In the beginning, a grand singularity shattered under the weight of its own infinitude, birthing from its scattered remains two fundamental forces: the Frenzied Flame, and the Greater Will.
Whereas a wrenching nostalgia seized the former, who endeavored to melt the wreckage back down into some semblance of that erstwhile chaos, the latter blazed with ambition, and to that end forged the cycles and binaries and hierarchies that we now understand as existence; the Will then looked upon its creation – the light and the darkness, the heavens and the depths, births and souls and individuality – and seeing it was good, named it Order.
And thus, the Flame and the Will, equal and opposite, dueled for eternity across the boundless cosmos, building and breaking, razing and restoring, neither ever truly overtaking the other.
It is, accordingly, a common tactic of dissidents and heretics – those 'freethinkers' and 'skeptics' inflamed by base rebellion, or who've already chained their immortal soul to some odious Outer God – to characterize the Greater Will as a sort of fastidious tyrant, enslaving the world to try and effectuate some impossible ideal of structure and harmony.
Nothing can be further from the truth.
The practicalities, you see, the particular flavor that Order takes – Aragorn's tax policy, if you will – means nothing to a conceptual, perpetual, multiversal being; its chief concerns are far more transcendental. Once Order's been imposed, the Will turns its eyes to the next battlefield, leaving the drudgework of daily management to its Gods on the ground, its physical agents imbued with infinite and infinitesimal slivers of its power.
Agents like Marika.
For her part, when she first hoisted the sublime burden of divinity, the fledgling God seethed with purpose, and resolved herself to conquer the world to replace it with a better one – and (though she'd never admit it) carve her pound of flesh from the society that had spurned her.
She took pride in her Order, in its atrocities, in the billions she'd trampled on the road to utopia. Her politics were purity, in the Hitlerian sense, the wholesale excision of the vapid and degenerate, and the triumph of the will over indolence and turpitude. With the point of a spear and the nails of a crucifix, she founded an era of glory and gold, prosperity and peace, consigned the beasts to the pits and raised the Numen to their rightful majesty.
And once her work was done – when the world had been pushed as close as it could to 'perfection' – she traded her laurels for a diadem, and relished in her uncontested supremacy.
But comfort breeds complacency, and success begets weakness.
"When Carthage," Sallust expounds, "the rival of Rome's dominion, had perished root and branch, and all the seas and lands were open, Fortune began to thrash about, and throw everything into confusion." Those early days of rapturous struggle choked on the poisoned fruit of victory – now, the ardor that had inflamed men's souls yielded to frivolity and cynicism, freedom was smothered under petty legalisms, heroism withered to impotence.
Marika watched as her civilization descended into the very decadence that she'd fought so hard to supplant; as Radagon and his fatuous band of priests and scholars and eunuchs seized the slackening reins of state; as once-vanquished foes slithered from their boltholes to chip away at the foundations; and as the quarrelsome demigods quietly gathered strength in rapt anticipation of the oncoming collapse.
Rise and fall, expansion and decline, such is the natural course of empire.
The God-Queen, however, rejected the fate of her innumerable predecessors – she had halted Death, she had named herself Eternal, and she would be the exception.
If war had created the Golden Order, then war would save it.
She would harness the collapse, accelerate it, engineer it to be as ruinous as possible, and out from this crucible – once the Lands Between had been cleansed of mediocrity – the fittest, the strongest, the sole deserving victor would rise to reforge the Ring, and join Marika as her new Elden Lord.
Together, they would herald a great renewal, propel the resurgence of the spirit, until the cycle turned once more and it again came time to sweep away the clutter.
Every forest, after all, needs a periodic burn.
Her logic, in a word, was monstrous – if only I hadn't found it so compelling.
Beneath the horror and shame, part of me preened with satisfaction, and a profound sense of achievement. I might've judged her plan utter madness, though a not-insubstantial part of me – just as large as that which insisted I bury myself in the pleasures of royalty and let come what may – begged to see it through. Better defiant than craven, rather an abhorrent victory to an honorable surrender, and what better way to surpass the original than completing the work she'd so cowardly abandoned?
