Sunlight in the Garden was constant, a completely fabricated vanity that Hrulinar insisted on. Everything in the Garden, in the Spirit Vale, was warmed by Aethra’s Grace. But having that ball of light to cast down rays, making the mist rainbow, was a gift his mother had allowed him when he had been born. Was he born? He didn’t recall. He was just there, in the Garden, one day, his hands trailing in the flowers. And he had a purpose.
Every single bloom, its face upturned to the false sun, was a spirit. Humanity’s best, brightest, most faithful were all around him. Their adoration flowed like invisible wine, intoxicating him as he breathed. What they loved about Aethra was automatically adored in him. He was, after all, an extension of her power. And his purpose was to cultivate their love, to keep their spirits nourished, cherished. He was the First of Aethra, and he was loved by all.
The spirits of the lesser life on Earth scampered at his feet. He marvelled at how the simple beasts retained their shape, how it seemed to be what made them what they were. The squirrels that chased each other up the trunk of the massive willows had no idea they were dead. The birds sang for a mate as though they would be laying eggs come spring. A spring that never came, as they dwelled in eternal summer sun, the cloudless days only broken by Shadesorrow’s arrival. Thankfully, that was rare.
His fingers brushed an enormous pink bloom, and it pulsed, opening wider at his touch. Humanity seemed to cast off their Earthly forms as they ascended. While the animals seemed to define themselves by their shapes, the humans of Earth had other ideas about what made a man a man.
Hrulinar leaned down and breathed in the memories of the plush rose, smelling baked bread and the warm sweetness of mother’s milk. This one had been a loving wife, an excellent mother, and an exceptionally devout woman, worshipping Aethra and her magnanimous love with a pure heart. The bloom whispered Aethra’s name in reverence and he rewarded her with a grin of his own, bright and blinding, borrowing his Mother’s grace to give to the adoring bloom.
Idly, he wondered if he could teach them his own name. To hear the whispered love from one of them, in his own name, would be pure bliss. A direct connection to their love would intoxicate him beyond belief, deluding his senses and growing his already powerful self. He stopped his treasonous thoughts and repented immediately.
He was not king here, Aethra was queen, and he was merely her son. Shame spread across his face, the one Aethra had created to resemble a sprite-like man, flame-red hair and twinkling green eyes. His pointed ears were his own affectation as were the freckles. He was slight and short, delighting in the grace of his well muscled, sleek, masculine body as he made his way through the garden. She had given him enough vanity to fill a thousand men, but her reasoning was that it helped him love others better if he loved himself first. Hrulinar did love himself, very much, indeed.
His true form, should something traumatic ever force him to it, was a many limbed, vine covered, genderless thing. Beneath the glamour of his visage, he could feel the way his skin moved, ceaselessly. The flowers that dotted his leafy mane tickled as he acknowledged them. His true form was beautiful, but the spirits appreciated a form they could recognize. Even Aethra, her beauty undeniable, took a human shape. He had never seen her true form. The shame fell from him as he resumed his walk through the Garden, withered by the brightness of his vanity.
Worry of another kind had niggled its way into his thoughts as he tended the souls. Fewer had cropped up in recent times. The devout remained here permanently but it was a vicious cycle for the Divine. Aethra derived her power from the souls that worshipped her, Earthbound and eternally here in the Garden. In return, she took care of the souls, the ones that we were born as the gorgeous, otherworldly flowers, expending her power to answer the occasional prayer of the devout below and to gift gorgeous days and healthy children.
Hrulinar, a fractured splinter of her power, was a costly son, though. It had taken her years to recover her strength after she had birthed him. And the cost had been worth it while the souls flooded their Garden, adding to her pool of power, and he tended them, cultivating their worship. He was not a wasted effort.
He thought of the days before he was alive, the memories that Aethra had lent him to learn his place. The clouds that would darken the Vale and Garden when Aethra doubted herself was the darkness of Divine despair. The inkiness enshrouded the Vale when Shadesorrow arrived, briefly reminding everyone that the rage and sadness of a Divine goddess was near.
