I feel so bad for the cliffhanger last time. Oh well! Let this chapter answer some of the mysteries of Reshma and Insanity.
Disclaimer: RotG is beyond my grasp.
To die is not as horrible as many make it out to be. Reshma knew this, being supposedly dead herself. It was the pain of dying that should be dreaded. And from it, Reshma never got release. When she died it freed her magnificent mind, too large to be contained in one mortal body and too strong to die with it. Instead it became its own spirit. But this spirit was in a terrible agony that could not be encompassed by words. The imagination it is renowned for was the cause. What it experienced, the best of the good and the most terrible bad, almost drove it to madness. Without a body, Reshma's mind could have very well become lost.
Reshma's mind had very little influence over reality but was able to push over small objects or create minor phenomena. After losing all semblance of control with the loss of a body, the spirit did not restrain itself from doing just that. In particularly severe pain it had rattled heavy tables and once even broke down a door. The tempestuous mind became infamous as trickster folk: pixies and fairies and other such creatures. Some benevolent, some malicious. It was how it came to the attention of Mother Nature.
Mother Nature, as chaotic and fickle as Reshma's mind, saw the spirit's suffering without a body to hold it. Though neither good nor evil, Mother Nature felt immense pity for it. Thus, she chose to help it. She asked the spirit if it wanted a body. Even without the ability to communicate or form coherent thoughts, it agreed in a rare moment of clarity.
With a perfectly preserved image of the spirit's dead body, Mother Nature fashioned an identical vessel. The spirit inhabited it, finding it capable to accommodate the wide-reaching boundary-less mind with the touch of its magic and the work of Mother Nature. Together, spirit, mind and body became Reshma. She was not mortal, unable to die as long as her mind remained whole, and her power was as boundless as her imagination. Truly limitless. Had it only been that simple.
Though mind and body melded into one, the mind was still very much unbridled and often painful to be in. Those first centuries newly reborn Reshma stayed in Mother Nature's Empire. It was the only safe place where she could not hurt anyone as she learnt control again. Though it took much time she managed it, with Mother Nature as aid through the darkest of episodes.
Once she left the Empire, Reshma began to interact with humans to the barest minimum. She found some could see her and some could not due to reasons beyond belief in the Muse. Children with imaginary friends could often see her, people with certain types of mental disorders and others for seemingly no clear explanation. She also discovered she had been spreading ideas sub-consciously since her death. Not all ideas, mind you, but enough that it was noticeable. She quickly realised, in a matter of seconds, that it was not something she could master so she let it be.
It was during the eleventh century Reshma met Insanity for the first time. She was secretive about her existence. Only Mother Nature knew who she was at that point and a scattering of humans had seen her. She preferred it that way. Though her interaction with humans increased, mostly so she could help them with their own dark times, no other spirits ever learned of her except Sandy.
Insanity was intriguing. She understood him and he understood her. They were hardly what you could call friends; they were not the kind to have any. But occasionally they would pass one another and let loose their feelings. No one knew what it was to unwilling spread insanity and ideas that could hurt and break the fragile people they saw parading across the Earth like ants. No one knew what it was to be consumed by your own mind like they did. A mind of worlds fluid and ever changing. Imagination and insanity were flip sides of the same coin. They understood each other.
In the eighteenth century, Insanity found love. It was a human, Eira, from a small village in Germany. Eira was different for a human, to love a spirit embodying all that is mad. Insanity loved her so much. The last wisps of his capabilities for rational thought became tethered to her existence. It was everything Insanity hoped for and deserved, as with the girl, yet Reshma knew it was doomed from the start. Eira was mortal, she would die and take with her the last of Virhorann left from the Golden Age. And how she did die.
Reshma was not present at the scene of Eira's death but could imagine it from what she knew. Eira had been feeling ill but Insanity was struck, just as Reshma was, with another episode of agony from the pressure of his brain. He did not see her again for eight months. Until he felt her pain through the fog and walls of his mind. He rushed to her but by the time he had arrived there was only a corpse lying in a blood and sweat, livid bruises denting her neck and her distended stomach pried open. Eira was murdered for witchcraft, one of the perpetrators her own husband.
The attachment that had held Insanity to the surface snapped, brittle like glass. Insanity, suffocated by rage and grief, grew in power, enough to kill the men that killed his love. It was not enough. The entire village was exterminated under Insanity's massive anguish. In his eyes there was no good remaining in humankind. To Insanity, all humans were darkness and evil. They had to be destroyed. Insanity would destroy them.
Though Reshma too saw the terror wrought by humans, saw it in the world and in her mind, she was not blinded by loss. She knew what it was to suffer because of her mind. She would not allow Insanity to bring all of mankind to its knees, mad to the marrow of their bones. It would take Insanity at least a few centuries to harness enough power for a mass attack on all people, and those spirits who get in the way. But both Insanity and Reshma could be patient.
2023, Sandy came to Reshma under the pretext of becoming a Guardian. It was ridiculous. Then Jack flew in, with news about Insanity claiming he was beginning his plans. The foolish Guardians seemed all but ready to march over and 'defeat' him. Reshma guessed they would be his first target, so she stuck with them. Using the Guardians' hastiness to "protect the children", she convinced them to pursue Insanity. Luring Insanity to infect Jack was just as easy. Jack had a hand in it, unintentionally of course. He was so deliciously vulnerable.
At the Pole, Reshma focused on calling Insanity to Bunny and Tooth, manipulating her own weakness to seem like theirs. Like prey drawn to a trap, he came. It took a little prodding and off he went, down fell the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. She had her own plans: undo Insanity as quickly as possible. He made it that much simpler by never leaving Santoff Claussen. Reshma went to go collect what she had been cultivating in the Guardians' – Insanity's power. Gathering it up, she used it to topple him. It was over.
However, as Insanity left seemingly fallen he whispered her name. "Eira." That was when she knew it was all a setup. A ruse. A trick. A decoy. In uttering his long-lost love's name he was telling her that this was not the end. It was not even the beginning. Insanity would be back soon, bringing with him the destruction of humans from the inside out.
The Guardians were ignorant but Reshma would be prepared. Why would he do it? Go through with a fake rise and fall, dance to the tune I played to stage his own demise? Why, indeed? She would have time to figure it out, imagine the possibilities until it narrowed down to the right answer. Until then, she would have to remain close to the Guardians. That meant becoming one of them. She closed her eyes in exhaustion. How she hated the Man in the Moon.