Rethen's name had finally come up, and with it came a devastating truth about what it truly was.
'His… a son of a god?'
Her mind was slightly shaken, to the point she stopped in her tracks. All this time, she had been talking to the son of a god.
'Wait, the description said something about it being the false fruit of their love, most likely referring to Rethen… he's not their son, at least not their real son, but a being created by Nether to be their child.'
The thread of the description started to connect in her mind. For some reason, the gods had cursed Nether, and because of that curse their child had died. A miscarriage, most likely. In his grief he had raised war against the gods, lost, and been cast down into the underworld. Refusing to accept what had happened, he had shaped Rethen there, using the essence of their unborn child to breathe life into him. Just what kind of person was Nether to wage war against gods?!
'Now that I think about it… Rethen spelled backward is Nether. So there must be truth in it.'
The more pieces she fit together, the stranger Nether became to her. On one level she could understand his desperation, if what she had guessed was even half right, his grief must have been bottomless. But to feed your unborn child's essence into an artificial creation? That was twisted beyond words. She would never claim to understand a goddess, but she could at least understand the disgust. In the goddess's place, she might have felt the same.
'…I committed a grave sin. I… let's just say I insulted the goddess.'
Suddenly she remembered Rethen's quiet confession. Pity stirred in her chest. He had been given existence only to be loathed and chained by the one who should have loved him, yet even so he longed to be freed, to go to war at her side.
Elizabeth didn't quite understand why. Why would he still care enough to go to war for parents like that? What had they ever done for him, other than cast him aside? Even Nether, his creator had left him to be imprisoned.
Elizabeth would never have been that kind to her parents. She shook her head, realizing her thoughts were starting to derail.
'Whatever. Their family tragedy has nothing to do with me.'
The gods were gone. Learning the outline of their doomed love might be interesting, but in the end it changed nothing. She was here for one reason, to end her nightmare and return to the world of the living.
***
By the time she reached the pillar's base, dawn had bled into the sky. She had walked for hours without pause, yet her limbs felt fresh and her eyes refused to grow heavy with sleep. She had spent most of the journey worrying at the puzzle that was her aspect, testing theories against the scant clues she had. One in particular had begun to seem likely.
Her aspect spoke of tending the ocean, which she still found absurd. How did one "tend" something as vast as the Ocean? Or "protect" it, from what exactly, pollution? Those lines remained a mystery. But the rest had given her an opening.
An Ocean Maiden lives for the ocean, hears the voice of the ocean, and is the voice of the ocean.
She had started to suspect her aspect tried to make her an echo of the sea itself. If she lived for the ocean, heard it, and spoke as it, then perhaps some part of her body mirrored its nature. The ocean was unending. So her stamina, too, might be unending. That would explain why exhaustion never touched her. As aspect abilities went, it was a gift.
She tipped her head back and studied the sky. Overhead the semi‑translucent golden barrier lay like a shell, the mist beyond it thinning and brightening.
"I did not sleep either," she muttered.
Her body never tired, but her mind was another matter. Running two minds at once wore on her in a way that she had never felt before and could not ignore. A dull ache throbbed behind her eyes. She shook her head and forced her attention forward.
The tower loomed before her.
From a distance it had been colossal. Up close it was monstrous. Its crown vanished beyond the golden barrier, spearing into the mist until sight failed. The stone was black to the point of wrongness, as if it drank in every scrap of light and gave nothing back, leaving only the impression of light refusing to be reflected at all.
She lowered her gaze to the door. Like the tower, it was a seamless slab of darkness. If not for the twin golden handles, she might have walked right past it. She let herself breathe once, then a second time, taking in the sight, and steadying her thoughts. Then she summoned one of Rethen's swords. The familiar weight filled her palm; and she felt her courage rise like a tide.
She reached for the nearest handle and pulled.
Beyond the threshold lay only darkness. There where no shadow, not even dimness of light, just nothing. A depth so black that even with the doors flung wide she could not see a finger's width inside. She hesitated, just long enough for fear to register, she pushed it down then stepped over the threshold.
The instant her whole body passed through, the doors slammed behind her. Absolute darkness swallowed her.
'Huh… am I falling?'
Her stomach lurched as if the ground had dropped away, yet her feet still pressed something solid. She felt herself pulled down and up and sideways all at once, as though the world had slipped its axis.
"W‑what is going on?"
Her whisper vanished the moment it left her lips, devoured by the void. Her senses turned inside out. When she tried to step forward, she felt herself dragged backward and forward and sideways in at same time. Even when she forced both minds to lock onto one direction, the dissonance remained.
'Is… space distorting? Where am I?'
Thoughts tumbled over one another, frantic and chaotic.
"Thump."
A heartbeat boomed through the dark.
The moment it sounded, blinding pain surged through her entire body. Pain followed like lightning, white, total, ripping through her flesh and soul. Her mouth shaped a scream that never reached her ears. Then, as suddenly as it had come, the pain vanished.
