"What?" Aperio muttered. As the sound of her words travelled over the endless plains of smooth obsidian, the realm appeared to ripple and warp. "What is this?"
The version of herself that stood in front of her only offered a small shrug before she pointed at Aperio's head. "It's you," she said. "We are you. Made by yourself, for yourself."
"That makes no sense," Aperio said, wrapping her wing a little tighter around Caethya. The things in front of her might look and feel like herself, but she could not be certain that they actually were.
"There you go again," another version of herself said. "Doubting your own words." The second version of herself hesitated for a moment before she tilted her head and added, "We go again, I guess."
"Are you her past lives?" Caethya asked, trying her best to peek out from underneath Aperio's unmovable wing. "How would that even work?"
"In a way," the first version of her memory selves replied, setting her eyes on the Demigoddess as a small smile played across her lips. "We are nothing more than fragments of her mind; the ones she cannot yet accept, or continues to remain unaware of. That you are here with her," she continued, crouching down a little to be at eye level with Caethya, "means that she is long past the point where she would need our help."
"But you are still here," Aperio said, placing herself between her disciple and the eerily calm memory version of herself as the obsidian ocean beneath her flickered with every word she spoke. "If there is no need, why are we here?"
"Because you refuse to remember," another version of herself replied. "You do not wish to remember your past; do not want to know who you were. What you were."
Aperio glared at the version of herself that had spoken, narrowing her eyes slightly as the black glass beneath the copy began to crack.
"I know perfectly well who I am," she replied, each word causing the cracks underneath the other version of herself to widen. "What I am," Aperio added, taking a step towards the first fragment of her memory. "I have no desire to become what I was before."
The ocean of obsidian shuddered as Aperio lowered her head, her eyes briefly lingering on the concern-marred face of her disciple before they locked onto her own reflection in the impossibly featureless black glass beneath her feet.
"I don't want to be like her again," she mumbled. "Why can't I just know why I died?" Aperio removed her wing from Caethya and let herself fall to her knees, her hair pooling messily on the obsidian sea under her. "Did I go too far? Did I regret what I did? …Was I just bored and decided breaking all of reality was the correct choice? Or, did I want to forget?"
"You can, don't know, yes, probably, and most definitely yes," the first of the fragments to speak replied, causing Aperio to focus on that version of herself faster than should have been physically possible.
"What?" the fragment asked, tilting her head. "You know this as well as I do. I am you, after all. That tiny voice at the back of your mind? That's us. You." The fragment offered a shrug. "But you know that already."
"No," Aperio replied, "I don't know." She stood up, brushing away Caethya's hand as she tried to hold her back. "How can I talk to a memory that I cannot even remember having? None of this makes any sense! "
"How did we create all of this?" one of the fragments asked, gesturing at the infinite ends of the ocean of black glass. "Why do we like Caethya? Why do we like fighting even though nothing could ever be a challenge?”
"You don't know," another fragment said. "We”—she gestured at Aperio and all the fragments of herself—”don't know. Not really, at least."
"But," yet another continued, "that doesn't make any of it less true."
The All-Mother just stared at the fragment of herself, lowering the hand that she had slowly raised in order to…
Her train of thought was interrupted as Caethya placed herself in front of her, standing on her toes causing her still concern-filled face to appear in her vision. "I have no idea what's going on here," her disciple said, taking Aperio's raised hand into her own, "but could you at least try to listen to these… yous?" She shook her head, hesitating for a moment before her shoulders slumped. "Please, I don't know what else I should do. I don't mind repeating myself for you, but you need to do something yourself; talking will only get you so far."
Aperio looked at Caethya for a moment longer, trying to see if she could find anything wrong with the Elf. "Fine," she said, shifting to cross her legs beneath herself as she mumbled her next words. "Listening to figments of my imagination that I somehow made real… Ridiculous."
"Isn't everything here because of your imagination?" Caethya asked as she set herself down in front of the All-Mother. She did not quite look comfortable being surrounded with the other versions of Aperio that walked around the endless sea of finite obsidian. "I wouldn't put it past you — your old you — to make something like this because you knew you would need it."
