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The bearer of the breath stepped forward, and inhaled deeply before responding to the life goddess's calls for peace with a blast far more powerful than the sun goddess ever thought possible when she had created the gift. She never would've imagined it could have stripped the beast of life of its very immortality. The vessel of life and the bearer of the breath bloodskill fell simultaneously to the ground on impact, both just as lifeless.
The vessel of Death cradled the vessel of his beloved in disbelief. She was the very goddess of life, she was the very spark that gave movement to all... So why wasn't her vessel moving? Why couldn't he feel her anymore? Why were they able to harm a goddess in this way? Why?
"Why? Why? Why?" Death's vessel was trembling violently, each repetition of his ominous question growing darker and darker. The beast of Death slowly lowered the vessel of his beloved to the ground below. The beasts the gods commanded were connected directly to their hearts... Had they harmed her heart? The beast of Death stood slowly, his golden gaze hardening immensely as he raised his head, sending chills down the spines of the five remaining humans still bestowed with the power to battle against the gods. He was quite the sight to behold in that form.
His golden eyes were glowing brilliantly in their otherwise dark sockets, contrasting sharply against the stony white equine skull that shaped his face. Death raised up a bony hand whiter than the moon itself solemnly to his side. Ribbons of soiled linens clung to his form, as it they were holding together the wispy shadows connecting the more skeletal features of the god beneath his ragged cloak. The vessel brought that hand up to its own brow, wrapping that deathly grip around the long, and regal looking spear of spiraling bone protruding from its forehead. The beast of Death tightened his hold upon the horn, and twisted once, freeing the weapon with the haunting crunch of fracturing skulls.
The jawbone of the horse skull split into two perfect halves, the left side turning out with the attached horn as it was broken free from the rest of the deity's face, still linked by partial fragments of the unicorn skull. When Death pulled once more, half of his face broke away to allow his weapon such freedom. Where the jawbone made a natural curve at the end of the horn-turned-staff, there were jagged teeth still lining the edge. The scythe of Death was always hidden in plain sight on his vessel, a design chosen by the goddess of Life herself, but the humans certainly weren't prepared for such a display. Little did they know this wasn't even over.
The entire scythe began to shift and grow larger with the sound of snapping and creaking bone. The curve of the jawbone defined a little more sharply, and the teeth all grew to become pointed and sharp spears that formed a razors edge along the inside of the hooked weapon. The god held his scythe out to the side gleefully in his moment of rage, smiling madly at his foolish children through a partial skull as the other half was brandished as a weapon against those that had harmed his beloved, a weapon he had never used to harm before that moment...
It was so fast, yet so incredibly slow. It was almost trance like, and none of the humans were really sure if they were merely imagining such impossible silence, or if the god had somehow commanded all of sound to even die in that place for a moment... Perhaps it was the nature of the shield, the ability to counter against Death's intentions that let the bearer of that stolen bloodskill react in time to save only himself.
A single cleave; three humans slain, six and a half hearts cut away, damned by his own hand. Two more hearts were lost somewhere even Death couldn't see shortly thereafter. The naïve second god had made a terrible, terrible mistake that he only realized the moment after he had done it. The world would soon sit broken in its unbalance because of it.
The humans bearing the sword, the trident, and the bow were severed from their mortal existence. Along with those three hearts, all three pieces of the sun goddess's heart gifted to them were sent to the afterworld by their side. The pieces of her heart weren't quite dead, but they were badly injured, and still connected to those human spirits. Had the sun goddess or the god of death realized what she had actually created, perhaps they would have known in time.
She didn't just give the humans gifts that could match the gods, she connected their hearts to the vessels of the gods themselves, she connected the hearts of the gods to the mortal ones... She was partially to blame for the murder of half of her family that day. The god of the ocean, the god of the sky, and the goddess of the earth all fell dormant along with their vessels the moment their father cut their spark away along with those human hearts. The beast of Life never awoke from its slumber, the human bearing the gift of breath had no remaining soul to harvest, and Death would never feel another sign of his beloved anywhere in that lonely, broken world for thousands upon thousands of years.
