Chapter Twenty-Four

Disclaimer:  Nire belongs to me.  Ao belongs to WotC.  The idea of the higher pantheon and the Void belong to me.

            When Nire collapsed, everything went dark. She returned to consciousness in slow stages.  At first, everything was dark, but she was aware of floating in the darkness.  Ever so slowly, thoughts began to return.  If this was being dead, it wasn't so bad.  Although, she might die of boredom eventually.  The dead dying.  That was a thought.  It was dark, still, even when she was fully conscious.  She could have been out for seconds or centuries.  Time had no meaning anymore, not in this void.  Perhaps she had nothing left - she was just a point of consciousness without a body in a void of nothing.

            She had the sensation, some innate knowledge, that if she wished, she could return to her body.  She could find it, wherever it was, and go back.  She could have a corporeal form.  Although whether this meant going back to her body or something different was vague.  For a while, she contemplated this, thought about he difference.  While she didn't want to go back to her body, having a form might be nice so she could explore this oblivion.

            Her mind began wandering before it settled on a conclusion.  Why was her luck always this bad?  Being dead, while it could be worse, really sucked.  She would have much preferred that she just ceased to exist.  Be no more, her thoughts and whatever made her her just disappear into oblivion.  Why couldn't it be like before she was born?  Having thoughts wasn't what she wanted; she wanted to just cease to exist.  But she wanted to go back to her body even less.

            Then, there was a voice.  Or a telepathic voice.  Or a thought.  She wasn't quite sure what, but it was in her head, and it was speaking to her.

            You have to go back.

            I don't have to do anything.

            You have to go back to your body, child.

            No I don't.  And don't call me 'child'.

            You must return to the living.  It is not your time.

            Bullshit it's not.  I say it is, therefore it is.  You can't make me.

            Child, you cannot understand how important it is that you return to your body.  You cannot stay here.  The stentorian Voice sounded sure of itself and used to being the authority.  Buts he was getting the sensation that he couldn't make her.  And now she was getting curious as to why this Voice was so insistent.

            Sure I can, and I will.  I'm done with life.

            A bit of frustration colored the Voice.  You don't understand-

            Damn tootin' I don't.  And I'm not until I get a damned good reason why I should go back to that hellhole called living.

            It is Destiny.  The Voice sounded as though it knew that wouldn't work, but it was worth a shot.

            Fuck my Destiny.

            No, not just yours.  The fates of many more than you know hinge on your going back.

            Why should I give a flying fuck about what happens to anyone other than me?  I was put on the earth alone, and now I am pleasing myself.

            A gust of a sigh blew through her head and she became aware of the feeling of great age and ancient power that accompanied the Voice.  Then come with me and I will explain.

            Acting on instinct, Nire willed herself to go wherever the Voice was going.  There was no sensation of movement, but that was to be expected.  Nire knew enough of science and physics to know that it was impossible to sense movement if there was no point of relativity to focus on.  In a black void, there was nothing, no sight, no wind.  But she was relatively sure that she was moving.

            The fact was assured when she was suddenly not in the void anymore.  She was back in her own body, a very disappointing happenstance.  But she was no longer in Raistlin's tower.  She was sitting in a comfortable old leather armchair, a fire roaring in a beautiful fireplace to the side of her.  An antique mahogany mantel framed the fireplace, carefully tooled with designs of dragons and unicorns.  She was in a giant library, filled with books in every language imaginable.  This was heaven for her.  But she knew it was not Heaven.

            An old mans at in the chair across from her.  Silver hair framed a wrinkled, wise face with sparkling blue eyes.  He looked faintly amused and was dressed in clothes similar to hers.

            "Well?" Nire asked impatiently, discretely shifting got check for the weight of her weapons.  She was armed.  "Better start explaining, buddy.  I was quite content being dead."

            The amusement of the old man grew, his eyes twinkling merrily, which only served to piss her off more.  "Do you know who I am, child?"

            "Once more, this enters the realm of, why should I give a flying fuck?"

            "Do you know where you were?"

            "Happily dead."

            The man sighed.  "Do you know what you are, child?"

            "A happily dead girl.  I thought I was the one supposed to be asking questions."

