PROLOGUE: THE FIRST LIE EVER TOLD.
---- Death was a painting, and she was so beautiful.
But remember now, that there was once a painting hanged in the halls of the Gods. Within she was held: the first woman, captured in brush and stroke, and frozen for an eternity over crimes that nobody remembers.
Her bleeding golden eyes looked out in icy anguish. A masterful stroke held the agony of her tears, and loss in roses they watered. Her frail form was obscured only by a bundle of bloodied cloth.
Godens and Goddesses would pass the frame by a thousand times a day and pay it as much mind as they might a single leaf on the tree of time, or a blade of golden grass in the worlds of wheat beneath them.
Such wasn't always the case. Long ago, when the world was young, and the Gods were still curious, they would happen upon her and admire her broken beauty.
--- The wise gods would declare – with the utmost certainty – that the frame held within, the first human. The primordial creation of the absolute trinity, saved as a cruel blueprint.
The gods of war knew otherwise. They claimed her as the first murderer; the harbinger of ends. They knew it was she who created death, and only she who would be denied it for an eternity.
--- There had been a question asked once, by the Golden Goddess. She asked of her ethereal father, "Who is she that has been hanged in our conclave all these long eternities?"
And the Forgotten Goden answered her. The painting's frame was no longer black oily steel, but stars and shadow. In a mouthless voice and with noiseless words none but his own daughter could ever comprehend, he said; "She was my blood. My sister. She was the first mortal, and the first mother."
"Then why was she placed in the painting?" The daughter asked of the shadowed stars. The winds bore her answer. They rushed past and swam through the horizon where she saw rise, the old world of the Gods.
The winds died, the horizon crumbled, and the old world ended in flame and war. She saw the new stars rise from the ashes of that world. The ascension of her kind as they escaped mortality and rose to divinity.
But there was more to that old tale. A beauty with hair of wintered water who stood alone beneath the new stars, never having risen to their greatness.
"She never became as us, as such she was fated to die alone atop the baren rock we called a world." Supernovas became tears on godly cheeks while some galaxy a lifetime away became his false smile. "The first gods joined our power and gave unto her, a child."
"But I was the first child," she of Gold insisted.
-- "You were the first to draw breath. He was the first born."
"He did not make it," she realised in a hushed tone. "How could a child of the Gods not be carried to term?"
She turned to the painting yet again--only now did she see that blood yet poured eternally from the little bundle in her arms.
"We were arrogant and almost as powerful as we believed ourselves. When we saw her; when I saw her alone in that world, I assumed her solitude to be curable. She sought no cure, no child, but I did not think to ask. Yet, when her womb quickened, she suffered the responsibility all the same. She bore the pains alone, while we crafted the skies above her. She slept on beds of rock and ate of the sparse fruits and grubs left upon the scarred world. Then the day came, and the child did not, and she was so much more alone than she had ever been before."
--- The agony of memory is a terrible thing for an ancient Goden. The sapphire sun set in the middle of the day. The moon tore herself in twain at his wail, and the mountains shed his tears. The rains poured in impossible colours and sparked out with glassy shards of lightning. The clouds hailed embers of emerald while the winds rushed as ruby torrents.
Then all became still, and he was gathered.
"What happened?" The perfect daughter asked.
-- "She swore to end everything the gods had ever touched. She swore to destroy my bloodline. She swore to destroy all worlds that we create, she swore to grow even greater than I, that she might cast me down and destroy my seat."
-- "And so, you froze her?"
"And so, I fought her," he admitted. The shame of it brought stillness to the world of waves, and silence to all the flames of the sun. "And so, she destroyed the world. She made good on her promise, and we were forced to start again."
"You made my world?" She guessed.
"Your mother made Marash. I swore to have no hand in it, that my sister might one day forget it," he corrected.
"But..." The young Goddess urged.
"But... then we made you, and you made all of them; where I had failed to make one." The sun flared out and wrapped around her shoulders for a warm embrace. "But by this action, her vow was renewed."
"She made an attempt at Marash? But she was mortal! Surely, she would have aged?" The mother of Marash demanded with almost a panic.
"She would have aged and died an eternity ago," he agreed, "had she not been placed in that painting."
"Then destroy the painting!" she demanded, a storm of thunder speaking her worlds in place of her lips.
-- "The painting cannot be destroyed, nor should you be so quick to violence, daughter. My sister will be freed by the dragon when the time is right. There is a plan in place, my love, and with my mark, atop Taeva's arrow, shall it all begin."
"Then what is the plan?" she snapped.
"Steel will glance, the Champion will reign, the traitor will fall, and the eternals will explain." The words shook the halls, and the painting cracked along her crooked lips. Her agony shattered in an instant and shone out as a sadistic grin. She wore it as blatantly as her bloody tears. In her eyes, the Golden Goddess could see the final words spoken by the ancient horror...