"And why would I do that?" Aperio snorted. "I was a bitch. I just did what I wanted because no-one could stop me. Doesn't seem like a person who would prepare for their own demise and subsequent return.
"None of them seem to know either," she added after a moment, glaring at the closest other version of herself. A thought caused a sliver of her mana to flow towards the fragment she was looking at. Aperio could sense them just fine with her aura, but that only confused her further. It was most definitely impossible that the memory fragments were living beings... but, if she went by normal metrics, neither was she.
She did not breathe, and the blood that flowed through her body was more akin to mana that had taken physical form than actual blood. The fragments, however, were mere clouds of mana — just like the one she did not want to become.
But they get to keep their form, Aperio thought with a frown. Or is it because I am imagining them that way?
"That's exactly why," the first fragment that had talked to her said. "And yes, we hear your thoughts, just like you can hear ours. They are yours, too, after all."
"And I simply don't want to know them," Aperio mocked, her eyes never leaving the movements of the fragment as she wandered around the obsidian expanse. "Why would I collect all the fragments that had been embedded in the deities if I did not want to know? Why, then, did I end up here?"
"Because you want to know, but also not," Caethya said, placing her hand on Aperio's cheek. Her disciple tried to turn her head, but the All-Mother continued to stare at the fragment for a moment longer before she let the Demigoddess complete the motion.
A flick against her forehead caused Aperio to blink and a shudder to run through the ocean of black glass. "Pick one and talk to her," her disciple said. "Or get us out of here and deal with Epemirial and the other Accused."
The All-Mother did neither, taking Caethya's hand first and making sure the Demigoddess had not somehow hurt herself. She did let her senses wander through the real world as best she could, furrowing her brows slightly at the nearly frozen scene that greeted her. Whatever she was currently doing was happening a lot faster than she had thought.
"Fine," she finally said, her eyes still fixed on her disciple’s hand. A thought brought the fragment she had been talking to back in their vicinity, just out of arm's reach – even for herself – to her right. "How did I- we," she corrected herself, "die?"
"We didn't," the fragment replied, tilting her head slightly. "We cannot die—"
"Because I'm everything?" Aperio interjected, narrowing her eyes slightly as she sensed a few of the fragments disappearing.
"No," the reflection of herself replied. "We are not everything. We are not Caethya nor Epemirial. We are the nothing upon which we weave reality."
"If I was nothing," Aperio said, placing her hands in her lap. "I would not exist."
"If there is enough nothing, there is something. You. Us. What we are is outside a mortal’s comprehension, which is why you made a body to inhabit. One that is still woefully inadequate."
"Still?" Aperio balled her hand into a fist, then squinted slightly at the possibly-imagined phenomenon of reality twisting due to the force of her grip. "I won't be a weird cloud again," she said, her eyes locking onto the small droplet of her own blood that fell onto the black glass. "And you — I? — better start making sense soon."
Her memory self only shrugged. "I merely answered your question. You can't die. Whatever it is that Epemirial remembers, or thinks she remembers, is not capable of killing you. You can forget, yes, but you cannot die. It is an impossibility. But I am sure you knew that already."
"Yes," Aperio replied. "I know I planned to live a life as a mortal, I even asked Moria to join me in that. But," the All-Mother continued in an attempt to forestall the fragment's offering of either more information she already knew, or another cryptic and rambling sentence that cleared nothing up, "that does not explain why I forgot, why I had to live as a fucking slave, or why my memories are now trapped in some weird-ass crystals that I can only destroy by physically punching them!
"It makes no sense!" Aperio yelled, batting away some of the splinters of obsidian that rose from beneath her as well as falling from the reflection above. "Why would I do that? How can there even be something that my mana cannot manipulate if everything is made from it?!
"And," she continued pointing at the way-too-calm fragment of herself, "why would I make some sassy projection of myself that only manages to make me even angrier?"