Aeons before she had birthed him, she had divided her power in half, separating from herself the awful disappointment and anger she had felt when the first soul rejected her and vanished into nothingness. Her rage had been mighty, the skies had darkened, Hrulinar knew, and the Garden had trembled. The entire Spirit Vale had quaked at her indignation.
Shadesorrow had sprung fully formed from that rage, a syphon for the beatific goddess’s wrath. Into her twin, she poured every negative thought and feeling that had ever been uttered about her, every doubt that she felt quivering in the blooms. She gave the worst of the darkness to Shadesorrow to bear, fortifying her with weapons made of the stars themselves and armour that she took from the reflection of the moonlight on the sea. It threw its dark rainbows across the Vale as she strode boldly through it, reporting to her other half.
Aethra was satisfied with her twin, and her sister bowed to her whims. In this way, Aethra thought she had quelled her own negativity and ensured her benevolence. It was, to her, a perfect balance and with her wrath carefully leashed, she loved and cared for the mortals.
But less souls had been coming to her lately, Hrulinar thought. The Garden needed to grow if they were to survive. She had watched, he knew, and saw that while she was still the One True Divine, something, somewhere stole the affection from her. Something threatened her.
As he approached the archway that denoted the entrance to the Garden, the sky darkened, harkening the arrival of his dread kin. Shivering in his glamoured skin, he made his way to Aethra’s preferred place to rule from.
The Divine Dais jutted out into a huge reflection pool, covered by an enormous white dome, held up by crystalline pillars. Aethra, as most Divine, had chosen white to symbolise her supremacy and Divinity. Her form, chosen to appease the spirits in her garden, was a towering, stunning beauty of a woman. Her crown, made of true sunlight cast rays across the reflection pool and danced across the silvery surface.
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Her dress was new each time he met his mother, one day a white shoulderless gown that exposed her soft arms and tops of her creamy breasts, but today she wore a billowing gown that draped her in many layers. A belt of multicoloured stones chiselled out her voluptuous shape, cinching her to a perfect hourglass. The Divine were allowed vanity; it was their right.
Her golden hair was down, as always, flowing in the ever-present wind that followed her. Long tendrils of flowers cascaded in her tresses, alive and blooming as she breathed in and out. Her cerulean eyes were the same colour as the sky around them, the choice purposeful. She was, after all, the most perfect of beings.
With surprise, Hrulinar noted the enormous white wings she had donned today. They hovered off her back, merely a ghostly silver image but when she faced him, she was the ultimate image of Divinity, beauty, and light.
Shadesorrow was kneeling before her sister, her dark head bowed. Hrulinar slowed, watching his mother’s other half kiss her twin’s bare feet and stand. Her Divine-forged mail danced in the sunlight of Aethra’s crown, casting the dark rainbows across the pool. Her bare feet were clawed, matching her long black talons that sprang from her fingertips.
The Wrath of Aethra did not choose to use glamour. Instead, she wore her true form, as it was, proudly and openly. Her long white hair, straight and glimmering, fell to her waist in a sheet of pure silver. Her broad, black wings were awful to him, their leathery boom as she flexed them a reminder of her darkness. Her black eyes were widely spaced, rimmed in purple bruise-like marks and set deeply in her ghost-white face. Her toned bare arms rippled as she crossed them across her chest. She had no breasts, merely a flat expanse of muscle covered in the dread mail that her sister had made her.
“It’s worse than we thought,” rumbled Shadesorrow to Aethra as Hrulinar approached. “Man is forgetting you.”
Hrulinar bowed low to his superiors, kissing Aethra’s feet and rising to face Shadesorrow. Her pointed teeth were exposed when she grinned at him.
“I see you chose to keep him.”
“Of course. He is my son, the First of Aethra.” The Mother smiled warmly at him and he felt his knees go weak. The brightness of her love was unbearable at full force. “He has a place here in my Vale. He will remain.”
“A continuous drain on your power,” Shadesorrow reminded her sister and Hrulinar frowned, annoyance washing across his handsome face.
“That is inconsequential.” Aethra waved a dismissive hand and held her arms out to her son. He went to her and she enfolded him in her embrace. His heart soared, the fluttering of a thousand birds inside him.
