black holes and revelations

vi

Vi stood upon the cosmos high above the Spire, above the shattered remnants of all that they had built. All that they had done to contain the disease that had been spreading like plague throughout Caido. And he had placed his emmisary there to keep safe those who remained faithful, to guide them and protect them. And to stop the Spire from being breached at all costs.

"What have you done, starlit one." It was not a question so much as a statement, Vi's voice purring across the skyline in the form of distant thunder. No mortal eye would catch sight of them up here. For the best.

You place stars into the sky that were not there before, as if on a whim. But you lift not one finger to prevent what has come to pass. Explain yourself."

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Safrin Not one to be naive, Safrin had thought that perhaps this call would not come. That Vi would have understood, or would have loved her enough to overlook her weaknesses. Centuries in what felt like exile and all she had wanted was him. But now his call rained starstruck ice through her veins, though she did not for even a moment consider not answering. Appearing in a subtle cascade of warm starlit patterns, Safrin looked up for just a moment, her heart leaping and swelling at the sight of her maker and mentor, and then lowering obediently. "It was no whim." Safrin replied softly, her perfectly painted lips edging in a sad frown as the galactic depths of her eyes took on an unending sorrowful quality. "In all the centuries here there were but a few whom I took special interest in...fewer still who I loved." The word burned the back of her throat, and though tears were something far too mortal for one such as Safrin, still her eyes misted with the enormity of mortality. Though perhaps few knew the bitterness of it better than the god before her. "They belong in the stars, if they cannot be returned to the ground." A starlit smearing of hope that quickly died on her tongue. "As for the rest of it, you must have known they would not be contained forever. What is the point of the barrier and the lives you allow to continue, if we are forced to micromanage them? Your parting gift of freedom taken away? Years passed and they learned...and she gathered more of them to her."

vi

"Your job was to care for them, not to love them." Vi's rumbling tone thundered across a sky seemingly clear of clouds, and he turned eyes as dark and deep as the warmest night on his herald. "And it is not your place to decide what I may or may not have known. You think I cast you into that place without knowledge of the cost?" Because Safrin was not the only one who had suffered, not the only one who had longed for better times. But life went on. Vi knew that well.

"She should not have been permitted to gather anything. How could she, contained as she was? You ought to have intervened. Your sole purpose was to keep those within the barrier safe - to make them part of that quest to keep the Core contained." His voice lowered, cosmic in its disappointment.

"And now she is free, and what have you to show for it? A couple of stars and regrets?"

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Safrin Your job was to care for them, not to love them. Safrin inhaled as if struck, turning her face away from Vi out of shame. His next words however rattled her to her core, because it was precisely what she thought. What they all thought, that indeed the cost of the barrier had not been known. The outcome not seen. She wanted to bring up his love for Mort, to gesture towards the possibility of mistakes made. To say that Ludo and Frey had done no better, that she was not alone in this. But it would do no good. Vi was quite literally her entire world perhaps now more than ever. And so all she could do in the face of his condemnation was bow her head, choking back her vanity and her scalded pride. "I didn't know what to do. Your orders, their free will...It seemed inevitable after a time. She is clever. So clever and we could not be everywhere. Do you know she reached out beyond the horizon of this world to snatch life? She assembled it within the Spire. They came in drips at first, but then she brought in a hoard of them. It was they who breached the Spire, but they did not do it alone. Even the most pious of our people entered and rose to the top." A couple stars.. Safrin's perfectly painted lips twisted as she looked towards Vi. "I was not going to let Ludo take them. Even now that they can return to Mort...I cannot let them go, even if it means leaving them in the sky."

vi

Vi did not flinch. He did not seem to react at all - like galactic ice, he merely froze at the explanation about what the Voice and the Core had been able to accomplish. To use that with which they had trapped her to summon others into the barrier...? "I had heard such tales, but I was unable to confirm them," he said.

The clouds were drawing in, promising rain, growth, life, and hiding the stars from view.

"Then in the sky they will stay, Safrin. But you - I held so much hope for you. And in over three centuries you have not matured at all." He pursed his lips. "I am of a mind to make you walk on mortal feet for a lifetime or two. Perhaps that will grant you the wisdom that you lack."

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Safrin "Then how can you fault me? When her power robbed even you of your sight?" Safrin blurted out before realizing the emotive cadence of her tone and immediately simmering. Tilting her chin upwards slightly, she looked away, swallowing down something bitter and angry. Where were Frey and Ludo? Why was she on trial alone, when Frey had done nothing and surely Ludo was as guilty as she? Vi's disappointment was like galactic debris across the field of her vision, darkening and obscuring the light she desperately sought. Centuries she had been without him. Days that spun into decades that she had laboured and toiled, and all for what? She'd been destined to fail, and under the oppressive weight of his stare, Safrin felt only regret that she'd not given in sooner. If her efforts meant nothing to him, then why had she even tried? However his threat drew the breath right from her lungs, and her star-cast eyes snapped to his with widening terror. Her lips opened to say something, to offer some plea in her defense but there seemed none to be made. "I'm sorry. I tried, but you had been gone for so long, and I...I wasn't.." Teardrops like comets streaked down her cheeks as she watched the weather obscure the stars she so loved. Her posture one of defeat. "I'm sorry I wasn't better." She whispered at last.

vi

Vi regarded her coldly, the emotion that welled within her both the entire reason for her existence and an irksome effect that he wished he had not instilled in her. But then without it, what would they be? Little by little, the deity thawed. He became no less stern, no less concerned with the events that had transpired within the Hollowed Grounds... but he seemed to realise the potential effects of his own ire.

"She must not be allowed to get her claws into this world a second time," he vowed. "Promise me, Safrin, that you will do all you can to facilitate her capture. If you love them as you say you do - if you adore them so - then you will protect them from her influence."

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Safrin Glancing up with shock as much as unfettered joy, the goddess gasped in a held breath and nodded immediately. "I promise." She breathed instantly, her eyes sparkling with devotion and love. "I will." Then, a touch more hesitantly, "But now that the barrier is gone and—" a pregnant pause, a vulnerability no mortal would ever see on her face, "—we are together, it will be easier."

vi

Vi looked away as Safrin beheld him with such adoration, though there may have been just a flicker of a smile on his bearded face, beneath the blossoms. "Hope suits you, starlit one. Do not make yourself regret it."

With a wave of a hand, the clouds parted once more, but by that time a Flowerbirth shower had thoroughly doused the Hollowed Grounds, barren and broken as it was.

He would leave her there, gazing upon the Spire and the monstrous thing she had not prevented from escaping, with much to think upon. But at least she would have her stars for company.

{END}

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