Prelude: The Goddess' Avatar

The Aether

Unknown

In a room crafter entirely from obsidian, three multifaceted, black metal devices stood side by side. Pipes made from the same black metal as the devices connected the two larger, outside devices to the smaller, middle device. The air around the three devices distorted, as though heat shimmer surrounded them, and inhuman howls echoed hollowly from the device on the right.

Besides the three devices, only two women occupied the obsidian room. The larger of the two women, looking more girl in her late teenage years, stood closer to the three devices. H igh cheekbones and a delicate nose framed a pair of large, monolid eyes that tilted upward at the outer corners. As she stared fixedly at the device on the left, her forest green eyes glowed with greenish-silver light. Her straight, midnight hair hung to her waist, glistening like a river of silk. Dressed in a short leather miniskirt and a tiny leather halter top, which covered very little of her tall, tanned body, which had a skin tone resembling polished brass, the twitching of her thick muscles clearly stood out as she repeatedly clenched and unclenched her fists.

The woman is an Avatar of the Forest Lady, an ancient High Man, who walked the Path of Divinity and became a Goddess in the eyes of countless Mortals in countless realms. Containing a fragment of the Forest Lady's Mind and Soul, she called herself Meili, the birth name of the Forest Lady.

"Mistress, how much longer are you going to stare at that…contraption? We can't see what' happening inside." Standing behind Meili, as she stared at the left-side device, the smaller woman radiated a mix of sullen anger and fear.

Meili smiled grimly. "I cannot see, but I can perceive. I will stay here until he is done."

As red runes in a grey metal collar wrapped around her neck glowed faintly, a pain-filled wince twisted her features, and her left hand tugged on the collar.

"Control your thoughts, Alyssa. Compared with the slave collars used in your Crossroads League, Brand's collar is a complex work of art. It will respond to just your thoughts or doing him harm. You do not need to act for it to punish you."

Alyssa glared at the left-hand device. "Brand killed my friends! How could I not want to hurt him! He's a cruel bastard!"

"You almost never think of hurting him over what was done to your friends. You and your friends sought to kill him just because he was with Life. You failed, and he was the one who saved you from being a test subject. You just want to kill him because you are weak and ashamed."

"Nothing happens when I try to remove or break the collar."

Meili laughed softly. "Brand was collard in the past. He broke free and turned the DokkAlfar slut, who collard him, into his woman. You can think of this a trial, one you must overcome. Your future is in your hands. If you manage to free yourself and run away or do nothing, Brand would just ignore you. You have not done enough to be a blood enemy he must kill. If you attack him, he will probably kill you. Painfully. He respects strength, but he is ruthless with those he considers enemies."

Alyssa's stomach growled. "May I go eat?"

Meili shook her head. "There is no need for you to spend your time here. Go eat. Train yourself, so that you can free yourself from that collar."

"Yes, Mistress."

After Alyssa left the obsidian room, the translucent image of another, much smaller, woman appeared. Like Meili, she had green eyes with epicanthic folds, but the golden brown tone of her skin was much lighter than Meili's skin. Her smaller body was not quite as heavily built as Meili, but she was still muscled like a body builder.

Meili glanced at the image, before turning her eyes back to the metal devices. "Grandmother."

"Meili."

For a time, the two young appearance women stared the black metal devices in silence. But neither really saw the devices. Their awareness was focused on what the devices contained, primarily the left side device.

The device on the right contained a Demon. Having the form of tree, p urple leaves sprouted from its branches, and snake heads sprouted from the center of its trunk. Silver-black sigil inlaid into the black metal of the inside of the device drained the Power from the Demon. The glowing, silver seals imprinted onto the Demon kept it from doing more than stare at the sigils. The Demon's eyes, which were once filled with malice, hate, and madness, had become listless, as its very life force was drained from it. The Demons is almost dead; it would only last for a few more days at most.

In the device on the right, a naked man sits cross-legged in midair. No Power or spell buoyed him; he simply did not obey the law of gravity. His massive bulk could barely be called human. No normal man could develop the thick slabs of muscles that covered the man from crown to toe. Even muscles on the scalp that were practically atrophied on a normal person bulged on this man. The abnormally think and heavy muscles of the man combined with his abnormally thick and dense bones to turn his entire body into an armored block of flesh and bone. The man had consciously crafted his Body into a living weapon to exert his will on the physical world in the most violent manner possible.

Warped, mangled looking skin covered more than a third of the man's Body. It resulted from the matching scars that were etched into his pattern itself. If he did not remove them from his pattern, he would carry them on his Body for life. But the scars did not extend much deeper than his skin. If not for the constant pain that the man felt form the scars, they would be little more than a mark or brand left upon him. The man was known as Brand, the name he had chosen for himself.

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The constant flow of Chaos emanating from the sigils on the inside of the man's device made his scared skin twist and writhe unnaturally. It twisted and tore, as though trying to tear away from his flesh Without the constant flow of braided black and silver Power that rose to the surface from within his Body, he would have probably been left with only half his skin. But the skin on the half of his Body fared little better. Its natural bronze color had changed to an angry, bloody red, and dozens upon dozens of blisters rose form it, seeping fluid. But the black and silver Power kept repairing the damage, maintaining and equilibrium with the destruction.

