Page 84 of Renegade Kingdom
“Yes,” Nymeria said. Simply. No defence. No excuse. “That is exactly what I did.”
That stole some of the heat from my rage. I’d expected arguments, justifications, some grand cosmic reason that would make it all make sense. Not agreement.
“I created Arik first,” she continued, and her voice carried the weight of centuries. “I poured everything I had into him. My hope. My power. My desperate need to fix the growing problems in this realm.” The shifting form seemed to contract, growing smaller. “But he was incomplete. There was a hunger in him I hadn’t intended. A rage that had no source. An emptiness that nothing could fill.”
“So you threw him away.” My voice was flat.
“I cast him out.” Her eyes closed, or the approximation of eyes in that shifting face. “Hoping he would find his own path. Hoping the realm would gentle him, shape him, give him what I couldn’t. Instead...”
“Instead he festered. And planned. And became a monster.”
“Yes.”
“And then you made me.” The words tasted bitter. “Your second attempt. Your weapon.”
The form flickered again, and for a moment I saw something raw underneath the elemental display. Just pain. Old, exhausted pain. “I made you to be the daughter I hoped he could have been. Not a weapon, Alyssandra. A choice. I wanted to give this realm a choice.”
I wanted to keep being angry. It was easier than the thing trying to crawl up my throat. The grief, the horrible understanding that was settling into my bones despite my best efforts to keep it out.
“Why couldn’t you stop him yourself?” I asked, and I hated how small my voice sounded.
Nymeria’s form seemed to sigh, the elements rippling outward. She drifted toward the stone throne and lowered herself onto it, and the simple act of sitting seemed to cost her something. The shifting slowed. The colours dimmed.
“Because I have nothing left to stop him with.” She looked down at her own hands. Translucent, flickering, barely there. “I wasn’t always like this. Once, I was…more.”
She was quiet for a long moment, and when she spoke again, her voice carried something different. Not the weight of a creator talking about her realm. Something more personal. More distant.
“I came from a place very far from here. A realm built for gods. Beings like me, vast and ancient and powerful beyond anything you could imagine.” The light around her shifted, and I caught glimpses of something in the swirling elements. A sky that wasn’t Nymeria’s sky. Stars arranged in patterns I didn’t recognise. “It was beautiful. And it wassuperficial. There was nothing to do. Nothing to build. Nothing to tend. Just eternity, stretching in every direction, and gods with too much power and too little purpose. When the backstabbing and the betrayal started, no one was safe.”
She paused, and the flowers at her edges bloomed and died three times before she continued.
“Bored gods create chaos, Alyssandra. I watched it begin. The games, the cruelty, the slow madness that sets in when immortal beings have nothing to occupy their hands. I could see where it was heading. The fractures forming between us. The darkness creeping into minds that had once held only light.” Her form contracted again, dimmer now. “And then they turned against me. Blamed me for things I had nothing to do with. Even when they realised I was innocent they were too far into their own madness that I didn’t even get an apology. They started turning on each other then, and I wanted no part of it. So I left.”
The chamber seemed to hold its breath. Even my mates were utterly still behind me.
“I found this place. Empty, formless, waiting. And I poured myself into it. Every scrap of what I was, I gave to this realm. I grew the forests, carved the rivers, raised the mountains. I breathed life into the soil and magic into the air. I created people and creatures and seasons. But with every act of creation, I bound myself tighter to what I’d made.” She looked at me, and in those ancient eyes I saw something I never expected to see in a god.
Exhaustion.
“I can’t leave, Alyssandra. I can’t go back. I don’t even know what’s become of the others. Whether they tore each other apart or found peace. For all I know they could still be circling each other in that gilded, vapid paradise. I gave everything to build this realm, and now this...” She gestured at her flickering form, at the fading light, at the breathing walls that pulsed slower than before. “This is all I have left. The last ember of what I was.”
I stared at her. At this god who wasn’t a god anymore. This mother who had never held her children. This creator who had run from chaos only to birth more of it, and who was now sitting on a crumbling throne watching the last of herself flicker out.
“You’re dying,” I said.
“I’mending.” The correction was gentle. “I’ve been ending for a very long time. This chamber, this seat of power, it’s the last thread that ties me to this plane. When you fully claim this court, that final thread will break.” She said it so calmly. So simply. Like she was telling me the weather. “And I will be gone.”
“You want that.” It wasn’t a question, because I could see it in her. The bone-deep weariness of someone who had been holding on for far, far too long.
“I am so tired, Alyssandra.” The words cracked something open in her voice. The elements around her stilled, and for amoment she was almost solid, almost real. She looked like a woman who hadn’t slept in a thousand years. “And I am sosorry. For Arik. For what he’s done to this realm, to its people, toyou. I made mistakes that have cost lives beyond counting, and I have spent centuries too weak to fix any of it.” The light in her eyes dimmed. “I hate that you have to fix it for me. You are my daughter, and I have given you nothing but an unbearable burden.”
The anger was gone. I didn’t know when it had left, but in its place was something worse. Understanding. She wasn’t an all-powerful being who had chosen not to help. She was someone who had spent herself creating and had almost nothing left. The whispers in the wind, the gentle nudges. That wasn’t indifference. That was a mother using the last of her breath to do what little she could.
Gods weren’t infallible. They were just people with more power and longer memories, and they made terrible choices born from exhaustion and loneliness just like the rest of us.
“I want to give you something,” Nymeria said, and her form flickered violently. Light and shadow warring across her surface. “Before I go. The last of what I am, the final spark of my power. I can use it for one act. One gift. For everything I have asked of you and everything I never should have, I can grant you one final request.”
The chamber went very still.
