Part 1

The Yearning

Nyx

The wishing God

On the wings of regret

Three Centuries Prior

For the span of three millennia, Nyx endured her nightmarish imprisonment within Sunshard the elvish heart city of Eldrithel. She spent most of her time in the palace gardens taking solace in the sunshine and the ever constantly blooming fruits and flowers. She watched from the palace balcony as the kings personal guard honed their skills together with wooden swords and knocked back arrows which struck their targets with expert precision. She particularly enjoyed scaling the roof of the palace and chasing the birds which seemed to gather constantly there and looking at the king in his secret chamber. As the birds took flight so did she flinging her body from the thatched roof and launching herself into the sky after them. They marveled at her, squawking as she joined. She would never travel as far as them and only joined them till the cities edge.

Today Nyx felt the sunshine on her face and listened to a constant stream of wishes chattering in ears. She looked towards the city center. There were throngs of people laughing and for the most part the city had a playful feel, the air swirled around them with their whispered secrets.

Yes, this would be a good day for Nyx.

She leapt from the balcony she stood on and floated gracefully down as the cobblestone street made contact with the balls of her feet. After her time spent amongst the elvish people she understood the essence of her mother and fathers creation. She preferred the elves companionship to the humans.

Nyx felt her eternal punishment was superfluous. All that she had done was kill Tyrankrill. Who even cared about him? She wondered. He was the God of some underwater sea urchin. Sure it was a whole family of urchin and mussels but it wasn't like she'd killed the God of the ocean himself.

"It wasn't his death," her mother and father had chided, that bothered them so much. "It was her dishonesty." She mimed as she walked through the soldiers horse stalls. She skipped past a particularly muscular draft horse and then sidestepped dung. One of the ebony horses batted a fly with its tail and she felt the tail hair snap at her too.

"Hey!" She chided the horse, who merely snorted its displeasure and looked forward at its feed bin. A grey mare snorted as she passed. She felt it mocked her. The horses often took in her ethereal scent and spotted her when the elves did not. She towered over even the tallest horse. Most of these horses were trained for war and so they did not frighten as she passed them, like the commoners farm and work horses did.

She walked down the hill which connected the palace to the main road deep in thought, "She had broken the most important rule of all." She recalled her father saying to her. "Gods do not kill Gods, by proxy, or by their own hand."

But what was she supposed to do, not fight back? Should she have let her cousin push her around? Besides... He'd left the most important part of the rule out. If they did kill another of their kind, or have someone else do it, they should just never be caught. Nyx had been sloppy.

Nyx felt the ebb and flow of the throngs of people beside her. She allowed the winds to swell around her. She looked to the birds above her and made her own silent wish. The one wish which would never come true, for there was no God beside Nyx to wish to. She ran forward towards the smell of honeyed bread and the loud fountain in the main streets within Sunshard.

She was the wind. She found she picked up their secrets faster as she swirled past them in her ethereal form. She loved to be the wind, it was the most freeing to her to flit about town faster than the eye of the elves could register. She felt it was the closest to freedom that she could experience in her forever prison her parents had left her to rot in.

She pushed over a basket at a nearby weavers with a simple stroke of a finger then watched as the woman stopped to pick it up grumbling at the Gods for the weather on this "curs'ed" day. Little did the old woman know Nyx was to blame. Nyx laughed at the stout grey haired woman's balled up fist as she pointed a finger at the sky.

Immediately Nyx sent forth a gust of wind which pushed at the weaver woman's shop windows and one of them cracked when a large metal pole came crashing down smacking the window beside her. "Never curse your Gods." Nyx tisked as she walked circles around the old woman.

She thought of herself, was she a God anymore? Could she even be considered one in this wretched place? The eternal punishment at first had been something of a joke to her before she realized she was stuck here forever. Really, stuck. Her father and mother hadn't come to aid her, had not heard her prayers, and had not asked for her help in any of theirs or the humans affairs.

She looked at the woman who now fiddled with the pole. A few of the guards at their post came forward and helped her lift it along with the tailor from the shop next door. She watched as the elves worked together and thought they were a beautiful species. Capable of coming together at times when the humans would divide. Yes, they were her preference indeed. Anyway Nyx had done her job. The day didn't have much wind, and she guessed the old woman was scrupulous enough to wonder at the cause of her bad luck. She would not curse any of the Gods again for a long time, and perhaps the next time she did, Nyx would hear it on the winds and send her a bigger surprise than a shattered window.

Nyx returned her sights to her eternal playground. She picked up a nearby apple from a produce stall and took a large bite before placing it back down. She moved forward gracefully on the cobblestone streets as a horse drawn cart passed her. Her barefoot hovered one inch above the cobblestone seeming to touch the ground without ever making contact. Her walk was almost a perfect hover as she forced the wind between her feet with each step, like an invisible floor.

