Do you ponder the manner of things?

M  A   E    A I talked to God to no avail Said, "If you won't save me, please don't waste my time." Dark, winding paths led her deep down into the earth. Shadowfilled corridors where strange lights blinked and disappeared, and hissing creatures dogged her steps. Doors slammed shut behind her and the walls closed in from all sides, and as the air thinned she clawed at her throat, her chest, tore long strips of skin and flesh from the bones in a struggle to breathe... but what came spilling out was not blood but something else, shimmering transparent with a light scent like the earth after a passing rain... With a gasp Maea jolted upright in the end. Something tore open in her throat and she coughed instinctively, nearly retching on the taste of blood and pus that lingered in her mouth. The infirmary was dark and quiet; any healers present must be sleeping by now, or blushing themselves elsewhere. She wished they had left a lamp burning. The darkness in the room was oppressive, closing in around her like the heavy air down in the bowels of the Spire. The dream still haunted her memory as she stumbled out of bed and reached for the shawl that someone vad placed on a stool. On bare feet, dressed only in her nightgown Maea hurried across the room, out into the temple and off towards the shrine. There would be candles there, light and safety; no monsters would dare come close to a shrine, right? Surely the gods would not allow it, would not permit... anything... to happen under their watching eyes? Pale fingers trembled as she fumbled with the flint and steel, tender and blemished from the toxic burns that had scalded the skin. She didn't even want to know what her face looked like. Her eyes had been bleeding, and her nose too, and though Vai's healing had treated most of the damage there were still scabs, and irritation, and... A spark caught on the tinder. The shadows receded as the tiny flame rose, and she quickly brough a candle wick close, tension easing from her shoulders when it easily caught and the radius of light grew. Another candle was lit, and a third, until the had surrounded herself with a wall of light on every side. A barrier against the dark, to protect her from the things that frightened her. But there was no protecting her from herself. Quiet, unable to offer her usual prayers she sat numbly on the ground, arms wound tight around her knees and the ragged black shawl draped loosely over her shoulders. If the floor was cold she didn't notice. A small blessing.

the Voice

"There is no need for you to kneel. It must hurt your knees to do so." The enigmatic and yet youthful voice of the Voice said suddenly into the stillness.

"I am sorry you were injured within. The guardians are ... well. They did as they were told, I suppose." She said with a soft shrug. Appearing not as she did before, the Voice was now well and truly physical. She appeared as she had before in a softly pulsing blur of blue electric static, only now she was corporeal in a way she'd not been when last Maea had seen her in the atheneum.

M  A   E    A I talked to God to no avail Said, "If you won't save me, please don't waste my time." The girl flinched violently at the appearance of the Voice. It was not who she had expected, nor the one she had wanted to meet... Maea swallowed, her mouth suddenly dry as the thing she had fled to the shrine to escape suddenly appeared before her, more physical and present than ever. Did that mean...? Had they managed after all? Those who went up must have, somehow, succeeded. Something awful lurched in the pit of her stomach and Maea pressed her lips tightly together. Fear was a dark beast that crawled through her chest, turning limbs to water and making it impossible to stand even if she had wanted to. "I should never have gone" she whispered. Her voice was cracked, hoarse from coughing and the awful burn of poison; not even Vai's magic would heal it all in one night. She had almost died, and for what? What kind of sin had she even committed this night? "If locking you in and leaving all those generations to rot was worth the price... Then we should never have dreamed of the outside. I wish I'd never set foot in the Spire."

the Voice

"No? And yet you did." The Voice replied, strolling around the Temple. It was quite a new experience for her, it had been that long.

Spinning on nimble feet at the harsh words, the Voice merely regarded Maea with a long and silent stare that turned sort of sad. "Again, yet you did. All of you, the ones who have grown up knowing what you have, knew what you were doing. Don't pretend otherwise." She replied, her voice youthful, her body willowy and athletic, but her eyes sharp and knowing. "You watched with them as they fought the creature outside of the Spire. You went when they entered." Her shoulders rose and fell, not at all putoff or offended by the implication of what the farm-girl had said.

