Rias Eventide
Through a lot of effort, I was face to face with Imkli who now looked very different from his teenage self the same could be said for me. Imkli had agreed to take the potions as long as there was someone trustworthy to monitor for any side effects, in this case Panora who took similar potions that were only temporary. His shabby unclean facial appearance of a scruffy mullet and patching beard began to shift to a more handsome-looking male with sapphire jewel eyes. His scruffy mullet became textured and well-maintained, the ashy blonde colour having life once more.
“R- Rias hello. You look good for someone so… dead.”
“Well… I’m cursed to reincarnate endlessly.” I replied jumping up from my throne. Lightning crackled off my fingers towards Imkli who flinched at the lightning expecting it to hit him. The lightning on my command flew past him lighting a candle that opened up a passage aside my feet. Shu and Imkli didn’t know yet, but this passage led down to five doors three of which I couldn’t open. Imkli looked at me with both fear and admiration I could tell which was the main emotion in these fleeting moments of silence. Without major conflict, I descended down the mossy stone stairs, under the throne room’s floor closely followed by Shu and Imkli. As the light wasn’t so brilliant I had to use eyesight enhancements to even see thanks to my mana.
“Can I get some light because not being able to see is kinda difficult especially because I can't use mana” Imkli spoke up trying to find his footing on the worn steps. Shu took his hand guiding him down the steps without a word as she used sight enhancements to guide herself. For some reason the stairs down to the five doors, were somewhere light cannot be produced not even by mana. The descent down the stairs wasn’t that long aside from the occasional slip from how the cold was produced here. Imkli was remarkably calm for someone having his hand being held and not being used to cold temperatures.
Without any words exchanged, I pushed open two heavy iron doors to a place that sat below the rest of Numena. Five large oak doors, one already open as that was where the three guardians prison used to be. Three of the five doors couldn’t be open as of yet or I simply didn’t meet a certain requirement to open them, these doors led to different things and showed different things. With this knowledge, I stepped to the only other door able to be opened.
I wasted no time, opening the large oak door in this dingy dark atmosphere. The old wood whined on its hinges with every slight movement. Pushing the door open became a bit of a challenge as the hinges were so rusted to shit, they didn’t want to physically move. Having moved it enough to even move through itself was a challenge. After some assistance from Shu we entered the space behind the door, a room that housed a lot of secrets about me and my family that only two others knew about. This entire room was pretty much a large cavern, somewhere you could fit an entire cathedral was something. This was what my father would consider a gold mine but for me, it was an epitaph of all my deeds come to life. Even in the lives I may have had.
Not speaking, I kept walking lightning up candles and fire lanterns as I went, Shu and Imkli took their time of course seeing as this was new to them. In this room was something he needed to see more than Shu, I brought her here because her master was portrayed on these walls. Coming to a halt Imkli and Shu turned their gazes no doubt feeling the heat of the lanterns at their backs or fronts.
“This is… I can't make any sense of this.”
“It’s your history, isn’t it? So, this is why you hate gods?” I shook my head at Imkli’s second question. It wasn’t why I hated gods I hated them for a very different reason. I explained to him that this place outlined various feats, deeds, and moments in my lives. Some I can remember and some I cannot because of multiple reasons like the fact I'm a cursed reincarnation or because I chose all of this to be forgotten. Those words alone sent a coiling blade down Imkli’s back as he no doubt imagined what that meant. Though keeping it to myself, in the last few months I have started remembering another life in which I was an eldritch god.
“The memories I remember aren’t all complete but, long ago I was an eldritch god.”
“Were you born as one?” Shu’s words were full of concern as she stepped closer to a mural of me screaming just as six wings came out of my spine. I wasn’t born an eldritch god like oryan or so many others I was made into one through experiments. Through these memories I could feel the pain that raked through me back then as well, the countless needless pinching into my skin. The sudden feeling of pipes being shoved down my throat, the excruciating pain of having fingers or body parts ripped off me just to be instantly healed through my sheer will. I could remember that pain and more, vials that were attached to my forearms constantly taking my blood to god knows.
Eldritch beings were created because a madman wanted to achieve godhood, but he was killed by his own creation. The Pthulminthians worked with various sentinel nobles and Nornirans to take fifteen children from either orphanages, noble houses or off the streets. Over time they put these six or five-year-olds through torment, exposing them directly to mana or filling them with deadly liquids, taking off body parts even vacuuming their insides out. This went on for years maybe ten to twenty years. Every day these children were put through these cruel experiments with no answer to when they would go home many didn’t even see the light ever again.
