Chapter 7
Mad Goddess, they whisper when she passes, humans and Gods alike. Mad goddess, they shudder after she is gone, counting their blessings that her eyes didn't fall upon them.
They say she has built a garden of bodies, stripped flesh only to leave bone behind that she has covered in thick ice fashioned as trunks, decorated with leaves of frost and flowers of snow. They lower their eyes when they see a hint of her white hair and pale colorless orbs, the glint of the fur of her cloak, the fur that she skinned after butchering the Lycan king of East who had stumbled into her lands.
For that is the story on heaven as well as earth, that the ruthless Ice Goddess slaughtered the Lycan king of East for trespassing on her lands, and the Wolf Goddess who had been betrothed to the Lycan King poisoned the human boy Ice Goddess had taken as her son for vengeance. The Ice Goddess marched to heaven and obliterated the Wolf Goddess while also humiliating the High God in the name of justice.
Elena sits in the darkened corners of human establishments that specialise in drink, debauchery and stories and listens to her so-called acts of cruelty.
She is the one they call Mad Goddess now.
She has become her creator.
~TX~
To say she didn't enjoy the pain she inflicted on Rebekkah would be a lie, and Elena has no use for lies.
When emptiness starts to snip at her heels, Elena fills it with Rebekkah's scream in her head and the High God's whining pleas to spare his sister, his useless threats of raining down heavenly wrath on her.
Jeremie's frozen face often stares at her from the centre of the Hall where she spends her days.
The spires of her castle are sharper, the walls wider than they were. Ice keeps adding to it useless rooms and staircases she doesn't need, arches and turrets that shine a little too sinisterly.
In more ways than one, Elena understands her punishment now. Her grief over her son makes her realize that the loneliness that Mad Goddess poured inside her as her punishment for stealing the peaches was ancient. It was born out of yearning and pain, a kind of hate that masochists only reserve for themselves.
She remembers her father's workshop and her questions. She also remembers his answers. The answers for why Mad Goddess is known as Mad Goddess (Elena is none too happy to have that title foisted over her by spineless humans and wimpy gods).
It must have hurt her to kill someone she loved, Elena thinks as she beacons the server to replace her empty jar of wine. To kill your lover for worthless gods, ah the tragedy, Elena muses as she stares vaguely towards the play they are enacting on the stage downstairs. This table in the balcony is perfect for drinking and watching stories being enacted by humans.
But tonight, the play doesn't hold her attention. She is actually listening in on the conversation between two men on the table behind her.
"I have heard the Immortal General has been summoned from the lands of Avunsuela." The voice is nasally and it irritates her ears. If not for gossip, she would have frozen shut his mouth.
"Do you think the High God will make him march to the lands of the Mad Goddess?"
For the umpteenth time, Elena thinks peevishly, she is an Ice Goddess, not the Mad Goddess.
"He should. Do you know what she did to Wolf Goddess? She gouged out her eyes, froze her inch by inch and stomped on her frozen limbs till only dust remained… "
These humans, where are they getting their information from? This is slander, Elena wants to turn and proclaim.
She hadn't gouged out Rebekkah eyes, merely blinded her. And as for freezing her inch by inch, she had only let frost turn a part of her leg solid and crushed it.
It wasn't her fault that when she froze Rebekkah completely, her leg somehow ended up kicking the kneeling iced up Wolf Goddess who tumbled against hard marbled floors and shattered…
Not her mistake at all, she thinks resolutely. That prick Nicklaus, he's slandering her through humans.
"She won't stand a chance if the Immortal General is sent to dispatch her from Godhood," The not nasally voice says confidently.
"Do you think the Immortal General will do such a thing? After all, the Wolf Goddess did kill the boy."
"Ah, so you don't know?" The not nasally voice preens.
"Know what? What do you know that I don't?"
"Well, this is not widely known, but the Lycan King was Immortal General's brother…"
Ah, so she is to face off against a God for slaying that wolf again? Well, she was getting rather bored.
She stumbles home, slightly tipsy and euphoric at the thought of fighting someone again, but her mood is doused as soon as she enters the silent foyer and looks at the dark corridor that stretches in front of her, leading to the Hall.
"Jeremie, why didn't you light up Iceflies?" She hollers as she shuffles in the dark, hands dragging over the smooth cold surface of the wall.
"Jeremie, light up the next time I am out. Boys shouldn't stay in the dark… " Her clumsy hands are busy creating misshapen Iceflies that twinkle in the shadowed space and soon there are enough sitting on the walls and ceiling to mistake the roof for open sky.
Her son stands where she left him, and a sob breaks free from her throat.
He is dead.
He won't ever be scared of darkness anymore…
~TX~
It all started with Elijah, she thinks as lies on the floor, head touching her son's frozen feet.
She had known when she had killed the wolf and skinned him that the animal was also a man. What she hadn't known was that the man had a name: Stefan, and a title: the Lycan King of East.
She had killed him for almost killing Elijah, not because he had been some innocent who had accidentally stepped inside the boundaries of her prison.
But no one cares for that, do they?
She is a vicious beast in their eyes, a mindless Goddess who goes on killing sprees to satiate her bloodlust.
There are no stories about Elijah, no plays about a shy man who chose to live in freezing solitude instead of returning home to his family. The High God doesn't tout about his older brother who suddenly vanished one night, never to be seen again.
The truth that never passes Nicklaus's lips is about a man named Elijah who had once been a contender for the Sky throne, a brother born to his mother from a different man, a lesser man.
Nicklaus never claimed a kinship with Elijah despite having one, going as far as to get his friend Stefan to hunt him down like an animal.
Elijah's mother, the Goddess of Arcane didn't care enough to seek vengeance for her slain son.
Elijah was nobody, and so, history has all but forgotten him.
Elena hasn't. She isn't sorry for killing the Lycan King. She isn't sorry that she left his carcass after she took his skin for vultures and wild animals to feast on.
If she hadn't saved Elijah, she would never have picked Jeremie. And not having her son in her life would have been a punishment far worse than grieving for him.
So, she isn't sorry for killing the High God's prospective brother in law. Or his sister.
And she sure as hell doesn't care about the Immortal General, who so ever that may be…
~TX~
Dun-dun-du-dun. Lovely people, you left lovely words for me. I am bopping on "Gravity' by Kim Jong Wan. It's a dreamy track that made me pour out the words for this chapter. If you're into kdramas and kpop, give it a try. I am also currently watching "The King:Eternal Monarch" and absolutely loving it. See you next time.
Stay safe.
