Her mind had been taken, but when?
When she stepped through the tower doors? No. She remembered that too clearly, the slam of stone gates behind her, and the first lurch of distorted space. In those moments she had still been herself. After that, though, everything blurred into a cycle of pain and darkness. She had only begun to reclaim her thoughts after finding herself outside again, standing at the new crater's edge. What lay in the gap between? Why had the voice that cried out after the sun's destruction sounded so familiar? Why was she like this? Why couldn't she control what she was saying?
It wasn't until fragments of memory resurfaced that she began to understand.
***
Right after she entered the tower, the first heartbeat sounded. But contrary to what she remembered, the pain did not come at once.
A voice spoke first.
"What brings you here, child of the sea?"
The words were deep and resonant, rolling through the dark. For a moment, she thought Rethen was speaking to her, but the tone was wrong, older, heavier, and far less distracting. And she heard the voice with her ears, not in her mind. Instinct snapped her into readiness, her sword raised as she waited for an attack.
She held her stance for a few tense seconds.
Then her sword began to glow.
'Huh… why is it glowing?'
The voice fell silent for a moment before its thunderous tone echoed again.
"…Child of the sea, are you here to free that abomination?"
Abomination? She tucked the word away, filed it next to everything she knew about Rethen, If she thought about it, in the eyes of others Rethen was indeed what exactly that, An abomination. She shook her head and took a cautious step forward. Again, her senses twisted, a strange, directionless lurch that made forward and backward feel the same.
'Am I really going forward?'
"Do not be deceived by him, child," the voice continued. "That abomination deserves its chains. To release it is to summon your own doom."
She took another step. If this being was not attacking her, she would keep moving toward the giant's heart. if she was moving at all. She needed to end her nightmare. Still, curiosity gnawed at the edges of her mind the more the voice spoke, and a small part of her that had been questioning whether she was doing the right thing could not help but want to listen to what the voice had to say.
"Are you calling him an abomination because his mother chained him here?" she asked. "Because he is some… twisted creation of Nether?"
"…You know what it is," the voice said, "and yet you still seek to free it?"
She paused long enough to try to answer, then sighed and moved on. For some reason, she could not see any reason not to release Rethen from his chains. He deserved it in fact, to be free of all of this. When she took a step again the same queasy pull of space rolled over her.
'Gods, this is still weird…'
"Look," she said into the dark, "I have nothing against… whatever you are. But I just want to go home, and this is the only way."
The heartbeat thundered then, booming so loudly it seemed to shove her. A gale of unseen force slammed into her, forcing her backward? forward? she could not tell.
"I cannot let you pass, child of the sea," the voice said. "If you free the embodiment of disaster, doom will fall upon you. It is using you. The fact that it sent a mortal proves its desperation. You must resist child."
Is this the guardian of this place? she wondered, taking another step, only to feel as if a mountain had just descended on her shoulders she clenched her teeth and tried to take another step foward.
"Desperate?" she said aloud. "I mean, I guess. He said he wants to help the goddess in a war. That is why I am here, to free him, I assume you too server the goddess? would you not want your goddess to receive more aid? you are getting in my way."
Silence answered her.
When the voice finally spoke again, the words cut through the dark like a blade shattering her belief and for a moment her mind cleared.
"To help the goddess…? Child, you are mistaken. The goddess has already fallen and that abomination is fully aware of it as well."
She froze mid-stride.
"Fallen? As in… dead?"
"…Do you not feel her, child of the sea? Even as a mortal, you should have sensed how her blessing on your kind has withered."
"What?"
What was it saying? What blessing?
"…What a strange child you are," the voice murmured. "Tell me, do you still hear her voice? Do you feel her power flowing through you?"
She stared into the dark, her confusion thickening. "What are you talking abou—"
Then as if a switch in her mind was turned on something clicked in her mind.
Wait a minute.
She pulled up her runes, her eyes narrowing on her aspect.
'Ocean Maiden… a being that tends to the ocean, protects the ocean, lives for the ocean, hears the voice of the ocean, and is the voice of the ocean.'
"How strange the world has become," the voice went on, "for a child of the sea, raised to be her prophet, to grow up ignorant of their own origin. How far the world has fallen already?"
'What… did it just say?'
A prophet? Of who—
'The ocean.'
The word fell into place, and with it, everything else. Her thoughts cleared as if someone had opened a window in her skull and solved a puzzle that she had been unable to solve.
'How… had I not seen this?'
She had been too focused on finding a lead, too desperate to wake up from the nightmare, to look at her aspect for what it really was.
She read the words again and each time she did she was even more certain of the result.
'A being that tends to the ocean, protects the ocean, lives for the ocean, hears the voice of the ocean, and is the voice of the ocean.'
The ocean was not something you "tended" like a garden. It was not something that needed "protection" from simple harm, not if taken literally. But if "ocean" meant something else...She had been thinking about it all wrong.
The ocean was a god, the goddess of black skies, to be precise.
Seriously, how had she not thought of this sooner? The answer should have come to her the moment she heard Rethen call her a favored creation of the goddess, a child of the sea!
Perhaps it was because there was a limit to how much madness one person could expect from a single line of runes. She would never have thought her aspect was related to a god in any shape or form.
The goddess of black skies was the goddess of storms, depths, night, oceans, darkness, stars, travel, guidance, and disaster. She was the ocean itself. Suddenly, the voice's words now made sense. This body had been raised to be a prophet of the goddess of the ocean, aka the goddess of black skies.
