Collide Gamer

Burning brighter than the Sun Part 1 – Of Goddesses and Time [Nathalia Side Story]

Sand.

An endless, vast landscape of sand. It wasn’t a desert, it missed the hills and all that, no, it was a maelstrom. Sand endlessly swirled around a center. Unceasingly, unquestionably, it drained and was recreated in the basin, kilometres across.

Nathalia sashayed along the pathway of impossibly thick glass that made up the rim of the basin. She had come here just to kill time but now all it did was remind her of the power she had lost. Of ages past when she had dragged annoying mortals here and dunked their heads under the sands until they pleaded for mercy and release from their own memories.

Nathalia knelt and ran her fingers through the sand. It was so fine, her digits glided through it like a liquid. When she raised her hand, the excess grains found their way back to the maelstrom. For a few moments, her hand shifted through several stages of age: young, old, ancient, back to young, before stabilizing at her current age. The sands of time did little this far away from the heart of the hourglass. Not like she cared much. This was just another place to visit and certainly the one that had changed the least over the centuries she had spent asleep. Even her Sanctum had gone through more changes.

“You finally show your face again,” an indignant voice reached the dragoness’ pointy ears.

Nathalia turned her head just enough to look behind her. A woman with platinum blond hair stood there. Golden eyes and radiant armour both shone with a deceptively warm light. A disk of burning fire confined in a black frame hovered behind her back, reflecting off the smooth floor and basking her copper skin in gold. The plate armour looked like it was hammered perfectly to her body, hiding none of her seductive curves that rivalled Nathalia’s own, much to the redhead’s annoyance.

“Sol,” Nathalia spat out. “Any reason you’re annoying me?”

“Luna felt you intruding upon this place and thought I would fulfil Romulus’ promise, he is very busy you know?” Sol laughed mockingly, “Oh, how would you know? He has banished you from his court… you’re lucky he doesn’t feel the need to make that banishment permanent in person.”

Nathalia growled and stood up. “We both know that Romulus isn’t coming here for an entirely different reason,” she said with a glance at the far away centre of the maelstrom. Her eyes were sharp enough to make out the man desperately trying to claw himself out, even though everyone knew that was useless.

The man was rapidly changing in age. Youth came and went, adulthood replaced with both the frailty of age and childhood. Wounds long healed became wounds present, only to be replaced with all the pleasures life had brought him. All of that, condensed into a singular moment stretched out for thousands of years. Throughout all of that, a spark of will remained and the man continued to struggle to remain on the surface. God-making hands grasped at nothing.

“He cannot bear to look at what he did to him,” Nathalia stated and ripped her eyes away. “Even I would shy away from that cruelty. It takes a special wrath for anyone to doom a brother to reliving their life endlessly and cowardice not to finish what he has started.”

Sol’s expression darkened. Nobly swung jawbones clenched, as the heat radiating from the fellow goddess’ skin rose. As a fellow entity of heat, albeit fire and light were different in many regards, Nathalia did not care.

“Still sensitive when people insult your master, are you?” Nathalia laughed, slow and mockingly.

“What do you want here, Nathalia?!” Sol barked.

Nathalia refused to answer on principle. While turning the rest of the way around, she answered, “What do you care? Our paths divided in Pompeii.”

Sol rushed forwards, suddenly in front of the dragoness. “You dare speak of Pompeii, arrogant lizard?” she hissed.

Nathalia crossed her arms, rolled her eyes and just stared for a moment while considering her options. Sol was Romulus’ familiar, she was of little threat without him around. Sadly, squashing her would just mean Romulus could put her back together, like all contractors could with their elementals. That considered, Sol was a being of life, Nathalia of destruction, in a fight she would always hold the advantage. Might as well antagonize the bright bitch.

“Pompeii was what I had to do because Romulus decided to mess with the one thing above him.” Nathalia tossed her fiery mane back with a strong motion of her head. “This conversation is beneath me.”

“Beneath YOU?” Sol asked in sincere ridicule. “I’m sorry, how is anything beneath you? Oh, is it because this conversation doesn’t have a cock your loose cunt can bounce on? Is aggravating me another mistake you want to add to your list of failures, you valueless whore?”

Nathalia pulled her lips back, beginning to growl. Then she thought of what would annoy the blonde more than being threatened. She shrugged. “Your opinion is as important to me as it ever was, Sol, just go back to your owner. Maybe he’ll see it fit to waste another hundred years scratching you behind the ears.”

Sol responded with immediate violence. A plated foot rose off the ground. Nathalia grinned for one moment, then she felt the leg slam into her side.

