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"Never trust your fears, they don't know your strengths."
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THE CAULDRON was infinite. Defining. Different than death in the way that I was aware of everything. Could feel the searing cold water around me, burning my skin like a cold lava. Could see nothing other than the inky black void around me as though I was again in the hell that had stolen me in death. An ocean of void.
The world ended and began and the eddies of this water.
Pain was a constant. A reminder and a promise of unending agony. My forever. My reality. This was it. This was my fate.
My lungs burned with the strain of the oxygen draining from my body. Claws ripping at my chest and throat as I fought the reflex to just inhale. To just give in to the lifeless water and allow it to consume me wholly. Take my mind, body, and soul.
I thrashed. I screamed, the sounds utterly consumed by the nothingness around me. There was no surface. There was no end. Only death and power and void.
I didn't know how long I had been in the water. Months. Years. Decades. Time was a mere formality in my old world, but in this...time was everything. A living, breathing being constantly moving and rippling.
Maybe I had been here for eternity, always on the brink of death, always resisting to take that final breath and flood my lungs.
Everything around me felt the same. Felt like death. The cold, the thoughts, the all consuming loneliness. Again, I was trapped within my own mind, unable to escape. Trapped and caged like an animal.
I was going to die. I was going to die here. Live in these icy depths until the universe ended. Stuck.
Panic gripped me so tightly it took all of my will not to just inhale. To give in to the deathless life around me. To remember who I was and what I fought for rather than allow myself to simply succumb to my inevitable fate.
Within the opaque cloud of my mind, I remembered. Made myself remember. Through the terror, I forced my mind to recall. For Rhys. For Feyre. For Amren. For Azriel. For Cassian. For Nesta and Elain I forced myself to know them.
If this was to be my last bit of life, I wanted that. I wanted to die knowing that I had lived. That I had not died without a fight.
That I had found true happiness.
I thrashed again, baring my teeth as I tried to swim upward. Back to the world. But I did not get anywhere. As much as I swam, as hard as my limbs kicked and moved, more distance appeared. Never ending. I would not make it to the top.
My limbs ached, throbbing with the pressure of the water and strain it took to keep myself moving within the ice I swam in. To keep a grip on consciousness rather than to simply close my eyes and stop moving.
But still, I fought. Trying to swim toward the surface even as my lungs were set aflame and the instinct to breath weighed on my every heartbeat.
Swim, Danika. I told myself over and over.
Swim—
I was yanked, back and through the folds of reality. Through darkness and light and triumph and loss. Just as I had been in death, pulled from Rhys's eyes like a phantom rope tugged on my soul.
And suddenly I could breathe in the darkness. My lungs gulped down whatever void this was, coughing and coughing as my eyes watered. Tears streamed down my face, wetting my cheeks like a small river. Sobs scrambled me entirely, fierce and commanding sobs that left my throat raw.
I placed a hand on my chest, trying to slow my erratic heartbeat even as I could no longer breath with the force of my cries. I turned in a circle. Darkness utter darkness greeted me.
I had died. Been shucked back in hell for all eternity until time ceased to exist and the world was a mere speck of dust. Another cry racked my body.
"Weak. Always so weak, Worldbreaker." A voice sounded within the darkness. So familiar that I let out a gasp I could not suppress.
A voice of worlds. Of pain and sorrow. Of joy and pleasure. All and none.
The same I had heard in death. The voice that had saved me. Returned me to life.
"Danika Archeron." the voice repeated, "Foolish name."
I found myself beyond words, swallowing my tears with every short breath I took. "Who are you?" I choked out.
An otherworldly laugh resounded through the darkness, "Your puny High Fae pray to me. Worship me." a snort as though it found it amusing. "The Mother, they call me, because I created this awful world with the very Cauldron you suffocate in now." every word was spat like a curse. A damnation. "Small beings like them never could keep their stories straight. Never possessed the depth to remember simple things like names."
Once. Only once will I break the rules for you Worldbreaker.
A god. This was a god.
I had never felt fear like this before.
"Millenia and your sorry excuse for creatures still forget my name." the being—the Mother said, "But you will not, Danika Archeron. You will remember my name in the worst of ways. My name will be the last thing you remember before you succumb to the very Cauldron I made."
Silence. All consuming silence.
The voice drawled again, "The Mother. Deanna. Cthona. I wear many faces and bear many titles, but one thing always stays the same."
Another pause.
"They always cower. Pathetic, really." it said, "Just like you. A pathetic creature molded by them." a hiss, "You have disappointed me."
I could not control my sob then. "What?"
It didn't answer. "You—you, will remember until you finally give in to death. My greatest disappointment, the only one."
This time the pause held infinite words. Other worldly words.
"Though you may be able to find solace in another." a soft snicker. "If you make it out of here. The first child I bore. Your brother, Danika Archeron."
The world shook.
What.
Brother.
Brother.
Brother.
Brother.
Brother.
Brother.
Brother.
The word echoed through my mind, pounding against my mental walls as though it was a sledge hammer splintering it bit by bit. I stopped moving, falling to the invisible floor of this dark void. My knees slamming against the inky blackness with a resounding thump, my hands catching me as my body could no longer support itself.
Brother.
But it was not that fact that truly made my heart cease beating in my chest. Made my bones chill to ice as pure and undiluted terror spliced through my veins. Cutting me open entirely as my chest was ripped open.
The first child I mothered. Your brother.
No.
No. No. Panic grasped me so tightly I felt my heart constrict. Felt myself barely holding on to the last of my air as the only thing that kept me from breathing in in my panicked state was the need to live.
The voice laughed in my face. Relishing in my fear. "Yes, Worldbreaker." it said, "You are my sorry excuse of a daughter."
Everything stopped entirely. Time, life, will, need, sorrow. It all drained away into nothingness.
Dread. Horror. Shock. The only three things I felt in that moment.
Impossible and yet not.
"Born at a different time in a different world. But...your brother exists nonetheless." another laugh if if my pain, my agony was the most amusing form of entertainment. "So, no, Daughter," she spat, "you will not become mortal. Because you ever were.
"And this...this illusion. You will not survive this. You will die knowing that you could have lived." amusement dripped from the voice's tone, "And you will die knowing that I could have saved you, but...you are simply not with saving.
"I will not break the rules for you again, Worldbreaker."
And then it was gone, and I felt its absence as though my heart had been ripped from my chest. Preventing the blood from my veins as I was thrust back into the murky waters of the Cauldron. The pain returned in full, the ice chipping away at my consciousness, my will with ever passing, slow beat of my heart. Nothing left behind as though that voice, that woman—my mother, was never there at all. Maybe she wasn't. Maybe it was a cruel figment of my imagination created in my last moments of life. Conjured in the wake of my doom.
I felt myself grow cold, felt the fight leave my bones as I curled in on myself. As I realized this would be my end. My demise. I would leave the world in shambles while war was imminent, leave my mate behind, leave my friends and family.
There's no one left to save you now, Danika.
And they were right.
They were always right. I would not be saved by anyone. Not in the cold depths of the Cauldron where no one and nothing besides the water everywhere the eyes could see could reach me. But I would not go quietly.
There was a time when I had wished for death, pleaded with the gods to take me and spare me from what I perceived to be a life of horror and despair. But I had seen the good...seen the light and the joy that could be brought when surrounded by those you love. I saw the beauties the world held, the sights, the people. And I would not give that up easily. I would not let myself give that up.
There was no one left to save me now.
And so I must save myself.
A/N: Gotta love Dani tbh. She's such a queen
Think, friends, who could her brother be....
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