A similar of damage and repair was occurring within Brand's Mind and Soul. The end result was that he continually grew stronger, but as the Demon drew closer to death, the process has slowed down. It was causing pain several orders of magnitude greater pain than what Brand normally lived with, but from the satisfied expression on his face, he might not have noticed that pain at all. He constantly directed the flow of the black and silver Power, the Od, rising from his Core Realm, the center of his existence, into his Body, Mind, and Soul.

In the beginning, threads of Chaos had penetrated to the depths of his Body, Mind, and Soul, but with the increase in Brand's strength and the weakening of the Demon's weakening, the process had become little more than a tempering of the outer layers of his Body, Mind, and Soul. It still benefited hims but only slightly.

The two women had watched everything occurring within the devices for a number of days in silence, before either of them spoke again.

"You are as obsessive as my son. You are an incomplete fragment of your origin self. You should be careful."

Meili shook her head sadly. "I do not understand what you mean Grandmother."

The smaller, younger appearing woman, the Projection of Life, who was the creator of the Second Metaverse, frowned. "Your memories and knowledge are woefully incomplete. You are lacking vital knowledge about your origin self. She is one of the few, who walk what you call the Path of Divinity, that has remained marginally sane for such a long time. The are not many who can remain lucid and mostly functional over two hundred and fifty trillion years. Do you think you have a billionth of her memories? You are just fragment with an obsession for Marek and enough knowledge to be useful to him. Do you have any clue why your origin self formed you?"

As she turned her head to stare at the Projection, Meili's frown matched Life's frown. "He prefers the NAME Brand. It is the one he chose."

When the word NAME left Meili's lips, the fabric of reality shuddered momentarily. Neither Meili nor the Projection of life appeared to have been affected, The obsidian walls of the room remained unscathed, but had Alyssa still been in the stone room, her Mind would have been critically injured by utterance of the word. The depth and complexity of meaning and knowledge contained in the simple sound was more than an Amalgamate being's Mind could withstand.

Life's Projection scowled at Meili. "Stop that. That Avatar has severe limits. Do you want to destroy yourself.? This is a perfect example of your obsession with my son."

With a wince, Meili began to breathe heavily, and with a sight, the Projection of Life raider her hand. A faint greenish-silver glow surrounded Meili, after a few moment a few moments her breathing calmed.

Meili's stare returned to the device on the left side. "How does that bastard, so easily, speak Names with the body of a First Circle Coalescent?"

"Despite his lack of Coalescence, Marek is still my son, born of my womb, not created through my Power. He has a level of …reality …that might be the best term for it, which far exceeds even your own. You may be the Embodied Avatar of a self-proclaimed goddess, but that is nothing in the face of Marek. He is little different from those you call the Titans. If it is terms of the reality of his existence, he far exceeds even the avatars of any 'god' or 'goddess' walking the Path of Divinity."

"But I am not a Goddess. I am only a False Name."

Life's Projection scoffed. "Spare me the false humility. Like the few other surviving High Men of the early generations, you see yourself as above all other existences. I have known you for hundreds of trillions of years. Do you think I do not know your personality?"

When Meili did not comment, the Projection of Life focused her attention on Meili. After a few moments, Meili shifter uncomfortably. She felt as though the Projection could see through her. to her deepest secrets. Life's condemnation of her beliefs in herself did not feel warranted nor justified, but she hesitated to speak.

"Meili."

While concentrating on suppressing her nervousness, she lost track of the passage of time. At the sound of Life's Projection speaking her name, Meili flinched. "What?"

"How far from the time of of your birth do you have clear memories?"

Meili frowned, and for a few moments she said nothing. Her focus turned inward, and she evaluated the state of her Mind and memories. "The conclusion of Crom Cruach's war against the Titans. You forbidding me to join him in his prison is the last memory that feel like it is truly mine. After that all my memories feel more like they belong to someone else, and I am only watching them play out."

Life's Projection frowned. "Interesting."

After being silent for several minutes, Life's Projection made a comment in an offhanded manner. "On Earth, you will have the chance to see Taban, once more, but he has changed."

As the comment opened the floodgates of thousands of years of intense memories, a flood of emotions washed through Meili. "Taban?"

"The seal on my prison was cracked some time ago. God was likely involved in it. Taban and others form the time of your youth still survive in the Realm formed from the expansion of the singularity. Old Boran attached a Realm fragment containing Earth's solar system to the seals that currently encapsulate that Realm. They have become connected in a manner of speaking. Taban and a few others survive but they have all changed as much as your Origin self has changed from the you that stands here."

Meili's frown returned. "What do you men by that?"

"You are the Meili I knew two hundred and fifty trillion years ago. You are not the Meili of today. She is the Forest Lady, and her personality is … complex. She has taken on so many Aspects that she barely knows who she is anymore. She has reached the limits for holding herself together. You are the fresh-faced, idealistic younger Meili."

Life's Projection stared intently into Meili's eyes. "Do not bind yourself to your Origin self's desires and obsessions. I do not know her real purpose in Making you. But to me, you look like a fresh start and a second chance for her."

Meili fell deeply into deep thought, and by the time she, nonce more, looked around, the Projection of Life was gone.

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