Burning brighter than the Sun Part 1 – Of Goddesses and Time [Nathalia Side Story]

Burning brighter than the Sun Part 1 – Of Goddesses and Time [Nathalia Side Story]

Sand.

An endless, vast landscape of sand. It wasn’t a desert, it missed the hills and all that, no, it was a maelstrom. Sand endlessly swirled around a center. Unceasingly, unquestionably, it drained and was recreated in the basin, kilometres across.

Nathalia sashayed along the pathway of impossibly thick glass that made up the rim of the basin. She had come here just to kill time but now all it did was remind her of the power she had lost. Of ages past when she had dragged annoying mortals here and dunked their heads under the sands until they pleaded for mercy and release from their own memories.

Nathalia knelt and ran her fingers through the sand. It was so fine, her digits glided through it like a liquid. When she raised her hand, the excess grains found their way back to the maelstrom. For a few moments, her hand shifted through several stages of age: young, old, ancient, back to young, before stabilizing at her current age. The sands of time did little this far away from the heart of the hourglass. Not like she cared much. This was just another place to visit and certainly the one that had changed the least over the centuries she had spent asleep. Even her Sanctum had gone through more changes.

“You finally show your face again,” an indignant voice reached the dragoness’ pointy ears.

Nathalia turned her head just enough to look behind her. A woman with platinum blond hair stood there. Golden eyes and radiant armour both shone with a deceptively warm light. A disk of burning fire confined in a black frame hovered behind her back, reflecting off the smooth floor and basking her copper skin in gold. The plate armour looked like it was hammered perfectly to her body, hiding none of her seductive curves that rivalled Nathalia’s own, much to the redhead’s annoyance.

“Sol,” Nathalia spat out. “Any reason you’re annoying me?”

“Luna felt you intruding upon this place and thought I would fulfil Romulus’ promise, he is very busy you know?” Sol laughed mockingly, “Oh, how would you know? He has banished you from his court... you’re lucky he doesn’t feel the need to make that banishment permanent in person.”

Nathalia growled and stood up. “We both know that Romulus isn’t coming here for an entirely different reason,” she said with a glance at the far away centre of the maelstrom. Her eyes were sharp enough to make out the man desperately trying to claw himself out, even though everyone knew that was useless.

The man was rapidly changing in age. Youth came and went, adulthood replaced with both the frailty of age and childhood. Wounds long healed became wounds present, only to be replaced with all the pleasures life had brought him. All of that, condensed into a singular moment stretched out for thousands of years. Throughout all of that, a spark of will remained and the man continued to struggle to remain on the surface. God-making hands grasped at nothing.

“He cannot bear to look at what he did to him,” Nathalia stated and ripped her eyes away. “Even I would shy away from that cruelty. It takes a special wrath for anyone to doom a brother to reliving their life endlessly and cowardice not to finish what he has started.”

Sol’s expression darkened. Nobly swung jawbones clenched, as the heat radiating from the fellow goddess’ skin rose. As a fellow entity of heat, albeit fire and light were different in many regards, Nathalia did not care.

“Still sensitive when people insult your master, are you?” Nathalia laughed, slow and mockingly.

“What do you want here, Nathalia?!” Sol barked.

Nathalia refused to answer on principle. While turning the rest of the way around, she answered, “What do you care? Our paths divided in Pompeii.”

Sol rushed forwards, suddenly in front of the dragoness. “You dare speak of Pompeii, arrogant lizard?” she hissed.

Nathalia crossed her arms, rolled her eyes and just stared for a moment while considering her options. Sol was Romulus’ familiar, she was of little threat without him around. Sadly, squashing her would just mean Romulus could put her back together, like all contractors could with their elementals. That considered, Sol was a being of life, Nathalia of destruction, in a fight she would always hold the advantage. Might as well antagonize the bright bitch.

“Pompeii was what I had to do because Romulus decided to mess with the one thing above him.” Nathalia tossed her fiery mane back with a strong motion of her head. “This conversation is beneath me.”

“Beneath YOU?” Sol asked in sincere ridicule. “I’m sorry, how is anything beneath you? Oh, is it because this conversation doesn’t have a cock your loose cunt can bounce on? Is aggravating me another mistake you want to add to your list of failures, you valueless whore?”

Nathalia grit her teeth at the time goddess’ cheeky tone. She was of half a mind to just break free the regular way. However, she was indeed owed a debt by the Rat. “I started as many Abyssal entities do,” the dragoness gave in to the little game. “Normal.”

The scene changed. Her mind was pulled away, numbed and devolved back into the first moments of her existence. She was nothing more than a simple lizard. A pretty big lizard for her species, but nevertheless just a lizard, following a human tribe for reasons of instinct. She was roughly aware that she was an onlooker and simultaneously she was back in the long shed skin. In that weird duality of feelings Ferikrona spoke, spoke of things Nathalia already knew about but had forgotten as they had become as natural to her as the words of her language.

