Ashtik: The Champion of Black.

Chapter One: Golden grasses.

Chapter One: Golden Grasses. 

There is a painting that hangs in the hall of gods. Within is held the first woman, captured and punished for an eternity over a crime nobody remembers. Her bleeding golden eyes look out in frozen anguish. A masterful stroke holds the agony in her tears, and the death in the roses they water. She holds in her hands a bundle of cloth, though only one remembers why she clings to it so tightly. Godens and Goddesses pass by the frame all the time and pay as much mind to it as they would a single leaf on a tree or a blade of golden grass in the worlds of wheat below them. 

Such wasn't always the case. When the world was young, and the gods were still curious, they would come upon it and admire her broken beauty.

 The wise gods would declare her the first human, the primordial creation of the absolute trinity.

 The gods of war saw otherwise. They claimed her the first murderer, the harbinger of ends. They believe it was she who created death, and only she who would be denied it for eternity. 

The young and revelrous gods saw her as a lech. They knew her to be the first whore and her portrait to be naught but a reminder of the consequences of sacrilegious hedonism.

There was a question asked once, by the Golden goddess. She asked of her father, "Who is she that has been hanged in our conclave all these long eternities?" And the forgotten goden answered her. 

The frame was no longer black steel, but stars and shadow. In a mouthless voice and with noiseless words nobody but his own daughter could ever comprehend, he said; "She was my blood. My sister. She was the first mortal, and the first mother." Now, the Golden goddess understood in an instant who she gazed upon.

"Why was she placed in the painting?" She asked of the shadows and stars. The winds rushed and she saw, upon the horizon, the old world of godens and goddesses. She saw the death of their world and the ascension of her kind, but she also saw a beauty with hair of crystal ice as she alone fled to the stars.

"She never became as us, as such she was fated to die alone atop the baren rock we called a world." The stars became tears on godly cheeks while the galaxy a lifetime away became his false smile. "The first gods joined our power and gave unto her, a child."
"But I was the first child." She of Gold insisted.

"You were the first to draw breath. He was the first born."

"How could a child of the gods not be carried to term?" She demanded. The painting came clearer to her and the bundle bled before her very eyes.
"We were arrogant and almost as powerful as we believed ourselves. When we saw her; when I saw her alone on that world, I assumed her solitude to be curable. She sought no cure, no child, and yet when her womb quickened, she suffered the responsibility. She bore the pains alone, while we crafted the skies above her. She slept on beds of rock and ate the sparse fruits left upon the scarred world. Then the day came, and the child did not, and she was so much more alone than she had ever been before." 

The agony of memory is a terrible thing for an ancient goden. The sapphire sun set in the middle of the day. The moon tore itself in twain and the mountains wept his tears. The rains poured in impossible colours and sparked out with glassy shards of lightning. The clouds hailed embers of emerald and the winds rushed as ruby torrents.

Then all became still, and he was gathered.

"What did she do?" The perfect daughter asked.

"She swore to end everything the gods had ever touched. She swore to destroy my bloodline. She swore to destroy all worlds that we create, she swore to grow even more powerful than I, that she might overthrow me."