Yggdrasil Wiegenlied
– how Alicia the Transcendent of Life became known as the World Tree Alice. World Tree-centric.
Inspiration: Enha Mirror Wiki's very . . . casual descriptions of Maplestory, Thousand-Year Wiegenlied (the song), Comic Maplestory and a few Korean blogs.
Warning: Major headcanon. Further explanations at the end of the story. Please read the explanation before leaving complaints about how the World Tree's human name is 'Alice', not 'Alicia'.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. For YukiSkye's challenge.
Yggdrasil – From North Mythology, it is also called the 'World Tree' and is said to link and shelter the nine worlds.
Wiegenlied – German term for 'Lullaby'.
A Transcendent is created by an – or maybe it is the – Overseer, just like worlds are.
A Transcendent has a duty to balance their powers. To exist, for them, is to do their duty. By existence alone their powers within their worlds are balanced.
Transcendences are pillars within their worlds, pillars who hold and support their world with their powers. By existing they are the balances of their worlds.
Alicia is an Immortal Transcendent. Alicia has a job. Her job is to exist. If she exists life will go on.
She will exist. That is her duty.
Next to a tree she curls up and sleeps. The tree grows and soon she sleeps amongst the branches that have grown to be thick enough to support her weight.
She exists. Life goes on.
. . .
Her sister Rhinne is an Immortal Transcendent like her. Rhinne has a job. Rhinne's job is to exist. Rhinne must exist to allow time to continue flowing.
Rhinne likes to move around and be near people. She must never open her eyes because to close her eyes is for her to dream and this world is all but a dream of hers.
Alicia stays where she is, near her tree, and avoids people. She must exist. All she must do is exist and her duty will be fulfilled.
She is an Immortal Transcendent. Immortality lies in front of her.
. . .
Alicia has a brother. Unlike Rhinne and her, he dies over and over again. He is a Mortal Transcendent.
It's okay. As long as she exists, as long as she breathes and her heart beats and she exists his soul, his Transcendent essence will be reborn and achieve transcendentalism again and again and again till the end of time itself, when Rhinne opens her eyes and her near-eternal dream ends.
Alicia curls up inside the heart of her tree and sleeps.
She still exists.
The tree grows till it is a massive tree that reaches out to the skies like a pillar supporting the roof of the world, just like she is a Transcendent, a pillar that supports this world.
Life as all knows it goes on.
. . .
She does not seek out anyone. Her task, given to her by her creator, is to exist. She does not need the company of mortals to do her duty.
Mortals come to her. Mortals such as humans and monsters and even elves, short-lived things who revere her and consider her a goddess just like they do to Rhinne who now lives in a temple that's been built around her precious doors of time.
They call her sister by her name. They call her Rhinne.
They do not call her by her name. They do not call her Alicia.
They call her the World Tree because of her shelter and the name sticks. They worship her tree, revere it as a god like they revere Rhinne and occasionally her brother's incarnations.
Alicia does not care. She sleeps because she can and because it does not matter what she does, as long as she exists, and as long as she does not steal the powers of another Transcendent.
. . .
The humans change. The creatures change. The elves change. The demons change. Her brother dies and is reborn several times. Sometimes he comes and lays a hand on her tree's – her – trunk and she feels his light, encased in a different shell every time.
. . .
Rhinne calls her by her name, calls her 'Alicia' when their minds touch within their dreams. She is the only one to do so.
. . .
Her brother's latest reincarnation does something. She feels it through the branches of her tree – through her branches – and she stirs uneasily in her sleep because there is something erroneous in the balance of the world.
The powers of light that belongs to her brother and all of his reincarnations calls to her like the powers of another Transcendent will call to her and she is curious.
But she does not leave her tree. She will not interfere.
All she must do is exist and not fade away.
. . .
One day humans come begging to her, a second-a day-a month-a year-a century after her brother's powers change the balance of the world. They are powerful, for human beings. They are vibrant with the force of life and she thinks that they'll do well enough in their lifetimes, for humans –
No, wait, one is an elf –
Another is a dragon and his life is interwoven with a human –
And it cannot be but one human is glowing with what is clearly her brother's life force, pure and made of the power of light that he is always reborn with to achieve transcendentalism over and over and over again –
What is going on?
She stirs and opens her eyes, leaves her tree and shows her human-shaped self to the band of mortals that have gathered.
They marvel, the ones that flicker with flames within their feeble shells. They tremble in fear. What they see of her is a woman taller than any of them, almost as tall as a tree, imposing and fierce. They see golden hair covering everywhere in the stead of clothes, a lean body with whipcord muscles and eyes that burn with the fire of a pitiless warrior. Everything about her screams that she is fit and powerful, capable of surviving through anything and everything.
They expected the Transcendent of Life to be gentle. That was their mistake. Life is not soft or gentle, but harsh and cold.
She has surprised them.
They surprise her. They show bravery as they begin to tell their true tale to seek her help.
Alicia listens.
. . .
From what she can feel in this world that she is a pillar of, her brother has abandoned his humanity, his light, his mortal self and is attempting to interfere, the very thing that a Transcendent should try and avoid.
That is not what the humans tell her. That is what Alicia knows as she reads the world, wide awake in such a long time. The humans speak of a powerful, dark man with evil intentions who puts the world in danger.
They seek her help to do away with the dangerous man without knowing who he truly is. Even the child of light like the twinkling stars above them in the black night sky does not know her brother's identity, or his importance as a pillar in this fragile world.
With her powers what they seek is possible. She knows this.
But she also knows that he has always been the mortal one, the one most capable of interfering with worldly states out of the three of them and she begins to think that this is just a part of the never ending mortal affairs when the heroes, as they are apparently called, speak of her sister.
Rhinne's temple is under attack by her brother's forces.
