Marika
The queen quietly walked down that quiet doorway. Echoes lingered in her mind as they wandered towards the chamber she once felt most secure. Dim, low candles lit forever surrounding a massive circular bed laid down in an indent of stone and covered by soft silken sheets and endless pillows. The floor littered with countless books, scattered, stacked, and tossed about in random measure.
"This..." she started to mutter before her knight's hand gently rested on her shoulder.
"This is not all you are anymore, Marika." Speaking her name with a gentle, sweet sincerity that robbed Marika's thoughts of anxiety for a few precious moments.
"How can you be so sure...?"
"Because you witnessed a glimpse behind my mask... and did not flinch."
"Just who are you, Luna?"
Her knight observed her quietly for a few long and precious moments. "If only it were so easy to tell you."
"Why can't you?" She turned, a grow frustration on the edge of her voice.
"Because I can't remember."
"What...?"
"It... It's not my first time doing such a quest. Part of how it's done I mentioned before are weakenings to me, memories considered too helpful removed. Part of that also means that my true identity is tied to you and why I am here."
"And revealing that would... compromise it.."
"And each time I grasp for the mempry, it slips away. Always there, but never still."
"Your mind sounds like agony."
"You have no idea."
Both shared a warm chuckle at that.
"But I mean it when I say that I love you, Marika. Come journey's end, I wish for you to return home with me." Her knight's words struck her like an arrow.
"But -"
"My wife is not so petty as to think less of you for her past. There... there will probably be some growing pains that I didn't ask ahead of time, but... she's a good woman and understands circumstances for you."
"And you..?"
"Oh, I am sleeping on the porch for a week. Easy. And I have it coming."
"You sound so sure for someone in trouble.."
"It was my cho -"
"No... it was mine. Good or ill... I knowingly pressed on a married woman. Being... poly as you call it? It was justification, but..."
Cupping her cheek, her knight rested her forehead against her own. "Whatever comes, we will face it together. I promise she will not hate you."
She sniffled quietly for a moment. "Luna..."
Her knight quietly kissed her, and the candles began to grow low as they fell back upon the bed. There was no one left to hear the sounds of their love.
...
???
"Was this the only way to ensure Marika would change?" A monotone voice said as fingers rapidly tapped across a keypad in a dark room.
A motherly voice answered. "Sadly, she required a direct display of her own failings to grow."
"Hm. And using Luna?"
"Can you think of anyone else who would not have immediately killed her?"
"... I hate when you are right. I still say I should be allowed to help them."
"I will... consider it."
"Hm." With the bite of the cookie, the room went quiet again.
...
Marika
As dreams took her again, carrying her away in the warm and comforting arms that held her, she remembered the first of her shames.
The time before Order.
Year ???
Messmer
The man silently knelt before his mother, shining of freshly woven black silks, and sat upon a small throne of roots. She seemed quiet today, far quieter than ever. The young man wasn't fond of days his mother grew quiet.
"Messmer. Do you love your mother?" She finally spoke after a few minutes.
"Without a doubt, mother." He spoke sincerely.
"Then would you commit great sin for your mother?" She spoke with a resonant weight.
"..." The young man gulped slowly. "Yes."
He felt the smile that slowly formed on his mothers lips. "Do this for me, and I shall give you a gift of clarity at last."
The young man silently turned his gaze up toward his mother as he felt that serpent writhing wriggle once more across his thoughts. His red hair tied in a tight knot beneath a simple plate helmet of steel and his simple red hauberk and trousers. His hand subtly twitched beside his blade as the snake inside hissed in retaliation before gripping his wrist quietly.
How it haunted him. She was offering him peace. Mercy. A chance to silence this broken piece of himself. To at last silence the serpent that spoke lies of deceipt and wickedness of his mother.
"It shall be done, Mother."
"You are to enter the shadow lands with a host of our forces and leaders of your choosing."
"And, then?"
"Burn it."
He looked at her, shocked.
"Leave as few alive as can be left to ensure the land does not fall into ruin, but the rest I wish for you to kill and collect the corpses of."
"To.. what end?"
He gulped quietly as that red glint flashed across his mother's green eyes. "To at last bring about our dream, my boy." Standing and walking towards him with her hands gently touching his cheeks after removing his helmet. "To give birth to Gold."
Messmer drank in her words and knew he had little recourse remaining. Rellana would likely never forgive him, but if there remained a chance that this could bring about a better world, then his sword would fall like a meteor upon the shadow lands.
He had not readily forgotten the sin committed upon his mother, after all, that had cursed him in tandom. He only wished that Rellana would join him, even if it meant letting her witness who he truly was. A snake.
