Fallen Gor'achen I

The Aether

Unknown

As the strength of the Chaos bathing me fades, the pain recedes but does not disappear. The pain from my scars never goes away. Through death and reincarnation the scars from being burned by Chaos fire, which cover close to half my body remain, and the pain from those burns still seers my Soul. Pain is my oldest friend. Pain is the source of my strength. That which does not kill me, makes me stronger. I know no truer words. Each time I suffer, I grow in strength. Without pain to temper my will, I do not know if I could have rebuilt myself and lived once more.

While still floating in midair, I faintly smile. Seeing the expression on my face, most beings would be terrified. With the scars covering the left side of my face, I have the face of a monster, but that suits me. I

The effects most sentient beings think of as natural laws result from Order's influence on the metaverse as a whole. These "Laws" can be ignored if one has enough Power of the right type. The Od is a Power that is inimical to all that arises from the Primal Powers. Ignoring Laws such as gravity can be done, but in most situations it servers little practical purpose. I can hover or float, but if I want to fly, I will need some form of propulsion. According to the knowledge given to me by Life, in the past, the supposed natural laws resulting from Laws originating from Order were easier to ignore, but as time passes they are rapidly becoming more difficult to circumvent.

The Second Metaverse has never existed in a vacuum. The Primal Powers have always had an effect on it, but with only Light and Dark in close proximity, but the arrival of Order and Chaos on the boundaries of the Second Metaverse started ongoing changes to the entire metaverse Initially, Life and Death were able to limit the effects. Now, with their injuries, they are limited in how they can fight against the Primal Powers. As the effects of the Primal Powers grow, the metaverse will continue to change. Even if they were not both severely injured, Life and Death would still be limited in their ability to stop the changes. This metaverse was created by Life, with Power fed to her by Death. He acquired the Power by bringing Death to massive amounts of Light and Dark, butHe did not appear to put a dent in either of them. The Primal Powers are too vast, and they have always had an effect on this metaverse. They always will.

As the Avatar of the Od, I will be thrown into battle with Primal Powers until my eventual destruction, but I am too weak.. I was woken from sleep too early. I need to finish rebuilding myself, and I need to acquire greater stronger. I had to rebuild my Mind and Soul to be able to rebuild my Body, but before I was able to complete my Body, I was awoken by Woden's minions. Without an iota of Coalescence, I should have been several times stronger, than I am now, and yet, I am already in the First Circle of Coalescence. The cycle of having raw Chaos tear my Body apart and rebuilding it again helped me, but I still have a ways to go.

With a thought, I apply the Od to the locks on my device and open the hatch. I never named this thing. I supposed I should call it my focusing chamber. As long as I get my hand on Primal beings, I can drain them of their Power and their lives. With the focusing chamber, I can continue to strengthen myself. Keeping myself from smirking in satisfaction, I step out of my focusing chamber.

Standing in the middle of the Night Raven's hold, Meili has a pensive expression on her face and a vacant look in her eyes. She stares into space, seeming unaware of where she is. As I move closer to her, she does not register my presence. She normally keeps her emotions under control, with very little of emotional state radiating, but at the moment, her roiling emotions practically flood out of her. Along with the emotions countless disjointed memory fragments seem to race across the surface of her Mind. Her Mind and Soul are wide open. If an enemy were to attack her at this moment, she would be helpless, completely unable to respond to, at least, the initial strike.

"Meili."

My single quiet word falls into breaks the silence of the hold, but Meili does not react. When my hand touches her shoulder, she practically jumps out of skin. The vacant look disappears from her eyes in a flash.

"Brand?!" As she makes a single word exclamation, the confusion in Meili's voice mirrors the tumultuous of her emotions.

"What happened?"

Even though her awareness should provide a clear image of the hold for her, Meili swiftly glances around. "What do you mean? What's wrong?"

"You. We haven't been together for long, but you're not acting like you normally do."

With a wide-eyed expression on her face, Meili brings her rampant emotions under control, or perhaps, she just restores the shields around her Soul and her Mind. With her thoughts and emotions hidden, her expression returns to her normal, slightly cynical, and decidedly mocking one.

"Nothing is wrong. You and your self-flagellation just brought out a lot of old memories, I would have rather left buried." Meili flashes me a smile, but something, still, feels off about her.

Keeping a flat, unemotional expression on my face, I stare at Meili for a moment. "You were wide open. You didn't even register my presence until I touched you."

Once again, Meili quickly looks around. "The Night Raven is safe enough. Other than the two of us, Alyssa is the only one here, and you destroyed her Imbuements. She is no more than a common human, anymore. Even if I let her try for a day, she would be hard-pressed to kill me."

I nod. "I suppose you're right."

Meili's smile shifts into a lascivious grin, and the air of cockiness, which she had from the moment I met her, returns. "You've been in that torture chamber for almost four months."

With a theatrical wave of her hand, Meili's miniskirt, halter top, and weapons belt disappear. Since you're already naked, we should make up for lost time. The more we try, the more chance we have of you giving me a child."