M  A   E    A I talked to God to no avail Said, "If you won't save me, please don't waste my time." Indeed. She could not argue that; Maea had known why the barrier was there and what entering the Spire might bring about, and she had gone anyway. A choice had been made, in the name of the living people who would have continued to fade otherwise... But that was before she ruptured the eye of a Guardian with her magic, before she realized what a terrible thing it was to thrust a sword forward into the flesh of a creature and hear it scream as it died. For all that she had slaughtered sheep and trapped animals in the past, the death of that tortoise haunted her. It har not been swift or painless, and now that Maea saw the Voice traipse around in the Temple, free from all restraint she questioned the very purpose for which the creature had died. Maea had helped bring this about, and she regretted it with every fiber of her being. "What will you do now, with the freedom we gave you?" she asked, and coughed as the healing sores irritated her throat. "I doubt the Old gods will simply let this pass without doing something..." There would no doubt be repercussions, sooner or later and Maea shuddered to think what her own punishment would be for her part in this.

the Voice

"The freedom you returned." The Voice corrected with a small smile. "And I will do what I did before. I will create, I will make bright those souls that I can."

The mention of the Old Gods made her stiffen for a moment, but quickly she laughed as she held out a hand before her. Lightning crackled beneath her fingertips for just a moment, before disappearing with a shrug. "I have spent a long time caged here, Maea. I will not let that happen again. Not to me, nor my children." Her voice was light, but suddenly the air in the room was dynamic as if on the verge of being electrified.

M  A   E    A I talked to God to no avail Said, "If you won't save me, please don't waste my time." The girl flinched again, shying away from the crackling light and the unspoken promise of violence in that statement, of conflict brewing on the horizon... Because how could there not be? The Old ones did not wish for the Voice or the Ascended to be free, and they did not wish to be caged. A desire she could understand, as much as she loathed the empathy at this particular point. She knew what a cage was like, and a few minutes underground in that tower had left her scarred and haunted. To be trapped for three hundred years... Yet Maea still bristled at the talk of bright ones, because she didn't understand what it detailed, other than turning people into something other. Something without red blood or breath in their lungs, with vicious sharp smiles... It only sounded strange to her, unnatural and frightening. "What does that mean? You said that before too, that I could have been 'bright'. Why 'could have'?"

the Voice

The Voice turned her head slightly as if trying to find the words to best demarcate her thoughts. "Did you know the abandoned were not always called so? We were the Acquired once. It is only because of the progress of myself and the Core that you are what you are now. Stronger than you used to be, but abandoned and thus so called." She said sadly.

"The magic has left an imprint upon your soul. An imprint that even I cannot scrub out, though I have never actually tried. But I would not risk the small spark that you do have. I do believe it would kill you."

M  A   E    A I talked to God to no avail Said, "If you won't save me, please don't waste my time." "The Core?" It was a new term, one she had never heard of before. Maea nodded grimly. She knew; had it from the stories of old, and from recently made friends who had acquired the knowledge from the Old Gods. She knew it was the Voice's fault she had not had her prayers answered once until just recently... and that not even Ludo could remove the so called spark from her soul. "It's your fault they turned on us. Because of you, they don't trust anyone with magic anymore. Call it 'progress' if you like, but it only sounds like arrogance to me. What was it you were so dissatisfied with? What was it Rae had done so poorly that you thought you should be the one to fix it?" What had they done? Had it affected Maea too? What had the Voice desired so badly that it made the Gods scorn of a whole race as a result? Stronger... as if she had ever asked for such a thing. Maea would sacrifice the magic in a heartbeat if it meant she could have the love of the Creators instead.

the Voice

The Voice merely shrugged despite the seeming hostility in Maea's voice. "Call it what you like. You are young, an eyelash in the face of time. I don't expect you to understand." She replied in a gentle tone. "Rae does nothing, that is their purpose." The Voice continued. "They watch evolution. The same way that creatures respond to outside stimulus and evolve because of it, so too did we. Rae would not mind what I did. It is natural."

