15:52, Rotation 108 / 365, 232 AE, 60.34137, 44.21169, Reath

  The Crown was the defining elvan achievement, a great work upon a great pedestal – tethered by its own orbit of Reath, it pulled up the Celestial Escalator up from the anchoring base, the elvan city of Babylon, in the Emerald Island of Vyredia.

  The Escalator made travel across the void not only possible, but profitable.

  Profitable beyond the imagination of even the Godlike.

  It was a biosphere with its own biome, a paradise revoluting to create the simulacrum of natural grasp. Only the psions at the highest upper echelons of the Amallarkean elite were allowed in, and once they got in, they would never choose to leave. Just to be closer to the Goddess.

  Protected in the void, the Crown was an impenetrable fortress. Filthy orcs could not reach here. It was as far from Orca as possible and with all the fury of a scorned mother between them. March as they will toward Babylon, take flight through the atmosphere riding skyborne fleets of automaton drakes and whirligigs, they would never pass the chokepoint of the Celestial Escalator. They would be leading themselves into a meat grinder.

  They could take to the void with enough forbidden fire. Let them try. Once they reached the void, they would be torn apart by the voidborne storm of debris known as the reathean cage. Not even dragons could survive. The Celestial Escalator ferried all between sky and void. And should they somehow even make it past the cage, then the God Empress’s dragons would make short work of whatever craft they could produce.

  The Horde knew its place.

  They could not possibly challenge the Goddess.

  And so, they stayed in the lowest gaol, as Her Omnipotence very well liked it.

  Reath. Wreathed in death mist. A blanket of roiling, thick, white clouds. Carbonic gas and water vapor. It swathed the surface of the realm, trapping the heat of the sun, the mist trapping the heat of the flesh, so that no one could survive within. Spawned from the Belt of Storms, the superheated equator, centuries ago.

  The Belt of Storms churned with hunger. Hunger for unthinking destruction. Its children, the immortal hyphoons and hypercanes, the titan storms striding to the highest stratosphere, birthed their giants, the super typhoons, and the super hurricanes, and they in turn begat more deadly progeny, more storms. More chaos. For there was no gap in the belt. No truly safe way of traveling from the lower hemisphere of Reath to the upper or back.

  Of the three paths – through the islands of Green Paths sieged by storms, up along the jagged mountain peaks of the Red Path, or through the infernal deserts of the Black Path – each was more difficult to survive than the last. The orcs had invaded, once, by the Red. They would not dare do so again. Now they had too much to lose.

  The death mist and the Belt of Storms were the parting gift of the Godlike Beings, together known as the Catastrophe. They had altered Reath irrevocably by burning that which must not be burned- the forbidden fire.

  The magickal phenomena unleashed by forbidden fire fed upon itself. A feedback loop. Deserts claimed carbonic gas trapping flora. Clathrates deep below, leagues under the sea, they belched putrid methane. The greater the air heated, the thicker the moisture it held. The irony of cooling vapor itself being radiative forcing was not lost in this Anthropocene Epoch. And so, the Catastrophe grew more terrible upon every rotation, even when the Godlike Beings tried their best to undo their sin. It was too late. Even as the last Godlike Beings clung desperately to extended life, or transmuted their very essence itself, they knew that their end was inevitable when they could no longer bear children.

  And then- the Eucatastrophe. The Dawn of Elvankind.

  And then- the Apotheosis of the Goddess.

  The God Empress.

  The God Empress of Elvankind.

  Elvankind knew that she was the rightful inheritor of Reath. Her only caretakers. They raised mighty forests all along Jhirya, magickally grown trees that towered thousands of meters tall, to undo the Catastrophe. It did no good.

  The Catastrophe could not be undone.

  The Catastrophe was still unfolding.

  Elvankind decreed never to burn the forbidden fire.

  Bu those sooty orcs simply didn’t care.

  The God Empress was convinced it was a calculated gambit to make frigid Orca more habitable.

  In the very center of the Crown was Ultima, also known as the All-Seeing Eye, where the false grasp did not plant elvans to their feet, so the God Empress could float in the void. Beneath the crown were the Strata, floating habitats where the highest and mightiest psions of Clan Amallark lived, but the Goddess never deigned to visit her subjects. No, they were to come to her.

  Here, in Ultima, the weightlessness was soothing to Her Omnipotence. Entirely spherical and the true mass-anchor through which the Crown pulled up the celestial escalator, it was simply impenetrable. The gryphantene armored shell of Ultima had continued growing for over a century, now nearly a thousand kilometers thick, and was entirely unaffected by dragon’s breath. No light entered save but through the spokes connecting the Crown to Ultima and the ports dilated only when Her subjects had to be summoned, which was rare, even for her own daughters. Psionic proximity to the Goddess simply by reaching the Crown was enough to overwhelm the mind. And so, here in Ultima, all alone in power, God Empress was wrapped in darkness, the sensory deprivation amplifying Her Omnipotence.