"You can't do anything with them because you don't want to." The fragment let out a sigh. "None of us know why we appear like this. We are not even different people, after all.
"My — your — best guess is that we feel the need to hear it from someone else. Due to the fact that the people you trust have none of the answers you seek, we made this. Just take those thoughts from the back of your mind and allow them to take the spotlight, front and centre. Open the flood gates, if you will."
"I'm going insane," Aperio mumbled, her eyes darting from one fragment of herself to another. "Is this how the other slaves felt?" Yelled at by their own thoughts? …Did they get the idea of the collar from something I did?
----------------------------------------
Caethya suppressed the urge to slap Aperio, not only because she loved the woman but also because she would probably break her hand doing it. But maybe it would help… A few broken bones would be a small price to pay to help Aperio get out of her mental spiral of doom.
Instead, she held a raised finger towards the imitation of her love and used her other hand to lift — or at least try to — Aperio's head.
"You are not going insane," Caethya said, placing the hand she had used to quiet the weird projection on her Goddess' cheek. Probably…
She was never quite sure what was going on with Aperio. Of course, she knew most of the time she was mulling over something that she thought she had caused, but generally her Goddess was not this scatterbrained.
Maybe giving your memories a physical form is a bad idea? Judging by the mumbling coming from Aperio, that was likely the case. Seeing her love beside herself like this was not something Caethya was sure she knew how to deal with.
Being thrust into a position of previously unfathomable power had been remarkably easy to adapt to — mainly because no-one really knew about it yet and thus nothing was expected of her, but also because she had already been in a position of power beforehand. If she had gone all-out, back then, people would have had a hard time stopping her.
Now, however, Caethya was at a loss for what to do. Before she had somehow always managed to think of something to do. Most of it had boiled down to calming Aperio through touch — be it physical or magical — but now, the Demigoddess was finding that even that failed to do the trick.
She was in a realm that made no sense — Her Soul? — with countless copies of Aperio aimlessly wandering around. It did not help that some of the copies were spewing nonsense that only worsened the condition of the true Aperio. At least they listen to me…
Listen to me? An idea sparked in her mind; one so stupid it might just work. None of this makes sense anyway.
"Listen to me," she said, with a bit more force than she had thought. Trying to physically shake the All-Mother from her stupor only resulted in Caethya moving herself around instead, but the intended effect was still achieved as Aperio ceased mumbling to herself and looked at her.
"I don't know what this is," Caethya said, gesturing at the expanse of black glass before she took Aperio's hands into her own. "But I have an idea. So please. Listen."
Aperio gave her a slow nod, obviously not quite sure if she could trust the idea. "Sure."
"Okay," Caethya said, taking a deep breath as she tried to ignore the fact that the trust her love had in her had seemingly vanished. She vaguely understood why, as whatever Aperio was currently going through was not something she could likely imagine, but it still hurt.
"These… fragments" —she gestured to the version of Aperio that sat beside her— "are your memories, right?" The All-Mother gave a nod. "So what they know should be known to you already, right?"
"Yes?" Aperio replied with another, slower nod. "But I don't know how to remember!" She let out a sigh, lowering her head as she did. "I'm not even sure if they really are my memories and not something I came up with to torment myself."
The fragment of her Goddess crossed her arms in front of her chest at the words, obviously unhappy with what the real Aperio had said. Still, just like Caethya had instructed her earlier, she remained quiet.
"Can you recall the feeling you had when you got some memories back from the crystals?" Caethya asked, brushing her thumbs over Aperio's knuckles. "This time you didn't break the crystal to absorb the mana within, and who knows what that does to the memory-regaining process." Who knows how you even made that…
"So I should just break it?" the All-Mother asked, the mana surrounding her immediately growing denser as if she was already preparing to do just that. It only lasted for a moment, however, before it dissipated again. "But that would destroy everyone's memories…"
"You’re right," Caethya replied, not quite convinced of her own words. Hopefully this works. "Just try to remember how it felt when your other memories returned to you. Try to replicate that when feeling the mana that surrounds us here."
