The Mystic Circle answered Elyonari's will across the empty chamber. Celadille stood within its outer radius with her hands clenched tightly at her chest. She knew that High Priestesses would summon a Mystic Circle if they wish to talk to the World Tree but she never expected it to be this powerful.
"This is the first time I have ever initiated this."
Celadille turned to her, startled.
"How is that possible? You're the High Priestess of Mintherenia. If anyone-"
"I was never meant to be the High Priestess."
"What?"
Elyonari drew a slow breath and placed her palm above the Circle's core. The runes reacted immediately. Their glow turned from emerald to a richer, more radiant hue.
"This rite is not communion as we know it. I do not visit Mintherenia. I call her. And in doing so, I accept whatever attention that summons entails. The rules are simple. We ask. We do not demand, we do not bargain unless invited and we accept that an answer is not always mercy."
She closed her eyes and whispered the prayer. Roots burst from the Circle. Something anchored itself to them and then pulled them under.
When Elyonari and Celadille opened their eyes, the chamber was gone.
They stood within an endless realm of green. It was a horizonless expanse where the ground was neither soil nor stone but compressed spongy Nature Energy itself. The air was thick with Nature Energy, Celadille gasped when the energy surged through her in a single, catastrophic instant.
Her skin began to break apart at the edges into white flower petals that drifted upward as though gravity had forgotten them. Elyonari reacted immediately. A hemispherical barrier snapped into place around Celadille, woven from compressed Nature Energy refined through Elyonari's power, anchoring her form before the dissolution could complete itself. Celadille collapsed to her knees, trembling.
"Th-thank you..."
Elyonari did not answer. Her eyes were fixed to the front.
The World Tree dominated the realm so much that the mind struggled to assign it scale. Its trunk was a continent of living wood, layered with veins of light the size of mountains. Its roots disappeared into infinity. Its canopy vanished upward into a sky that could not contain it. Though it felt close, Elyonari knew with absolute certainty that it was impossibly distant. Mintherenia was vast beyond comprehension and yet She appeared directly before them.
Mintherenia took the form she favored when addressing her beings. She was eight meters tall with her green colored body. Flora bloomed and withering across her form in slow cycles of life and death. Elyonari and Celadille bowed instantly.
"Rise. I did not summon you to admire the ground."
They obeyed.
The World Tree's gaze settled first on Elyonari, and something like curiosity flickered through the roots of her expression.
"It pleases me that you chose to initiate this yourself. Normally, I come to you. This time, you came to me."
"The situation is urgent," Elyonari replied without hesitation.
Mintherenia's eyes shifted to Celadille. Celadille stepped forward, hands shaking, but her voice held.
"I wish to become Divine. If I do not, my unborn child will die."
Even the circulating Nature Energy seemed to pause. Mintherenia looked her for a long moment.
"You are aware that Divinity is not salvation. It is a burden. Are you not concerned for your own life?"
"I am. Terrified, even. But this is my fault. My weakness led us here. If I were stronger, I would not be begging you now. Please, give me the chance to atone."
"To ask my aid is to accept a cost. I'm sure you know this."
Before Celadille could respond-
"I will carry it."
Mintherenia turned sharply. Celadille froze. Horror and disbelief was evident in her face as she stared at Elyonari.
"A Divine Being may endure it but an immortal cannot. Whatever price you demand, I will pay it in her stead."
For the first time since the realm had formed, Mintherenia was silent.
"A High Priestess who offers herself as collateral is not something this world produces lightly."
Elyonari met her gaze without flinching.
"I am not asking. I know how dangerous your conditions are."
Mintherenia did not answer immediately. Instead, she looked at Elyonari with an expression the World Tree almost never revealed to her.
"I did not expect this from you. Tell me, Elyonari, is this resolve yours alone? Or was it planted by that false Verdarite whom you killed?"
Elyonari froze. Mintherenia lifted one hand and with a simple gesture pulled something into being.
A cup appeared before Celadille. It was carved from pale wood with slowly blooming vines and translucent leaves. Inside the cup swirled a viscous luminous green solution heavy with condensed Nature Energy.
"Drink this. Do so before you sleep. It will stabilize your transition. Your ascension from Ascender to Divine will not tear your body apart nor will it harm your child."
Celadille stared at the cup. Her hands were shaking as she accepted it.
"Th-thank you," she whispered, tears finally spilling free. "I-thank you, Lady Mintherenia. I will never-"
"The cost," Mintherenia interrupted, turning her gaze back to Elyonari, "will be discussed separately."
Celadille bowed deeply again before she vanished. One moment she stood there clutching the cup and the next, the realm closed around her absence as though she had never been there at all. Elyonari broke the silence first.
"Why did you never tell me?"
Mintherenia tilted her head slightly.
"Tell you what?"
"That I was born from the corpse of a Verdarite and an artificial soul."
Mintherenia sighed.
"I anticipated this moment. Sooner or later, you would reach it on your own. If that is true, how do you think you came to exist?"
Elyonari closed her eyes as she began to gather all what she knew.
"My mother was born from two Verdarites. No one knows this. Anyone who did know... she either killed or died since this was known by the first elves."
Mintherenia said nothing.
"If I was formed from a Verdarite corpse and an artificial soul then that soul had to be made. Souls don't just exist. They require fuel. To give life, something must be taken. For my brother and me to exist, both my mother and you would have had to sacrifice something. But what..."
The answer hit her all at once.
Elyonari's eyes widened in pure horror. Her knees buckled and she dropped to the ground, retching violently as her body rejected the truth before her mind could even process it.
"Disgusting. That's... that's disgusting!"
She gagged again, vomiting until her vision blurred and her hands held uselessly at the living ground.
"My mother is a monster. She's a fucking monster."
Mintherenia shrank. Her towering form compressed down to a height just above Elyonari's. She knelt beside her and placed a hand against Elyonari's back as the younger Divine retched again and again.
"She used them. She used the corpses of her own parents to make us. And the power to initiate had to come from somewhere..."
Her voice cracked.
"During my birth an entire city died. Over a hundred thousand elves were crushed by an earthquake that made no sense. I always wondered how something like that could happen when all cities were protected by you."
She laughed hysterically, then vomited again.
"Now I see it. You sacrificed them. Their hundreds of thousands of souls were ripped out all at once... compressed... refined..."
Her breath came in broken gasps.
"To forge two artificial souls."
The words barely made it past her lips. She gagged again, shaking.
"Do you know what else she did? She didn't just use the corpses. She has to scrape away what was left of their identities and embed foreign souls into bodies that still remembered being someone else."
Tears streamed down her face.
"My body isn't mine. It's my grandmother's..."
Mintherenia closed her eyes.
"That means that my brother and I are made from the deaths of hundreds of thousands animated by the remnants of an entire civilization's worth of souls."
She laughed again but it was hysterical.
"Yes. That is what you are. I knew you would figure it out. Now you understand what your mother did."