Lucid opened his eyes. He was standing. The endless, reflective blue crystal water was still there, holding him up. It had never left. But something felt deeply, horribly wrong. It was as if he had been crushed under a weight so relentless there was nothing he could have done to overcome it. A feeling of profound helplessness clung to his bones.
She stood some distance away, a figure of impossible grace against the seamless horizon. Her elegant curves, her soft, flowing hair, her eyes of endless, gentle blue. He could not take his eyes off her. She was a masterpiece of sorrow.
"My child..."
Her voice was a soft caress, a melody of pure sadness that resonated in the empty space between them.
"You cannot even help but be drawn to me," she murmured, a statement of fact, not accusation. "I am afraid I have passed far more time than was ever needed in this form."
"I have been trapped in solitude in that vessel for a long time... a long, long, long time."
"I wanted you to give up your soul for me... human... but you have unparalleled potential."
"A potential that could go against the monarchs..."
She took a step closer, the water not rippling under her bare feet.
"You look at gods and deities for faith, for salvation," she continued, her voice like the low song of a whale in a deep trench. "Yet you are unaware that by having faith in yourselves, you are capable of so much more."
Lucid listened. Her words were soft murmurs, tragic notes woven into a haunting lullaby. He couldn't decipher every logical point, but he felt the meaning. It was carried in the beautiful timbre of her voice, in the elegant lines of her face, in the soft curve of her mouth.
"When she cast me down from Celestia with the a duty to safeguard mankind, I found a human," she said, her eyes growing distant with a memory millennia old. "You remind me of him. My mortal. The one I once... loved."
A single, crystalline tear traced a path down her pale cheek. "He died in battle. Such a fragile life, snuffed out, while I was doomed to carry the burden she had cast upon me for eternity." Her voice hardened, just for a moment, with an ancient, cold fury. "I flooded that continent. I cast my wrath upon it until there was nothing but sea and memory."
Lucid was transfixed. Her tragedy was beautiful. Her rage was divine. He felt a need, a desperate, aching need to save her from this pain. To absolve her. To hold her and tell her it was okay.
"She will test you," Neptune whispered, her gaze focusing on him with sudden, intense clarity. "She will chase you. She will play with you. But you must remain stubborn, my child. You must not break."
"Stay true to yourself and the people around you... let her not influence you..."
"Your soul is beautiful... divine."
"Like a blank canvas."
"You have not path no destiny nor a fate, yet some have already placed their faith in you..."
"So please go forth, carve a path for yourself and mankind... fulfil the role I could not..."
She spread her arms, an offering to the blank white sky. "For I offer you my whole existence. Not as a companion in this quiet prison, but as your weapon. Your strength. Your vitality."
She knelt before him, her immense height bringing her eyes level with his. The gesture was one of total surrender.
"Kill me," she said, her voice a clear, formal command that rang like a bell. "Rip my flesh apart. Drink my blood. Break my bones. Consume me. Let it flow into you. Feel it. Wish for it."
The moment the words left her lips, something shattered in Lucid's perception.
The spell broke.
He looked at her, and the breathtaking, tragic beauty was gone. In its place was something ugly. A revolting, pitiful sight. Why was this thing in his vision? He could not bear to look at it. Her eyes, once deep pools of sorrow, now seemed like oily, sucking pits. Her presence made him feel sick. It filled him with a frustrated, seething disgust that this... this *creature* shared the same breath, the same space as him.
Hatred, pure and cold, washed through him, drowning the last echoes of her hypnotic song.
He walked toward her, his steps full of purpose, of violent intent.
She remained on her knees, extending her hands in an open, welcoming embrace. A gentle, serene smile touched her lips. It was the most disgusting thing he had ever seen.
"End my solitude, my child," she urged, her formal, divine tone now grating on his ears like sandpaper. "Kill me. Carry me with you."
He ran the last few steps. Even on her knees, she was massive, but that only made it better. More surface area. More places to inflict damage.
Her voice was a horrible, screeching noise in his head. He could not bear to hear it anymore.
"AHHH!" he yelled, a raw, mindless sound. His eyes locked onto the column of her throat, the most vulnerable-looking part.
His hands shot out and closed around it, finding not soft skin, but cool, smooth scales. He squeezed with all his strength.
She gasped, a choked, wet sound, but she did not struggle. She did not fight back.