The Demigoddess of Creation could not be sure if the mana that filled this endlessly finite space was, as she was suspecting, that of the memories themselves instead of that of Aperio, but it was the only thing that seemed to make sense. It felt different, somehow. It lacked the warmth, the curiosity, and sadly also the doubt that was omnipresent in her Goddess' aura.
That was not to say that the mana did not belong to Aperio — all mana did, after all — but it was unmistakably attuned to the All-Mother in a way she did not quite understand. They have to be memories.
"And why would that work?" the All-Mother asked, a bit of the warmth of her mana returning. "How did you even come up with that?"
"It's how I taught myself magic before my parents wanted to hire teachers," Caethya replied, offering a small smile. "I would sit and watch my mother do her exercise and then try to replicate it by feel." She cast her gaze down, saying her next words a little quieter. "I don't know if it'll work, but talking doesn't seem to be effective. Neither with me, nor with these… yous.
You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.
"No matter how many times I try," she continued, meeting Aperio's eyes again, "talking just leads you to walk in circles, but I will say it again anyway. You are you. What your old you did does not define you; doesn't make you a bad person. She isn’t you."
Aperio did not reply immediately, her eyes wandering over the obsidian ocean and the dwindling number of fragments that wandered through it. The more copies that vanished, the more of the usual warmth seemed to return to Aperio. Her aura became more comfortable, for lack of a better term, and given her Goddess' slight change in posture Caethya felt safe to assume that there was a shift going on within her mind as well. There was a feeling growing in the air, one that she could only describe as nostalgia.
The obsidian sea upon which she sat also reacted, the black surface becoming slightly transparent and letting the Demigoddess get a glimpse at something that lingered beyond. She wasn't sure what exactly it was that she saw, but it was there, moving behind the milky obsidian. The colours of this other thing just barely managed to shine through enough for her to see.
"I don't know how many atrocities I've committed. I don't even know if Aperio is my real name," the All-Mother said as her gaze lingered on the fragment closest to the two of them for a moment longer. "But I know that my actions were eventually sufficient cause for me to kill myself. Well, try to, at least.
"Why I let Epemirial and her people think that they managed to off me is not something I know," she continued, gently wrapping her wings around Caethya and herself. The Demigoddess moved herself a little closer, giving her love's hands a tight squeeze as she nodded for her to continue.
Aperio did not seem to notice how the fragments continued to vanish as she carried on speaking, nor how the one that sat beside them had the faintest of smiles on her face.
"I wanted to see what it would be like to live as a mortal," the All-Mother continued. "How it would be to have nothing. To be used. A way to punish myself, perhaps."
"Are you sure?" Caethya asked in the hope that the question would help Aperio.
"Sure? No, I don't remember." She took a deep breath, and the mana that billowed through the obsidian sea flowed towards the All-Mother. "But I feel like that's what I did. They couldn't hurt me then, and most definitely not now. The only options were that I did it myself and either did not bother to correct them, or planned that they would assume they were responsible.
"You saw me at their gathering," Aperio continued, the black sea that surrounded them giving way to the scene Caethya had already spectated once before. "How I tricked Epemirial into ignoring me so I could listen in. I knew what they were doing. I knew that they were messing with Souls and I did nothing!
"I just went there to find out if they were actually a threat to me. Not because I cared for the Souls they abused, or even the rules they had broken."
"Then why did you choose to live a life as a mortal?" Caethya asked, hesitating for a moment before she continued. "Why did you choose to have nothing?" How did she even do that?
----------------------------------------
Aperio tilted her head slightly as she looked at her disciple. I did choose to live like that, didn't I? It was not clear as day by any means, but it felt like the correct answer. It felt like the truth; unclear, yes, but irrefutable nonetheless.
There was more to be felt in the moment, too. It was not quite the flood of feelings and memories she experienced when she destroyed a dungeon core, but more of a gentle stream that invited her to dip her toes into it. Maybe take a swim.