The dragoness had not expected that kind of speed, not in the slightest. The first of the celestial elemental’s attacks catapulted Nathalia into the air above the swirling sands. Wings of obsidian and flowing magma spread wide open. A segmented tail appeared from her scaled back below, its swipe blocking the next strike from the sun goddess. The exchange of blows created distance between them, a divide only crossed by the glaring hatred in their eyes.

Sol had changed into her true form, one of nothing but golden fire. The only things remaining of her previous appearance were the womanly curves and the disk of fire hovering behind her back. Her eyes, two white dots amongst the gold, were focused entirely on Nathalia.

“You truly thought you were still that superior to me?!” Sol raised a hand above her head. “Have you forgotten what my Master took from you? You became weak and I am Patron Goddess of the Greater Empire.” An orb of white energy the size of a house formed above Sol’s palm. “I am a goddess of life, Nathalia, we are equal by nature and now I have surpassed you!”

The orb of blinding light rushed towards the dragoness. Nathalia closed her wings, using them as a shield as the attack clashed with her, basking her in heat that would have reduced lesser beings to ash. Obsidian scales melted, some cracked, but nothing reached the core of her being underneath. The feeling was annoying, not painful. Just as annoying was the brightness that blocked her sight.

A hand suddenly grabbed her by the tail and spun her around. One time she circled around, then she was launched. Nathalia, disoriented, roughly realized that she hit something soft, which she quickly started to sink into. The tingle of changing time was a warning.

A being of her power was fine just touching the sands of time, particularly this far out. Sinking under the surface, that she had no experience with. Nathalia hurried to try and get out but Sol landed atop her, pressing her deeper into the sands with her foot.

“I told you I have surpassed you,” Sol declared. “You can stew in the summary of your failure while I devise a plan…-!” She stopped to kick away Nathalia’s tail. Then she was right back to shoving the redhead deeper into the shifting, pale beige. “…to extract you. Really, I’m doing you a favour, letting you revisit all your sexual exploits.”

Nathalia’s mouth opened and out came a cone of fire. The red and gold flames burned as hot as the core of a volcano, glassing the surrounding sand.

“Pathetic,” Sol stomped down one more time and Nathalia growled. “Are you even worthy of being called a goddess of destruction anymore?”

Nathalia made an animalistic grunt and clawed into the foot that was pressing her down, pushing against it with all the force she could muster. The glass that had been slowing her descent turned back into sand, the individual grains reversing their own time, and now she was slowly being completely enveloped.

“You never stopped being a bitch, did you?” Nathalia growled as the sands reached her ears.

“I hate you, Nathalia. Maybe this will help you remember why you deserve to be hated,” Sol returned in kind as the dragoness was swallowed by the sands. The grains covered her field of vision, and then the foot atop her was gone. Nathalia floated in a limbo, memories drifting around her in the radiant darkness. Against her expectations, they stayed away from her. A presence held them back.

“Oh, I don’t get visits often,” said an unknown voice, distinctly female.

“I am…”

“…Nathalia, yes, yes, I am looking at your history right now. It's more interesting than hearing about you from my pals. I am Ferikrona, the one and only goddess of time. Pleased to meet you Nathalia, Flame of Destruction.”

‘There is a goddess of time?’ Nathalia had thought she had encountered all but the youngest of those that had claimed divinity. Not that it mattered. “Get me out of here,” she then demanded, she still had things to do. First of all was crushing Sol. Then, perhaps, she would check in on that mortal boy.

“Mhm, I could do that, but if I do that you and Sol would just cause a ruckus. Better to give you a bit of a boost. Just like the crazy rodent expected.” Ferikrona laughed and Nathalia raised an eyebrow. “I suppose I should remind you that you are owed a debt and where better to start than the beginning? Tell me, do you remember what you were before you became divine?”

Nathalia grit her teeth at the time goddess’ cheeky tone. She was of half a mind to just break free the regular way. However, she was indeed owed a debt by the Rat. “I started as many Abyssal entities do,” the dragoness gave in to the little game. “Normal.”

The scene changed. Her mind was pulled away, numbed and devolved back into the first moments of her existence. She was nothing more than a simple lizard. A pretty big lizard for her species, but nevertheless just a lizard, following a human tribe for reasons of instinct. She was roughly aware that she was an onlooker and simultaneously she was back in the long shed skin. In that weird duality of feelings Ferikrona spoke, spoke of things Nathalia already knew about but had forgotten as they had become as natural to her as the words of her language.

“There are steps to magic and all start with humans. Whether or not they realize what they are doing or how they are doing it I do not know but it all starts with humans. Faith, that is what makes us. Faith is a flimsy thing. Humans may worship logic or pray for good weather. They may not even actively think about it all. Faith is created regardless and much of it is aimed at nature.”