“There are steps to magic and all start with humans. Whether or not they realize what they are doing or how they are doing it I do not know but it all starts with humans. Faith, that is what makes us. Faith is a flimsy thing. Humans may worship logic or pray for good weather. They may not even actively think about it all. Faith is created regardless and much of it is aimed at nature.”

The human tribe settled in one place and created art. They carved pictures of what Nathalia had been into their totems, drew her on their tents and offered her food. They thought her to be holy, and therefore she became it. As the faith of the tribespeople was directed towards her, she changed. Not slowly, not even quickly, no she changed at one particular moment, the moment her mortal shell died and her soul entered the Abyss.

Her animal soul was the target of human emotions, negative, positive and neutral. All drenched her being and made her soul distinctly non-animalistic. Made her into something else. Something powerful enough to surface in a Natural Barrier. Something fragmented, torn between the many different ideas of her existing within one shell.

“They say the first step to godhood is an existence of many minds and you were.” Her new form started feeding on the prayers as her status as a holy animal became legend, then myth and finally the central religion of that tribe. They called her the fire lizard and the form they depicted her as had long changed from realistic to what modern humans would later know as a dragon. She absorbed whatever the tribespeople gave her, in an age where the barrier between mundane and Abyss had been permissive. Then, she was a monster of the Abyss, a powerful one at that, but just acted on instincts she had gained from all the fragments of other souls that now made up her own.

“The second step to godhood is then taking control of that hivemind and becoming the singular controlling entity.” The tribe grew into a village and she started to become aware of herself. No longer did she just eat up the emotions of the humans who worshipped her, but instead started thinking about the why. She became sapient, like the beings whose Faith nourished her.

“The third step is standing for an aspect of humanity, the Faith of a small village is not enough to create a god. It would take thousands of years for someone to create their personal god and none have ever managed to sustain a Faith so dedicated for so long. No, Faith is a fickle and predictable thing, following the basics that all humans share. The wonder of life and birth, the terror of death, the destruction of landscapes and the changing flows of time. One village is not enough to create a god, but what about all of that Faith that has no outlet? People who pray for safety to no particular deity, where does it go? The fear of disease is a thought not lost. It doesn’t vanish. Thoughts and ideas accumulate and they wait for someone to embody them.”

The earth around the village started rumbling, “And so all it took for you to step into the realm of true power,” the rumbling intensified, centred around a distant mountain, “was to stand for a primal fear of humanity that was not yet claimed.” The mountaintop exploded into fire and ash, a volcano eruption that sent projectiles of stone flying for kilometres. The sky darkened as blackened clouds blocked out the sun.

“On this day you became one, a goddess of destruction, you are the incarnation of humanity's fear of fire and ash. One of the first dragons, one of the first gods. This day you reached for godhood as that faith reformed you and gave you a name, Nathalia.” Ferikrona spoke as the scene unfolded in front of Nathalia herself. In front of the dragon she had been. The plain, black-scaled, large winged lizard.

Then and now, she was mesmerized by it. The force bottled up in that mountain. The heat that was sent flying. The beauty of molten rock as it burst out in geysers of ash and gas. Blotting out the sun, dominating the world, burning all around, freezing all beyond, leaving the landscape irreparably changed, and ready for new life to begin. Change. Destructive, beautiful, change.

As all of that reflected in her eyes, she became the embodiment of it all. Thoughts lined up with Faith and Faith flowed into the outlet that embodied it. Neither one changed the other, the individual and the pooled power simply were the same and would be until the god’s death.

The dragon turned into a stream of orange and black energy. The men and women who had worshipped her fled from the magma flows. Those on elevated positions saw and pointed, as the creature of myth that surfaced sometimes around them appeared in the explosion of the mountain. A large lizard turned into a volcanic eruption. Wings of black clouds and a body of flying embers. Cataclysmic in size.

A rebirth in the flames of the volcanic eruption, and her voice bent the trees. A body too large for reality to contain, the energies of her birth steeping the environment in magic. Gaia’s will descended on her and, with eyes that had known mercy, removed her from the mundane once her formation had run its course.

“Are you done meddling in my memories?” Nathalia wanted to know, her consciousness detaching from memories.

Ferikrona made an amused sound, “No, not yet, there is another thing I want you to relive.” The scene of the eruption vanished into the darkness, leaving a trail of green, curly hair.

In its stead stepped a man over two metres tall. Short brown hair, a tinge of grey to it, covered his regal head. Around it sat a laurel of the most verdant green. It was the only decoration he allowed himself. The toga and the sash that kept it in place were both plain white. A colour that contrasted starkly with the tanned skin that stretched over his muscles.

There were many names for that man, many of which had been forgotten, many more that were no longer associated with him. Nathalia knew many, but she only cared about one.

Romulus.