            Amusement was warring with frustration on the old man's face.  "Do you want to know the answers to those questions I asked?"

            "Sure.  Why not.  Do enlighten me."  The power that filled the room was buzzing through her, making her feel light-headed and dizzy.  Why couldn't she have just poofed and ceased her desolate existence?  No, that would have been too easy.

            "I am Ao, also called the Overfather.  Do you know that name?"

            "Yeah."  Nire mused, "I s'pose I should be a bit nicer to you, then.  All right, so you're the head honcho.  Where was I?"

            Ao was definitely amused with this child.  She had no idea just what she was and yet she had no reverence at all, anyway.  She spoke to him as though he were just another Joe on the street.  There was no doubt that she truly believed he was who he said he was.  He felt her mind delicately probing his, and mentally jerked in surprise when she almost got past his barriers.  She was almost ready for her Destiny.

            "Perhaps explaining what you are will explain that better.  I have been a god for aeons upon aeons.  I have seen empires rise and fall, worlds form and be destroyed.  I have watched gods under my rule being created and fall out of power."

            "And yada yada yada.  Get to the point.  I'm not impressed."

            The sparkling, grandfatherly blue eyes suddenly grew cold.  Just as quickly, they were back to being warm and grandfatherly.  But Nire was no longer fooled.  The power she could feel from the man sitting across from her, the way he held himself, led her to believe that he truly was Ao.  While people might not think that she knew when to shut up, she did.  She knew how to push a person to the limit, then back off.  Now was certainly a time to back off.

            "As you can well imagine, I am tired.  For the past century, I have been laying plans for my replacement."  Nire had a sick feeling in the pit of her stomach as he continued to speak.  "Then, I put my plan in place.  I picked a world with the right atmosphere to raise a baby god, and picked a couple who would provide the right parenting.  I invested the man's seed and the woman's egg with my power.  Nine months later, you were born."

            "Bull shit!" Nire interrupted.

            "Oh?  Then explain to me why you pick up on everything so fast.  Pray tell, just how do you master fighting techniques in three hours that take grown men three years?  And how do you manage to be an equal, if not better mage than a man more than twice your age?  How is a twelve-year-old more knowledgeable than the adults around her?"

            There was no answer to that.  She didn't know, she just assumed that it was because she had talent.  But she was certainly trying to think up a valid reason.

            "Part of it, child, is that you have natural-born talent.  Talent that I did not bestow upon you.  But, too, it is because you are a godling."

            "A godling?" she asked sarcastically, removing her mind from the fact.  "Wouldn't it be a goddessling?"

            "God is the general term for a god or goddess.  And when a person is made with the specific intent of being a deity when he or she comes of age, that person is known as a godling."

            "Oo, the semantics of it all."  She rolled her eyes.  "So, this has been done before?"

            "Of course.  Many times.  Although, not as often as a follower is merely chosen and invested with the powers of the god."  He smiled gently.  "Denying it and being sarcastic won't change the fact."

            "Bully for you.  It doesn't matter, seeing as how I don't believe in said fact."

            "Oh, but deep down, you do.  In your heart of hearts, what I am saying feels right and you know it is true.  This is the explanation you have been looking for as to why you feel so different from everyone else, why you don't fit in."  The grandfatherly smile was back, warm and comforting.

            Nire wanted to throw something at him.

            She sat back deep in the chair, unconsciously steepling her fingers and bowing her head to think.  Okay, so she sure as hell didn't want this to be true.  She could only imagine the way people would react if they ever found out.  Somewhere in the back of her mind, she had decided that she was going back, regardless.  But how others would react if this were true… She could already feel the fear, see the people pretending to be her friends just for the power she could bestow upon them, for a myriad of reasons except the one she wanted, needed.  No one would be her friend because they enjoyed her company.

            Searching deep, she ignored everything else that was trying to overwhelm her.  All of the hidden truths she kept locked away, truths that she didn't want to know about, tried to make themselves known.  She ignored them all and searched for the little place that knew he was right.  And, much to her dismay, she found it.