The human tribe settled in one place and created art. They carved pictures of what Nathalia had been into their totems, drew her on their tents and offered her food. They thought her to be holy, and therefore she became it. As the faith of the tribespeople was directed towards her, she changed. Not slowly, not even quickly, no she changed at one particular moment, the moment her mortal shell died and her soul entered the Abyss.

Her animal soul was the target of human emotions, negative, positive and neutral. All drenched her being and made her soul distinctly non-animalistic. Made her into something else. Something powerful enough to surface in a Natural Barrier. Something fragmented, torn between the many different ideas of her existing within one shell.

“They say the first step to godhood is an existence of many minds and you were.” Her new form started feeding on the prayers as her status as a holy animal became legend, then myth and finally the central religion of that tribe. They called her the fire lizard and the form they depicted her as had long changed from realistic to what modern humans would later know as a dragon. She absorbed whatever the tribespeople gave her, in an age where the barrier between mundane and Abyss had been permissive. Then, she was a monster of the Abyss, a powerful one at that, but just acted on instincts she had gained from all the fragments of other souls that now made up her own.

“The second step to godhood is then taking control of that hivemind and becoming the singular controlling entity.” The tribe grew into a village and she started to become aware of herself. No longer did she just eat up the emotions of the humans who worshipped her, but instead started thinking about the why. She became sapient, like the beings whose Faith nourished her.

“The third step is standing for an aspect of humanity, the Faith of a small village is not enough to create a god. It would take thousands of years for someone to create their personal god and none have ever managed to sustain a Faith so dedicated for so long. No, Faith is a fickle and predictable thing, following the basics that all humans share. The wonder of life and birth, the terror of death, the destruction of landscapes and the changing flows of time. One village is not enough to create a god, but what about all of that Faith that has no outlet? People who pray for safety to no particular deity, where does it go? The fear of disease is a thought not lost. It doesn’t vanish. Thoughts and ideas accumulate and they wait for someone to embody them.”

The earth around the village started rumbling, “And so all it took for you to step into the realm of true power,” the rumbling intensified, centred around a distant mountain, “was to stand for a primal fear of humanity that was not yet claimed.” The mountaintop exploded into fire and ash, a volcano eruption that sent projectiles of stone flying for kilometres. The sky darkened as blackened clouds blocked out the sun.

“On this day you became one, a goddess of destruction, you are the incarnation of humanity's fear of fire and ash. One of the first dragons, one of the first gods. This day you reached for godhood as that faith reformed you and gave you a name, Nathalia.” Ferikrona spoke as the scene unfolded in front of Nathalia herself. In front of the dragon she had been. The plain, black-scaled, large winged lizard.

Then and now, she was mesmerized by it. The force bottled up in that mountain. The heat that was sent flying. The beauty of molten rock as it burst out in geysers of ash and gas. Blotting out the sun, dominating the world, burning all around, freezing all beyond, leaving the landscape irreparably changed, and ready for new life to begin. Change. Destructive, beautiful, change.

As all of that reflected in her eyes, she became the embodiment of it all. Thoughts lined up with Faith and Faith flowed into the outlet that embodied it. Neither one changed the other, the individual and the pooled power simply were the same and would be until the god’s death.

The dragon turned into a stream of orange and black energy. The men and women who had worshipped her fled from the magma flows. Those on elevated positions saw and pointed, as the creature of myth that surfaced sometimes around them appeared in the explosion of the mountain. A large lizard turned into a volcanic eruption. Wings of black clouds and a body of flying embers. Cataclysmic in size.

A rebirth in the flames of the volcanic eruption, and her voice bent the trees. A body too large for reality to contain, the energies of her birth steeping the environment in magic. Gaia’s will descended on her and, with eyes that had known mercy, removed her from the mundane once her formation had run its course.

“Are you done meddling in my memories?” Nathalia wanted to know, her consciousness detaching from memories.

Ferikrona made an amused sound, “No, not yet, there is another thing I want you to relive.” The scene of the eruption vanished into the darkness, leaving a trail of green, curly hair.

In its stead stepped a man over two metres tall. Short brown hair, a tinge of grey to it, covered his regal head. Around it sat a laurel of the most verdant green. It was the only decoration he allowed himself. The toga and the sash that kept it in place were both plain white. A colour that contrasted starkly with the tanned skin that stretched over his muscles.

There were many names for that man, many of which had been forgotten, many more that were no longer associated with him. Nathalia knew many, but she only cared about one.

Romulus.