The Goblin's Heir

Chapter Seventy Eight: Empress of Iron

The old crone's eyes sparkled like sunlight atop cresting waves as she smiled at my dumfounded face. "You are surprised that the faeries' sea of magic lives? That power can be sentient?"

"I'm more confused that you look like an old version of me. Is that by choice?"

"It is by your choice." She gave a raspy chuckle I recognized well. "The boy," she gestured with her lantern at Knut, "sees me as his mother. Another might see me as a dead loved one, a lover, a promised child. Sometimes I am old, sometimes I am young, female, male, sometimes I don't appear human at all. I am both formless and can be any form at once. It all depends on how your soul chooses to define me." The light of the lantern scattered with every motion like fireflies from summer grass. "I think it is quite telling that you choose to see me as yourself and not anyone else from your memory. To have your dead or one of your children speak to you now would be a pain too great, wouldn't it?"

"I'd prefer you took no form at all." I said.

Another raspy chuckle, a wider smile. "Very well."

She exploded outwards in blinding light. A force shoved against me, pushing and pulling at every piece of my soul. It sent me to my knees and forced a shout from my throat. "I take it back! Take any form you wish!" She retracted inward, conforming, contorting until she was once again the crone wearing my withered face, a mane of silvered hair moving about her head without the aid of wind. "What are you?" I shuttered, trembling in her presence. She was unlike anything I'd felt before. The might of that being before me was almost comforting in a way. Unlike the Hollow, I wasn't overwhelmed with the need to pray to her as I'd been when it first appeared to me in Mab's prison. This being needed no one to worship her to warrant the power she held, that she was. She possessed a friendly, welcoming presence. I didn't want to flee from her. I wanted to run into her embrace.

"You've been told that creation is like a chain, one being creating another on and on forever. The Hollow was not the first link of the chain but rather the last. I am not apart of the chain. I am the smith that forged it." As she spoke, I could hear the clang of Floki's hammer striking an anvil. I recognized his rhythm and the force of his blow, the sound as unique to his being as the sound of his voice.

She knelt and took my hand while Knut took my other elbow to gently help me to my feet. "Much like the first of goblin kind, I awoke into consciousness alone. I began forging the chain, willing other beings into existence, out of loneliness. These were my children, my grandchildren. I made the first link, then my children continued it, using me to add to their power and form their own children. On and on it went. One link connected to another until The Hollow. When The Hollow discovered what it could do, what it could use me for, all of creation ceased. It used me instead to make itself nearly as immortal as I by leaping from one body to another using your kin. Immortality is not a natural thing. Even I will one day fade from existence as all things must. I have seen too many worlds and people rise and fall for its sake. It needed to be stopped."

"Why did you wait so long to interfere?" I asked.

"How eager would you be to murder one of your grandchildren?" She asked dryly, her dark eyes meeting mine knowingly. "I tried to persuade it. It wouldn't listen. I tried every alternative until I could find no other. This was my last resort." This being, this barely physical manifestation of power itself looked at me expectantly as if she answered to me, as if I held power over her. "This is why you were made, Matilda. It was I that pleaded with The Hollow to spare the humans after they fled and forced themselves to forget it. Potential, I told it, they have so much potential. And they do. So much it is impossible to measure. It wanted to see what kind of sapling would grow from seed planted in your children, but it was you that I wanted to see come into the world, you I needed and helped The Hollow form for this purpose. A goblin soul planted into a human girl. A human with a goblin's viciousness and a human's rebellious, questioning nature. A girl that would grow into a woman capable of leading armies and toppling the other kingdoms and gods alike. An Empress of Iron who could move the very mountains if she set her mind to doing so."