the call
CHAPTER IV.B
There are two sides to every story.
To the Old Gods, of course she seems like an infection, a blight on their narrow existence. Any attempt to forge one's own path has always been taken as an act of mutiny to the old ones, and history, as they say, is written by the victors.
And so this is the tale you're told, while she and her people - people who chose to join her, people punished for having the audacity of free will - suffer behind a barrier, or under the yoke of other, wrong, the enemy.
What will history say now, as the Lullaby tears the Core from Caido's breast, as he falls into the waiting arms of victory and the world plunges into deep, deep darkness?
The Voice doesn't know. She won't be here to see it.
But her children will.
Contingency strategies are necessary in circumstances like these, and unlike the Old Gods (all fire and no fuel as they are), the Voice has been preparing hers for over a season now.
Deep within the Climb, in a cathedral of obsidian, stands an altar and an empty bowl. Legend has it that in times of old, offerings of blood were given at this altar - but the Voice needs a much larger bowl for what she plans to accomplish.
It started with the ursur, out on the ice. Then she moved south, to the ceffyl dŵr, to ramphire and encantado. Gallons and gallons of blood, from the smallest bird to the largest beast, until the Mountain's Roar ran in thick sheets of crimson, frothing in the pools below. Soaking into the rock.
No one had ventured so deeply into the Burrows, but if they had, oh what a sight they'd have beheld at Soulfire Reach. The glittering cavern of precious gems, transformed into dripping rubies, glittering like a plate of eyes in the ruddy light.
It is within this scarlet tomb that the Voice makes her plea, to the sleeping secret that resides here. For there is nothing without balance, even for Caido, even for the god of all. But what, pray tell, is the mirrored face to All?
I offer you life for life. You and yours will wake again, will walk again, will feast again, if you would take my brightest sparks and make them yours. This I pledge, should I cease to be.
Night after night, the Voice prays and the cavern bleeds.
Now the moment arrives. She feels herself already beginning to flicker out, even from far across the world, as the Lullaby ruthlessly crushes the Core in his fist. Spitefully, she hopes that he never ceases to feel the pain it will cause him, to shatter the heart and mind of a goddess.
It is time. Save them, have them, keep them. Her words echo in the dripping catacombs, even as her light extinguishes, at last, forever.
The war, over.
The Voice, silenced.
...And then the rubies begin to churn and writhe in the dark.
