The Worldeater Saga, Part XLIX: Unforgotten

A shimmering bridge of brilliant hues carved through the starfire and cosmic annihilation, a feline silhouette traversing the impossible space spanning the gulf ‘twixt terrestrial and celestial.

Clutching a godslaying weapon in Her claws, Omei’s implacable journey drew Her ever nearer to a Father who finally noticed Her. In that notice was yet another moment that signalled the departure of the Celestine’s calm, reprehension etching stormy darkness upon His glowing visage.

Eager for relief in a battle against timeless experience, Severn called upon His pilfered power once more to gird Himself from the onrushing waves of devastation that exuded from the Eschaton. A moment of consideration breached through the Zenith’s interminable focus as He looked upon His approaching Sister. Realisation dawned then as darkling light upon His face – and He turned away, once more fixated upon finding His footing against an ageless fixture of eternity.

Bent upon patricide, Omei surged forward and leveraged Her waning essence as a shield to withstand the devastation all around Her, lurid light limning Her like a multifarious mantle of chromatic protection. Reality heaved as Chaos visited the Prime once more. Countless Astral denizens gave themselves over to dissolution, their lives unwound to serve as fuel for Instinct’s campaign of vengeance. Shining light poured from Her spear, its majesty sweeping underfoot to become rainbow-limned stairs She soon ascended to get ever nearer to Varyan Celestine.

The Allfather found His centre again. Astonishment melted away, replaced by the cold tranquillity that came with resignation to one course – or another. He lifted His hand towards His approaching Daughter, as if this simple gesture could stem the tides of Her millennia-long displeasure. Omei lunged forward with a snarl that echoed throughout the realm entire, a wild exultation of vengeance realised and wrath visited, a celebration of cessation and success that sated Her lust for the argent blood of Her hated Father. Before killing light could manifest to stop Her, the rebellious Goddess of Instinct finally acted upon the unsettling hatred She had harboured for Her Father for countless ages lost to mortal recollection. She thrust Her spear into His very palm, its chitinous point breaching His glowing flesh as if He were a mere mortal.

Varyan Celestine’s serenity once more vanished akin to so much smoke upon whipping winds.

Even the glorious, enigmatic Eschaton gave pause then, the nebulaic patch of haze that served as Its head tilting in an inquisitive swirl of space, time, light, and dark. Distant, forbidding stars stared on as It observed this unfolding familial betrayal, unending curiosity stoking Its component galaxies to supernal brilliance.

Wordless agony roiled from Varian’s omnipotent frame, His suffering distributed to His Creation in manner evocative of His bond with it. The land bled its lushness for Him. The skies howled to mourn the betrayal in His paternal heart. The oceans churned and wept for what He must do. Even as the eldritch essence coating Omei’s spear did its gruesome work, Varian lifted His other hand towards Her. In defiance of size, His fingers seized upon Her and lifted Her up so He could meet the plague-withered eyes that glowed within Instinct’s rotting skull.

Instinct’s spear tumbled away through the skies – down towards the Court of the Gods.

“More disappointing disobedience. More thankless betrayal,” boomed the authoritative voice of the Celestine. “Would that You had suffered Ilimos’ touch, Lurli, rather than Jakrasul. I shall not spare You this time.”

A discordant keening dominated the air then, smothering the percussive rumble of battling Gods and the shrieking dissolution of twin Creations. Even as Omei’s frame began to unravel thread by painful thread, even as the light of Her virtuous essence waned to nearly naught, She refused to give voice to a pain that might satisfy Her dispassionate Maker.

Instead, the Nightmare’s fanged maw scythed into one last triumphant grin.

“You shall die,” Instinct hissed, droplets of rainbow ichor spattering Varian’s face. Her violet eyes twitched, Her attention upon the wound inflicted so recently upon a palm that had once held worlds and planes within its grasp. “Even if You unmake Me, You cannot unmake what I have done.”

Varyan Celestine lifted His scathed hand and looked upon the ruination inflicted by His Daughter’s spear. Malignant potential gnawed away at His boundless essence, His observation doing naught to stop the process of an obliterating cancer wrought by a mad god yet still chained away upon Sapience. The wounded Creator reached out with that harmed hand and extracted what little light remained in Omei’s violet eyes, the gravity of His overwhelming influence accelerating Her unmaking. He unravelled Her shred by shred, tearing away what remained of the disease-riddled shell housing Her defiant essence so that He might reclaim what He had given to Her at the dawn of His precious Creation.

Cruel laughter akin to a raspy deathrattle spilled out from the Court of the Gods as Chakrasul beheld the end of Her Sister, Her lips pulled back into a sneer that did not match the unnerved terror glowing in Her jade eyes. “It seems I was the only one worth sparing, Lurli,” Corruption taunted, Her unctuous tone ringing out across the rasping corpse that is Creation.

Rather than waste Her final moments hurling more insults, the Goddess looked inward – toward Her Court. Upon them did She spend Her last breath, speaking but one word to them all in private:

“Unforgotten.”

Violet light smeared against the roof of the empyreal vault as Instinct died within the palm of Her hated Father, the last of Her wild power scattered to the winds of an era’s close. Riddled with disease and consumed by inevitable rot, the Imago gasped Her last virulent breath, unwoven from existence by the Celestine in a final act of callous desperation. All the colours of the Astral Realm waned and dimmed as they mourned the loss of their beloved Empress. Riotous hues died as they embraced the monochromatic misery of a realm undone, the horror of an impending succession war casting the kingdom’s alien Nobility into panic and disarray. Bereft of the Nightmare’s will, Sythro’s arson once more began its ravenous consumption of Tecpatl’s Cradle. Gone was the dreamborn dam that stood as a bulwark against time’s inexorable rapids, a trickle of seconds that became a brook of minutes and then a roaring rapid of hours and days experienced in a single breath of chilling cataclysm that saw to the unwinding demise of the holy land of Omeiian prosperity.

Ziggurats and floating islands and the weathered remains of Ka-la-kai all deliquesced into quicksilver that dried up underneath the harsh reality of Omei’s demise. As the Dreamworld withered in the absence of its wild mistress, so too did the places anchored by its all-encompassing fabric. The multichromatic foliage of the Seer’s Wood desiccated and scattered upon one of Creation’s shuddering deathrattles, its structures and spheres and sacred places one and all desecrated by the Celestine’s callous felicide. Even the Dreamer’s blessed tattoos and secrets of enlightened oneironautics withered upon the vine, the sudden loss of Her commanding will spelling the demise of all who possessed such gifts.

With His rebellious Daughter finally undone, the Celestine returned to the pressing matter of the Triomachy, shreds of Her essence serving as renewed, recaptured might.

Penned by my hand on Kinsday, the 18th of Omeian, in the year 0 AC.