Aetherfall (65)

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AN: You guys voted for it, so here it is! A Maridah PoV special into her past!

PS: I'll also be posting Ch66 for Silver later today or early tomorrow!

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[065] (special)

Maridah, through Monkey’s eyes, sat atop the higher tower within Cracked Bay. With her divine eyes, she could spot every secret that lay bare. The death of so many mortals was a stain upon the mud bricks and cobblestone streets, yet at the same time it left open so many secrets. Each house was a tiny treasure trove of minuscule little tidbits. A man cheating on his spouse here, a girl hiding toys from her parents there, morsels that would be lost to time. Every little scrap was picked up by her slimes, collectors that traversed every inch, ridding the city of death and disease, cleaning its karmic imbalance, and more importantly, laying claim to the territory.

The current pantheon treated mortal cities like discarded corners of stagnation, where the Gods barely needed to show their presence. Cracked Bay would not be like that, Maridah would not sulk in a tiny little corner. No, every meter would be under her protection.

As was proper.

Despite her wishes and infinite patience, however, some aspects were progressing slowly. Mainly, herself. Now that she’d left the safe confines of the Twilight Jungle, she needed to adapt herself to being amongst mortals once more.

“You’re stalling.” Monkey spoke, chiding her.

“I am.” Maridah admitted freely. Now that she’d reintegrated the core concepts and memories she’d tucked away within Bunny, it was time to take the plunge and properly dwell on the past. To regain that which she’d tucked away, the fruit that would’ve been opium to her pain were still in the jungle.

To remember what she’d once been, the glory of her prime in full.

With the barest sigh, she closed her eyes.

And unlocked everything that’d been tucked away.

---

Maridah floated atop a sea of stars, skyscrapers of concrete, glass, and steel that stretched out kilometers high. Though to a mortal’s gaze the landscape ended at the horizon, to the Goddess’ senses the city stretched out until it occupied the entirety of the continent. A neon jungle that was stratified and divided, with every building connected with bridges, high rises, and floating platforms. It was a chaotic maze with very few roads, every portion was partially self-sufficient, connected through corridors, hallways, and tunnels to every other part it might need.

Mortals ignorant of the layout could spend a lifetime traveling in circles, never reaching the layers above or below. It was for this reason that there were explorers, risking life and limb to find hidden shortcuts, paid by map-makers that sold their masterful works of digital ink to any who wished to traverse their little corner of the city.

The smell of mortal life reached her even this far above. Kitchens working at every hour, sweat, sex, stress, blood, shit. It all permeated into the very essence of her city, some of the scents carrying knowledge of their own, clues for those with a sharp enough mind to recognize them. No one mortal knew more than a tiny portion of the city and its secrets, most lived their whole lives thinking it was the only thing that existed, others desperately searched for the borders of the continent and what lay beyond. Meanwhile, those at the coasts often searched for the heart of the city, a whirlwind of mortal lives that were ever in motion.

It was a city of rumors.

It was a city of secrets.

For a moment, she basked on the taste of it all. Every detail, every nuance carried with it a lattice of knowledge that tied into other secrets, a web that any mortal could pull if they just looked at the hint properly. Entire bloodlines dedicated their existences to this task, but very few solved the grand game of clues, even when the devout of her temple provided bits of help here and there.

It was a fun little game, one that kept her divinity churning and boiling, twisting and dancing. It fueled her and reminded her of her duty.

With a sigh of contentment, she plunged down, shadows and ephemeral form phasing through matter as she traversed through kilometers of houseworks and buildings, then through even more in tunnels and underground construction.

Layers upon layers upon layers.

Deep down, deep enough, the very stone became so hot that it would be impossible for mortals to live there if not for the extreme thermal shielding. Maridah continued past this, beyond the deepest settlement (put there entirely for the sake of research), beyond the areas their active scanners could reach, into seas of magma.

It was here where she felt it, the monster larger than any single nation, a creature not of flesh and bone but of metal and stone. Its body glowed with heat, its hunger for aether insatiable, yet it slept.

For now.

Maridah glanced around, searching for a familiar presence.

The Knower was there, perched atop a small bubble of solidified magma, observing the monster just as she had. Maridah approached, materializing in the form she’d taken to be her preferred one so long ago. “Heya.” She called out through a voice that echoed despite there being no air, the human girl grinning in amusement and warmth, staring at the equally ‘young’ male human.

“Sup.” He responded in kind, not quite shifting his focus towards her, most of his attention preoccupied with the monster that slumbered beneath them. “It seems we’re reaching the threshold.”

“Really?” Maridah’s brows knit together in consternation. “So we can’t keep it from waking up?”

“Spreading out the aether rather than concentrating it into a singular spot helped, but no, there’s too much activity on the surface.” He folded his arms in annoyance. “As things are, it should be waking up in a dozen million or so.”

The Whisperer took this knowledge and nodded. A dozen million years was not exactly as much time as she would’ve preferred, but it was definitely a big problem. A monster of this scale becoming active would surely see most of the mortal world brought to ruin.

“We’ll use the Throne to kill it, then?” Maridah pondered out loud. “I can’t think of any alternatives.”

“The frequency of these threats has increased.” Knower commented, rubbing his chin. “At this rate, if we use the Throne, it will not have regained its power by the time the next threat emerges.” He looked at her. “Does it not strike you as odd how none of the Gods before us were older than an Age? And they, in turn, knew their predecessors to only be an Age old. It is like a cycle.”

Maridah took a moment to chuckle amicably. “Beware patterns that are merely of correlation. I should know that better than anyone, too many mortals finding explanations that only work for the coincidences they experienced.”

