“Why is it that when you feel frustrated, brother, you always come to me?”
Her voice was that same mix of serene amusement and sardonic mockery that he had known for his entire existence. Millennia with her as his companion, foil, friend, foe, nemesis, and partner had inured him to her personality for the most part—yet still, for all that he believed himself above it, his twin sister never failed to elicit a response from him.
Even here, among the cosmic forces that formed the seat of his power.
“I am not frustrated. Everything is going precisely as I planned it.”
“Oh yes,” she responded with a laugh like silverbells. “The nasty apostates are on the ropes, our mad brother’s abominations are marching to clean up your pet project, and your ignoble rapist has sent more lambs to the slaughter to fuel the tide of death you plan to unleash.”
“I take no responsibility for the depravity of my faithful. We can no more dictate to them their path than we can dictate our own. Free will is—”
“You’re hiding behind that when it suits you, I see, but only when it does. If you truly believed what you’re about to spout, my dearest brother, you’d never have fought so hard to claim the Highest.”
“Better us than the others.” he responded with resolute belief.
“You’re still evading what I said.”
“The mortal—”
“The rapist priest.” she cut in again.
“The mortal—” he emphasised with a flash of anger “—will get what he is owed in time. If I wasted my time chastising every disgusting roach that upholds my faith, I’d never get anything of worth done.”
“Ah, the greater good, is it? You’ve been using that one for Ages, now, too. I think the first time I ever heard the words ‘greater good’ was when we killed the Night Sister Triumvirate. I recall you saying something about it then, too, when you killed their entire following with sunfire.”
“They were sacrificing and eating people en masse.” he said stiffly. “They deserved to be wiped out.”
“But the rapist doesn’t?”
“Fate will mete out his justice well enough.”
“And again, you’re evading.” she said with another laugh.
“Coming here was a mistake.” he growled.
“Yet come here you did, my darling brother, because you know the others are useless. Eidania and Heiara will say and do whatever they can to please you, even if it means lying to your face. Broseidon and Thetor will disagree with you only until your pride forces you to silence them, which is ultimately useless. Absolum, Jaraxus, and Polaris will spend more time trying to veil their loathing for you than they will helping you, and as for Cernuos—”
“He won’t care about anything unless it affects his trees and flowers.” he finished with a disparaging grunt.
“And so, you come to me, even after sealing me away in that silly rock.”
“It is penitence.”
“It’s petulance, Arcastor. Petulance and pride. You’d have already released me if you weren’t so happy about not having to worry about me running around behind your back.”
“Then you admit by your own words to have not learned your lesson,” he said with a flush of validation, “even after all these millennia, Caerwen.”
“Lessons, is it?” she asked with another laugh. “How about this for a lesson, then.”
He raised his eyebrow, and then grimaced when he was suddenly elsewhere, and standing within an expansive green valley, resplendent with a marble city and metal-worked citadel at its northern end.
“Sanctuary, sister? Really?” he asked with irritation.
“Look at them all, Arcastor.” his sister said from his left, and drew his eyes.
She looked the same, even after millennia of isolation: eyes the colour of liquid mercury, hair like spun starlight, and attired in a simple himation cinched over her right shoulder. She’d chosen that appearance when they’d first been Called, for all that he’d tried to take on a more grounded appearance himself.
Part of him vaguely regretted, in his quietest moments, not sharing her wild abandon for what they considered normalcy. Judging from what she’d attired him in, though, he presumed she conversely missed that normalcy to some degree.
A glance down at himself showed him wearing a white chiton, sandals up to his shins, and wielding a xiphos on his right hip—the same things he’d worn before their transmigration to the Prime Material. His hand reached up, and he felt at the soft golden curls that covered his head, and fell to his shoulders. It was a visceral, and almost-forgotten sensation for him.
He was back in his original body, before…
“What am I looking at?” he asked instead of letting memory consume him. “Motes of dust that don’t know they’re already dead?”
“Ah, I see you attempting disaffected antipathy, brother, but it’s as false as your name. Honestly, I still don’t know how you talked me into that. Solarius? Selenia? How repulsive that alliteration is.”
“Would you have preferred Apollo and Artemis?” he asked blithely while she set off through the bustling thoroughfare, and he followed begrudgingly.
“You and your sentimentality,” she said with a laugh. “I still can’t believe you convinced Marten to call himself Broseidon.”
“It was an act of whimsy.” he said with remembered amusement, and nights spent laughing around a campfire with his twin sister over the amusing nature of the suggestion. Broseidon. The fact Marten had never clued in on the mockery of the name still, he had to admit, amused him to some small degree.
If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen. Please report the violation.
“It was an act of trickery, brother.” Caerwen said with a twinkle of mirth in her silver eyes. “You lost that, too, over time. I missed that part of you the most, I think; the laughter. The joking. You were so warm, before all the transcendent divine power got in the way.”
“You are speaking of a time so far behind us that I barely recall it, Caerwen. Why do you insist on bringing up history older than the Highest itself?”
“Liar,” she accused with a laugh, and smoothly dodged around a pair of running children. He tracked her movements and looked down at the mortals, barely older than ten, and they met his gaze and froze. A click of his tongue followed, and he walked beyond them without comment.
“You actually projected us here physically?”
“In a manner, yes.” she admitted.
“You’re abusing your position, Arbiter.”
“Mm. Does it still rankle that I pulled that one over you, Arcastor?”
“The System does as it is wont to do, Caerwen. If anything, your stroke of genius there impressed me. I didn’t realise that was even an option for us, else I may have taken the role myself.”
