First, if you read this do me a favor and don't steal it... It's actually writing from a story I started but, as the title says, never finished. I thought maybe, since I can't finish it because I can't decide what direction to take, that I could try using it for an rp. What I'm looking for is someone, or a few someones, who are willing to throw out plot twists and add their own ideas to this story... co-writing instead of just one person leading the whole thing.
Basically, the story revolves around warring Deities. There is Era, the Goddess of Chaos; Aya, the Goddess of Light; and Ina, the Goddess of Neutrality. There are also many others, but those are the premade characters and I can play them all if no one bites for them. There is also Azel, a Lesser God who is Era's servant and Rien a Lesser God who is Aya's servant. Ina's servant is never named. Since Ina is reborn you can make her human form however you want so really... beyond her past she's your baby if you want to play her. Same with Era, Azel, and Rien actually...
Background to the Story: To make a long story short, Era watched Aya creating wonderful things and did not have the ability to create anything herself... only destroy. She grew jealous so she drew from the Void itself, the place where all the Gods/Goddess' originated... a place of Nothing, and tried to create a living thing from that. The being that was created went insane and Aya was forced to calm it and give it true form and balance... She named him Azel and he loved her for saving him. However, Era played Azel's jealousy over Rien against them both... She lied to Azel and told him that now that Aya had created Rien, a being of light and life, she no longer needed a tainted creation of darkness like him. This was further solidified when Azel initiated a fight with Rien and Aya defended him, growing angry at Azel. Afterward Era told him she'd heard Aya tell Rien she planned to put Azel back in the Void where he belonged. He fell into the trap and again lost his mind to the madness of the Void within him. He nearly killed Aya and during the battle all of Creation began to unravel. Just as she was convincing Azel that she DID love him, that she TRULY loved him, Rien opened the Void and tried to force him in... Afraid that he was already too far gone. This caused him to disbelieve Aya's statements and he ran her through with the Tainted Blade he'd drawn from within himself. As Aya was dying Era told Ina the only way to save things was to seal Aya away, thus stopping her death and the Taint spreading through her from the wound Azel had left... Ina, being the more gullible of the sisters believed this and helped Era to do so... Azel was lost to the Void until he grew stronger and later escaped it, Aya was sealed away in the mortal realm as the Source, and Era... having gotten rid of her main threat cursed Ina and cast her also to the mortal world to be reborn over and over as a mortal herself and always remember her deaths. Rien escaped the realm of the Gods just in time and has been seeking Aya and Ina's mortal incarnations out for centuries, trying to save them each time only to fail... until Fallyn. I'll figure out how to tie in your original characters be they Gods/Goddesses/Lessers or otherwise once I get some bites...
How Gods/Goddesses were 'born'. Before Aya created the Pattern of Reality, the only thing out there was the Void. Inside it were mildly sentient beings made up of the Nothingness around them and driven by the primal urge to feed. They devoured one another, slowly growing in intelligence and strength as they did... Once there were many of them the beings began to formulate speech and unique powers, it is thus that Aya discovered her ability to Create. She wove the first Pattern of Reality, and all other realities that came after, so freeing the others from the Nothingness of the Void by creating them their own realm beyond the realities she'd created... The Realm of the Gods. Ina made the creatures to fill the realities, Era maintained the balance of Life with that of Death. The system worked... until Era grew jealous.
The actual story is below, in the Hider.
Often she'd lay awake trying to work through the tangled web that was her memories. Tugging and pulling, digging for what she could not find. She didn't know how she'd lost herself, couldn't remember anything before this place of mist and shadows. She had no inkling as to how long she'd wandered there looking for something...someone. The fog crawled along her pale skin like a living thing, cool and clammy, there was no wind. In and out of the mists seemed to dance haunting wraith-like things, gone so fast she wasn't sure they'd ever existed.
She couldn't remember how she'd gotten here, couldn't remember anything but this place where the sun never rose and three moons drifted in the sky. Her breath came out as crystals in the cold air and the grass tickled along her bare skin. She remembered wandering in this world until she'd finally collapsed but there was no sense of time. How long had she been here? Where was here? These things seemed right there within her mind ready to be understood but when she grasped for them they slipped through her hands like water.
