Blood of Azura

The Fallen City

"And so it was written, that the four realms of Ethis, created for the purpose of peace, would for the final time be destroyed by war. Cities would fall, blood would be spilled, and the bodies would stretch for miles across a once again broken land. For what else are beings capable of but war?" the Goddess asked.

"Love, mama," the small voice answered. "They are capable of love."

The Goddess turned and smiled down upon her child, startled again by the innocence and wisdom that shone back at her. The Goddess could not remember a time when she herself was filled with such innocence. It seemed that war and death had forever been present in the world that she knew. But perhaps it was only that war wiped out all else: Memories. Hopes. Lives. Love.

War was the most powerful force the Goddess had ever known. For a time, it had been love.

For the Goddess had known love. Once.  A powerful, all-consuming, divine and glorious love. An unspoken love. A love which had torn worlds apart and wrought forth a war that would last a thousand years.

"You are right my love, beings can love," she smoothed a hand over her daughter's hair, golden lengths which shone in the sun and looked aflame when a beam hit it just so. "But sometimes, love can bring war with it. Sometimes love itself can be the very cause of war. And sometimes, at the very heart of the very bloodiest war, lies the most pure and fragile kind of love."

"I don't understand mama..."

"I know child, but you will. One day you will. Because one day you will be the most loved of all; the most beautiful and just, the most gentle and fair, the most worthy and full of grace." The Goddess explained. "One day men will kill for your honour and sacrifice all for your favour." The Goddess knew this because it was written. As all of it had been written. It was foretold in grains of sand and in particles of stardust. It was evidenced in the depths of oceans and in the salt of the earth.

It simply was.

The child's face did not colour with joy or happiness at her mother words. Instead, it clouded with pain and fear, wide-eyed innocence receding behind amethyst jewelled irises. For this was not what the child wanted. She wanted to be loved of course, but she did not want killing and sacrifice to be the marker of it.

The Goddess simply smiled and ran a soothing hand across her daughters paled cheek. The child did not yet understand how some things simply were. Worrying over these things did nothing, for they could not be changed or prevented. Only the will of gods could alter these things.  And no God had such will.  Not anymore.

But the child would come to understand such things in time. Soon she would come to understand everything. What was. What is. What would be.

"I want to tell you a different story now, one of love in a time many many moon rises from now," The Goddess began.

She slid under the coverlet beside her daughter and pulled the child close, so to feel the heat from her bloom against her. Such a necessary feeling, the Goddess thought. The life of her daughter in physicality. She was alive. She existed. Through war and death and blood, she lived.

"How many moon rises mama?" The child replied. She was fascinated by the passing of time. By the history of her world and of the worlds still to come.

"A thousand thousand, maybe more."

The child's eyes widened. "That's a lot."

"Yes, it is."

"Is it a happy story?" The child enquired, still struck by her mother's words only moments ago, and the fear they had wrought in her innocent little heart.

"You'll have to wait until the end to find out," her mother said, her voice soft as silk.

Though the words came with some foreboding to the child, these things were always easier to bear with her mother close by her. Her mother would keep her safe always. From all things. These were only stories. And stories couldn't hurt you.

"Okay then," said the child. "I'm ready. Tell me the story mama..."

"Once, there was a city of gold. Rich in all of the ways that a city can be rich; it's lands bore fruit, it's people lived in serenity and peace, and they worshipped their rulers as the kindest and fairest of the four realms."

"Azura, mama!" The child cried, excited.

Azura was her favourite realm, it's princes were the most handsome and it's princesses the most beautiful and in any tale about any war she would always shout for Azura as the victor. This always made the Goddess smile. A secret knowing smile filled with echoes of sadness that was always misunderstood by the child, but that someday like all things she would come to understand.

"Let's wait and see shall we?" her mother winked playfully. Her daughter nodded eagerly and settled back down against her mother's breast, joy beginning to flutter in her little heart. "Well, one day the city of gold was attacked by an army of soldiers for no reason other than the pride of an old man," She pulled her daughter closer to her and felt her grip tighten. "This army was led by a force of dark savage soldiers, commanded by the most feared warrior in all of the four realms..."

The child clung tighter to her mother, for she knew of these dark warriors, and of their thirst for blood and destruction. But they were only stories, and stories could not hurt her.

Her mother's voice turned thick with emotion as she began to tell the tale of the day the city of gold fell...