The silent smile snickered, "I've burnt whole worlds for hurting me, why is it you feel so safe?"
Then the Goddess awoke from her dreams and forgot her father and his tales soon after; as she did every morning. As everybody did every morning. Such was his grand blessing, the right to forget; the right to dream.
CHAPTER ONE: GOLDEN GRASSES.
---- The sapphire sun set over shimmering golden grassed. The snowcapped mountains hid the horizon from sparkling little eyes. The day's final heat warmed her back as she strolled through the nameless forest.
Rain carried on the wind, though not a drop had yet fallen. The sun glinted off the shining silver reeds as she moved along her way. The trek had tired her, though for most it would have been no journey at all.
She set upon a clearing in the trees where she finally came upon the dusk lit sky. Perfect daylight red melted into the perfect blue of sunset as she followed it away.
"Sister?" she called out with a drop of worry and a slightly ragged breath. It had been a moment too long of silence and winds rustling through the black leafed trees made for poor conversation.
A single dark leaf landed on her shoulder as she stood in the clearing. Only evergreens kept their coat so deeply into autumn, yet she stood surrounded by golden spruces and pitch oaks. A flurry of purple leaves carried overhead on a quick gust of wind.
It was an oddity of the season, but surely not worthy of worry to her mind.
"Ash!" She called out again beyond the treeline, though her own lonely echo proved her sole company. "Ash, it's getting dark! Let's head back!"
A flutter startled her, the flap of dark wings as a black sparrow settled within a golden oak. The girl and the bird shared eyes, steely grey and focused only on each other. To her mind, the songbird seemed a little too intent on watching her. Its eyes followed her along the clearing as she walked towards the centre.
Only as she reached the middle did the bird flutter past her. It took flight with a light chirp and landed a breath behind her, atop a stepping stone in a pond that she could have sworn didn't exist a moment ago.
It was a shallow pool, but rather wide and brimmed with colourful stones. Red reeds lined its surface, and she could even see a couple of small fish within its bounds.
"Hello there," the girl whispered as she toed the water. "I'm Evara."
The sparrow bounced in place, cocking its head towards her.
-- "You wouldn't have seen my sister anywhere, would you? Angry looking woman with a big spear?"
With nothing more than a gentle chirp, the bird took flight again and shot far above the canopy, headed towards the evening sun.
"I'll take that as a no," Evara sighed.
--- Her shadow grew long as the mountains swallowed the newly set sun. The darkness took the forest in an instant, and the cold of winter's first reach scratched along her spine. A glint in the water caught her eye as she shivered in her dress.
It was blue and purple; then red and gold; then green and white. It entranced her. It was beautiful as it shimmered an inch beneath the water.
"What are you?" the girl whispered as she took her first wading step into the pond, offering not a thought to the brisk cold.
She drew nearer to the shimmer, and it seemed to do the same.
It grew from a spec to a little ball of light, then it grew larger still. Then it was no longer red, nor was it blue or green; black or white. It was some impossible flavour of light. Some fevered dream of a madman. A colour that couldn't be, yet so clearly was. The glint wasn't beneath the water anymore, but above it – above her.
She gawked as this impossible delight sparkled and danced amongst the slowly waking stars. She awed as the orb grew larger and larger. Apprehension caught her when it grew larger than the stars above, and dread gripped her when it made dwarfs of the twin moons.
It was sunrise, and sunset. The orb – or whatever shape it could possibly be described as – sparkled a thousand colours and lights, none of which she could ever have imagined. It rained cold lava and burnt Icey flames. It was a ball of lightning, then a box of dreams, then a heart of iron and an eye of gold.
Then it grew smaller, much smaller. It coursed through the sky straight towards her -- no more sparks, no more light. It wasn't a shooting golden star; it was an arrow. Black and steel and deadly. The majesty was gone though the intent was newly apparent. Simple and obvious, a shard of oily black steel ripping the sky apart in search of the young girl.
The bolt of black shattered and splintered an iron oak trunk, felling the tree in an instant, as it barrelled towards Evara.
She didn't even have chance to scream before she was being thrown to the ground by strong and warm hands.
"Ev!" her sister cried as she dove between the arrow and the girl. She barred the shard from its target, and she suffered the consequences.
It tore into her shoulder with the same force it had torn through the tree with, only, it didn't go through. It seemed lodged within Ash. It nestled and burrowed but it should have burst through to the over side.
"Ash!" She screamed. The elder sister, Ashtik, lay limply atop of her. "Please, no no no..." She whispered. A prayer came to the deepest pit of her heart. She didn't say it. It was barely even conscious in her mind, but it grasped her soul.
"Please don't take my sister"