'Am… am I dead?'
Her mind felt strangely light, as if some great weight had been peeled away.
'Huh… where am I?'
Darkness still cocooned her. Her senses slid in and out of focus, refusing to settle. Then, somewhere in that void, music began, a soft, unhurried melody that smoothed the jagged edges of her thoughts.
'…oh. Right. I was sent to destroy the heart of a giant.'
What? How did I even forget that?
She took a step forward. The heartbeat sounded again, louder, and new agony tore through her nerves. The music swelled in answer, straining to match the pulse, each vying to drown out the other. Only for the pain to vanish again. She staggered.
'…Where am I?'
Fog rolled through her mind. For a moment she did not know her own name. Then the melody caught her attention again, and with it, her memory came flooding back.
'Ah. I was sent here to free Rethen.'
Right.
She walked on. Step after step, the pattern held. Each heartbeat brought searing pain. Each wave of pain left her dazed, thoughts scattered and incomplete only to remember when she heard the music. She had no sense of time. Minutes, hours, years it all blurred together. It felt like forever.
"...Where am I?"
Her own voice sounded distant to her. She lifted her head, and this time she saw a faint glow ahead, warm and gentle.
She moved toward it, slow and unsteady, unaware of the way the space around her twisted and reshaped itself. Eventually, the light resolved, and she stopped.
A lake stretched before her, flat and perfectly still. Its waters were as black as the void around her.
Is the light coming from the bottom?
The heartbeat echoed again, but now there was no pain, only a rush of warmth that spilled through her veins.
"I… need to go to that light."
She stepped forward. The lake closed over her head. She barely noticed. When walking failed her, she swam, her scaled, fin‑fringed arms cutting the water, driving her down, down, and deeper down.
'Ah… so bright…'
At the lake's floor a miniature sun blazed, small and terrible. Its light blistered her skin, but the water wrapped her in a thin veil of protection, just enough to keep her from coming apart.
In her hand, the sword flared.
"Ah… a glowing sword? Why do I have this…?"
The question unlocked something in her mind. Her purpose flooded back in a single, searing instant.
Right. I am here to destroy the heart of a giant, to free Rethen, son of Nether and the Goddess of Black Skies… Herald of Disaster.
She drove the sword toward the burning core.
Fire ate her arm to the shoulder in the space of a heartbeat, yet the blade did not falter. It sailed on, a streak of light, and vanished into the miniature sun. Even as her flesh charred and her bone dissolved, she found herself smiling, her empty gaze fixed on the weapon sinking into that impossible sun.
[Your memory has been destroyed.]
The Spell's voice snapped her free of her trance.
'Huh…?'
Before she could gather a single coherent thought, another voice shook the darkness. It was ancient and familiar, heavy with a power that made her soul quail. Yet beneath the power lay nothing but anguish, a raw, tearing grief.
"In the end I could not free you… what have you done, child of the sea, what have you done!? Could you not have listened to me?"
'W‑what?'
Guilt knifed through her, sharp and inexplicable, as if she had committed some unforgivable crime.
Around her, the darkness writhed.
Then, all at once, a fogg was lifted of her mind.
'Where am I? I… I was just entering the tower. How am I suddenly—'
"I am here to free the Herald of Disaster."
Her remaining hand flew to her mouth to close it.
'What am I saying? Who is the Herald of Disaster? How am I talking underwater? How am I breathing underwater?'
The questions piled up, but the world did not pause to let her ask them. The miniature sun dimmed. Chains she had not noticed before cinched tight around it, then crumbled into dust as the light bled away.
When the glow died completely, the Spell whispered
[You have slain a supreme beast, Guardian of Disaster.]
[You have received a Memory…]
'Huh…?'
'She had killed… a supreme beast? How did that happen?'
Was that light the heart of the giant?
"Next heart!"
Her hand snapped back over her mouth.
'Next heart? Why does it feel like something is terribly wrong?'
She blinked and in the next instant she stood outside.
Behind her yawned a vast, lightless crater.
"Huh? Where did the tower go?"
Her fingers dug into her cheeks as she clamped her mouth shut. Panic clawed up her throat. Her body spoke without her consent. Her tongue formed words she did not choose. Beneath it all was a sick, gnawing certainty that she had made a terrible mistake.
Why did she feel as if destroying the giant's heart had been the wrong choice? Who, truly, was the Herald of Disaster? Nothing made sense.
Suddenly she was assaulted by flashes of images. As the images played out, she understood what had happened to her.
'Oh. Oh no. No, no…'
The worst possibility. The one she had not wanted to name.
'Urg… I was so stupid. I was so, so stupid. How could I have trusted it? Rethen… I will kill you!'
The visions were not random; they were fragments of her own memory, scattered and dulled. They showed her why her thoughts had frayed, why even with her arm burned away she had felt no pain, why her mouth refused her command.
Her other half had been taken over.