The only thing she had was a name that was not her own, Azel. The clouds drifted until the moons shown in the sky and for just a moment the mist parted. On the edge of a cliff sat a white barked tree with pale green leaves that seemed to glow with the moons light. Silver flowers nestled between two leaves and the tree swayed as though beckoning though no wind danced in its branches.
Confusion made itself known to her numb mind and she sat up. That tree... Where had it come from? It hadn't been there before. She got to her feet and padded towards it. Where there had been no sounds before other than her feet in the grass the beings that were and were not within the mist seemed now to whisper among themselves. The tree stopped swaying as though waiting for her. She neared it and reached out to touch it.
"Aya," the voice was aloud and not in her mind, soft and barely audible, yet she recognized the name and she froze inches from touching the trees cool, smooth bark. This world did not permit speech by mouth but whoever had just spoken had done so despite his surroundings. A hand touched her shoulder, physical contact after years of being alone. She gasped and whirled to face...nothing. There was a sense of terrible loss and terrible sorrow and then she was falling, falling fast.
~*~ Now ~*~
Dark blue-grey eyes snapped opened on a room dimly lit by fire's light. A pale hand pressed against a pale forehead touching jet black hair that seemed to catch the moonlight in silvery-blue threads and cascade around thin shoulders. Panting Fallyn sat bolt upright her slender body trembling from head to foot in a cold sweat. That dream, she'd had it so many times in the past year. So many times she'd wandered in that world alone only to forget come morning but this time was different. She remembered every detail, she'd felt herself die.
She closed her eyes trying to banish the memory and instead a cruelly handsome face with wounded angry golden eyes and black hair flashed through her mind. She jerked her eyes open with a cry half expecting to see HIM there. The room was empty, but for the first time in a long time she used her power to light the candle by her bed. The fire's golden light seeming to dance with the silver of the moon in her hair as she trembled and wrapped her arms around herself, "Azel..."
As she watched the flame dance her mind moved back... Back to a time when Sieran had been full of life and laughter, back to before it had went from being her home to her prison. The ruins were all that was left now of her life before and the events that had brought around its desertion had happened over a hundred years ago. Once Verrin, the old scribe, had told her that their kind aged much more slowly than the mortals outside the mist. Now, she wished it was not so. Remembering Verrin brought a smile to her face despite the grim thoughts that had brought the remembrance about. "Verrin," she whispered to the darkness, "I'm sorry I didn't get to tell you how much you meant to me..." Teacher and father, she missed him more than anyone else she'd lost.
~*~ Then ~*~
"In the beginning of what is left of Briel's telling of the Legend of Azel we are introduced to a place known as the Void. In that place there was nothing, no darkness and no light, only a lack of everything. One being was cast into this nothingness as punishment of some crime though the record does not say what. He was a lesser god known as Azel and he was believed to be a destroyer. Around him, through the power of the Void, his anger took shape and became shifting, black, palpable darkness. Try as he might he could not escape the prison the Void had become to him. In his helplessness he cried tears of bitter blood that mingled with the darkness that he had given birth to. The bitterness, pain, and emptiness in his tears mixed with the rage and hate in the blackness and became the Taint."
"Trapped within the Void Azel formed a plan and he allowed the Taint to cover him, to hide him. In doing so he claimed its power and became both something more and less than the lesser god he had been. Unable to sense him any longer his fellow lesser gods soon forgot about him and their hold on the Void lessened, freeing their prisoner. Freed, Azel used the Taint he'd created to destroy several of his fellow lesser gods and dared to taint the Source in the process. In doing so he defied the one true goddess Era, the creator of the lesser gods and the creator of worlds. Seven of the lesser gods, the seven of Azel's banishers that still remained, used the Source to bind Azel to one of Era's most loyal when they were unable to kill him by other means. With a powerful entity within him he became as close to a god as anything created by the gods can be but his name was lost to time. He became Era`s weapon and he became her love."
"The Source was sealed away after that to keep it from ever being used against the seven and Era again. Then, when the Loyal One had a son Azel's curse passed on to him. We mystical beings known as the Sadrahi were commissioned to watch over the Source's resting place and in return we would be given a stand just below the lesser gods as immortals. For centuries the Source remained a secret to all Sadrahi except the Elders who formed the Council. Slowly, those outside the Council forgot its whereabouts and Azel passed out of existence peacefully when the Loyal One was forced to sacrifice his son...."