And his flames grew hungry.
...
5 years of genocide later
Messmer
Kneeling slowly among the mountain of corpses as his mother slowly walked up the beautiful steps onto the great gate he had constructed as instructed. A thousand times a thousand corpses laid upon one another to form a great field and arch topped stairway that rung with countless thrumbs of power. A million souls, echoing in agony. Trapped by sorcery in their burned and charred corpses, the wails were truly of a horrific sound.
Marika slowly approached the war weathered soldier as he sat there, adorn in finer scaled armor and decorated in shadows of soft reds and dark colors. He truly looked the part of a warrior prince.
Yet his heart hung heavy with his sins. The screams would linger even beyond this place. The horrible acts he had committed. That he had enjoyed committing. It weighed on his soul in ways he had never truly grappled with, and even now, it hung like a noose around his throat, always threatening to joke out his very life with shame.
Her hands gently touched his cheek just as they had five years ago, and he felt his worries bleed away slowly for just a few soft moments of relief. His mother and Rellana were the only ones left who could calm the serpent within. Sooth the savage hate that burned his every muscle.
"You have done truly incredible work, my son. With this, my age can finally begin." She sounded so overjoyed and excited. Yet there was a lingering feeling of somberness at the edge of her voice.
"I have done as you asked. As I always have, mother." He spoke clearly but allowed himself a little smile that faded slowly as his mother's gaze turned away from him and towards the gate.
"Now all that is left is to take what is mine." Slowly walking along the great field of flesh and corpses as her bare feet wetly plodded across corpses of whimpering, bleeding, and burned hornsent.
"Mother?" He spoke, softly rising to his feet as he watched her. Rellana quietly emerged, standing beside him. Their hands quietly laced behind their cloaks. She had stayed alongside him, even through the nights where the balcony of his castle felt more welcoming than the bed sheets, and the ground below became so enticing.
"At last... it is mine." Her voice wavered in a way that drew discomfort from the two, and Messmer's eyes narrowed as he noticed the muscles of his mother's back twitch.
He rushed up suddenly behind her. It wasn't her. It was Him.
His 'mother' turned just in time to catch what was coming as Messer rammed his spear through her chest. There was a cough of shock as the spear had pinned a small part of Marika's right shoulder.
His voice began to come out. "How... d..are..insulent.." he ripped out the spear and watched his mother gasp in shock as control gripped her once more. He had learned where on her body He had currently settled in infecting her. He had no interest in letting him be the one to take whatever gift this would grant his mother. Were it not lethal, he would have removed that horrible appendage the first chance he had.
His mother's eyes regained focus. Warm pools of emerald green that reminded one of a field of flowers with the specs of colors that littered them like stars. She had told him once that it was a gift of someone she no longer could see.
"Messmer..." As he planted his spear on the groumd and knelt again.
"I only struck to preserve your control, Mother." Speaking honestly.
"..." he felt her place a gentle hand on his back, yet it felt ever so slightly tense. Still, he felt that moment of ease. "Thank you..." she whispered, and he fully released his anxieties.
He stood slowly as she began that march again, stopping only near the first few steps as she knelt beside one of the corpses. He could not hear her now, stepping back by Rellana, but he could feel it was personal as she stretched her hand into the corpse and withdrew strand golden threads.
Rellana spoke up first. "What was the purpose of all of this?" She asked incredulously. "A corpse mound and all it grants is fancy silk?"
"Come now. Surely, there is more to it than that." He assured her with a subtle squeeze of her hand.
"You have far too much faith in her Messmer."
"Many have said the same about you for me."
"You are a good man. Her... " she let the unspoken doubt hang.
Both were struck silent by the sudden boom that rippled across them as the sky turned red as blood. Both became fixated in shock as Marika slowly knelt down between the great corpse arches and began to raise those threeds between her hands to the sky. They glowed and grew into a great arch of unbelievable golden light as her body began to ripple and pulsate with an unbelievable golden glow. The corpses all let out single last shrieks before the two watched in horror as everybody slowly began to petrify and shrivel in seconds.
Rellana quietly gulped at what she was watching as she felt the raw divine power building, growing inside of Marika. "Messmer... she's..."
"Ascending."
As a great blast tore apart the sky, and formed the first great arc of seemingly pure gold. Messmer watched in a mixture of wonder and horror as his mother became a new god. The first god of their order. Their dream. What they had worked so hard to achieve.
So why did his chest squirm with fear? Why was his own heart equally as frightened as his serpent now?
What did this all mean?