  The fortress of Her Omnipotence was a peaceful place. None could challenge the might of the Amallarkean Imperium. Not anymore. It became the one and only place where the God Empress found the daily task of psionic management of her realms the least bit tolerable, completely isolated and removed from all distraction.

  To prepare for the coming occasion, however, she had hallucinated simple white walls, zen and minimalistic.

  The Goddess chanted her mantras.

  But as much as the elvans were convinced Her Omnipotence was truly omnipotent, there was still a limit to the Goddess’s power.

  So, the God Empress delegated the psionic load to the Princesses, Amefrid and Senjya. Effort was beneath the Goddess.

  The Princess Amefrid, Administrator of Reath, and Princess Senjya, Administrator of Aryss, had all the elvans of their respective realm under their command. Their force was vast and legion.

  So how did it all go so wrong?

  To correct things required a major change to the planned future, and so it did call for the extremely rare occasion that she summoned her daughters, Amefrid and Senjya, in person.

  Despite having not seen them in person for nearly eight of these revolutions, Amefrid and Senjya appeared before Her Omnipotence at exactly the time she demanded. Though no light could enter Ultima, through psionic hallucination they could sense each other in their mind’s eyes perfectly. The Princesses were careful to cloak their entrances from Her perception lest they distract their Goddess Mother.

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  Your Omnipotence, greeted Princess Amefrid, the Administrator of Reath.

  Your Omnipotence, greeted Princess Senjya, the Administrator of Aryss.

  No second of time was more precious for any living organism in the history of all known existence, so the Goddess got right to the point.

  I’m not angry.

  It was in Her nature to delight in seeing Senjya and Amefrid’s backs jolt upright in fear. Amefrid, with her fiery red bouffant, flowing long to ensconce her in a commanding aura. Indeed, the God Empress had designed the electrostatically hovering nanothreads herself, so that her dear, beloved daughter would never need to carry the burden of the mass on her head.

  But she found Senjya a bit cringey with her pigtails. She had never given Senjya quite the same tutelage as her first trueborn, Amefrid, the only one who had emerged from Her very body. She had only ever birthed Amefrid, for Her Majesty found the trials of labor far too painful to bear again and assigned Senjya’s hatching to a brood mother.

  She was prejudiced against Senjya from birth. She saw now that Senjya had only reached her highest potential because of grit- it was from the neglect of the Goddess that she thrived. She had outdone herself on Aryss, and now the God Empress needed to test the measure of her mettle with a real challenge.

  No. The daughter who needed discipline was the spoiled one.

  Amefrid Amallark.

  I’m just disappointed.

  Her eyes opened and she shot a glare at the Princess Amefrid.

  The Princess met the eyes of Her Omnipotence.

  It was a horrifying thing to behold. This power. None but the Princesses were even allowed to see Her Eyes. Any other elvan in her presence cast their eyes down or were puppeteered to do so from the fear of a minder. With no elvan capable of disobeying, it was still unknown exactly what the consequence would be should any elvan, but the Princesses behold the Goddess in physical form. Surely something worse than death. The simple matter of an execution of an elvan in Her domain – telepathically from great distance – took but a thought for the Goddess. She had no time for that. What one life mattered or not was far beneath her. She delegated such drudgery to the psions. Let them do the dirty work of Power Word: Kill.

  Amefrid’s inquisition began.

  The foul orcs have grown in population far too fast. Their industry belches poison upon Reath.

  Holy Goddess Mother, please forgive me for my disagreeability, but we need the stock! We send so many cocoons to Aryss-

  Have you delivered?

  Goddess Mother, forgive her, for she had not. But how difficult it was, with that damnable secret!

  And what do you think happens if the orcs discover the harvests?

  Goddess Mother, forgive her, for they would want to kill every one of us, to the last.

  So, do you see my concern, Ami, about your sympathy with these brutes?

  Goddess Mother, forgive me, I do not sympathize with these brutes!

  And then a flash, that struck her hypocrisy.

  We cannot allow them growth. Five revolutions ago I told you this! Five revolutions ago I ordered you to bring their numbers down! And instead, they flourish!

  Amefrid had dreaded this moment for every waking rotation in that time.

  Do you have anything to think in defense for yourself, princess?

  …

  Nothing?

