Chapter Text
Catherine Foundling woke up. Her face was pressed against snow, shivering under the expanse of an eternal moonless night. A void of nothing high above. Her body was wracked with pain like ice stabbing into her. Her very soul scraped raw by the extensive use of Winter and the subsequent sudden cleaving of it from her being. The power she had scavenged from the corpse of old Arcadia had become intertwined with her, turning into something akin to an additional limb, its theft leaving the once Sovereign’s soul wounded. Human once more.
Catherine Foundling had died in the depths of Liesse when she had ripped out the scaffolds that Hierophant had put in her soul to escape Diabolist’s bindings, her end merely postponed by the anointing of power. With power taken, with Winter taken, the damage sustained by her spirit resumed its progress in bringing about the villain’s death.
She gasped. She vomited. Clear and cold. Colder than anything she had ever felt, only matched by the chill of her apotheosis. Life was leaving her. The fool girl waited and waited to greet the end that all mortals would meet. She waited, without the strength to carry on further and fight for the people and country she had sworn to serve and help. Those who loved her would mourn. And though she loved them as much as they did her, she could no longer bear to stand. Moments passed, and in those moments, eternity.
Catherine Foundling waited. And though she could feel death coming, it had taken too long to take her hand and usher her into the beyond. It approached her still. But her story was not at its conclusion. She could feel it. Writing itself out. Yet to be defined. One more encounter. One more battle. She would be frozen in this nothing-state until that time was past. The orphan sighed and pushed herself to her feet.
Sin and grace. Defeat. Victory. Neither would come to her and so she stood, uncaring of what might happen. And yet. Catherine Foundling was queen and villain, but first and foremost she was a soldier. And she would fight.
Why bother, a voice insisted, asking her why she would fight for victory even now.
“Why not?” She said to herself. She waited, and soon a figure came from the shadows of this not-Winter not-Night domain. Pale silver eyes glowing amidst the darkness warring against itself for the final shape it would take. The Mighty Rumena looked down upon Losara.
“Ah, finally. I was getting bored. And crippled. But that one’s admittedly not your fault.” The fool girl paused and considered her next words. She grinned with mirth she did not feel and met the eyes of the oldest drow she had seen. “Take me to your leader.”
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“It is admirable that you refuse to compromise your principles even moments away from your unmaking,” the Mighty said.
“I can’t tell if you’re being sarcastic right now,” she said. “And I think my hearing might be going, because there’s this weird screaming sound that-”
Catherine paused, and swallowed. A patchwork of rippling Winter was howling uncontrolled, much like a storm, and battering at an obsidian tower that contained the shimmering blue from the rest of the city-domain.
She sighed and closed her eyes, resting against the back of the ancient monster that bore her, not caring for anything enough to bother with anything else.
Time passed and she was jolted awake as she fell to the ground for a second time that day.
She blinked her eyes, clearing them, and observed her surroundings. Over a hundred drow bearing weapons surrounded them, and in the middle of the circle, an altar was prepared, and behind it a being clothed in purest Night stood. Silver eyes framed by ink black hair that rose into the nothingness over them all, connecting this lesser god to its acquisition.
Catherine Foundling had no inclination to act as she frequently did when in combat, and yet it mattered. It leaned into her story.
And so, she said gazing straight at the entity’s eyes without shying or flinching away from the burn of it: “Sve Noc. Good of you to finally show up. You may kneel.”
A heartbeat of silence, and the fool girl was drowning. Terror buried her. The kind of terror that subsumed and overwhelmed everything else. She laughed. For the first time since waking up. Since the Doom of Liesse. She felt truly alive.
“That’s the stuff,” she grinned even as her body shook.
“Alone and lost,” the Priestess of Night said. “As promised, Catherine Foundling.”
“Please, call me ‘Your Majesty’.”
“Queen of Nothing, and so no queen at all.”
The girl did not reply and merely smiled at this. “Rumena, be a dear and find my pipe?” She watched as the Mighty hesitated before proceeding to do as she requested, inwardly rolling her eyes at the black flame used to light her wakeleaf.
“So that’s what it used to taste like. I’d almost forgotten.” She shivered in pleasure. “I don’t suppose any of you have a decent bottle?” A pause. “And they call Callow a backwater. You all make for terrible hosts.”
“No guest are you,” Sve Noc said. “A bird of misfortune, headed to grim ending.”
“Bold words, coming from a woman visibly fucking up her apotheosis. How’s Winter taste, Sve? A bit too much to swallow?”
“All will be Night,” the darkness surrounding them thundered.
Catherine Foundling laughed. “You’re just a pile of disappointments, aren’t you? At least your subordinate knows its way around a phrase. You haven’t spoken like a person for too long. You’ve forgotten how. Even Neshamah has touches of that.”