"Yes... my child," she managed, the words strained but still holding that formal, accepting tone. "I am yours."
Her submission fueled his madness. He let go of her throat.
He flattened his hand into a rigid blade and drove it into the soft, scaled flesh of her stomach. He bit into the soft curve of her chest, tearing away a chunk of flesh with his teeth and swallowing it like a beast. It tasted of salt and cold light.
He laughed, the sound harsh and wild in the silent expanse.
"Die! Die! Die!" he repeated, a savage chant, as he stabbed at her stomach again and again with his fingernails, tearing and rending.
She was still alive, her breathing shallow and pained.
Enraged by her resilience, he grabbed the tip of her elegant blue horn. With a furious cry, he brought his foot down on it, shattering the crystalline spiral with a sound like breaking glass.
A sound ripped from her then, not a scream, but the pained, deafening shriek of a whale, a sound of pure, physical agony that echoed across the water.
He didn't care. He used the sharp, broken base of her horn like a dagger and drove it into the side of her neck.
Purple blood, thick and shimmering, gushed forth, covering his hands, his arms, his chest.
Her body began to tremble. Her eyes, wide with pain, found his.
"Take my will," she gurgled, the blood bubbling at her lips. Her voice was fading, but the formal, divine resonance remained. "Take my essence. Take my fate. Take my faith. Take my destiny. Take my duty. And I shall carry it with you, til the end... My will runs in your blood now... my child."
She was holding onto consciousness by a thread, her gaze fixed on his face. A strange look crossed her features then—not fear, but a dawning, heartbreaking recognition. As if she was seeing not him, but someone else from a past so distant it was myth.
As the last of her life bled out into the blue water, staining it deep violet, Lucid's frenzy broke.
The red haze of hatred cleared from his mind. He came back to his senses all at once.
He looked down.
He was crouched over the massive, broken form of the deity. He was covered in her shimmering purple blood. Her horn was shattered. Her stomach was a ruin. Her neck wept a fatal river.
Horror, cold and absolute, slammed into him.
"Wait..." he whispered, his voice trembling. "Wait, wait, wait!"
He looked at his blood-soaked hands, then back at her dying face. "What is this? Why did I...?!"
"It's you... why did... you make me do.. this..." He sobbed now.
He hadn't wanted this. Not like this. The disgust, the hatred, it had been a foreign thing, a poison she had somehow drawn out of him and turned against herself.
A weak, cold hand lifted, trembling. It cupped his blood-smeared cheek with impossible gentleness.
Her eyes, fading from brilliant blue to a dull grey, searched his face one last time. A soft, confused smile touched her ruined lips.
"Adam..." she breathed, the name a ghost on her final exhale. "Is that you?"
Her gaze drifted past him, to some point in the empty white sky. The smile grew, becoming peaceful, almost joyful.
"Where are our children?" A hint of a smile touched her lips.
The light in her eyes went out. The hand fell from his cheek, landing with a soft splash in the water. The Divine Deity, Neptune, was gone. Her last thought not of wrath or sorrow, but of a love and a family from an age before time had meaning.
Lucid stared at the ruin before him. He slammed his fist down upon the water's unyielding surface.
"Damn it all!" The shout fractured into quiet, broken sobs. How had this happened? One moment, he was on a spectral rail in a purple void, mending a break in the track with bloody hands wrapped around chains. The next, a narwhale of starlight and sorrow had swallowed him whole, bringing him here, to this silent prison of water and sky. A deity of impossible grace had wanted to keep him forever. He had seen her beauty, a masterpiece of tragic longing, and in the very next breath, he had been consumed by a revulsion so total it felt like truth. He had murdered her in cold blood. He had torn her flesh, drunk her blood, eaten from her chest like a rabid animal.
Her body began to dissolve, not into mist, but into bright, white motes of light. This time was different. The motes did not scatter. They drew inward, folding upon themselves, condensing into a single, swirling essence, a luminous, purple-white core of her fate, her faith, her very being. It hovered for a heartbeat, a miniature star of transcendent sorrow, then poured into Lucid's chest.
It felt warm. It felt welcoming. It felt unbearably, eternally sorrowful. It was her. She was inside him now. A final, gentle surrender. A weapon forged from a deity's last hope and despair. The weight of it settled in his soul, and his sobs were for her, for himself, and for the terrible path that now lay ahead, carrying some kind of a deity in his blood.