  The Goddess scryed so deeply into her daughter’s mind that Amefrid felt she would choke on her own saliva while clawing her mind out of the epileptic fit that followed. But the Goddess was repulsed by obfuscation, smoke and mirrors, self-imprinted safeguard and false leads to red herrings. Still, despite Amefrid’s psionic defenses, Her Omnipotence had truly scoured her daughter’s mind as thoroughly as she could.

  But she drew a blank. Nothing. No thought.

  Oblivion.

  Oblivious.

  Amefrid was only panicking now, thinking about herself, thinking about excuses, ways to justify. The Princess was too intelligent, and she would always find an excuse.

  Not this time.

  The Goddess would not allow it.

  This was unforgivable psionics. She would do this to her own firstborn?

  A void which binds. For everything in the known universe touches some point in space.

  The Reathean Cage was the sickness of Kessler syndrome.

  Because the Horde Master knew his place. The Goddess knew this. The Goddess knew why she knew this. The Goddess knew how she knew this.

  And they could not have been but for the breaking of the Atlantic meridional overturning circulation, allowing pockets of the ocean surface to reach over fifty degrees centigrade.

  Chaos, once unleashed, can never be put back into Pandora’s Box.

  Known as ‘Godlike’ for given the advancement of their political economy, they would be akin to Gods to the orcans and most elvans in material luxury, but of course, not Gods for omnipotence implies immortality, and all the Godlike Beings were most certainly dead.

  Increased the mean temperature of the realm. By as much that could be ascertained, the amount attributable to anthropogenic emissions was four degrees.

  The temperature continued increasing until to date it was eight degrees centigrade hotter than the beginning of the Lost Age and still going up.

  Before even more radical transformation unmade them, the gynous could reach up to two hundred, but the androus… only one hundred and fifty.

  As the sound of the playgrounds faded, the despair set in. Very odd what happens in a world without children’s voices.

  They both knew that pushing the temperature up beyond the already egregious eight degrees could transform Orca from a thawing land into a flourishing, tropical paradise, but it would leave the rest of Reath a ruin.

  One could almost even say with a Scandinavian aesthetic, but like much lost knowledge, only the Empress and the Horde Master even remembered who the Scandinavians even were.

  It helped her ground her transcendental meditation, which she found necessary to hold her sanity against the torrent of zettabytes and zettabytes whispered to her by the spirits.

  The Goddess would not have her divinity challenged, so she strived for sprezzatura.

  It was ironic indeed that in this holy structure, Ultima, the divine seat of the Goddess herself and known as the ‘All Seeing Eye’, all who resided within were technically blinded by the darkness.

  Senjya had a great love for the character Harley Quinn, but the Goddess found the harlequin distasteful, off putting, and most of all - childish.

  Amefrid was only able to bring 0.89 cocoons for each rogue trader that she had to liquidate, to keep the secret from spilling out. If the secret were to come out, all-out war would surely follow. And at the time of the recording, the Great Wars had not yet begun. The Empress simply did not know yet how bad it would be. However, Amefrid, in that revolution so far, had only been able to deliver 1,638 cocoons in total, a dismal number and hardly capable of keeping up with demand. At the time the Goddess couldn’t think of how things could possibly be worse. Her Omnipotence was glad that they had plentiful stores.

  The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret. We never believe them. We never assume. Still can’t believe that there is a lie. Promises promise. An eye for an eye. We’ve got something to reveal. No one can know how we feel. Whatever you do… don’t tell anyone.

  Princess Amefrid and the Horde Master gathered on a shadowy rogue elvan hideout hidden in the cliff faces of Orcadas Island. By the Horde Master were crates upon crates of prized triple kop orcan wheat, and rare-earth elements – which were not actually rare anymore – obtained from processing enormous amounts of orcan mountaintop removal mines. The Goddess shuddered to think how much forbidden fire was burned for these ‘rare earths’. By the Princess were crates upon crates of gryphantene fiber spools, dragon captured meteor iron – which the elvans had far too much of to know what to do with – neatly smithed into ingots, and a crop of live chickens. And then they shook their hands. A deal is a deal.

  The Princess was able to hide the thought that it was the Goddess who was the hypocrite, because it was she who had made the ultimate deal with the Horde Master. She would not be Goddess without him.

  She would survive it, the Goddess knew. She designed the body Amefrid was in, cell by cell.

  See you on a dark night.

  It would not just be the entirety of Amefrid’s neuromuscular system, her body, that was hers to command, but truly Amefrid’s mind itself. The ultimate triumph. The soul to keep.

  Should Amefrid try to even think defensively she would find herself simply incapable, as if an amnesia to her faculties were eating away at her from the inside, a brain rot.

  The God Empress was ancient, and this was her second brood of Princesses. However, Amefrid was still the first one she gave birth to with her own body and not a surrogate brood mother.