Heyo all!
So I originally started this in 2017 as a summer fun project and from a daydream about greek variations of Aveyond character stories. My eventual goal was to create a collection of smaller stories that retell portions of greek myths with an Aveyond twist, and this was to be the first one, Hades and Persephone told Aveyond style.
I ended up drifting out of this project to focus in on HoD and other big projects, but this summer I've decided to revisit it and see about at least finishing Night Flower! This is the rewritten prologue, posted in June of 2020!
Prologue
In the ancient records, it is believed that Aia always had, and always would exist. A world of magic and gods, where divinity and demon alike walked amongst mortals and the dreams of all created new creatures beyond the mortal plane.
This is not so.
For before there was divine, before demons rose up in the shadows of mortal bloodshed, before the fabric of Aia was woven together by the hands of the fates, there was nothing, and this nothing was defined by two forces.
Light and Darkness.
Walking between these forces as a friend was the Great Goddess, a pure being of balance made of both dark and light in perfect harmony.
Their power was as vast and infinite as the cosmos their existence formed. During this timeless age they found that they wished to create something more, to appreciate the simple beauty that the goddess saw in the light and the dark. So the goddess reached into the stars to withdraw the shining embers of their light, pressing it within her hands and channeling her essence within to create a perfect world. Filled with rolling mountains, forests of magic, gardens and glittering oceans.
When it was done there was not a place left untouched by beauty, both delicate and fiery. The Great Goddess looked upon her work and it was perfection, but the Goddess realized that she and the two essences around her were all there was to appreciate it. This realization tugged upon her heart, and she looked to her companions before lifting her hands once more. Across her world new beings began to form, some of darkness and others of light, while yet more remained walking the path of neutrality.
This world was exactly how she imagined it, stunning and filled with activity, beings leading vibrant lives in full circle. As she watched them, she couldn't help but note a force that began to spread across her world, passed between kinds that both revered and feared it. Wild, untamed, unimaginably dangerous even in it's tamed form within the cities and homes her creations were building. She watched it move across this world she had come to call Aia, before finding a land of rocky mountain and ash to settle and claim the very ground around it. The red-orange flames danced upon the face of Aia, entrancing the Great Goddess and filling her with worry for the world she had created with such love.
The emotion that welled up in her was unfamiliar, powerful, and without her full realization, a single crystalline tear fell from her eye.
It was filled with the power that had brought fire forth, and the bittersweet emotion as she watched it's wild and untamed strength rage through different areas of her beloved creation, wildly beautiful yet bringing death to those who got too close to the flames.
As the tear hit her beloved creation and the darkest piece splashed off to the side, the ground around it began to sizzle as the pure essence of the goddess began to bind power and thought together. Where the tear first hit a new form began to take shape, and a fiery maelstrom exploded to life.
From within the flames an outstretched arm appeared, followed by a woman who stepped from the vanishing storm with wildness in her smile and hair that burned like fire.
Next to her a second form was taking shape from the splash, the darkest part of the Great Goddesses tear as she considered the loss of life amongst her creation. A man, garbed in black with eyes the colour of freshly spilled blood.
Fire and death, forces that moved indiscriminately through her people with no regard to kind or age.
Yet even as she observed this, she realized that amongst them she could see another just like them, something steady and reaching across all her creation to bring light in the wake of loss. New births, plant growth and the creation of all new things. A smile wreathed the lips of the Great Goddess and she shed one more tear, this one filled with the hope and joy of all things new. When this one hit the ground it sank into the light that bloomed over the grass, and out of its centre rose a young man with a radiant smile and that held the smell of fresh plant growth and warm earth. His thin and tapered ear points aligned him with her kind that built their world around the cycle of growth and nature.
He was life, the perfect balance to the man of death who stood across from him watching with simple curiosity.
They stood as the first.
Deities, embodiments of pure power representing the forces that governed this new world. A deity of light that brought new life wherever he went, and two dark deities that represented the destructive forces that kept the cycle of her world looping from life to death.
It was not yet balanced, but it was good, and she watched her beloved creation began to move forward as the fates began to weave the world towards the events needed to bring balance amongst their newfound guardians.
New patterns found their own way to play out upon the face of her beloved Aia, bringing cycles of destruction and beauty that brought the Great Goddess to tears many times over. Each tear that fell brought forth a new deity, and inspired her hands once more to form retreats for her kind that needed protection, giving her deities a place they could call home as they resided over new lands as patron gods.
Time marched on, bringing blessing and war to Aia and it's deities, and with each great breakthrough woven into the fabric of the Great Goddess's creation a new major deity was born until true balance could be found.
When the final tears fell, the Great Goddess looked over her creation and the deities that protected it.
Harmony had nearly been reached in completion. Fourteen gods now stood upon the face of Aia.
Six light, six dark, and two neutral to walk the perfect balance between.
All that was left was a final push, to align opposing sides in wielding power and authority equally.
Then, the creation of Aia would finally be complete.