Nyx's silky black hair flew behind her as she ran through the streets. She transformed into the wind again. Her white dress turned to a silvery glow as it meshed with the wind around her. Her hair took on an eerie darkness and birds took up flight nearby her as she blew past. She sung merrily like she was but a little girl again, her long white chiffon dress trailed endlessly behind her as it melded with the wind. Every fiber of the dress transformed and as she became the wind so did it. Her nakedness was visible beneath the dress and sometimes she would appear from nowhere to catch a mans eye only to disappear again as they fell in love with a ghost. One of her favorite frivolities was to be there for just a moment, to watch as they fell for her. No mortal could view the goddess without falling immediately in love with her. She then watched them as their lives played out, as no woman compared to her, and as they went through the motions of life.

She took a sickly sweet joy in watching them wish for her to come back, for them to meet her. She sometimes did meet them, for a tryst that left them wanting more. And then she waited the years until they died lonely, or having settled for someone else. She liked the power in knowing that no one would ever compare to her. In their heads, in their dreams, they wished only to be with her again. Thought only of her... She felt, somehow, relevant when she did this. In a way, it made her feel that even if she was forgotten by her family she was not forgotten here to these men. That someone, even if it was just a lowly guard or a bakers son, remembered her. Despite this she still felt the emptiness thrum within her stomach. She wished away the feeling and still it lingered there in her stomach and throat.

Nyx gulped it away and turned her attention to one such man now who sported a guardsman's uniform, and then just as quickly as he saw her she was gone. He wondered after who she was as his mouth was left half open. She would watch for him, perhaps she would pass some time with him until she eventually drove him mad with lust. Maybe the madness would eat at him until he was deemed the town drunk, filled with madness. The ones who slipped into madness were her favorite...

Maybe he would chase her into the streets as she led him away. She would appear only to him and he would crawl after her on hands and knees. She imagined it now. She had done it hundreds of years before with an elvish artist who later became prolific. He painted her daily, studies of her face, sculptures of her body. A mosaic still stood in her temple, made by him, beside a large statue that he cast from bronze.

He was truly talented. She was sad when she made him go mad... It had caused a sort've rift in their time together. He was far too obsessed with her for it to continue, but she so loved the paintings and other idolatry. He did fair well in the end, as he donated most of the portraits to her temple and she ensured he had a place to stay there hosted by the temples leadership. It was selfish really, if he remained on the streets there would be no more art of her to display throughout the city. She did indulge the idea of making other artists go mad but there was no fun in that seeing as how she'd just done so only a few years before.

As Nyx raced through the streets deftly dodging carts and elves, she pondered why she hadn't been bestowed the title of God of Wisdom like her brother Aelor, or Deity of Tricks, her brother Quill. She enjoyed tricks more anyway and she was far more mischievous than Quill was. She also grew wisdom from learning the minds of the wishers... the humans and elves. She felt her talents were misplaced here, she was far too selfish to grant wishes. At least she knew this... Her parents seemingly disagreed.

Vaylith, her mother, had told her once about her brother, "Quill is unique... you enjoy tricks because you like to unsettle your father. If Quill had to live a day without tricks... He might actually lose his light and be extinguished from existence. You're correct when you say you're wise, but you learn from their thoughts. Wisdom doesn't come naturally to you. It comes in the ways it does for everyone else. Through knowledge and time. Aelor was born with wisdom. He watches over the humans guides, the priests, the priestesses, the men and women who doll out advice. And he is fascinated by it. Can you really tell me you have the patience for that Nyx?'

"Besides, if you weren't the wishing God you could never control the wind again... Wouldn't that kill you a little bit inside? You'd also be split from your sister." Her twin spirit, Syriah, a wound which still ached for her centuries later.

Nyx sighed.

She had split her mind from Syriah when she was exiled. Together they had delivered the wishes, frolicking together in the wind, pushing each other to new destinations. Listening in to gossip and banter.

Syriah was of Nyx's soul as Nyx was of Syriah's. And yet, she hadn't seen her in centuries. Really, that was the true hurt. Being ripped in half, and split from Syriah. The real prison of this place. Syriah had volunteered to be exiled with her. "You're needed to command the Weavers." He father had told them gruffly. Even if Syriah wasn't needed there, she thought her father would not have let her sacrifice herself to be exiled with Nyx.

Nyx still saw her fathers screaming face when she closed her eyes. The exile was as fresh a memory today as it was on the day it happened. Wrath had accompanied her father to her exile. Syriah plead with her father as Nyx stood between them.

"I'll be fine." She told her sister, blinking back tears as she lifted her from where she beg at her fathers feet. "We do not beg. We do not bow. We do not scrape."

It was then that Nyx took a forward step over the edge of the cliff which separated the Gods home from the mortal world. She split herself from Syriah, watching as her father used his rage to cut the golden chord which had so long been invisible between them.

Syriah and Nyx screamed as Nyx fell. Wrath pulled Syriah back as she dove towards Nyx. It was in this moment Syriah sent forth a small gust of wind, a push to her side to say goodbye.

The wind enveloped her and then entered through her body. She felt the small pulse of Syriah's soul bind with her magic. The wind tethered to her and she manipulated it as she landed down on the Elvish kingdom.