The All-Mother gave in, letting herself be immersed in the slow waves of mana. Caethya had said she should try to find this feeling. Her disciple had stuck with her even though she had been running in circles for Gods know how long. Even if she had not known how, or even what the real issue happened to be, she had always tried to help. Aperio trusted her.
Once this was over, she would have to take the time to properly thank Caethya for what she had done. For now, Aperio simply wrapped her wings a little tighter around the Demigoddess as well as letting some of her mana flow around and through her. They might be in the safety of her own weird mindscape-thing, but Aperio felt that more was not appropriate at this time.
"Probably because I did want to punish myself for doing nothing," she finally replied. "And I deserved it."
Her next words were suddenly cut off by the arrival of a memory in her mind's eye, one that was clearer than the others. It was one of herself, floating in the same space she now occupied. Unlike her current form, the Aperio in this memory was little more than a cloud of mana that loosely resembled an Elf. The sea of black glass was in constant motion, both on the ground and in the sky, the sound of it breaking and its weird reverse echoing through the infinite expanse as if it was nothing more than a large hall.
The fragment that had sat close to Caethya and herself smiled as Aperio glanced at her before she dissolved into a fine black dust, swept away by an unseen and unfelt breeze.
"That doesn't work," her remembered self mumbled as she let go of a small ball that immediately dissolved into the same black dust as the recently departed fragment. "Why did I even make those stupid things?"
A wave of her old self caused reality to unravel itself and a few more black marbles to emerge from the rift. "Right," the old Aperio mumbled as she picked up one of them in a suddenly solid-looking hand. "Why do they try to toy with their own Souls too?"
She turned the black marble every which way before a sigh escaped the cloud. The bit of mana the impossible act had produced drifted into the marble, turning it from the solid black it had been to the colourful orb of light Aperio had come to know as a Soul.
The glow within the newborn Soul lasted only for a second before it winked out and the marble returned to its light-absorbing black. "Not even a tiny bit?" Her cloudy self shook her nonexistent head. "I should have just never made these things. I don't need one, so why does anyone else?
"Because they aren't capable of living if they don't exist," the old Aperio continued, answering her own question. A foreign thought that was still her own crossed Aperio's mind, undoubtedly from the memory she was currently reliving. The brief consideration to make something akin to a Soul that could hold herself raced past before a jagged crystal made from a somehow even darker material appeared before her old self.
Just like before, a bit of her mana flowed into it, but this time it did not come back out. "I should really thank Ulria for coming up with those memory crystals. Their structure is so useful for storing stuff." Her old self stared at the crystal for a moment before she laughed. "Nah," she continued with a shake of her head. "She would just invite me to one of her harvest festivals again."
Another one of the foreign thoughts caused countless more of the jagged-looking crystals to appear, all of various shapes and sizes. "That should be enough for Verenier," her old self said. "Enough to spur them on to get stronger, at least. Just need to… go there."
The obsidian sea beneath the cloud that was her old self fell still as she let out a long sigh. The doubt Aperio knew all too well was back, but this time it was not her own — not directly, anyway — but that of the old Aperio. She was not quite committed to whatever idea she had, but it was clear as day that she saw it as the only way.
"I let it go this far…" her old self mumbled with a shake of her almost nonexistent head. "Nobody would learn if I didn't do it. I wouldn't pay for what I let happen.
"Perspective is good!" The old Aperio cheered herself on, faking a different voice that sounded almost like Ferio. Another thought racing through the All-Mother's mind caused the crystals she had just made to vanish. "I hope Ferio can forgive me for this. Whatever comes won't be nice for her. For anyone, really.
"But sometimes," her old self continued, the cloud of mana coalescing into the form Aperio remembered her past self usually having, "harsh measures are needed. It's not like I'll die; I'll just forget. Hopefully forever." She shook her head, touching the armlet that adorned her right bicep. "Why do I even want to save this version? Because of Ferio?"
With another sigh and another shake of her head, Aperio's old self vanished along with the memory she had just seen, replaced by a view of Verenier from space she had experienced once before.