These scientists thought it was ironic that these children with all their power wouldn’t fight against their masters. luckily for them, these children couldn’t control those created powers, nor did they want to fight back as all scared for their own reasons. When these children began to grasp their powers I started to train with them in secret, weaving through them and understanding them yet not knowing it fully as their child minds couldn't comprehend all the knowledge needed. When these children became teens, they began to grasp their powers still scared for their lives, at this time some began to break. Three children began to change for the worse and it was noticed. Orin, Sif and number Six who had no name, she was just called six because of her number in the trials as these scientists called them.
Eventually, they found success in six beings. Mentally scarred to a point they couldn’t return to normal society. Three of the six were Orin, Sif and six were the worst off they were thought to be mentally broken. Orin was still energetic, but he didn’t talk using his hands to communicate, using his eyes to direct his emotions. Six never left her depressive state only when Sif was around. Six was the weakest and the most impressionable because of her Naïve nature. Sif however was different from those two and the other twelve she was nicknamed ‘the blank one’. No one ever knew what she was thinking, nor could they tell.
Stolen story; please report.
All the others screamed and shouted even struggling away from the experiments. Sif however grew quicker, hitting the age of twelve she stopped talking and didn’t struggle or scream. She looked blank as she went through these experiments, they knew one day that she would snap back but they couldn’t imagine how. For a few years, nothing changed aside from her unnatural ability to use the powers of wind mana and earth mana. Her ability to use blight aether was unknown to these people.
However, on her sixteenth birthday, an unimaginable pain began to sprout through her. It lasted for thirteen days, every day was a different feeling of death. On the thirteenth day, she sprouted wings six in total, and from that day on all nicknamed her the blank angel. It was also the day she began to talk in the runic script of the Eldritch. Every day so forth after, she was put through even more experiments that began to drive her insane, yet she didn’t snap back or even fight.
They couldn’t understand, it boggled the minds of them all eventually, she would do it. From the age of sixteen to twenty-one she trained her divinity and other abilities such as the mana and aether blight. When she turned twenty-one, Sif finally had enough of it all, sh- no I chose to show them the monster they created. using divinity I killed everyone present in that facility aside from the six remaining kids and a woman who was the only one who generally cared for those children.
My memories are still hazy and incomplete but things I could gather from that life started to appear in my head after I first came down to this place, they appeared more frequently as I killed beasts, monsters and the like. As my memories increased, I started to see everything so much more differently, revenge on the maiden became less present with the more I knew. The being that all the races looked up to, a virtuous person who embodies justice, wisdom and rationality is nothing but pure bullshit. I wasn’t as wise as they think, I wasn’t full of just cause and I sure as hell wasn’t rational.
As Sif, I did things I'm not proud of even more than Marin and artura, those lives I had plunged worlds into chaos, trying to refuse to become the monster I was seen as then but not now but as Sif I was that monster people saw me as. Did I have the right to be one maybe so but as Sif I had plunged more than just the realm worlds into chaos, me and Orin’s war against each other our plan did more than just start chaos. Still not being able to recall it but knowing the feeling of wanting to end it all. To turn everything into ash under the flames of unending golden flames.
As the war in heaven dragged on and the more, I killed in the name of the creator, the eldritch saw me for who I was not a war god or a Pthulminthian but an experiment. An artificial created being close to becoming the concept of war. In my last major battle alongside my Valkyries and angels, I was given a name more like a title that would be renowned forever time. Ares. This battle took place in heaven itself where I recovered my six wings becoming that primordial concept of war even if it wasn’t for very long. It was also the same day I was killed by six and Visenya the black Valkyrie.
“I know that story. The fallen angel that became a god… I was once told by my teacher in Amaranth that Sif being considered the most human was the closest to being a monster. I never knew that was you Rias…” Imkli’s words were drawn out as he focused on the giant mural before me well a part of it being Sif. The story of the fallen angel becoming a god was largely outdated taking parts from various accounts from bards and scholars, the truth of it was I wasn’t the first fallen angel and wasn’t the last. I became a god with even more power than oryan which scared him so much that he wiped me from the annuls of the eldritch archives.
“Skadi told me a similar story, but I never knew who she was until a few months ago which I'm still trying to wrap my head around. I'm still unsure if that’s even right.”