The Shattering was my only chance, that seductive voice crooned, to save my works, my power, myself from the inexorable march of history.
But this wasn't my Order, the other part screamed, my body, my family, my world, why should I care what happens to it?
And yet …
"Your Majesty?"
I blinked.
Across the room, the maid I'd dragged into my bed propped herself onto an elbow; the mattress beneath her creaked, and the blanket pooled at her hips. A pretty young thing, barely scraping her first century, she softly panted as sweat trickled down her perky breasts.
The sight only stirred in me a sort of vague aesthetic appreciation.
Marika had always preferred beefcake.
"Clean yourself up."
Bowing her head, she padded over to the washbasin in the corner and wiped herself down with a damp cloth.
I'd inherited her body – that much I've made my peace with – so why couldn't I stomach the perfectly reasonable conclusion that I'd also inherited her tastes?
Really, what's one more loss on the pile?
Tying her hair into a neat bun, then smoothing her uniform skirt, the maid demurely folded her hands and presented herself for approval; grunting, I flicked my chin towards the door.
With a curtsey, she left me alone to my thoughts.
A hand snaked between my legs.
Bone dry.
I summoned a bottle of port.
V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V/\V
I don't think they expected me to return so soon.
Or, quite frankly, at all.
Brynden, certainly, had written me off, and startled and screamed and scrambled for a knife when I burst through the flaps of the tent.
Ed, too, recoiled, and with his axe held at the ready, retreated to the far side of the table, yet he wasn't so much surprised as understandably wary.
Of the lot, Thoros looked happiest to see me – while he might not have cared a lick for me personally, my apparent success vindicated his faith. But even his rapture wasn't enough to drown that nugget of doubt lingering deep within his soul, and he kept his distance with a smile.
I laughed.
"That's no way to greet the conquering hero! Ha!"
Strolling past them, deeper into the tent, I then stripped down to the nude and flopped onto a settee – nothing like letting your tits air out after a long, productive day of violence.
"Your Grace … " the priest tentatively started, but the girl interrupted him with a derisive scoff. He shot her a glare. "Do you have something to say?"
"No, no, of course not, " she grumbled. "Please, keep on flattering the great golden bitch."
Ed didn't bother stifling his snort.
Red-faced, Thoros now looked a second from bashing her head in, and riposted with some affronted blustering – I can't be arsed to recall the specifics.
An argument predictably unfolded from there.
" … if the Others … "
" … she hasn't been … "
" … I say we … "
Someone slammed their fist against the table.
"You da – !"
A twitch of annoyance.
"Quiet."
Their mouths clapped shut.
"I won't have my good mood ruined by your bickering."
For a moment, I luxuriated in the silence, smothering my budding irritation; then, stretching, kicking my feet up, I sent Brynden's way the smuggest look I could without it being vulgar.
"Your fears were overblown, Lord Commander." As Bryden pursed her lips, I loosened my braid, letting my hair drape free across my shoulders. "Well, maybe not the easiest party I've ever attended, I'll give you that much."
My head leaned back against an armrest.
"I've said it before, though, the Others were just a symptom."
Little wonder why the Red Faithful blamed the rotten state of the world on a 'Great Enemy,' or 'God of Night and Terror,' or any other number of macabre epithets. However unreasonable it may seem to pin sapience on what was, by every indication, the spiritual equivalent of Chernobyl 4, malice had almost certainly factored into its creation – a collapse this total simply cannot have occurred naturally. Someone had to have pulled just the wrong lever, pressed just the wrong button, at just the wrong time.
But who, and why?
I stared up at the ceiling.
"How does your prophecy go, again? Ice and fire? We've about had our fill of ice, I'd say."
There's nothing more fun than a mystery.
"What's Valyria like this time of year?"