Diskrye twisted itself around the memory of Aperio that stood silently in the nothing of space, dancing around its mistress as she placed the crystals she had made all over the world.
Only a matter of time…
The thought echoed through Aperio's mind, both past and present, as her old self looked at the world below her. "It'll be such a mess," she said. "And I won't even see it."
"Then don't leave?" Diskrye asked, mirroring the shape of old Aperio as it took its place next to her. "Where are you going, anyway? And when will you be back? I am almost done with the next set of worlds. They are quite nice, if I say so myself. Especially the fjords on one of them."
"I can't tell you, Diskrye," her old self replied with a wave of her hand. "It would be too much for you to know."
"If you say so," the space-born deity replied, the distaste for the lack of answer obvious in its voice.
"I do," her memory self said. There came a long, quiet moment in which Diskrye and her old self simply stood there in the void of space, observing Verenier. Then, past Aperio spoke again. "Look out for Epemirial and the ones that follow her. They will make some claims, but they are lying. Don't assign the new worlds to anyone either; they can take care of themselves."
"Is that why you asked me to make those changes?"
"Yes," she replied with a nod. "Can't have them falling into disarray while I am gone, now can I?"
"But the old worlds can?" Diskrye asked, swooping in front of Aperio.
"They need it," her old self replied, unmoved by the shadowy deity that was directly in front of her face. "As do I.
"There is another way," she added, twisting the armlet a little, "but that is a last resort. I made the problem, so it is only right that I make it go away. Even if it takes a while." And some pain.
The words rang through Aperio's mind as if they were her own. She knew what was awaiting her, and she wanted nothing more than to reach into the memory and strangle her old self for what she had done. The Aperio of the past had likely planned her own torment, but had effectively punished someone who knew nothing of the crimes that had been committed. Someone who would never have done such things in the first place. Who would have cared for what she made.
"Calm." The voice of Caethya caused the memory to waver and, ultimately, vanish. Aperio's vision returned to the sea of black glass, now in turmoil, and a concerned-looking Demigoddess staring at her. "I don't know what you saw, but I am sure that if it continued, this space would have broken." She nodded to a patch of the obsidian sea that had disappeared, showing the maddening kaleidoscope of colours beyond.
"I saw myself preparing to die," Aperio said, ignoring the tear in reality that was already beginning to mend itself. "Talking about how I would fix something I did but ignoring what Epemirial and her ilk did to the Souls. I just didn't seem to care."
"But you did seem fit to punish yourself?"
"Apparently." Aperio looked at her disciple a moment longer before she sighed and lowered her head. "There is something else, too. I made the dungeon cores and put parts of myself into them in order to make them, and I quote, 'Enough to spur them on to get stronger'.
"What was I even thinking?" she asked, leaning herself back. "Let's make some dungeons that kill people before I kill myself! Let's give Epemirial and her fucks more time to torture people!"
A slap followed immediately by a loud "Ow!" echoed through the obsidian sea.
Aperio blinked, touching her face where Caethya had hit her. It hadn't hurt, physically at least, but it had managed to clear her mind a little. A thought and a quick motion had the Elf's hand in her own and enough mana to resurrect her from the dead flowing through her.
"Why would you do that?!" Aperio half asked, half yelled. "You broke your hand!"
She would fix it, of course, but that was still a lot more reckless than she had thought Caethya would ever be. The fact that she had been hit did not mean as much to Aperio as it probably should. Perhaps she should get angry that Caethya had hit her, but her anger was aimed squarely at herself, not at the one she had come to love. "I was doing it again, right?"
"Yes," Caethya replied with a shaky voice, wiping a few tears from her eyes with her free hand. "Just stop blaming yourself for everything that bitch did. You aren't her; not anymore. She died like she wanted to."
Aperio stared at Caethya's hand in her own, gently stroking it as she removed the mana she had used to heal it. "Can you promise me something?" she asked, locking eyes with her disciple.
Caethya gave a hesitant nod, seemingly not quite sure what the All-Mother wanted. "Of course."