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Meili steps up to me and puts her arms around my neck. As she looks up into my eyes, she frowns. "You have grown half-a-head taller."

Running my hands down Meili's back, I feel a shiver in her body. I flash my horror show grin. "Is that a bad thing?"

Using my shoulders for support, Meili lifter herself into the air, so our eyes are at the same level, and wraps her legs around me. "No. Not bad. You were always on the short side for a Titan. A downright midget compared to your older siblings."

"How big were the Titans?"

"The smallest were three or four times your height. Your eldest siblings …" Meili's voice fades out and a dark, pensive look fills her eyes.

After close to a minute of Meili being lost in her thought, I squeezer her ass with both hands. "My eldest siblings?"

Meili starts and a myriad of emotions flickers across her face. Hints of them break through the shield around her Mind and Souls, but they change so fast, I cannot follow them. As the emotions disappear back into the depths of her Soul, Meili licks her lips. "I never saw the eldest. I heard they were taller than the tallest trees and more powerful than any of their younger brethren, but they disappeared after the sister gave birth to hundreds of children. Those children were the mightiest of the Elder Gods, and their children were among the strongest of the High Men."

I shrug. "I have a long way to go. I already knew that. But right now, I need a little relaxation."

Meili hungrily returns my kiss. As I ignore gravity, we float in the air in the hold, and her eyes open wide. "You've learned new trick."

"Laws were made to be broken. Beside, I've been curious what it would be like to fuck in zero gravity."

Meili just grins and kisses me.

* * * * *

Floating in Night Raven's hold, I hold a sleeping Meili in my arms. As an Avatar of Transcendent, she should not need much, if any, sleep, but not long after, we finished, she fell into a deep sleep. I do not know what caused her mental and emotional turmoil, but it must have taken a toll on her. She would not be sleeping so deeply otherwise.

"Master." Seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere, Night Raven's voice fills the hold.

"What is it?"

We are near our destination. Innumerable debris fills this region of the Aether. One object matches with a recent signature in the dimensional ripper."

"What signature?"

"The identification label for it is Gor'achen."

"Gor'achen?"

The name unleashes my memories. A flood of images raves through my mind. Slave pens. Gladiators. Assassinations. A forge. A mirror that was not a mirror. A massively muscled, big man, who looked like he was half ape. An ethereally beautiful, sliver-haired DokkAlfar. With the memories, my emotions pain, loss, rage, and hate. Hate for the lizards calling themselves Dragons. Hate for Woden.

In the blood-soaked flying citadel called Gor'achen, I found the two people, who mattered to me the most in my life. I cannot say I loved either of them. I am not someone capable of feeling love. But they both mattered to me. They fell to the manipulations of Woden and the Dragons. I have yet to pay Woden or the lizards calling themselves Dragons the debts I owe them, but if I live long enough, I will. And behind both parties, the Dragon calling itself God lurks in the shadows of the Primal Powers. That thing is my ultimate target.

After weaving a spell with the Od to keep Meili suspended in an area ignoring gravity, I pull my pteruges, boots, and weapon harness out from my Core Realm. Once dressed, I head to the deck of the Night Raven .

A wall of silver and green Power is the first thing to greet my eyes. I cannot so much as guess the Night Raven's distance from the wall nor its size. In front of the ship's bow, it stretches farther than I can see in every direction. The dark clouds of the Aether hide the wall's farthest reaches.

Not seeing Gor'achen, I move to the bow, and the citadel comes into view in front of and below the starboard bow. There is no denying that hunk or red rock with the damaged city atop it is Gor'achen. With the winds inside the Night Raven's dimensional barrier stilled, we hang motionless in relation to the citadel. From the apparent size of Gor'achen, the citadel is twenty to twenty-five miles away from the Night Raven .

Looking back at the at the green and silver wall of Power, Gor'achen puts its size in better perspective. Just the part I can see has to stretch at least a thousand miles in any direction. But that estimate could be completely off. In the Aether, distance can be almost impossible to determine. There are no landmarks to use to judge size and distance. The omnipresent dark clouds of latent Power and potential matter can be just inches away or they can be tens, hundreds, or thousands of miles away. Without the ability to extent your awareness far enough to contact the clouds, there is just no way to know how far away they might be.

Gor'achen appears to be spun about two-hundred degrees out of sync with with the Night Raven's XYZ axis., but that is not surprising. As with space in the Amalgamate Realms, the orientation of the three physical dimensions depends entirely on having what could be considered a "gravitational body" to provide a point of reference. The main difference being that there are no natural gravitational bodies within the Aether. All solid objects and all life comes from within the Realms or from the Primal Powers.

The Aether itself consists of nothing but potential and mostly dormant Power. It is the sea from which new Realms are born, and the graveyard where the remains of old Realms go, after passing through Death. According to the data in the crystals, which Life gave me, the Aether is larger that all the well-nigh infinite Realms of the Second Metaverse put together.

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