Two Transcendences involved in one affair.
Alicia makes up her mind. That is far more than enough Transcendent interference in one trouble.
Rhinne can handle herself against their mortal brother just fine.
She enters her tree again and sleeps.
Life will go on.
. . .
A short while after – she knows it's short for the mortals who visited her before have not changed in their physical appearance, save for expressions of desperation and exhaustion – the world shifts in balance again and she wakes up, abruptly and harshly and more shocked than she has ever been in her very, very long life because –
Because –
Rhinne's powers have fluxed and twisted. Her presence is weak and sealed and significantly reduced.
A Transcendent has a duty to exist. Their sole existence is to ensure that time, light and life is sustained within their worlds.
Rhinne still exists. But –
But –
Their brother has attacked her and taken her powers.
He will use those powers. There will be severe repercussions.
He will not care, for he has stolen Rhinne's powers knowing the consequences his actions will have.
Alicia sees now that he is ambitious. That ambition has corrupted his former pure heart.
If a Transcendent uses the powers of another Transcendent there will be a severe rebound that will not stop at affecting her brother, but the world itself.
Alicia leaves her tree once again and this time she knows she will not return to her beloved shelter for a long time.
. . .
A Transcendent is naturally pulled towards another Transcendent. They pull at each other like magnetic stones will do with their powers that naturally gravitate and draw towards each other. That is how she and Rhinne have spoken in their dreams despite never coming near each other and how her mortal brother's incarnations always managed to stumble upon their resting places.
Her brother is still the Transcendent of Light – black light, now, but every action he takes except for the abuse of the powers he stole from Rhinne balance the world's light.
Her sister still exists – but her powers have been violated and soon time within their world will become twisted and unstable.
Alicia knows that she will be next.
A Transcendent, after all, cannot help but be drawn to another.
He will be after her powers, next. He is ambitious and he will be pulled towards the power of life, her power.
Any action a Transcendent makes is an action of balancing.
She has no intention on being changed, has no intention of allowing her powers of life to be violated and stolen by her insolent mortal brother.
She helps the mortals. She provides them with her powers.
If her brother dies a new Transcendent of Light will be born. Whether the new Transcendent will have his soul or not, whether the new Transcendent will be an immortal or not she does not know.
Alicia does not care.
All she cares is that balance be restored to this world. And his fall will lead to balance being restored.
. . .
The fight results in her brother's current incarnation, called the Black Mage – but that's not his name – being sealed along with the human of light who was once a part of her brother.
The mortals called heroes are cursed. She feels the spell of hateful vengeance cast by her brother creeping over their life forces and knows it is only a matter of time before they –
No, they will not die. Not yet.
It does not matter. They are mortal, they will one day die. This curse is not one of death but one day their lives will extinguish like a pitiful flame in the path of a strong wind..
Alicia's powers are severely drained to the point where she wonders if she – she, the Immortal Transcendent – will die.
She wants to return to her tree.
In the form of a little girl – no longer the tall, majestic woman with the imposing presence – she follows a weeping elf girl hugging a treasure that protects her from her brother's curse and tiredly returns to the island where her tree awaits.
. . .
Her tree is dead.
Alicia wearily climbs into the abyss created by the tree's roots and begins to recover her much-dwindled powers.
. . .
A hero comes. He has aged, and the dragon he formed a pact with is no longer next to him but she recognizes him as one of the five mortals who sought to seek help from her.
He begs her to free his friends from the curse of her brother. He offers her everything he has, including his own life.
Alicia does not want anything from him. She would not grant him his wish, even if she could.
She quietly asks if Rhinne is free.
He leaves crying bitterly and she knows that the man does not have long to live for. He will not last even if he did – he no longer has anything to live for.
. . .
When monsters plague her she seethes because she is so weak, so helpless she wants to scream –
In the past she could have disposed of these monsters without a thought if she wished to. In the past these weak things would not have even dared show their presence to her because they would have known better.
She is not Alicia, the Transcendent of Life, the majestic woman that the Heroes once begged for her help. She is a shadow of a great power trapped in the body of a little girl and the name Alicia is not to go to her –
From that moment onward she is Alice.
. . .
And now it's time that the mortals began doing something useful for the Transcendences.
HUGE author's explanation that should not be this long: The reason why Alicia is Alicia in the beginning (and middle and most of the end) and not Alice - In KMS her name's transliteration is something along the line of 'Alicia'. They originally planned it to be Alice, but . . . . well, that didn't happen. So here.
I'm far too used to seeing the World Tree's human form as a mature, scary looking woman in the Maplestory comic (well, she was a fake, but moving on), which makes it hard for me to accept little Alice as the World Tree's human form. So when I ran into a blog post that suggested that maybe Alice was stuck in the form of a child because of her drained powers, I was all, 'makes perfect sense to me' and then my imagination went rampant. (Can't find the blog again, though . . . . TT_TT)
The title's inspiration comes from two different songs: Yggdrasil Prayer, a Root Abyss BGM, and 'Wooden Girl ~ Thousand Year Old Wiegenlied' by MOTHY feat. Miku and Haku. The second song has far too many different names, is around seven minutes long and features girlxgirl. Warning ahead.
I've had this idea for a long time, and then I read YukiSkye's story 'The Challenge' (recommendation to those who haven't read it) where the author gave a challenge of her own; Pick any character, monster, or heck even background feature in the game—the more obscure, the better—and give them a backstory; give them personality, character, and history; give them life.
So there you have it - an explanation for the reason why the supposedly powerful Transcendent of Life is a lolita.
Most of my information comes from enha mirror wiki, which I mentally translated. Gah.
EDIT: Okay, since everything's confusing and contradictory, here's my grammar. Singular - Transcendent. Plural - Transcendences, because apparently Transcendents is not a word.