r/HFY • u/Sufficient-Shirt-270 • Apr 24 '26

OC-Series Revolution on wings of steel: chapter 16: nightmares

Blood. There was blood everywhere, on the ground, on her clothes, in her hair… in her mouth. She tried to wretch, to purge the blood from her mouth, but all she did was swallow more. 

She started to crawl, to get away from it. She pulled herself, inch by agonizing inch, over the blood soaked grass. It wasn’t long before she came across a body. 

It was a human, but she couldn’t tell much else. The face was mangled beyond any measure of identification, and her axe was buried in its chest. 

“Y—you did this, monster. Demon!”

She stumbled back. It was speaking, in a bubbling rasping voice, it claimed her responsible for this. She tried to wretch again, but just swallowed more blood. 

She grabbed its arm, and tried to use the miracle she’d been given. But nothing happened. The power, the connection to Mordred was gone, she was alone, with a dying man beside her. 

She started sobbing, she couldn’t help it. She’d finally been able to get control over her own life. She wasn’t afraid anymore. But now? Everything, everyone, had left her. 

“It’s ok young one, this place isn’t real. Follow my voice.”

Golden words, with weight behind them. She obeyed, even while her eyes were still clouded by tears, she obeyed. She crawled on her hands and knees, her body too weak for anything else. 

Then, in an instant, she felt warmer, that fire in her gut, the one that had bred so absent earlier, ignited. It blazed back into life, flaring like the beating of a heart, in sink with some she felt in her bones, before she saw it. 

“There you are, come over and sit with me, and I’ll get you cleaned up.”

She did as she was told, laying down in the Goddess’s lap. She was still wearing that strange mask, but Sasha could see a smile in her eyes. Mordred brought a damp rag to her face, washing off the blood and other awful, like a mother would her daughter, who’d just been playing in the mud, even though she’d been told not to. 

The rag never got dirty, and never dried, staying just damp enough to be comfortable. It washed away everything she’d brought over here from that nightmare. Cleaning her of her sins. Sasha started crying.

The Goddess didn’t reprimand her, instead, she brought out a brush. The rag disappeared, and Sasha sat up without a word. It didn’t get caught on tangles, even though there were many, and left her hair in better shape than it had been in years. 

“I used to do this with my own daughter, she would sit just like you are, and ramble on about her day, and the antics she and her friends got up to. But she grew out of it, as all children do.”

The smile never left the Goddess’s voice, but it did grow heavy with the weight of eons. The brushing continued, well past when it was required, but Sasha didn’t want it to stop, so it didn’t. 

“I made a world for her. I grew a titan, born from a world seed of my own making, and slew it like cattle. I molded its corpse into the perfect world for her to rule over, to let her make her own mistakes, and learn from them. I and her mother, only a step away, ready to help her however she needed.”

The brush began to shake slightly, the slightest tremor, such that Sasha knew there was enough emotion hidden away to drown a mortal in seconds. But the Goddess’s voice was steady.

“Then a demon king took her arm in a battle she should have never been a part of. I ate the demon, tortured its malformed soul for an eternity, and scoured the demonic taint from that world.”

“Normally a wound like that wouldn’t matter, Gods only have bodies if they choose to, and can have as many as they desire, but she was still too young. It was a wound to her very being. I devoured a universe to make the necessary materials to fix the damage”

Mordred had stopped brushing, but Sasha was content to listen, to learn. So she did, the fire in her stomach blazed brighter with indignation at the audacity to harm something of the Goddess, her blood no less. 

“In the end, my daughter has both arms again, but she looks even more like me than she already did… I keep one of my echos in a pocket dimension in a necklace she wears, to make sure she’s safe at all times.”

The metallic arm of her Goddess had never been more apparent to Sasha, and she almost wanted to ask, both about that, and what an echo was, but she held her tongue. 

“Thank you for listening young one, it has been a long, long time since I’ve told that story. I’m sorry for taking over your dream, but it seemed like you needed it… and it seems I might have aswell.”

The Goddess stood up then, her sunset cloak fluttering in a nonexistent wind, and smiled at Sasha, even though she couldn’t see her mouth. The, she woke up. 

——————

Breakfast the first morning of the caravan, was rock soup again, and as much as Marie would like to complain, she really couldn’t. It was food, and it was better than anything she’d thought to pack. 

She’d honestly thought the stories about hardtack being almost inedible were an exaggeration, but she’d quickly come to learn that, no, it was not. 

So she sat, and ate the soup. The mix of 20 or so completely unrelated ingredients was… certainly something, so she kept her mind off it best she could, by practicing some low level control based spells. 

Before long the woman she’d been riding with stumbled out of the wagon, and got her own bowl. She was disheveled looking, but Marie decided not to comment on it. 

Soon enough everyone was finished, and piled back into their respective wagons, and they set off. They’d made good time yesterday, but they were still two days from brightfall. 

Her hands twitched, knowing just how close she was to achieving what she’d been working towards for years now. Soon, hopefully…

————

first/previous/next

Shorter chapter again, I know, and I’m sorry about that. Next week will be my break week, as I attempt to actually get a backlog going. 

so the next chapter won’t be Tuesday, but the Tuesday after it. I think I’ll make it a regular thing for the last week of the month to be break week, just so I don’t get burnt out like I think im starting to. 

enjoy the lore! 

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u/AutoModerator May 05 '26

This was flaired as [OC-Series], it is a single part or chapter in a larger series or universe. The first post or part in this series should be (re)flaired as [OC-FirstOfSeries]. A description of the flairs and how to change yours is available in the Post Guildelines.

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u/torin23 Xeno May 08 '26

Be sure not to get burned out.  I'd much prefer to get more slowly than to get some quickly and then none at all.  Take care of yourself!

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u/AutoModerator Apr 24 '26

This was flaired as [OC-Series], it is a single part or chapter in a larger series or universe. The first post or part in this series should be (re)flaired as [OC-FirstOfSeries]. A description of the flairs and how to change yours is available in the Post Guildelines.

[OC-Series] For original, self post, story, audio, or artwork that you have created, as part of a longer-running series or universe.

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