it were misplaced. Because not everyone deserved to live in such a world. Humanity had far too many enemies, and if they were to survive there would have to be a cleansing.

But the idea she put forth called to him. For hadn't Humanity usurped a God before? Had a group of starving refugees not once carved a home for themselves off the back of broken divinity?

They had done it before. They could do it again. And this time, there would be nobody left who could stop them.

Perhaps he'd been too harsh on the Daughter, all the way back then.

For what better place did the Goddess deserve, than to be puppeted by human priests?

-<X>-

Rosalina

Rosalina was young, relatively speaking. Compared to the Goddess, to the Demon Lords, to even the Elves, she was but a child still. A little girl who had not lived even a fraction as long as the monsters she fought every day.

But youth did not preclude wisdom, and age did not guarantee strength. She had been younger still when she'd laid low a behemoth that had loomed over the world since time immemorial.

Her battle against the Lich-King should have been the greatest moment of her life. The day her faith in the Goddess was rewarded and the day one of the great remaining threats to Humanity was slain.

Yet it hadn't been.

Most of her friends had died in the attempt, and even the survivors had been crippled. The Demon Lord's territory remained inhospitable, and the power of the Goddess was incapable of purging the rotten miasma that clung to his lands. Countless had perished to lay low a King, and for what? Nothing important had changed. The world simply continued on as it always had.

The fall of the Lich-King should have been what cemented her faith, yet all it did was further shake it.

For why would the Divine require a mortal to do her dirty work? Could a true God not simply reach down and pluck the rot which had seeped into her holy tapestry? And if they could, why leave them all to suffer so?

Was so cruel a Goddess truly worthy of her devotion?

It was then, in the depths of her crisis of faith, a worm-tongued wretch sought to poison her soul. Aethric, he called himself. The last remnants of the Lich-King, clinging to his charred bones.

At first she'd tried to finish him off. To purge him from even her mind, as all good priests should. But he stayed her hand, for he only wished to talk.

Had she been in her right mind she would not have allowed him even that. A Demon was a Demon, no matter the state of their body.

She was not in her right mind, though. And so, she let him speak.

Despite it all… she was curious. To learn why someone would so ardently oppose the Lady in Heaven. To discover what made a Demon a Demon.

At the time she justified it to herself that she was gathering intel. That she might even do the impossible, and convert one of the Demon Lords to the side of Righteousness.

What a fool she was! For there was nothing in the world worse than this fossil whose very soul was rotting.

The Lich-King spoke to her in whispers and lies. He taught her ancient secrets and modern falsehoods. He told her of the life he had lived and the world he wished to bring about, of the Goddess' hatred and her own assistance in the continued suffering of Man. Of Death and Divinity and the foundations of Sin.

He tried to corrupt her. Oh, had he tried. As days turned to weeks turned to years he wormed his way further into every aspect of her life, plucking and prodding and poking at everything she was and everything he wanted her to be.

He tried to tell her what she wanted to hear. Yet he failed, for as knowledgeable as the ancient Lich was of esoteric topics he was incapable of seeing beyond his own petty biases. Love and hate and duty and destiny, countless concepts so engraved in his rotting soul he could not break from them if he wanted to.

But it was in realizing this that she finally discovered the solution to her withering faith.

A Demon was a Demon. A Man was a Man. A God was a God.

The Goddess was a beautiful ideal. Kindness, benevolence, and mercy, mixed with the good sense of justice, law, and righteous punishment. It was no wonder she captured the imagination of every soul who learned of her, for if such an ideal were real, would the world not be a better place?

The ideal was not real, though. Not because it couldn't be—for the Goddess was powerful, more powerful than ancient Man who fell to her and more powerful than the ancient Gods who fell in turn to Man—but because she could not let go of her hate, of her grudges. An old soul who had lived to long, unable to see past the scars that clouded her heart.

It had come to her upon this revelation, as clear as crystal.

The Goddess was perfect, but who the Goddess was was not. Therefore, if the Goddess were sundered and replaced by a fresh slate—by a woman without biases or baggage—would she not then be truly perfect? An impartial ideal to cleanse the world anew, as she always should have been.

And who better than her, Rosalina, her most devoted priestess?

She had slain a Demon Lord, yet in her benevolence forgave him his trespasses. She had allied with more than just Humans—with Elves and Dwarves and Orcs and Insects—and through that understanding she would be a Goddess not just for Man or Elf but for every living being in the world. Justice would be dispensed via her hands unblinded by hatred or cruelty, for who else could be trusted to act as the Goddess should other than she who had memorized every sanctified scripture by the age of seven?

Not everyone agreed with her, naturally. They believed her mad, a blasphemer who did not know the limits of her entitled Ambition. But in this she forgave them, for they could not see the greater picture and did not know of the rites long buried. They simply didn't know any better, and was it not the Goddess' duty to light the way for the unenlightened masses?

As she granted them purpose they would come around. First in ones and then in twos, then in tens and hundreds and thousands. A new/old Goddess to lead her people into a better tomorrow that they themselves could not see.

Perhaps, in some ways, she'd been too harsh on the Daemen of old and their ambitions of Godhood.

For what better purpose did Man need, than to be puppeted by the Goddess' Will?

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