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123 AC, Chroyane
Lord Harry approached her, before sadly raising his hand, a familiar scythe appearing inside it, and with a flick, he swung it directly towards the goddess's wound. Slowly, light started to spread across the statue like cracks, before glowing brightly, and then, everything turned white.
Helaena opened her eyes, blinking, wondering if she had stared at the sun for too long. After a few moments reviewing her memory, she suddenly shot up in shock. It all came back so quickly: the expedition to Chroyane, defeating the Shrouded Lord, the moving statue of Mother Rhoyne that was made of Black Stone, the battle against the giant crab, which was apparently some kind of God, and finally, the final confrontation between Lord Harry and Mother Rhoyne.
She looked up and froze as she saw colour around her, which had been missing since they entered the final city. The sky was clear, utterly and completely blue, and she could hear the sound of a stream slowly make its way to the river. She stood up and looked at where she was.
The young princess immediately recognised the hall where the statue of Black Stone was. The temple was all but gone, ruined, really, but it was no longer floating in the sky, like it was previously, and the temple wasn't surrounded by an endless giant storm. In fact, she could see a few sandy mountains in the distance without any issues.
It seemed as if whatever curse this place suffered through had faded away. Helaena looked at the source of it all and saw the statue of Mother Rhoyne, who was no longer weeping. On the contrary, she had a soft smile on her face, one that she had seen often on the face of her own mother. Where the injury in her gut had lain was instead a scar. It wasn't fully healed, but it was no longer wounded. Her twisted sorrow was gone, but she could see some of the sadness remain in her eyes, despite them being made of stone.
Feeling like she was almost bewitched, the young princess moved her hand forward to touch the traces of it, only for a voice to stop her, "She's much nicer like this, isn't she?"
Helaena turned and saw the familiar faces of Lord Harry and Lady Daphne, giving her a knowing smile, and she couldn't help but return their smiles despite the circumstances. "She is. What happened?"
"I sealed away the rot in her personal realm. Whatever had infected her was pretty thorough, acting like some kind of energy parasite, and closed the wound. Without it, her domain can't stay sustained in the material realm, which means that Chroyane returned to normal, well, as normal as it's going to get, I'm guessing."
"And you have my thanks for that," a voice replied softly, the sound spreading throughout the destroyed hall as if it came from everywhere at once.
Immediately, from the eyes of the statue of Mother Rhoyne, a woman of light appeared. Her presence radiated comfort that Helaena couldn't help but feel, even if her features shifted unnaturally. They ended up settling to be suspiciously like that of her own mother, but she could swear that she also recognised hints of the sharpness similar to that on Lady Daphne's face. The princess did not have the time to deliberate much on what that as the woman of light addressed them, "I owe you a debt, Harry Potter, Daphne Potter, and Helaena Targaryen."
"Mother Rhoyne," Helaena muttered to herself in her shock.
The kindly woman of light nodded, "That I am, or perhaps I am what remains of her. I apologise for what happened before. It was quite unseemly of me."
Unseemly?
The young princess almost burst into laughter at the sheer madness of this statement. The entirety of Chroyane had become an endless void of floating structures surrounded by a giant storm, and she had been trying to turn the entire world to stone.
"Was what Lord Harry said true?" Helaena couldn't help but ask.
"Quite so," the goddess replied sadly, "On the night the drake riders came, as they burned my people to ashes, their leader came to this temple, with a cursed blade. I had not expected that my conduit to the mortal realm to be turned against me. I was mourning, and that curse twisted my grief into something monstrous."
"That's not it, isn't it?" Lady Daphne replied, "Something else happened."
The goddess had a faraway look on her face, looking at the sky as if they weren't there, "I was not alone in this temple."
"The statues," Harry commented with a questioning tint, to which the goddess nodded without explaining any further.
It took a few seconds for Helaena to understand, especially as she remembered the broken statues that had been around the room. There had been other gods in the temple, hadn't there? It made sense in a sick way. Something that could infect a god would need the power of another god.
Another part of her remembered that Mother Rhoyne was said to be the mother of all gods in the Rhoynar faith, even if they didn't go into the specifics. Had the person responsible for this used her own children's lives to kill her? If so, then it was one of the most monstrous acts that she had heard of in quite some time.
"The curse was powerful and unfamiliar to me. A twisted, vile thing that I had not seen the like in quite some time. I did not notice it burrowing into my essence, amplifying my grief and spilling into the world."
"Do you know who did it?" Lady Daphne asked.
"It matters not who was responsible, only that it happened. The fact that any being might have access to something like this is concerning. Thankfully, Fate had wisely separated my warped grief from the world, but that changes very little. My children, my worshippers, my city, are gone. I am alone once more, and even without the curse, my heart grows colder with every moment."
