Chapter 464: Leviathan
Once more, Amarena found herself inside a place of the mind.
Beneath her stretched a field of pebbles, and above her a stormy Hell-sky, which filled horizon to horizon with the tempest of its fury. But directly above her, amidst the eye of the storm, was Ayther.
The blue and green orb that had called to demons for ages with its bounty, only for its people to reject them time and again.
"Finally, we are united," a voice spoke, and Amarena looked to find Attika, her mother, stepping out of the storm.
"What happens now?" Amarena asked. "Is this some ploy for resurrection?"
Leviathan Attika laughed as she stepped past her daughter. "A Leviathan lives once and dies once. That is our rule. It is the rule that has allowed Leviathan to be for all these ages." She gestured, and Amarena looked, eyes widening.
From the storm stepped figures in their dozens, and then their hundreds. They formed a spiral around the pair, all demons in their war forms, each of the demonic branches represented, and more.
Some figures she recognized. Other Leviathans. Ancient generals and mighty warriors who had been immortalized in stone all over the Wrathlands. Others, interspersed at random throughout the spiral, she found strange. Half-human, almost, their features varied yet underformed compared to the nearest.
The last figure, however, did not step from the shadows of the storm. It loomed, dark and unseen, from within the curtain of rain. A giant amongst giants, but one whose silhouette looked oddly familiar to Rena.
"The first Leviathan was a demon of sloth," Attika said, matching Amarena’s gaze into the storm. "She found her wrath in the first Heavenswars, when Angels fought to banish us from Ayther. They slaughtered her children in front of her, and because she was too slow to stop it, she grew in wrath until her wrath became swiftness, strength, and power. But from this, she could only destroy and consume, for she would not let go of her wrath to mourn... and she never has. Even in death. She is the core of who every Leviathan was, and all others have built on her legacy."
Amarena was speechless. The implications of there being a first, and of that being’s presence within Leviathan’s soulstone, pointed to a truth she’d never suspected.