“You think to threaten me with the King of Death?” Sve Noc laughed. “You know nothing.”
“I know some things. Like, for example, Winter is a difficult power to tame. It’s not something that’s meant to give. And it’s not flexible the way a Name is. If I had to guess, you’re just as static as what you’re trying to consume. You can’t change to match it, as I did. And so you have to rely on bludgeoning it into obedience. That’s where I come in, I suppose. To wash it all down?”
“Crawling, wretched thing,” Sve Noc said. “Still trying to escape your fate even now. Stripped of every ounce of stolen power, tumbling through death’s door. Your deception is feeble. Your plans are known to me. Mad and desperate, you resort to flimsy lies, yet trickery is no match for real power.”
Then, she was there. The girl of masks. Taking them up and discarding them as was needed.
“Then fear me, drow, for I wield the power of friendship.” Akua Sahelian announced grinning, as she buried her arm into Catherine Foundling’s body and gripped the other girl’s heart with her chill fingers.
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Through this reflection of her first act as Sovereign of Winter, the Queen of Callow’s remaining connection to her stolen power was strengthened. A path to a second ascension.
Her senses expanded, and her will bloomed down the remaining pillars of Winter.
“You forced her to act early,” the Diabolist said.
“So. The power of friendship. It feels somewhat ungrateful to say this, but we’re not really friends. Acquaintances, at best.”
“You break my heart, dearest. Again.”
“And I didn’t even have to punch through your chest this time. I am getting better at this.” Catherine’s attention drifted to the presence of Sve Noc. “But then, so is she.”
“Yes. The situation should feel familiar, my heart. You’re a claimant once more. Lesser, but still.”
“What for, do you think?”
“That depends, I would wager, on which of you succeeds in pressing your claim. Before, I would have guessed it to be sovereignty over Night, but now, who knows?” The Diabolist laughed. “Interesting times, dearest Catherine. Interesting times indeed.”
The fool girl did not respond. The unspoken question clearly expressed in the silence.
“Am I not in your service?” Akua said. “Bindings are formality, not essence.”
Akua Sahelian pressed close to Catherine Foundling, and the latter saw the other villain not as she was, but as what she considered herself to be at the core of her identity. The epitome of the villainy of the old East. Sculpted face. Hair that fell behind her as if a curtain to veil herself with. Adorned in rubies and gold, and instead of her face, a mist. Ever shifting, shrouding her face, and behind it, blazing golden eyes. Then the vision was gone, and the fool girl only saw the culmination of the Wasteland’s people’s attempt to master Creation. As terrible as she was beautiful.
“I have grown tired of iron.”
The once Squire narrowed her eyes. The darkness shifted.
“Clever little rats. You have earned death at my hand.”
And the final dance commenced. Sve Noc pulled back. A tide before the wave. Unspeakably massive and gathering before release. The fool girl drew all that she was to herself. And though she did not want to go back to what she had been as Sovereign of Winter, she fought.
Time passed and so they danced, every step and exchange a form of worship to the Gods Below. And finally, a break in tempo. The two-faced goddess stumbled, a discordant ring in the flowing music started by the Doom of Liesse.
“I am a sword,” the soldier said. “Sharp and merciless, I cut.” Her will struck out against Sve Noc, and finally blood was let. Again. Again. And ever again, iron sharpened by iron until finally the last cut was made. Darkness. And she was sent to the threshold between conscious and unconscious.
In this line between mortal and infinite bearing a renewed godhead, Catherine Foundling could feel the purest of the Night flowing to her, consolidating itself in her, and the potential of it. She could feel it changing into something raw and unformed. To be shaped by her into whatever she wanted. Her right as the victor of hallowed violence. The worthy took, the worthy rose. Winter would be hers again. Already, it was coming back, and soon it would return her to the state she was in. Stuck in the aftermath of her greatest failure and vulnerable to principle alienation the more she used its power. And though she had fought to keep it, more than anything what she wanted for herself was to remain human. The Night she had claimed she could feel react to her greatest desire and it morphed into a Crown. She extended her will, in an attempt to shape it further, but she had not the knowledge nor the skill. It came to her and bound itself to her. A simple strip of ink that went around her head with a pattern of thorns growing out of it. An image taken from the descriptions of the crucifixion of royalty that Triumphant had defeated she had studied about during her tutelage under the Black Knight.
Doom, her heart whispered. She was doomed.
Then she was awake, and whatever insight or epiphany she had was gone. And though she did not register temperature as Sovereign of Winter, for the first time in a long time, Catherine Foundling was not cold. A glass wall of Night around her soul to keep the worst of Winter at bay. Fragile. Thin. And yet, enough.
She had won.