Helaena interjected this time, "There are Rhoynar in Westeros. They joined with the Dornish, but they still remain, all thanks to Nymeria."
If anything, the woman looked even sadder, "They are not mine. They did not drink from my rivers. They did not pray to me. They are not blessed with my magics or my waters. They even hold a different god, the upstart one that came from the hills, who foolishly wishes to break himself into pieces. But that is not why you came to see me, Lord of Space and Time. That is why the Harmonious One brought you to my river. You may ask me a single question, Stranger, and I will answer it as best I can."
The sorcerer looked taken aback for a few moments before a wide, excited expression appeared on his face, "Oh, I have so many questions. But there's one that I don't think can be answered by anyone else. From the moment my wife and I came here, we realised that the world felt… unbalanced. Fate's influence is far less powerful and yet far more direct than before. Death is more flexible than it should have been. A magical effect that is able to affect the world on an unprecedented scale. Magic is far too raw, primal, and civilisations across the world have been stagnant for thousands of years. I can feel that it ties to some kind of celestial war, one that, according to Naath's god, predates most gods. So, what came before? What came before the war that broke the balance of this world?"
Helaena stood frozen at that statement. She had known that the Potters' quest for knowledge was a big reason why they wished to explore the world. But the way Lord Harry described this, the way he spoke so casually of a war between gods, the way he called the world unbalanced, as if he had some other reference to compare it to, made her wonder just who Harry Potter truly was.
It had been a mystery that she had left at the back of her mind, as it paled compared to the insight she gained into his nature, the kind man who brimmed with more power than she thought possible, the fighter who does not seek war, the teacher who taught her that there was more to life than her visions of doom and death, the man who saved her family.
But even now, she did not know where he or his wife had come from. Far away, he said, but he never specified where, despite many of his stories involving places that she did not know about.
Alas, her thoughts were interrupted by Mother Rhoyne as she replied to his question, her kind expression becoming mournful, in a way that reminded Helaena of her corrupted self once more, "You chose a hard question to ask, Stranger, but I will answer it. I know not what came before more, only that I was born of Light and Night. When they joined, order was made out of chaos, and ideas emerged, and with each one, something was born to represent these ideas. I was The Mother of All, She Who Loves, She Who Cares… We lived at peace, often simply preferring our own realms to anything else, for the Void was dangerous, even to us."
"Until one didn't," Lord Harry continued for her.
The goddess nodded, "Yes. We once called him The Darkness. He sought to understand the Void, to use it despite the risks to himself. Eventually, he found a fragment of the Night in the sea of Chaos, and with it, he made a terrible discovery. He found a realm without a God, because of its own nature, one without power but with matter. He called it the realm of the Materium, or the physical world. We thought very little of it at the time, something that we later regretted, as The Darkness discovered that the Materium could somehow act as a bridge between realms. I know not if it was his greed that drove him, or if it had been the fragment of Night that he had usurped that twisted him so, but he used this to enlarge his own realm but consuming those belonging to other weaker gods, which he found unworthy. What I do know is that the bright, curious god that he had once been had turned into a monster that threatened us all, and thus, the War in Heaven began."
"They all died, didn't they?" Lady Daphne commented.
"It was a conflict that shook the cosmos," the goddess replied while nodding, "One God against countless others, but we were not creatures of war. We did not know how to battle alongside one another. We were ideas, concepts, not warriors. And we fought a foe that grew stronger with every victory. We could not even call him The Darkness anymore, given what he had become. We settled on calling him The Other, for we knew not what he was anymore. Ultimately, this culminated in a battle on the field that was common amongst us all, a battle that shook reality at its closest, a battle that ruptured the Void itself, and brought strange beings to our cosmos."
"You triggered a Cataclysm," Lord Harry said with horror in his voice.
The goddess looked confused, and Helaena turned towards the sorcerer with a questioning look. He scratched the back of his head in embarrassment and answered her unspoken question, "It's an event that only happens during an unbalance on a cosmic scale. It's akin to a collision between worlds, which sometimes lets things through. It's, as its name suggests, quite calamitous for both worlds. That… That actually explains a lot."
Mother Rhoyne looked thoughtful at his answer, "That is an… apt description. Our domains shattered, and even The Other, who had been the most powerful of us, became the most vulnerable. His very essence was destroyed by the very war that he started. Alas, his mastery over the world of Materium was too strong for him to fade, and what the fragment of Night twisted him into made his death quite irregular, compared to the others. It left small pieces of his presence in the world, remnants of what had once been his greatest achievement, his greatest weapons, like a body without its mind. Yet, the war had ended, The Other was slain, but at what cost? I do not know if any other god survived, and I never thought to look, too lost in mourning what once was."