Her fathers rage followed her. Wrath stepped forward from a large hole he had formed within The Veil. He wore his human form, since as God of Wrath he could only assume the common form of those who most worshipped him.

"I'm not sorry." Wrath said to her as he looked her up and down in her Elvish form. Her long dress blew behind her, her eyes glaring at him. Wrath was not afraid of glaring back. "But I do feel sorrow for Syriah. What you have done to her, is a hurt she will never recover from. She will forgive you because she is as vast as time itself. It's in her nature to accept the ebb and flow of the pain you have caused her. But she should be angry for what you did, for how stupid you were to let yourself be stolen from one and others. You are the problem and until you face it you will never be joined again, your self serving nature has gone on for so long I do not believe Syriah even knows who she is when you're not there."

"If that's the case then Wrath, why did they make me this way? They made me selfish for their own gain, and then condemned me for it when I was exactly as they wanted me to be?"

Wrath paused, "We are all born in the way they want us to be, but not all of us are meant to stay that way. This is more of a subject for Aelor. I think your punishment is too small personally. If father didn't know that it would likely kill Syriah he would've sentenced you to the same fate as Tyrankrill."

"A lesser God? I doubt it." Nyx smirked at him letting her hair down from the leather band which held it. She hastily shook it out narrowing her eyes at him.

Wrath maintained eye contact, "I have a wish for you dear sister," he winked, "I wish for you to never stop feeling Syriah's sadness, her anger, her pain, and any other pain you have caused her. She feels it so deeply because she fears if she doesn't feel it for you, then you will never feel it at all. I wish that when she's driven mad with rage, or loss, and loneliness you feel her hurl her savage storms upon the earth, and you hear her screams of pain. I wish you to feel what you did to her." Wraths' skin deepened in a reddish color the more he felt the anger within him pulse throughout his body. The spikes on his arms were the only thing which gave him away as non human, growing with his rage like thorns on a rose bush. They stood out now over a foot long.

Nyx stood tall and then spoke proudly changing the subject. "Will you be the one doing the sentencing then? He doesn't even wish to do it himself?" She watched as the tether began to form between her body and Wrath's as the wish took physical form only she could see.

"You were never his favorite, so why would you think father would attend?" Wrath smirked a shark toothed grin. "Shall we get this over with then?" He put out his right arm as they stood side by side one and other. She held her head high. Nyx took Wraths forearm in her slender fingered pale hand and placed it on the golden wrist cuffs which adorned wraths ebony forearms, she watched his muscular arms flex beneath her cold hands. "You have chosen your fate then?"

"Would you rather I bow down?" Nyx retorted chin jutting out proudly.

"Honestly? No. I want you to hurt. I want you to grant my wish so that you feel what you have done to someone you love. Possibly the only person who you love. To feel the anger, the pain, the loss, and if not her vengeance then mine. I want you to taste the cold of it on your tongue and feel the swelling of it in your throat as you hold back tears. I want your arms to grow heavy from carrying the weight of it. I want you to know Syriah's sorrow when she thinks of you."

Nyx softened. She felt the wish envelop her. She didn't want to grant it, but she could not ignore the white light of the chord. Syriah wanted her to grant it too.

"For how long?" She asked Wrath.

"As long as it takes for you to understand."

"That might never happen Wrath." She winced as she felt the wish pull her forward. It was a white chord extending from Wraths hand to her chest. She couldn't ignore the White Wish. She also knew one thing, this wish would bind her in some small way to Syriah.

"Then this will be painful." Said Wrath.

"Wait!" Nyx shouted as Wrath placed his hand on the small of her back.

"Then you will grant me one wish in return!"

Wrath looked at her, they were nearly the same height, his green eyes now beginning to turn black with his anger. "I've had enough of your stalling." He growled.

"I would like you to watch out for her. Make sure nothing happens to her. Protect her." Wrath laughed. "She can protect herself, Nyx."

Nyx felt him push her forward a step. She turned back to look at him as the eternal pull of the white chord was tugging between them.

"Protect me then?" She asked him, her voice quivering. She saw the wish extend from his chest to her own. He looked down at his chest where her eyes remained and smiled. He knew what she was looking at even if he himself couldn't see it.

He nodded, "I'll do my best. Beside's, what can get you in here Nyx?"

The wall of divine magic closed around locking her in her prison forever. Wrath took one step back and then another until he had stepped all the way into the rip in The Veil which he had come from. She wanted to chase after him but the walls closed around her.

She felt the chord tugging, fading as the rip in the The Veil healed.

She pulled at the chord on her chest, "Syriah!" She shouted in distress. It was real. This was real.

She cried out to her father, "I apologize!" She looked towards the sun. She watched Wrath smile as the glowing green slit that split the gods world and the one she now stepped foot into closed.

The tether began to fade away as it entered the Gods ethereal realm, absorbed by the green smoke which seeped from the cut in The Veil.

She looked down at it and sent a magical shockwave through it. It lit in her hands glowing golden and then tightened on her chest strengthening her connection to Wrath and Syriah.

Nyx granted Wrath's eternal wish.