            Not one for knowledgeably deluding herself, she slowly opened her gray eyes to regard Ao from around her steepled fingers, not bring up her head.  Her eyes rolled up to focus on his all-knowing blue orbs.  There was a dangerously feral look about her as she slowly raised her head, her eyes never leaving his, allowed her hands to fall to the chair arms, and straightened in the chair.

            "All right, so I am a godling.  Whatever, I can't change what I am.  Hell, I can even use this to my advantage.  But there's no way in fucking hell I'll ever actually become a god.  So sorry, but you're going to have to make someone else before you die.  If I don't kill myself again, I'm gonna make Jander make me a vampire.  But never will I be a god."

            "Yes you will."  He spoke with the surety of one who could see the future.  "But that is beside the point.  And I am not dying, I am merely retiring.  You will need someone here to teach you how to handle everything.  And then, when you have it under control, I will return to the higher pantheon and live there until the end of all time."

            "I'm not going to argue the point.  I know I won't, you think I will, and neither of us will change out minds.  'Tis a lost cause, so why don't we move on to something more important."  She accepted everything with an astounding amount of matter-of-factness.  "I'm assuming, of course, that you've been watching over me since I was born."

            "Watching, yes.  Interfering, not in the least.  Once I created how you looked and what your personality was, I stopped."

            "Okay," she said slowly.  "That's all well and good.  But why, when you saw what kind of people you had put me with, why didn't you put me somewhere else?"

            Ao looked decidedly uncomfortable as she regarded him, daring him to give her the answer she feared was coming.  She knew, from the way he was sitting, from the set of his features, that he didn't want to tell her the truth.  Apparently even the great Overfather had some sort of conscience.

            "That was the environment needed to raise a godling."

            This was the first time in her life that Nire went empty.  The first, but certainly not the last.  Her gray eyes were steely and cold, unemotional.  There was no one home in her head; an unthinking machine had taken over.  Inside, she felt nothing, at most cruelly calculating.  She knew that she was nowhere near powerful enough to hurt Ao right now, but in a few years, she would be.  And then he would pay.

            Nire's face, her visage, her body was remarkable similar to that of a sociopath, or that of a hitman.  Ao continued to explain.

            "You needed to grow up not dependent on others, but dependent on yourself.  You couldn't have a family that you would regret leaving behind.  Your environment formed you so you did not and do not trust people.  And you can't trust others as one of the most powerful gods.  You couldn't have friends that you wouldn't want to die.

            "Of course, I didn't count on you meting who you did and forging the friendships that you have, despite your best efforts to destroy them."  He paused for a moment and seemed to be looking far off into the distance.  Then his eyes snapped back to refocus on her.  "Interesting.  The future has not been changed by me telling you all of this."

            "Bully for you," Nire said stonily.  She had slowly regained life as he spoke.,  But now, her body, her self, was filling with a cold rage.  This was the anger that stayed long and hid deep and festered.  She would hold onto this all through her life until it was time to unleash her wrath.  She had been trained to hold grudges for as long as possible and then enact revenge with deadly accuracy and lancing bites.

            "Do you see why you need to go back, child?  Do you see why you need to live?"

            "You know what?  No.  I don't.  But I will, damn you, I will."

            "You know, child, they truly are your friends.  They are your true family, something I never anticipated."

            "Yeah, yeah, yeah.  So the only good thing that ever happened in my life wouldn't have occurred if you had anything to say about it.  I think I get the point."  From the point onwards, there was something missing in Nire, some piece of humanity that had been traumatized to death.  "I'd say sere you alter, but I really hope I don't."

            "I am sorry, child."

            "Stuff it," she snapped as she willed herself back to her mortal body.

            It was back to the anonymity of the complete darkness.  She assumed that she was moving in the opposite direction as before.  As she moved, she became aware of an increasing dull ache.  When the blackness began to grow gray, she identified the pain as her body.  Perhaps this wasn't such a good idea.  But still, she kept moving.

            She knew she was back in her own body, that betraying temple, when the pain peaked at a steady, throbbing ache everywhere and everything was no longer dark.  Now, it was the pale red of looking at a light from behind closed eyelids.

            She opened her eyes.

~~End Chapter Twenty-Four~~