Helaena remained horrified by the story, the idea of a war on such a scale that the very world would be nothing more than a convenient battlefield. "What happened after?"
"The 'Cataclysm' allowed a few beings through. Most did not survive the Void, but a few were able to come to the realm of the Materium. There had been many of them who spread around the world, surviving in the world we left so broken, creatures of ice, creatures of fire, creatures of wood, and even humans. Soon after, we made a startling discovery that gods could be born through the Faith of humans. The world was so unbalanced, so full of directionless ideas, that it relied on them, on their faith, to birth new ones in the broken realms of those before them. They were weaker, but still dangerous. Fearing that another 'Cataclysm' would occur, the most powerful race that had made its way during the war, the Dragons, came and bound the Materium from the rest of the realms in the cosmos, both the Void and Gods alike, which they have defended ever since. However, they left the bridges, scars of the 'Cataclysm' which would allow us the ability to influence them further, to grow ourselves through the Faith of mortals. I abided by their rules, bound myself to this statue, and let myself weep at what I had lost. Eventually, I was found near the river where my tears sprouted, and worshipped by the mortals, until I wasn't… As for the Dragons, they laid their eggs and slumbered, though many still fear their awakening, for it often means ill for every being with divine blood."
Helaena's heart couldn't help but swell at the heartache in Mother Rhoyne's voice as she mentioned the Rhoynar dying. It was an awkward topic, one that Lord Harry wisely decided to avoid, focusing on another detail entirely, "And yet the world remains unbalanced."
"It is. Scars of the War in the Heavens remain to this day. The gods of this realm can barely be called that, influencing only fragments of what the true natural realms once were. It is why gods are so plentiful, and yet many fragments still remain unclaimed, as mortals do not understand their necessity to bind them to a god. It is why Fate is weakened, why Death is strange. There are many reasons why I call you Stranger, why any divine being would call you this, for you feel like someone who understands the unknown, that comprehends the nature of Death, in a way that even the current Gods of Death are not able to, let alone that aspect of that Hill God."
"You mentioned the Light and Night giving birth to you. Can you explain what that is? Does it have any relation to the Long Night?"
Helaena perked up at this. She remembered the Outsider in Valyria, the one who had claimed that Night would come. Was it referring to the same creature as the one who birthed the gods? The young princess did not know, and her mind was brimming with one disaster after another.
Unfortunately, a smug smile appeared on the goddess's face, "I am afraid that I have answered your question, Harry Potter. I have told you why the world is unbalanced and what happened to make it so. That is my debt to you repaid."
"But not mine," Helaena retorted in protest.
The goddess looked almost taken aback by her question, before smiling gently at her, and the young princess felt herself warm up. A bond sprouted in her mind. At first, she thought that it might have been like the one she shared with Dreamfyre, but as she looked at it closely, she realised that it was quite different. The bond was more akin to an instinct than a way to communicate, specifically, instincts about both her children. Jaehaera was sleeping, while Jaehaerys was smiling as the nursemaid played with him.
Helaena wished to help Lord Harry get his answers; she truly did, but she couldn't deny that the boon from Mother Rhoyne felt priceless. The concept that she, a mother, would always be able to know that her children were fine.
She hesitated to ask for it to return, and Lady Daphne stood forward, "What about your debt to me?"
Helaena expected the goddess to be angry, but if anything, her smile widened, "I thought that you might prefer some aid in your true goal in this realm. After all, your expeditions, your adventures, are not just to sate your curiosity. You wished for something more, something far more precious than crowns and power."
"How?" Lady Daphne asked, her eyes having widened in shock in a way that Helaena had never expected of the woman.
"I was once The Mother of All, my dear. Is it truly a shock that I would know of your wish to be a mother yourself?"
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AN: Before getting to the chapter, I wanted to ask you all what you think about this arc. I haven't really gotten a lot of feedback from it, and I guess I wanted to make sure if you guys liked it or not. I know that things have been somewhat repetitive with the story, with essentially each expedition being a separate thing, but I suppose I wanted to somewhat explore the lore with every expedition, I guess, like adding pieces to a puzzle.
I know that this chapter is a bit of a lore dump to speed things up a bit. I had to choose just how much to reveal, which was a bit tricky. The reveal of Potter's motivation will be explained a bit better in the next chapter, and it will shed some light on a few of their decisions that they took. I've been meaning to make a push in terms of Harry and Daphne's progression as characters, since I didn't see much that could be done on the 'power scale' front. As usual, please let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions.
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If you want to support me, check out my patréon at https://www.patréon.com/athassprkr
I tend to upload drafts of early chapters on there to get people's opinions on them, so you can read up to 20 chapters ahead as a bonus.
Thank you guys for your support in these hard times.