“Yeah. She was the sanest out of all six of us. Skadi the eldritch god of hunting and winter… after I became a fallen angel, she fell like me then it was six after that Renus then Persephone fell becoming fallen lastly Orin fell becoming Hel the eldritch god of death. Renus didn’t survive the war passing the mind’s eye to Imkli and Persephone I believe chose to be reincarnated. Six we all know what she is. Skadi has probably returned to the winter whereas Orin as far as I know has left his eldritch god life behind him.” I shrugged my shoulders knowing that Orin once the eldritch god of death was now just a humble emperor of Pthulminth who would rather see his empire fall than give it to anyone else.
“Rias what was the reason you brought us down here?”
“Right, that. I brought you here because there is something I need to tell you both. Other than myself only you two know of the mind’s eye, Renus who held it before Imkli warned me of something but I can't quite recall I was hoping you two could help with this.”
“As the holder of the mind’s eye, I do not have the past user's memories only recollections imprinted in the knowledge they gained. Renus held it before me and before that Rold had possession of it… they both gave a warning to the next holder which I have only just deciphered. Never allow the golden blood to run cold. You want us to help you discover what it means?” Imkli asked waving his left hand.
I nodded in response to his question, with help from various people from my lives such as Orin. I wanted to remember the warning that Renus gave to me long ago and to remember my life as Sif in full like I could do with Marin and artura, this would be a hard thing to get through as I had many other lives I could remember in the meantime. The names of those lives just stuck in the back of my mind ever-present, that dream I had when I was sixteen years old was now gone. Just a distant dream floating in a void of nothingness just passing on like it never happened.
One thing that was a constant in those dreams was the formless eir that followed me no matter what dream I entered, it spoke in the back of my mind telling me to repent or something of that nature.
“Renus’s warning do you have any idea what it actually could be or are you a bit lost in that area?”
“I-I don’t know… my heart tells me that one day I will feel a pain worse than death and when I feel it I'll want to kill myself. This could all be superficial but who knows.” Not knowing the warning was the worst part of all this knowing whenever I try to think about it my heart begins to hurt trying to come out of my chest. Looking back to Imkli I watched as he turned looking from mural to mural using the mind’s eye, not finding much more than eroded carvings of my past lives. Any names to merit my deeds were completely lost in time.
“I know you can't trust me and that’s completely fair and I wonder why you are using mind’s eye like this but from the facial expressions you showed… you know something that you aren’t ready to disclose about this place and about who you are. More like you don’t know because your subconscious won't tell you who you really are because it will destroy you inside and out.” Imkli’s words are probably right, to a certain degree I don’t know who I truly am and was trying to avoid becoming a monster but the more I grow, I realise one day I will become a monster maybe closer to who I truly am.
Explaining to both Shu and Imkli as I had done with the other grand commanders and Talia, I'm trying so hard to remember my past so I don’t repeat it by becoming a monster. If I could remember Renus’s warning this would be so much easier yet having incomplete memories made this so much fucking harder than it had to be. Imkli understood that I couldn’t tell them everything as I didn’t know everything about myself or my past it was a feeling I should be used to this by now. Imkli tried to respond just like Shu did but couldn’t find the words to make a sentence that made any sense.
“we’ll help. No doubt everyone else will aside from those bastard gods and eldritch who only care for themselves and no one else.” Shu’s words were somewhat accurate to our selfish overseers the eldritch. The eldritch those so-called gods who were beloved by all were a selfish bunch with a few exceptions being Morrigan, týr and Skadi. I couldn’t call Orin an eldritch god as he left that world behind after the war in heaven had ended. The bastard gods she was referring to were the lesser gods that also tried to raise their positions to become eldritch.
Unknown to them after the war in heaven, oryan refused to make any more eldritch, even disallowed any lesser get raised to that station for the simple fact he was scared the war in heaven would happen again. According to Tyr who became the god of war after me only took up that position so no one could clamber to it like sewer rats on a corpse. Whether I wanted it or not the position had to be filled, the person on it had to realise that they sat on the throne of someone who fractured Yggdrasil beyond repair. According also to Tyr the week after the war in heaven was done a seer spoke to eldritch with few words said. ‘The war god will return under the hanged of the blood moon’.
“I've been wondering… now your queen of Numena have you chosen a new name for yourself like something meaning golden.”
“I have actually. From this week onwards my last name and Talia including my bloodline after myself my blood’s name will be eventide which in this context means children of light. I believe ‘nother meaning for it is daughters of gold. I am no longer a pendragon but an eventide, a daughter of the golden mother.”