The Knower did not answer, merely keeping his gaze fixated upon the monster. “I believe this might be a sign that our Age is coming to an end.”

“Bah.” She twirled, turning to glide around the bubble as she allowed herself to float freely through space. “We’re not like our predecessors, we don’t kill spirits indiscriminately to protect our position. We have hundreds of them, learning, growing, helping us. We might face danger, but so long as we bunker down and survive the worst of it, then we will emerge and grow anew.”

The Knower nodded, half of a mind present, clearly dwelling on many other things.

“I know what can cheer you up,” Maridah said, stepping closer and giving him a grin. “You could tell me your true name.”

He smirked. “And let you know where I am at any given time? You wish.” With a wave of his hand, he stepped outside the physical realm. “Besides, it’s the one secret I’ve got left, you’d lose interest.”

“Spoilsport. Have it your way.”

Maridah still did not deny his claim, though today she did not feel like going through the usual song and dance. Her mind wandered to things far ahead, and the preparations that would be necessary. If the Knower was right, as he often was to be about these things, then she’d look into ways to bunker down properly.

For now, it seemed she was to keep enjoying the fruits of her labor. With no monsters worth hunting (at least not after the Hunter’s rampage on the other continents), and with no projects to try and dig fun little secrets, that left the Goddess with her city. THE city, the one place where nearly all mortals lived, and that she was in charge of.

“Maridah.”

A thrill ran through the Goddess, her attention narrowing down and focusing on the source, on the mortal who’d spoken her name. There was trepidation in the word, hesitation, fear, but also curiosity, confidence, and satisfaction. She turned and followed the threat until she found the old decrepit man that knelt at the hidden altar, staring at the three-eyed statue in reverence.

With but a thought, she materialized in front of the dwarf, her appearance shifting to a female of his species, alluring in all the ways the man had secretly wished his wife to be. “Yes.” She spoke, a twinkle of approval in her eyes at the mix of desire, restraint, and awe within his aura. “That is the answer.” A slight caress of her hand, and the mortal shuddered, his ailments, his pains, his every sore healed. Maridah could not unmake the progress of time on mortal flesh, but she could alleviate all the pains it brought.

“Y-y-you are real…” The dwarven man stuttered and bowed low, speaking in supplication and gratitude, whimpering as he chanted the songs of hidden knowledge. “A-a-a Goddess…”

“Yes.” She chuckled lightly. “Perhaps meeting me undermines the point of seeking knowledge for the sake of knowledge’s sake, but I thought it apt.”

“Th-then…”

“You have one question.” She raised a finger. “Just say my name when you’re ready. However…” That singular word hung in the air, catching the man’s every bit of attention. “If you ask something I do not know, then I will refund that question, and give you another.”

The dwarf nodded, and she branded upon him her mark, proof of his status as a finder of the greatest secrets. Even amongst her highest priests, it would be seen as a status. The dwarf and his descendants would never know hunger or illness, of that the Goddess would make sure of.

Returning to her perch atop the largest city to ever exist, she began her work in erasing the clues that this mortal’s ancestors had followed. Bit by bit, one detail at a time, she shifted the city ever so subtly, replacing the trail of riddles and hints with an entirely new one. A quick check on the millions of other paths confirmed it would be a few hundred years before anyone solved one of her grand riddles.

Idly, she stared at the city and looked at it, finding herself curiously shifting her attention.

From where she sat, she could spot the patterns, the hints, the little clues and footsteps. Everything that she’d put there for the sake of the mortals to follow and figure out. Following a nagging thought, she glanced out into the broader world, beyond the borders of the city and on to as much of the mortal realm as she could take in.

She’d mocked Knower for it, but now she couldn’t help but feel oddly tempted.

What greater patterns did the world have?

And did it mean anything that they were there?

---

Opening her eyes back in the present, Maridah returned to her Avatar. Through its senses, she immediately focused on a singular and very specific human. A human whose narrow face and pale skin were far too similar to the God who’d she’d once called a friend. A human who was spending the night with a mortal lover.

It was as if a piece of a puzzle that floated out of place, no pattern fitting its shape.

Liam had insisted time and again that he’d made this world, it was his belief, one held fervently within himself. So strong was this notion that even Maridah had sensed his refusal of Bunny’s advances being a strange mix of apprehension, as if engaging with the aspect were almost masturbatory in nature.

Maridah would’ve long since dismissed those feelings as insanity, yet she could not.

Maridah looked at him, truly looked a him, peering past the veil of protection she’d put on him, and stared at the violent swirling vortex of secrets that threatened to consume the world. Secrets that, by his own admission, no God should ever know, and it was something she was inclined to believe herself.

However, she refused to accept that it’d been his hand that held responsibility for the world, for her actions, for everything she’d experienced until this moment. To Maridah it was clear he was an Oracle, in ways none have ever been before.

Nothing less, and certainly nothing more.

And yet it was her nature to unbury secrets, to expose them, to peck and poke at veils until truth was revealed underneath the layers of interpretation.

Observing the two lovers was a revelation of truths in of itself. Liam’s physiology was human yet not, and though those differences meant inefficiencies, in this particular instance it appeared he held the advantage. And Aisha al-Hakim, Amil of Doeta, was the eager victim of this boon.

A woman whose feelings blossomed and flared out in her aura, practically drowning the room.

Slowly, a plan formed in Maridah’s mind. She could never bring herself to believe Liam was a being that had held accidental omnipotence for a period of his life. Yet that didn’t mean others needed to hold that view.

Liam would not be her Champion, he’d refused the role.

But she could make him a Messiah.

Maybe then Maridah would be able to unveil the truth of what he was, how he’d come to be here, and what that meant.

---

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