"Fallyn, are you even listening to what I'm telling you," the old scribe asked closing one of the old musty books he'd been reading from. The cloud of dust that rose as he did so dirtied his spectacles so that it made it hard to see the young girl, fourteen and four months from her next birthday, setting three feet across from him at the small table. His sneeze seemed to bring his pupil out of her reverie and she quickly tore her gaze from the window and looked back to her teacher who was now cleaning his glasses.
Her quick mind saved her from being caught, "What happened to the rest of Briel's telling? You said what's left," she noted recalling the first and almost the last thing she'd heard.
The white haired, withered, kindly old man looked at her skeptically over cleaned spectacles with gray eyes that revealed his amusement. He knew she had not been listening but he would play along. It was her last lesson in the records after all, "No one is sure... but it seems the pages were torn out."
"Torn out?" she asked her own gray-blue eyes looking puzzled as her jet black hair fell into them. "Why would Briel, a scribe, tear out pages of the history he'd recounted?"
"Again no one knows and Briel is quite deceased so we can't ask him now can we," he asked as he pushed himself up from his seat, his old bones complaining. Immortality may slow the aging process but one could still age and no one knew Verrin's age other than Verrin himself.
Fallyn recalled one other thing she'd heard, "Does any of our kind still remember where the resting place of the Source is Master Verrin? Or what it is?"
Verrin looked pleased that she'd remembered something from her lesson but shook his head, "The Elders have long since died off Fallyn, no one knows anymore what the Source is... if they ever knew at all. Though, I suspect it is hidden within the mists around Sieran that separate us from the rest of the world." Noticing her eyes light with curiosity Verrin set a heavy hand on her shoulder, "You must give me your word you will not go looking for that place Fallyn. Your father's temper is bad enough to deal with without having the fury of the Goddess directed at you."
She smiled, stood, and bowed, "You have my word Verrin. I'll see you tomorrow, the sun has gone down."
"Very well," he said standing as he made his way to the bookshelves, "make sure to go over today's lesson Fallyn, or you'll never keep up with my other pupils. I'd like to see you out do them..." Yet, the girl had already dashed out the door when he'd returned from replacing the book. Slowly, he took his seat again and pushing his spectacles back up on his nose he shook his head. Fallyn had always had a hard time of it with her father. Her mother had died in birth with her and her father blamed her. It was unfortunate and because she was the only female in the family she was the lowest in rank and Lothrin took full advantage of it.
He beat the girl, made her work like a slave, and promised her to a low ranking man that would never be able to care for both her and what children she would have. Verrin desperately wanted to see the young girl succeed where her father wished her to fail. Lothrin had always been an ill-tempered man but it could no longer excuse the way he treated his daughter and lately even his sons. As a Scribe she'd at least be provided for and she'd never have to marry the man of her father's choosing. On top of this she'd be given the respect her quick mind deserved.
His mood darkened further as he turned his gaze back down to his own records, "If only, Child... you would pay more attention..." Verrin murmured.
Fallyn had four months left... only four. If she did not graduate by her birthday, and she was who Verrin believed, she would never have to worry about what life her father had planned for her... she would never live to see it. Once every one hundred years a girl was born with the touch of the Source to her... an effect of living so close to its resting place. This girl would loose her life the night of her fifteenth birthday to restore the strand of the Source to its resting place and keep the power from straying outside of the mists of Sieran. The worst part of it was that when the girl was killed, because the piece of the Source was within her soul, she would have no afterlife... she would simply cease to be. It was a dreadful business but it had always been done and so always would be. Unless, Fallyn could escape their grasp in time. A Scribe had a measure of immunity towards the rules of society since they would have been part of the Council of Elders had it still existed.
The old Scribe sighed and withdrew the torn out 'missing' pages of Briel's Records. There were so many secrets but to reveal those secrets would mean the wrath of the Goddess, earthly death, and living in torment after that death if you were allowed to live at all. "Secrets have a way of escaping their keeper's grasp.... What will the Goddess do when she looses her hold?"
~*~ Later ~*~
Time seemed to have no meaning, maybe it's always that way when a person is dying. Thousands of things passed through her mind, knowledge that she didn't want to accept, truths that she wished she'd never known, wisdoms she should not have been able to comprehend. Yet, nothing that was going through her mind could compare to the feeling singing in her blood. For dying, this was strange. It went against everything she'd been taught. Then it occurred to her that the light surrounding her was fading, that there was no pain anymore, that she could hear, smell, taste the season in the air.
