Letoskvida (Lay of Leto)
I was born among a meek hatch of eggs, and my so-could-be-called siblings were just as weak as me. Our community lived deep within the Great Ocean, below the treacherous seas and dangerous sub-aquatic life that lurks beneath. We lived in the deep dark, our black eyes adjusted to see the bare minimum we did not waste our echo-location, and often times magic given sight, on.
Our magic, the Deep Ocean magic that manifests as help in every-day life, in healing, or in foresight, is inherited in unusually strong-willed individuals, always born from strong and plentiful batches of eggs. The ones not gifted with the Deep Ocean magic were trained as warriors, hunters, and servants to those chosen.
I would, as my weak batch of siblings would with me, become a warrior or servant. Those capable, would train their speed, their reflexes, and their dexterity with their respective teachers.
Others would be assigned groups with one job: to make whoever asked of us as comfortable and as content as possible. My siblings, many small and weak, did not often succeed. And, dared I wonder along with our superiors, what would such failures and weaklings be good for? I did not feel remorse when they were outcast, exiled, or sacrificed to the Goddess.
The Goddess, of course, as our religious superiors have taught us, had retired to live in the Deep, for it is the coldest of all Niflheim, the name she called us. Every day our people would feel the frost and the cold, they would tell the young that it is the Goddess blessing them with energy to work harder, and to survive another day. As I grew older, I felt the cold on my fins and tail more and more frequently. I relished in the idea of our Goddess blessing me this way.
The frost, a strong proof of our belief, encouraged me to strive to get closer to one of the students of the Arcane, a young blessed with the Deep Ocean’s heart. They were, as all others, not inclined to talk to us. I understood this, for it did not reveal true nature of the person, only the wisdom to avoid the punishment inevitably brought upon them by their superiors and teachers. I often felt the fear of failure myself.
Until I heard the voices. I was convinced that She, our lady Goddess of Ragnarök spoke to me herself. She had told me, and called me by my name, this: “Leto, my child. Embrace the cold.”
I could not contain my excitement any longer, and found the gifted, magic-blessed student when they were alone, and I dared to speak to them. “Tilliane, I have heard the calling of our Goddess! She spoke to me – I heard a voice in my sleep.”
They looked at me with panic in their eyes, quickly using a Detect Thoughts spell to see whether anyone heard or saw us. I sharpened my senses too, but found no one. When they looked back at me, their eyes pure black again, they almost sounded jealous.
“You cannot say this!” they scolded me. Then they asked for my name, and I gave it. They waved their fingers, weaving small thread of light between them, dancing on their webbing. I promptly felt a headache, and then my hand being held, and twisted.
“Leto, do not spread lies. The Goddess Skaði” they called her by her name, which none other would dare, “could not have spoken to you. You do not even have the gift.”
I felt hurt. I did not talk to this gifted again. They were only a few years older than me, but they weren’t too young to understand the importance of my visions.
That night, the voice spoke again. “Do you know what you must do, child?” I woke up with frost enveloping my fingers, my neck gills stiff. After few breaths, the colour returned to my fingers, and my sight became slightly clearer. I did my duties, as I would every day, for fear of death or punishment at hand of people with more power always made me strive to push further, and I pondered on the question.
‘What must I do? Must I go out of my way to seek the cold and the frost? Must I step out of the line, and see if I get punished? Must I test whether the voice is real, and expect protection from it? Must I prove myself another way? Must I question my orders, for there is a power higher than the one I serve? Must I... act on the disrespect acted upon me?’
Yes, I thought, that had to be the answer. Would it be enough, for me to figure this out, or would I have to act upon it to prove myself? I had questions, and my mind was fogged and unclear for the entire day. My attention distracted, I continued my duties beyond my assigned time that day. I met the other half of our society, the merfolk who live during the night.
In our community, we were divided in halves. We did not choose this, nor got assigned, but it was predetermined by the time of our birth. For me, my day lasted for twenty segments of time, and my sleep lasted for the remaining twenty segments of the day. For the other part of the society, their day started when mine ended, and they slept while I was awake. The community never slept as whole, one half working during half of the day, the other half working during the other part of the day. This was always the case in our community, for life after Ragnarök came with many dangers, and defences against them were implemented by never letting our guard down. The teachers said this kept our society from being attacked in a hundred of cycles.
