Chapter 940
Ikenga’s gaze drifted back down to the field, where young Ikelos was now crouched in the dirt, poking curiously at a glowing, multi-legged beetle while the tiny tortoise on his head bobbed in rhythm. A soft, indulgent warmth filled his chest. Deciding that intervention could wait just a little longer, Ikenga let out a quiet breath. He had other matters to attend to first, an old acquaintance named Red who was long overdue for a conversation.
For millennia, they had been shackled to the high planes, forced to watch Nana through a distant, unblinking lens. Now, the weight of their own divine bureaucracy had lifted. They were now somewhat free. They had greater autonomy, unmonitored reach, and the sweet, heavy air of the mortal world filling their lungs once more.
And the cost was too small for them just for this taste of freedom.
In the frozen expanses of the northern hemisphere, Mahu materialized beneath a heavy canopy of slate-grey clouds. Her flowing silver robes fluttered, catching the pale, dim light that managed to pierce the Arctic gloom.
While her siblings reveled in the unbridled euphoria of their newfound liberty, Mahu found little solace in it. Beneath her calm, composed exterior lay a deep, gnawing ache, a secret cost she bore entirely alone, carefully guarding it from the watchful eyes of Ikenga and the rest of her kin. She knew how desperately they had awaited this exact moment, yearning for the day they could finally stretch their limbs beyond the high planes and walk upon solid earth once more. Yet, for all their excitement, there was no actual necessity driving them down, nothing grand demanding their immediate intervention in the mortal sphere.
What truly intoxicated them and what kept their enthusiasm burning was the sheer permanence of their transition. Even if temporary, their freedom was absolute and unshakeable. They could seamlessly bridge the two worlds, stepping between the ethereal quiet of their native realms and the raw, breathing chaos of the mortal domain at a mere whim.
Yet, as the Origin God of Motherhood, Mahu cared very little for the novelty of unbounded access or the thrill of unmonitored dominion. Her perspective on existence was forged in the fragile, beating heart of nurture and growth. For her, creation was a delicate trust, one that made the ruthless, blazing chaos of the mortal world a constant, agonizing theater of loss.
Her vision blurred and shifted, the icy winds of the north dissolving into a suffocating shroud of soot and heat. She materialized in a recently devastated settlement, a scar of charred earth where a thriving community had stood only days prior. Nothing remained but blackened pillars and vast, suffocating drifts of grey ash, the final, silent testament to the fires of conflict.
Gently, instinctively, Mahu knelt in the ruins. She scooped a handful of the warm dust into her pale palm, cradling the remnants of lives extinguished as if it were a fragile, sleeping infant. The weight of it pressed down upon her divine core, an unbearable grief for a bond she had never personally forged yet felt as a physical wound.
A single tear, glowing with the soft, pearlescent luminescence of a mother’s moon, slipped from her cheek, tracing a path through the grime before vanishing into the particulate dirt.
"They were mothers," Mahu whispered, her voice cracking with a sorrow so profound that the surrounding air grew heavy, thick with the phantom scent of rain and mourning. "They were children. They had names. They had gardens, and songs, and fears that meant the world to them."
Across the vast expanse of continents, the profound shift in Mahu’s emotional resonance rippled outward through the divine connection, striking her siblings with the suddenness of a physical blow.
For Ikenga, standing amidst the lush flora of the eastern continent with young Ikelos, the sensation was unmistakable. The distant drop of Mahu’s tear into the ruined earth sent a sympathetic tremor through the ground beneath his feet.
With a thought from him, where that single tear had soaked into the scorched soil, a sudden solitary, snow-white blossom tore through the ash, unfurling its petals in defiant, fragile grace. The petals burned with a quiet, celestial luminescence, weeping tiny droplets of liquid light that smelled faintly of night-blooming jasmine and maternal milk.