"Don't hurt yourself because of me," Aperio said, a small flex of her mental muscles dissolving the last tears that still clung to Caethya's eyes. "You should not hurt yourself to fix me."
"I will do what is necessary to get you to understand," Caethya replied gently. "I did not want to do it — don’t want to do it again — but you don't listen when you are like that. You never do.
"Dwelling on it won't make it better either," she continued, placing her free hand on top of Aperio's. "Go forwards, not backwards. Get your memories back, and then act with that new knowledge. Don't try to pull something out of your ass because it fits with the ridiculous narrative you have in your head."
She shook her head and sighed. "Yes, the old you did horrible things and was largely illogical, but that's not you anymore. I don't know how many more times I have to say it, but she died. She won't come back just because you retrieve your memories."
Aperio wanted to object, but that was exactly the attitude Caethya was talking about. She wanted a reason to justify how she felt; she was as aware of that fact as anyone else. It made little sense, but neither did her entire existence. A sentient nothing that made the things.
She shook her head lightly, the obsidian sea beneath her becoming a little lighter as she did. Before she could return from this endless ocean of black glass, Aperio had one more thing to do. She needed to see every crime Epemirial and the other Accused had committed, even if it was only to justify the punishment she had already decided on. Death.
Caethya wiggled her hand, pulling it away as Aperio let go before she climbed on the All-Mother's lap and wrapped her arms around her as best she could. The Elf rested her head against Aperio's chest, perhaps trying to listen for the beat of a heart she did not have or for the calming sound of taking a breath that would never come.
"There is still so much more," Aperio said, her eyes wandering through the now-empty ocean of obsidian. Though, to call it truly empty would be lying. It was filled with the memories she had crammed into the crystal, all of it slowly flowing determinedly in a direction but yet never reaching anything.
The feeling of remembrance had left Aperio, but still memories were nagging to be viewed at the edges of her mind. Not ones from her own life, but ones from Epemirial and her ilk. She had said she wanted to see them so she could be sure of her judgement, but even back then Aperio had known what to expect. She didn't want to see it. Did not want to feel the anger it would bring.
"It's okay," Caethya said, rubbing Aperio's back. The All-Mother wrapped her arms and wings around her disciple, gently resting her head on Caethya's as she let a touch of her mana flow through her. Her disciple was fine, the broken hand back in perfect condition and no sign left that she was hurting, and yet Aperio felt like something was off.
"It's the first time that a memory wants to be viewed," she said instead. "Why?"
"Because you want to see it," Caethya replied, her voice slightly muffled as she spoke into Aperio's chest. "You're really dense, sometimes." She pulled her head back and pushed herself up a little before planting a quick kiss on Aperio's cheek. "You look at the memory and I’ll keep you calm, okay?"
Aperio gave a hesitant nod in reply, holding onto her disciple a little tighter as she let the memory further into her mind. The notion that Caethya could keep her calm with something as simple as a hug might have seemed silly, but the All-Mother knew it worked. Whether it was magic or because of what she felt for Caethya, the Elf always managed to calm her by merely being there.
The first thing that greeted her in the memory was something that caused her to hug Caethya just a fraction more tightly. It was her own corpse, displayed on a stone altar and surrounded by deities. As she looked at those who surrounded her body, she noted that they all had one thing in common. They were all part of the Accused. What are they doing?
Epemirial held a knife, the same one Aperio had used to kill herself not once, but twice. The symbol of the Inaru Empire sitting where a normal pommel would be already caused anger to rise within her, one that was easily overshadowed by the rage that bloomed as Epemirial began to cut into her dead body.
There was no blood, no inner tissues, not even bones to be revealed. Each slice of that infernal knife caused the shell of her previous self to crumble away. All that was left behind were a few small crystals, ones the All-Mother recognized to be tiny versions of the dungeon cores she had made. Why her old self had simply given away the memories in that way was beyond her. The only reason she could come up with was that, perhaps, she wanted to be able to kill them when she revived and so placed the incentive within them.