“It won’t seem so when you hear what I have learned.”
“Then tell me, and be done.” Aethra released him and strode the edge of the pool, waving a hand. The image of the world below refined, sharpening into a huge globe floating in the cosmos.
“Here,” Shadesorrow began and a tiny human city lit up on the globe. She waved her own clawed hand and the image rushed toward the dot of light. Suddenly, they were looking at the enormous glass and stone structure of a house of worship. The spires pointed toward them, reminding all that could see them that Aethra dwelled above, that all must give her thanks.
“That’s lovely,” Aethra breathed as she watched the jewel-toned glass windows sparkle in the sunlight. “A new design from mankind. A gorgeous tribute.”
“It is not yours,” Shadesorrow said bluntly and Aethra baulked, cringing at her words. “This is a temple of worship to the Light.”
“But the sunlight is not my only gift.” Aethra said and her twin shook her head.
“It is a temple for the Light, sister.” Suddenly, Hrulinar felt it, too. The way the language of the Divine slipped around the word, imbuing it with importance.
“The Light,” Aethra said, and the Divine tongue gave the word life once more.
“It is man’s invention, completely a false deity.” Shadesorrow waved her hand again and showed Aethra and Hurlinar the small grouping of humans inside the temple.
The building was full of well dressed men and women, their eyes cast forward to the four-pointed star that adorned the front of the temple. A man in red robes stood before them, gesticulating widely, his voice echoing. As they listened, his words sharpened.
“And the Mother does not give you these gifts! You are all granted the gifts of intelligence, the ability to decide right from wrong, the capacity to love. But Aethra, damn her, did not give you these gifts. We have always had them, they are our rights as menfolk! The Light lives in each of us! The ability to choose compassion and justice over the evils of vanity and selfishness.
“Aethra does not bear the Light. The Light comes from within us, something we have always manifested. Now, my dear people, we must join our Light together. We must spread the word of man’s Divinity, each of us the avatar of the Father!”
A raucous cheer rent the scene in two and the Mother dimmed the pool, allowing it to reflect the perfect sky once more.
Hrulinar looked at his mother’s perfect face and felt tears welling inside him, spilling from his emerald eyes.
The perfect, calm, kind face she bore, the face she had sacrificed half of her power to permanently obtain, was creased with a frown. Shadesorrow glowed with a dark intensity, syphoning the goddess’s negative feelings. Her wings snapped open wide as she drew in the anger and disappointment. She seemed to grow, her toned arms a little more chiselled, her long white hair glowing like moonlight.
“This is not to be endured,” Aethra said but it was Shadesorrow’s voice the left her perfect mouth. She touched her lips and closed her eyes, bowing her head briefly before meeting Shadesorrow’s gaze once more.
“This is not to be endured,” she repeated. Her voice was light, soft and loving. Aethra’s voice once more.
Shadesorrow merely nodded and kept her arms crossed against her chest, waiting.
“We must watch them.” Aethra said. “And we must cull from them these…troublemakers.”
Hrulinar frowned slightly, hearing his mother’s meaning in her words.
“Cull,” he said and crossed his own arms across his chest. His green silk shirt and thick brocade vest shimmered in her sunlit crown. “That’s a word for beasts, not man.”
In an instant he was backhanded by Shadesorrow, his face stinging, his eyes watering. He fell, clutching his face with terror in his eyes.
“You are not to question.” The words were hissed and angry but they came from Aethra herself. Fear coiled around Hrulinar, his mother’s towering rage overflowing from Shadesorrow. She slid a hand to her hip, her claws stroking a black dagger.
“Leave,” Shadesorrow said to him and he scrambled to obey.
The darkest day in Hrulinar’s eternal life was seeing Aethra lose control over the carefully leashed rage that she had given Shadesorrow.
The Garden was dark when he returned to it, the blooms all closed. He collapsed in a quivering heap amongst the souls, breathing in their scent. The heady adoration was muted and Hrulinar felt the first crack in Aethra’s supremacy ripple through him, his immortal heart breaking for her, for himself, and for the adoring souls that would be lost if he could not tend to them.