Death retreated immediately in near madness, freeing himself from his beastly vessel as he fled back to the afterworld, desperate to find some way to repair what he had broken. The sun goddess collapsed at the horrific reality of what she had caused, leaving the first bearer of the shield standing alone in the battlefield of gods and man, still uncertain how he had survived the impossible. He turned to the sun goddess, and feared for what she would do when she awoke.
"The shield bearer made a final, despicable choice that day that somehow ended up buying the world just enough time to scrape by, not that he should ever be revered as a hero for accidentally helping with the unforeseeable mess he helped create." Aster wasn't prepared for all of that to say the very least. The human looked down at his own hands, and stared at them with a sense of guilt. His father spoke reassuringly.
"I felt the same way when I learned the truth. The shield isn't a gift at all, it's a piece of heart stolen from the sun goddess, one crafted into a weapon designed to fend off even Death. We were never the heroes, not back then anyway." Aster recoiled at the news. His father gave the answer to the question building in the boy without needing to hear it.
"You can return it to her some day if you wish, but it will do her little good without the other pieces restored as well." Aster frowned at that statement, but his father continued, "There are ways to fix what is broken." Aster was about to ask how exactly, but then he realized something odd.
"So, what happened to the moon?" Calium frowned before he answered that with a look of sympathy.
"We don't actually know, but it might be worse than even the fate of the dormant gods. When Death made his strike, the human bearing her gift survived also, but nobody can remember how. Nobody can remember what the sixth legendary bloodskill even was anymore, Death included. Nobody else knows anything, and even Death only knows this; The moon goddess did something after witnessing her family fall. She did something with her beast, and she did something with the human that bore the gift tied to her vessel, and whatever it was, she somehow stripped the memory from even her father. What we do know, is that the part of the moon goddess that remains, the empty and broken shell of the moon that still meddles in the affairs of the living world, is absolutely mad."
Aster looked away once more in guilt that wasn't really his to bear. The boy asked his father something in a low whisper.
"So what happened then? What became of Death, of the sun, and of the shield?" Calium continued his story with a heavy sigh.
Death returned to the Afterworld after his retreat from the battle of gods and man, bringing with him the three fallen souls of the humans he had reaped. The dark armor surrounding those three souls was the most putrid, and heaviest corruption the god had ever seen. What the god had created by ending their cruel lives after so many years of unfair suffering, were three very big problems. The goddess of life was gone, and by her absence, her song was seemingly lost to the world. The peaceful souls could still find ways to reform, to still be reborn between offspring of other creatures, because life did tend to find a way...
However, the moment a cruel life or death awaited a soul, the moment it, too, would cling to its hate, remorse, and sin of its last life, the soul would fall from the garden of life after death, weighed down by its own darkness. It would just keep falling forever, never making it back to the afterworld to find peace. It would fester, and rot, and only fuse with the darkest of dreams, desires, and injustices that haunted it as it fell eternally until, (when the soul had warped enough,) it would fall back to the mortal realm, denied rebirth in the afterworld. It would hunger for souls that possessed what it did not; hope, love, and light. It was the birth of a new age when the first of the old gods fell... Fiends started to overtake the land of the living just a few short years later.
Death foresaw the pain and destruction to come through the eyes of his children. The god knew the great suffering he and his daughter had caused. The god knew the world was surely destined to fall, but the shield bearer's final misdeed had quite the unexpected results...
The shield bearer and the last of mankind united to build a prison for the sun goddess, entrapping her inside of her own vessel before she ever recovered her strength enough to fend them off and take back what remained of her power. She was buried, cast into the shadows, and bound in chains where the light of her true form could never reach her, where her strength could not return to her. She was trapped in her vessel alone, hidden in darkness, and forever left to linger on the horrible realization that she was so terribly, terribly wrong about it all... She should have let mankind fall...