The ones she had retrieved from the accused were the ones that explained — at least to a degree — what had happened to her. Could they see them? Fel'Erreyth could… Aperio somehow doubted that they could as the scene shifted in front of her, time seemingly turning back as the body reassembled itself and returned to her bed where the Goddess of Duty and Loss had first found it.
It did not stop there, however, running back further and further, showing each and every time Epemirial tried and failed to kill the All-Mother. And yet, at every failure the old Aperio seemed to conveniently not notice the attempt, thus allowing Epemirial to try again and again.
The Goddess of Duty and Loss, through all the attempts, only had hatred on her mind. She truly wanted nothing more than to grind Aperio into dust and usher in an age with herself as the ruler. Not anyone else, only her. She failed, as Aperio knew, but the desire was there. A burning passion that had consumed everything as time went on.
There had once been something good in Epemirial. At least, Aperio believed that to be the case as the further back the memories went, the less cruel the Goddess was. The more she cared for her people, for those that lost themselves and others while doing the right thing. There was no surprise event or turning point that had twisted Epemirial to an evil path of deceit and murder; just an ever-growing desire to right the wrongs she saw until everyone but her was evil and had to be controlled. Was that the mistake?
Another shift and she saw the same journey for Lor'Kem and the other Accused. They all pursued their Domains more and more blindly until all they could see was a world in which they were right and everyone else was wrong. Shells of their former selves that needed to get more power so they could save the world from those that corrupted it. From me…
In a way, they had been right. She was the one that had given them their powers; had set them on this path. But not everyone went insane. Ediscio was a good example. The God of Knowledge and Love had not changed, as far as she could tell. But every single one of the Accused had fallen deeper and deeper into cruelty as they started to deceive themselves to justify their means.
Aperio wanted the deluge of memories to stop, but it did not. Life after life played before her mind's eye, showing the final insanity of the Accused before going back through their timeline to show her what they once were. People with an ambition that she had taken and made their source of power. The Domain was their passion and she had given them reason to ignore everything else to fuel it; to grow stronger. Eventually, for their madness to end, she had to die.
The issue was that it had not worked. They still continued on. Came up with even more cruel experiments to ensure they could create a world that would fit the ideals they had twisted beyond recognition.
Tears streamed down Aperio's face as the memory-carrying mana that filled the obsidian ocean flooded into her, showing her every severed limb, every raped and tortured Soul the Accused had gotten their hands on. Their crimes were clear, and so was their reasoning. It did not make sense to anyone but themselves, but it did not have to. No-one could stand against them. Twisted their truths beyond repair…
They could not, should not come back. Simply ripping out their divinity would not solve the corruption of their mind. They would never stop pursuing what they thought was the perfect world. They had to die.
The world around her shifted, the black glass beneath her crumbling as reality twisted itself apart. Aperio stood up from the throne she had occupied in the courtroom, her mind still in the slowly dissolving obsidian sea with Caethya in her arms. She would do what was needed to save her creation. Her past self was wrong. Selfish. Weak.
She had sought an escape for herself, not a fix for the mistakes she had made. Aperio had one; one she did not like, but one that was necessary. One that would only require a single word to usher in an age of chaos.
"Death."
Her voice quieted the courtroom immediately. There was no blood or rolling heads. The Accused, many of which had already been clawing at their throats, crumpled to the ground one after another. The light in the room gave way to darkness as Aperio brought her Void back into the Court, guiding what was left of the Accused to the River of Souls so that they might be washed clean of their corruption and start a new life.
Aperio took a breath of the nothing that spilled from her Void, letting her mind touch all of Verenier. She could not yet touch the crystals that contained her memories, but she knew where they were. She no longer feared what they contained — had no more reason to lie to herself. They will be mine, in time.
The All-Mother touched the armlet that still adorned the bicep of her body in the courtroom, a glimpse of another time flashing through her mind before it was replaced with the warmth of comfort. Her old self had failed with her first and second try, but she would do it right.
I have to, Aperio thought, giving Caethya a squeeze before the sea of obsidian finally crumbled away. For me. For her.