If the aspect meant anything, then an Ocean Maiden was someone who could converse with the ocean, live for it, and speak as it. A prophet of the sea-goddess.
Was her aspect a form of blessing? Was that why she never tired, because she had been created as a vessel to carry out the goddess's work? To be it's guardian? How was someone supposed to protect a god?
"It seems you were not raised with this knowledge, child of the sea," the voice said. "But no matter. Turn back. The one you seek to liberate is nothing but the embodiment of disaster. He has deceived you."
She stopped. The certainty she had clung to, that freeing Rethen would end the nightmare, suddenly felt very thin. She had no reason to believe the voice, but a small part of her did anyway. If the goddess had been dead from the start and Rethen knew, why would he lie to her about the reason he must be freed?
Had she been lied to from the start? If so would freeing him really be the right choice?
What… what was she supposed to do? how exactly was she supposed to end her nightmare?
If she freed him and the nightmare did not end, she would have unchained a catastrophe for nothing. And if he killed her, and a small part of her told her that it would, there would be no waking up from this at all.
"…Child of the sea," the voice said softly, "I believe destiny has brought you to this ship to fulfill a duty our goddess can no longer perform."
She surfaced from her spiraling thoughts and raised her head to stare into the darkness. "A duty… I must fulfill?"
"Correct. This ship was fashioned by the goddess to imprison that abomination. She used her own blood to bind it. We giants were tasked with guarding the sorcery she left behind. She tied that law to our concepts, to my brethren. But after her fall, her blood was never renewed. Slowly, the ship decayed. The people who dwelt here dedicated themselves to watching over the abomination as the sorcery withered. Then, one day, it shattered. We had no choice but to use our souls to seal him. But the brief moment between the shattering and the bindings was all the abomination needed to massacre them."
Another lie she had been told. The people of this ship did not die protecting him, they died because of him. He...It had been the dangerous being.
"When our souls fades in the near future, we know he will be free." The voice said, "We had lost all hope… until the ship's sorcery flared to life again, her blood had been reignited. Oh, it seems that the goddess has not abandoned us yet. Even in death she sends a gift to us."
Elizabeth's stomach dropped, her mind still preoccupied with the lie Rethen had told her. But why should she believe what this voice had said as well? How much of what the voice was telling the truth? How could she trust it?
But unlike Rethen, she knew the owner of the voice was not bound by any restrictions on its power. She had realized soon after taking several steps in this strange tower that if the being wanted to, it could have erased her from existence. So she was incline to believe it more than Rethen.
'Why did I believe him?'
Why had she accepted so easily that something had attacked the ship, that the people had sacrificed themselves to stop it, that Rethen had somehow survived untouched? That Rethen was a victim in all of this.
'Why didn't I question any of it?'
She fell silent. Betrayal was not the sharpest blade that pierced her right now; her own gullibility was. Anger at herself burned hotter than the anger she felt toward Rethen.
"I was stupid." She muttered, but the voice seemed to have heard her.
"I do not fault you, child," the voice said gently. "He embodies disaster. Confusion, manipulation, and chaos is his nature and his essence. Your mind was being poisoned by him."
She curled her fingers into a fist, her nails biting into her palm, and stared into the endless dark. She had been set back to square one and now had to figure out exactly what her goal was to end the nightmare.
"…This duty you mentioned," she said, "what exactly is it? I do not see why you told me all of this."
Even as she asked, she already had a feeling of what the voice wanted her to do. She remembered the way the ship had reacted when a drop of her blood struck its surface earlier. Had that been what powered it? But how? She was no goddess.
"You are a child of the sea," the voice replied. "Beings fashioned by the goddess herself, with a portion of her blood. You are descended from such stock."
She understood then.
"You want me to be this ship's blood source," she said quietly. "To keep him locked away."
"Yes, child. Renew the sorcery the goddess left to us. It is your duty as a child of the sea."
"…I refuse." She said softly.
She looked down at her sword, then back into the dark. Her gaze turned cold. She was getting tired of seeking answers from others; she was getting tired of looking for an easy way out of her nightmare. This was a trial created to test her, and she would be the one to decide how she was going to end it.
"…What?" The voice said.
She drove the sword point-down into the unseen floor and leaned her weight on the hilt.
"I am not going to be a blood bag for this ship," she said. "I have places to be."
"…Do you wish to stand with the abomination, after all I have told you?"
"Of course not." Her voice sharpened, it's tone turning colder. "But I do have a solution. It is simple really. Rethen is weak right now, so weak he is practically dormant. Which means… I will not have to power this ship to keep it chained if there is nothing left to chain."
The voice hesitated before it spoke again and she could have sworn it was shaking. "…What are you saying?"
Was it truly not obvious?
"Uh," she said, "it means I am going to kill him and be done with it."
Silence fell.
Then laughter rolled out like thunder through the darkness, deep and booming.
"You?" the voice roared. "You would kill the embodiment of disaster?"
The laughter rolled on, but Elizabeth stood her ground staring into the darkness.
"Listen, child," the voice said at last. "Even weakened, it was once a sacred demigod, Herald of Disaster, creation of Nether, demon of destiny, prince of the underworld. Even now, its soul brushes the divine. You cannot kill it, especially not as a mortal. It is impossible."
A small, fierce smile tugged at her lips. Every fiber of her being insisted that this path, impossible or not, was the right one.
"It's not possible?" she murmured. "No… it's necessary. And I have a plan."
To end this nightmare, she had to kill Rethen. Now she was sure of it.