M  A   E    A I talked to God to no avail Said, "If you won't save me, please don't waste my time." Pale eyes narrowed at the reply, her sore and chafed lips tightening at the not-answer. "If it's so natural, then there should be no problem talking about it, should it? It must be more than making a few changes to a mortal body... Come on, why don't you let me hear your version of the story? Maybe it might make me change my mind about you." She held her hands out in a gesture of non-committment, suggesting she was willing to listen. Setting aside an old grudge would not be easy... but Maea was trying to create change herself. What would she do if she couldn't even offer an open mind?

the Voice

"I don't have a problem talking about it. Your judgement is all that is stopping you." the Voice replies with a shrug. However as Maea's attitude changed, the deity spun lightly on her feet to face the pale-haired girl and considered.

"It is more than that, yes." With a wave of her hand, a sort of...sterile and white looking room appeared. On it was Maea's body, entirely naked. Blank lilac eyes stared up at the ceiling and the Voice beckoned the real Maea closer. Waving her hand again, layers of skin were suddenly removed with absolute precision. "The things I do first, the obvious things, are easy." With a flick of her wrist, the Maea-corpse's lungs were suddenly replaced with much more efficient ones, her bones made stronger.

"But your magic is a part of you. With one whose body is clean, like the accepted, there is nothing to stop the procedure. It can all be changed without any adverse effects to the host. With someone like you though.."

As blood was siphoned out of Maea's body and silver liquid replacing it, short bursts of electrical energy began to spark in and out. The weak telekinesis Maea had began to jolt erratically, parts of her body shifting and bones moving where they shouldn't. "Those with healing are much harder to work with, I would think." She concluded with a sigh, watching as Maea's magic fought the changes and eventually her skin began to melt.

Waving the simulation away, the Voice sighed.

"In order to be made bright, I would have to strip your magic away from you and I am not sure that any could withstand that process. I would not practice that lightly." She replied, arms folding gently around her body. "I have only ever done what you might expect any species to do - to adapt and evolve to survive. The Old Gods create, but they do not sculpt. Not like I do. Rae watches species rise and fall without intervening as is there way. But it need not be the same for me. I can intervene. I can help. It is all I have ever tried to do."

M  A   E    A I talked to God to no avail Said, "If you won't save me, please don't waste my time." If she had expected to hear some secret, or details previously undivulged, Maea was left disappointed. Instead, she was treated to the nightmare of herself in the throws of change, and one that would not end well. To see the insides of her own skin, the mechanics of get own body revealed in such meticulous detail... it was nauseating, terrifying, and made all the worse because of the carefree way the entity described the process. So uncaring. So far removed from the human emotions that wrecked Maea as she stared in horror at the vision of herself splayed open on a table, skin melting as the soul thrashed in horror at the violation. Even after the vision was removed the waves of nausea made her shudder and swallow, swallow, swallow, the taste of bile bitter at the back of her throat. What part of this was natural? What kind of desperate madmen would subject themselves to this willingly? "You're right" she whispered. "I don't understand. I'm sorry. Even when I try... I can only think that you're mad." She didn't want that to happen to herself. If ever the thought or desire o Ascend had crossed her mind it was thoroughly extinguished now, erased by the knowledge of how it could end. Never had she been so grateful to be unsuitable for a process... or so convinced that the Old Gods were right. This... Maea didn't even know how little she knew but this glimpse was enough to convince her that releasing this person was a terrible mistake. She had been so wrong. And now it was too late.

the Voice

The Voice regarded Maea for a moment before shrugging. "I didn't think you would, as I said. You are just one heartbeat in the big scheme of things, I wouldn't worry yourself about it too much. You'll likely never understand." Waltzing around to stand eye-to-eye with the young abandoned, the Voice smiled a sort of melancholy smile. "Remember this moment, if ever you think you do understand things. When you think you have it all figured out, remember this moment and know that you don't."

It was meant as gentle advice, but advice could be a warning too. A threat.

Gently the Voice shrugged again though. That Maea didn't understand wasn't her problem, not her concern. Mortal minds were so small after all, and as she'd already told Maea, there was nothing she could do to brighten it.

And so she vanished.