The humans took the secret of the shield to the grave, telling not even their heirs the truth. They united behind the last sliver of the stolen power to protect their domain from any who remained that would threaten it while using the story that they were the saviors of the mortal realm for fending off the great feral beasts. Many centuries, many relocations, and many heirs of that shield would come and go in time, but by sheer fate, that piece of the goddess's heart linked to Death always remained beating for mankind, always keeping his daughter alive.
A human city was built upon her stony and dark tomb, sealing the goddess away indefinitely beneath the footsteps of millions over time. As centuries passed, as history repeated itself in an endless cycle above while she remained trapped below, that city fell, and was rebuilt by beasts, and fell, and was rebuilt by man, and fell again, only to be rebuilt by beasts once more.
During that time, the sun goddess had long since abandoned hope in her isolation. She projected what was left of herself back to the three corrupted pieces of her heart resting in the garden. She could rest there at least, she could not truly escape her vessel trapped on earth without first repairing her heart, but her soul could partially linger in the afterworld as she wept for her own crimes.
She escaped her eternal prison the only way she could, that was when Death realized there was some hope, that was when a partial shadow of his daughter appeared in the garden of life through those damaged human souls bearing her heart. The shadow of the sun finally looked to the injured souls too decayed to be reborn. She searched within herself for a trace of the spark that had created her.
She tapped into the spark of her mother, of the very life goddess, and the sun goddess began singing in her loneliness, her voice carrying to even the afterworld by the pieces of her heart that rested there. The song of rebirth had survived through their daughter, and although it was not quite as powerful as her mother's song, not powerful enough to stop the flow of fiends entirely, It could still soothe many of the damned souls. For a very long time, throughout millennia of her imprisonment, the sun goddess stifled the flow of corruption in her mother's absence, torn between two realms. The three human souls bearing the pieces of her heart never healed in the afterworld, but they never hatched or fell either... Not for a long while.
Death was left with no other choice, he had to leave his daughter imprisoned so she would keep singing while he found a way to fix everything. The god dove into his powers, making deals with the living, testing his limits, seeing what his true potential held. He discovered the extent and nature of his strength, and pushed to test and learn even more about the nature of fiends, the sleeping gods, and the three, dark souls trapped in perpetual incubation by the song of rebirth. His years of self exploration were not wasted, and the god made many useful breakthroughs, but never quite enough to fix what was broken, not for a very long time.
"Death would find his answer in the most unexpected, yet obvious way, but the solution would also mean time would start running out for the world once more..." Calium trailed off, Aster asked, genuinely wanting to know how such a thing could ever even begin to be remedied. The king looked away, and spoke in the most respectful tone he could manage.
"Well... That brings us to the second story. Her liberation..."
===
Flames erupted against the wall of shadow separating Jagón and Stahl from Aster and Calium, surprising both knights at the sudden assault launching between them. They quickly turned on their paws, and both were immediately taken aback by who was responsible for trying to break through that barrier. Lady Alice did not look very pleased about any of this. Jagón spoke softly, still assuming she had died back at the arena in the battle that had wounded him, assuming she was simply lost in that place as he was before.
"Alice... I know this all probably sounds unbelievable, but I think we're all dead. I don't believe this is something we can muscle our way out of." Alice responded rather shortly.
"I know where we are...I've been here a while now. The fact that we're all dead or dying is exactly the part I'm taking issue with at this moment..." Jagón sighed, something was bothering the high mage, he had spent enough time around the feline to know that much. He did his best to console her.
"I have a feeling we are all going to get a chance to do something about this when that story is over... So why don't we just wai-" Alice interrupted nervously.
"I don't want to hear anymore of this mere tall tale repeated as fact while we wait around, likely running out of time... Can we just go, Jagón? Can we just go look for some other way out?" The panther looked to the smaller feline curiously, feeling there was something more going on here. Alice didn't seem herself, she was all edge, and none of that playful side was showing through. Jagón knew discovering you were dead could wipe the smile from most muzzles, but that wasn't it...