Slowly, very slowly, she opened her eyes and for paradise the place she was in looked a lot like the marsh filled with mist she'd just been killed in. She looked about but her father, the knife, and the hooded figures were all gone and there was no wound in her chest... no twisted ankle or broken arm. She frowned in confusion, had it all just been a dream? No, because if it had why was she still lying here on the steps to an alter she hadn't thought really existed? If it had been a dream why was she still in the marsh she'd run through to escape her father and the mad men with him? Most importantly, if it was a dream why was there a gash in her shirt and a scar on her chest?
She swayed to her feet and bit her lip, "Hello?"
There was no answer but what could she expect? She was nearly a mile from the village. She glanced back at the alter steps and, for a single horrible moment, wondered why her blood wasn't painting them. She looked at the door, still open... and that meant. She stuffed her hand into the pocket of her jacket but the orb was gone. What had happened? Then, she remembered. She'd been showing it to Verrin, the old man had touched it and then swore in a way she'd never thought she'd hear the sweet old man swear. He'd sent her away then, told her to run for the marsh and to hide there until morning and he would come for her. Only, her father had found her first.
She tried to remember what had happened to the orb, she'd had it when she'd been fleeing because she remembered the way it pulsed with warmth in her hand every time her heart beat. She remembered the whispers telling her what way to turn and when to hide, keeping her calmer than she should have been. Finally, it came to her. She'd planned on hiding inside of the shrine where the alter lay outside but they'd caught her and surrounded her, driving her up the alter steps. She'd fallen when she'd twisted her ankle and one of the stairs had broken her arm when shed hit.
The last thing she could remember was a strangely soothing fire washing through her as the knife in her father's hand plunged towards her chest, a blinding light and a voice in her head, and then waking up. Had her father stolen the orb when he'd thought her dead? How long had she been lying there looking dead? How long had it taken her to heal and how... how had she done it? She bit her lip and wished for the tenth time that she hadn't found that shrine with Caeren. She wished for the tenth time that she hadn't gone into it when the doors had opened so strangely. Yet, there was a good chance that it had been the orb she'd found within that had kept her alive.
She ran a hand through her hair and looked about, what should she do? She could wait here till morning for Verrin and hope her father hadn't killed him too or she could go check on him herself. She opted for checking, after all... no one knew she was alive. She went back the way she came, not sure how she found her way but it felt as though she knew these woods as if she'd been the one who'd planted the trees and placed each stream and stone. She wound her way back and when she came out she froze, too stunned to move.
The city was empty. Candles were still burning in windows but the houses were abandoned and nothing had been taken. She was confused again and wrapped her arms around herself, "Hello?"
There was still no answer but for the whistle of the wind through the streets. She moved towards the Archives and pushed open the door to Verrin's office, it too was empty but this time there was a note.
Dear Fallyn,
I cannot tell you how difficult it is to write this letter knowing that your body lies in ruin at this very moment upon the steps to the alter where so many girls have been murdered by the Elders for a false God. I can only pray that somehow, by the grace of the TRUE Goddess, you have survived and that you are now reading these pages that I have left for you. Fallyn, you must understand that if you have lived then it is because I was right all along and you are the child I was told would come to be. You see, many years ago when I was still known as Briel I was met by a man whose aura was so bright that I could not bare to rest my gaze fully upon him. He called himself Rien and he told me that a child would be born who would carry more than just a strand of the Source, that she would be the one to discover and free the Goddess trapped inside the Shrine. He was right Fallyn, the orb you had was no normal trinket just as you are no normal child, that orb was the Soul of a Goddess... the Source of Creation. You will come to understand soon enough. The people in the city have fled from Era's wrath, they have been gone two days now and still you sleep. I am sorry Child, but I cannot wait any longer. Immortality does not mean you will live forever and I fear my time is up, death waits for no man. In the desk you will find a book with many pages that will describe foreign lands, cultures, and ways of worship. Study them, learn them, I've no doubt Rien will come for you Child. It is simply a matter of patience.
Your Friend and Faithful Servant,
Briel Verrin Feit.