At that, she did laugh, and fully enough to draw glances from passersby—though they were largely ignored. One good side effect of their Divine Cores, he conceded, was their ability to passively defy actual attention when they did not desire it. Mortals would know they were there, only until their attention slipped away. After that, it would be like they were remembering a waking dream. It had proven quite useful over the aeons.
“Oh Arcastor, as if you could ever give up your prestige and power to do such a selfless duty. The role of Arbiter is a shackle of its own, not a position of power in the way you would enjoy.” she grinned and stepped up in front of him, hands clasped at her spine, back bent forward, and silver eyes sparkling with mirth. “I know you far too well to believe you’d ever want my mantle, brother dearest.”
“You have a point,” he allowed with a quiet ‘tsk’ and glance away from her, “for once.”
“Ha! So grouchy.” she said shrewdly. “Is it because you’re standing amid a crowd of innocents you plan on seeing slaughtered and raised as undead abominations, or did you turn a blind eye to too many rapists, murderers, and abusive monsters today for even your stomach to handle?”
“This again.” he said with an exasperated growl, and stepped past her. His sister and her moral absolutism were going to drive him mad. At least the mistake of visiting her always ended up reminding him of why he’d incarcerated her in the first place. Caerwen’s mercurial pursuits of ‘justice’ were a terrible impediment to his designs. She’d never understood necessary ignorance.
“This again,” she confirmed while returning to his side, and looping her right arm with his left as they’d done when they were mortal. “Why do you have to insist on this path, Arcastor?” she asked more seriously. “There was a time you just wanted to feel the seabreeze in your hair, enjoy the path of Cultivation, and make the Realms better for everyone within them. Wasn’t that why we pursued Dominions, and engaged in the Godswar? To protect people just like this?”
“I am protecting them.” he shot back with a hint of frustration. “Order is the only way to keep them safe. Cultivation itself is the cause of their problems. By markedly reducing the proliferation of potent Cultivation, I have in turn precipitously reduced the frequency of catastrophic battle across the Realms. These mortals cannot be trusted with that kind of power. They must be controlled, or else—”
“Fear cannot be the motivation that drives governance, brother.” she interjected softly, and with a gentle squeeze of his arm. “We learned that lesson the hardest way possible, did we not?”
“I…” he trailed off, and grimaced at the pang of memory she managed to bring to the fore. “You cannot sway me with ancient sentiment, Caerwen.”
“It’s not just ancient sentiment anymore, brother, it’s foresight. It’s learned understanding. Did you know that he’s the same as she was?”
He felt himself stiffen at his sister’s words, and his eyes snapped to her sharply.
“What?”
“It’s true.” his sister said in the same calm, earnest voice he knew from their earliest years. Caerwen had always been honest to a fault. “Just like you and I, and Elysea as well. He’s from Earth, Arcastor. He’s from our home.”
“It’s been nearly ten Ages since we were summoned here, Caerwen. How—?”
“Time moves differently here, in some ways, and identical in others. The Realms accelerate and decelerate randomly, compared to Worldshards. Besides, Callings don’t specify silly things like dates. The next one could summon someone a thousand years before Aurelian was even born.”
“Aurelian, is it?” he murmured while memorising the name. “That name, it’s—”
“He called it pseudo-latin,” she said with a laugh, “without even knowing the significance. Just like Elysea before him.”
“He’s just one Nephilim,” he responded with a shake of his head, “he cannot stop me.”
“You were just ‘one Nephilim’, Arcastor.” his sister said with a meaningful glance. “And you conquered everything.”
“We.” he said softly, and only due to the privacy of their current situation. “We, Caerwen. I did it with you.”
“You did,” she said obligingly. “You did do it with me, Arcastor. Me, and the Elden.”
The word brought him up short, and he looked at her sharply. “You know how I feel about—”
“He’s discovered them again, Arcastor.” she said softly.
He froze mid-stride at her words.
“What?” he asked in a whisper.
“Oh, technically he hasn’t.” she clarified, and released the sudden vise around his Core. “But he has become a Primogenitor, thanks to Selucia Tollarius giving him her Unique Trait through the modified Calling. A true one, Arcastor, not whatever macabre imitation Absolum desperately tried to create.”
“...so that’s how he—”
“Unlocked the Seal on Calamity’s Blade? Yes.” she answered with a small laugh. “That was a stroke of genius on Elysea’s part, wasn’t it? Tying that power to the Blood of the Elden? I know even you were impressed by that.”
“She was impressive.” he murmured softly.
“Of course she was,” his sister agreed. “Isn’t that why you fell in love with her?”
To that, of course, he had nothing to say.
Caerwen, for her part, didn’t seem to expect a response.
Instead they continued in silence, through the bustling streets and crowded thoroughfare, among a sea of life that would by his own command be ended in blood, fire, and undead apocalypse. A sea of life that clung to a remnant of a memory, of a woman named Elysea.
A woman with red eyes, and hair of darkest midnight.
A woman of singular will, respected and feared in equal measure.
A woman that had made Gods kneel with the might of the Elden.
A woman he had loved, with every atom of his immortal being.
[https://files.oaiusercontent.com/file-vXGzEViHum8IWjalO7wIZmvj?se=2024-02-06T18%3A31%3A56Z&sp=r&sv=2021-08-06&sr=b&rscc=max-age%3D31536000%2C%20immutable&rscd=attachment%3B%20filename%3Dc5c99f5f-d03c-4d93-9888-36a56404b6af.webp&sig=axXV7LJ6RMIbV/75bqD0MOp8FSesmI7INqT96RUfku0%3D]Concept art of Solarius, God of Light.