The panther gazed at the calico cat a short while longer, squinting vaguely as a small degree of familiarity and recognition lingering right outside of his grasp slowly became more and more clear to him as he peered into the eyes of the smaller feline. The general sucked in a sharp breath, and his eyes went wide in recognition as Calium continued into perhaps the saddest part of his story on the other side of that shadowy barricade.
===
It was numbing, she hadn't moved in so long that there was no point in trying to even shake the bindings anymore, they would only remind her they were there, they would only remind her that she was there. Her chains had long since subdued even her fire. She knew her place, it was on that slab, the same as it had been for countless centuries unmarked by any means to measure them. She sometimes wondered if anything before ever really even happened, but she assumed that was simply another round of madness coming on. She discovered something not many ever would, if you go insane enough, if you cannot die for millions of years, you just eventually loop back around to sanity, only everything is a little more shifted each go around.
A rumble filled her hearing, she giggled to herself as she mumbled out into her eternally silent tomb.
"A larger tremor. An offering to the goddess of the slab. Wouldn't sister be jealous?" The sun goddess laughed shrilly, and then she cried desperately, and then she closed her eyes, the same as she did every day. She felt around for that distant part of her heart, and she started singing to herself once again, just as she did countless times over the centuries, soothing the spirits of the afterworld all the while. She only kept on singing in that dark place, paying no attention to the tricks her mind played which she had long grown bored of.
The rumbles she had once always perceived as her tomb opening that were never more than the earth trembling slightly. The voices of her family calling out to save her that just never seemed to find her in the dark, no matter how loudly she tried to answer them... The feeling that the chains had been lifted, only to remind her of their steady presence the moment she dared to move. Yes, she knew of all the cruelties an immortal mind could play in such eternal darkness. As if right on cue, another loud, explosive rumble filled the ears of the sun goddess. The goddess ignored her obviously fabricated madness, choosing instead to sing, because the song was the only thing that ever still seemed real to her at all.
Her mind was being creative that day, the rich voice that called out wasn't even speaking a language that she knew. The boundlessness of madness was truly impressive. She only kept singing so softly, knowing no such hope remained for one such as her. The intelligible voice called out again, closer this time, in a tone that seemed uncertain, or hesitant. Her song hitched in her throat for the slightest moment, she let herself almost believe it was real for a moment... so she kept on singing, desperate not to fall for such a trick yet again.
A warm hand embraced her own, and her song finally came to an abrupt end as she sucked in a startled gasp of shock. The goddess clenched both her jaw, and her weakened fist tightly after, so afraid of how much the awful truth was going to hurt her again, knowing that there was no way this could be real, no matter how warm she was imagining that touch to be. The hand released her own, and she exhaled, grateful the visions had passed her over once more. She had breathed far too soon...
She had imagined someone pulling her blindfold from her many times, marveling at how much the mind could really create and even see after so much time alone. She had imagined all manner of faces staring back at her, come to rescue her, and she had watched them all fade back into darkness eventually, this beastman would be no different.
He was a young and strong leopard this time, his fur a solid, lustrous ebony that coated the large cat entirely in a pelt of his own darkness. The spots of his pelt were seamlessly hidden in such dark fur. She always admired panthers, how just a simple change in color could create such a seemingly different breed entirely. Yes, the sun goddess always loved her felines, so it only made sense she would imagine yet another one coming to her rescue, this was nothing too different than the usual... But his eyes, his piercing and sympathetic eyes, they just seemed so real to her weakened gaze in that moment.
The sun goddess stared in disbelief, still refusing to accept what was happening. Even as the young panther broke her chains, and removed her bindings... even as the handsome beast bent over tenderly, and pulled her from that cursed slab at long last... even as he stared into her eyes, and walked her back up those steps, she was desperately fighting back the assured madness she was letting overtake her once more... She just couldn't accept that it was real, it was never real, it was never-
