The Sad Truth of Life

Kurnt was the god of power, and he used his skills with brutal efficiency against Saol. It all started when the cruel twin rulers offered her a deal she could not refuse. After all, it was something she had begged for every time she was forced to enter the celestial arena. They would allow Saol to stop competing, but the price of this reprieve was that she would marry one of their supporters, Kurnt.

Although she was not fond of the idea of being bound to the overbearing god, the only other option Saol had was to continue being ripped apart in the arena by her friends and allies. So she willingly agreed, believing that submitting to Kurnt would be a better fate than what awaited her in the arena.

How wrong she was, and that mistake nearly cost her the remains of her sanity. Once Saol had agreed, she and Kurnt were quickly joined together by the twin rulers themselves. The bond created was unbreakable, and Saol resigned herself to being Kurnt’s wife for eternity. The start of their marriage was peaceful enough, and Kurnt was very attentive. This lured Saol into a false sense of hope for the future and it wasn’t long before Saol was with child.

The trouble started when Saol gave birth to their first child. Kurnt took the babe from Saol’s arms and disappeared, despite Saol’s wailed protests. When he returned with the bundle, he had a dagger in his hand, which he plunged into the babe right before her eyes. Then he let out a malicious laugh as Saol’s mind fractured and she sobbed for her murdered child. It was at that moment she realized she was in a new form of torture, one devised by the evil twins to break her completely for her role in the resistance against them.

Resolve filled Saol as she made a vow to herself that they may crack and bend her, but Kurnt and the twins would never break her. And so the vicious cycle of hope and despair began. Kurnt would come to her, begging for forgiveness and expressing his desire to have another child with her. He would seem so sincere that Saol would eventually relent only to have Kurnt take the child after the birth and plunge a dagger into it as she watched helplessly.

With each child’s death, Saol’s resolve to not break was chipped away, until she was sure one more harsh word from her husband would do what the death of her children had yet to do. Kurnt managed to father four children before he finally dropped all pretenses. He came to her one night, not long after he had killed their last child, and told her what she had known since the beginning. Arex and Jinju had devised this torture, but it was not as a form of discipline, but because they needed something that only she could provide.

Then he told her if she would contribute to what the rulers wanted, the torment would cease and she would be left in peace. Saol readily agreed, knowing her heart and mind could not witness another child’s death. But when Kurnt told her what the twin gods desired from her, it gave her pause. What purpose could an exact copy of her sister serve the rulers and why must she be the one to make it?

When asked, Kurnt merely shrugged with a wicked grin on his sharp face and asked if she would do as the rulers wanted or would he have to kill another one of their children in order to get her in line. Not able to witness another slaughter, she reluctantly agreed. Once the copy was complete, Kurnt took it and left her alone. In her loneliness Saol’s mind cracked more, her treacherous mind replaying the deaths of her children and her husband’s evil smirk as he did the deed.

Thankfully Saol was granted a reprieve before complete insanity could set in. At long last, she was reunited with her sister when the twins predictably grew bored with their torment of their captives. When Saol first laid eyes on her beloved Elysha, a wave of remorse and guilt roared through her. It was clear at that moment what the duplicate body had been used for, just as it was clear Elysha had been subjected to a similar torture that she had endured. But unlike Saol, Elysha had broken and now she was split in two.

Seeing this, Saol begged for forgiveness and vowed to help Elysha become whole again.

Although both goddesses tried to reunite the two halves, the damage to her sister’s mind was too severe and Saol finally had to admit defeat. The damage had also changed Elysha in other ways, and she began to inflame the other punished gods to rebel against their cruel rulers. Despite everything that had happened to her, Saol could not bring herself to plot revenge with the other gods. Doing what she wanted to do at the beginning of the war, Saol retreated within herself while the other gods created their own races to put on the rulers’ perfect world the twins had created. Despite being a risky move, the other gods felt this was the ideal beginning to their payback for their unjust punishments.

Despite her closeness to her sister, or perhaps because of it, Saol did nothing as the other gods created their own races and placed them on Rukan. She did nothing as those races fought and killed each other for petty reasons. And she did nothing when the creations of Arex and Jinju rebelled and fought their way to the heavens to remove their masters from power. But when the Jin and the Rexi began banishing the old gods, Saol refused to do nothing any longer.

After everything she had gone through, being banished for someone else’s crimes was a step too far. Following Baelbus’ example after the war, Saol decided the best course of action was to go into hiding. And what better place to hide than within the cursed world that the twin gods had taken such pride in creating. So while the Jin and the Rexi busied themselves with containing the other gods, Saol slipped away and made herself comfortable in the very center of the cubed world. It was her hope that once the rebellion was over, she would return to the heavens and free her sister. Perhaps even convince the new gods to release the more docile of the old gods so they could all, finally, live in the heavens in peace.

Her hiding place served Saol well, as neither the Jin nor the Rexi found her and she evaded banishment because of it. But there were some unintended consequences that Saol had not foreseen in her plan to evade capture. The new gods may not have found her, but the races of Rukan did, at least part of her. In order to properly hide, Saol had linked herself to the world, and the races of Rukan quickly found this link and exploited it. They believed they had discovered magic flowing through the world, but it was in fact Saol’s divine essence.