Ikenga knelt, his large fingers gently brushing the stem to pluck the pristine flower from the ashes. He looked down at it for a quiet moment, then raised his gaze, he held the glowing flower up, turning it over in his heavy palm before lifting his gaze to meet Mahu’s tear-stained face.
"Our essence should not be easily displaced, my love," Ikenga murmured.
"They died because we engineered this," Mahu spoke, her voice rising, shaking with a rare, fierce indignation that cut through the desolation. She stood up, glaring at Ikenga "We cornered them. We dangled a false hope, lit the fuse of their greed, and let them tear their own world apart just so we could find a loophole in the cosmic law! This was a slaughter of our own making in the name of freedom!"
Her hands tightened around the grey dust before letting the ash slip through her fingers, scattering away on the draft.
"Mother acquainted me with the sin of greed and you the sin of sloth," Ikenga said, once Mahu has spoken her mind "I know if it were up to you, sister... you would be perfectly content staying locked away in your realm, letting the children below live and die as they will, untouched and unbothered." She glared at him for his words.
Ikenga did not flinch from her gaze. He stepped closer, closing the distance across the charred ground.
"That is how you view them all, as children, no matter how good or bad they are," Ikenga murmured, his voice softening, "No matter if their action are to ruin us all or not."
Reaching out, he placed a gentle, calloused hand beneath Mahu’s chin, lifting her face to meet his eyes. There was no defiance in him now, only an exhausted, aching truth.
Ikenga leaned down and pressed a soft, lingering kiss to her forehead.
"I know that, and I am sorry," he whispered against her skin. "My greed cared little for the price of my actions and plans, nor did it care for how it would affect those close to them."
He shifted his gaze downward, his other hand tightening its hold around young Ikelos’s small, warm fingers as the boy looked up between them with innocent, wide eyes.
"Or," Ikenga finished, his voice breaking slightly on the admission, "how much it would affect you."
His tone turned mischievous as he said, "But you know, it is always known that mothers are the ones who love unconditionally and overlook their children’s faults, and that it is up to fathers to discipline the kids and make sure they grow up right and outstanding."
"Do you want to sit this out?" Ikenga asked as he looked at Mahu.
Mahu looked back at him, wanting nothing more than to say yes. But as she looked into his eyes staring back into hers, something in their depths told her he wanted her to stay.
She let out a sharp scoff, hating how much control he still held over her. She ignored him entirely and reached down for Ikelos instead. No words were spoken, but her quiet, stubborn motion gave her answer, she would stay, binding herself once more to the chaos they had wrought together.
Around them, their remaining siblings made their appearance, materializing from thin air. A quiet, heavy glance was shared between Keles and Mahu, culminating in a subtle, understanding nod.
"Look at it," Jaus murmured. With a lazy flick of his wrist, the surrounding landscape rippled and shifted. He gestured casually toward a massive, smoking basin where three flourishing kingdoms had stood less than a day ago. Millions of lives had vanished into vapor when a fleeing paragon’s domain collapsed upon itself. Entire generations, rich histories, centuries of culture, and unbroken bloodlines had been erased in a mere fraction of a second.
"Messy," Crepuscular remarked, his voice light, airy, and entirely devoid of empathy. He squinted up at the fractured, bleeding sky, torn wide open by the reckless escalation of the paragon’s laws. "The little things breed like insects. You step on one anthill, a million more crawl out. But the view... the view is remarkably improved with the cloud-layers in shreds."
Keles knelt beside a vast pile of grey ash that had once been a bustling provincial capital. A few melted iron tools and charred fragments of bone lay scattered in the dust. She reached out with a long, pale finger, touching the ash.
"So much potential, wasted in a panic," Keles whispered, her voice like dry leaves scraping across stone. "They fought so hard to live, clawing at each other’s throats for a scrap of paper and a ring. And for what? To feed my domain with a sudden, bountiful harvest. In truth, I should thank these paragons. They have saved me the trouble of reaping them individually."