The Night Half, as I liked to call them, rolled out into the hallways and corridors. They lived their life as normal, the gifted studying and honing their talents, the weak cleaning around them and tending to their needs, and the strong training and practising fighting. It was night for my mind, but not for my body. I continued to do my duties, wondering whether my body will hold the next day. At the back of my mind, I trusted our Goddess to protect me if I would not. As I was attending to one gifted, in their class as they listened, I absently listened to the teacher too. They explained the tactics of wars, and how our fellow merfolk would attack our community all those cycles ago. They talked about the cunningness, the wittiness, and most importantly, their defeat and our superior tactics. I was about to leave into the tall corridor where I would swim on the bottom, until I heard an unusual thing. The teacher’s voice... it turned into our Goddess! She spoke, as she had before during night, from teacher’s mouth, and she said, “All these wars, all these tactics. I did not wish for them, when I created this world. My goal was to avoid them, really. The old gods, they were destined to fight a war, and they would all perish in it. I did the job for them, and annihilated them to the last one instead.”
The teacher noticed me staring, and though her voice was still the Goddess’, their eyes indicated I needed to leave. I panicked. I left the room, and I heard another student passing me by, not paying attention to me, start speaking. “Worry not, you can hear me through anything. I am not them, after all, I am talking to you only, Leto.”
I jumped out of surprise, and started moving forward. Every person who passed me, they spoke, and I listened. “And yet, after the carnage of Ásgarðr, the people who remained did not go in my footsteps. They did not understand the so-called Ragnarök I have brought upon is not meant to be conveyed through endless wars of tactics and waiting, of patience and planning. It was meant to encourage one, and this one singular thing only: ruthless and cold murder.”
I had arrived at my sleeping room by the time passing figures had finished saying these words of the Goddess. I could not find anyone for her to speak through, and I could not attempt to sleep before she finished talking. So I reached for a broken piece of reflective surface, and my weak vision reflected my own face. It looked tired. But the reflection spoke. “Clever, Leto. Oh I do wish you would stay up more often. It is so much easier to reach your clear and conscious mind than the fuzzy, asleep mind. Carry out the duty, my dear, and you will be rewarded.”
I only had five segments of the day to sleep that day, but the Goddess has blessed me with strength to carry out my next day enveloped in cold and dark waters. I sought out Tilliane again, and with no hesitation, a knife made out of ice pierced through their neck, and by my hands, they perished.
After that day, I would only sleep every third day, and listen to the Goddess’ voice the remaining two. The exhaustion I would feel at the end of the third day before my sleep caused me to sleep so deeply I could not hear the Goddess in my sleep at all. I did push through every time, for it would be a cycle closer.
For cycles, I listened to the words of the Goddess, and I carried out her wishes. Her delight helped me push through the pain every time, and her laugh helped me stay awake to please her.
Until, one day, cycles I stopped counting the number of, I could not stay awake any more. The ache, the freezing pain in my tail and hands, the unbearable fuzz and pinch in my head, my webbing had gone tattered, my hair unkept and my ear-fins torn.
I was asleep, my eyes closed and my mind blank, but my body moved, seemingly on its own. I was but a puppet for the Goddess, and she carried out her will. My body moved, effortlessly across the water until it reached the teachers. It hid at the back of the rooms, in the darkness, where others did not bother looking clearly, and though I was not capable of it before, one of the teachers, and this was specifically one that was cruel to me before, they felt a sharp pain in their chest, where the heart was, and they began to float upwards, unmoving. There was an icy sharp blade between their scales, perfectly fitting, but none of the students saw anyone putting it through.
The students panicked, attempting to heal the teacher, the ones who had the gift of healing from the Goddess, but could not do anything, for she was the one who acted upon this, and would not let her powers be misused to undo it.
I could not do anything, for my body would not answer to me yet, and my senses barely registered what was happening around me. The water took me, and my eyes, previously ichor black, were bright green pupils, with black around them. It was said, those were The Goddess Skađi’s eyes. People stepped away from my path, and looked with horror. Our eyes, they are always one color, and the color fills in the entire eyeball. It was unseen to have human, or in this case, elven eyes. It terrified them for understandable reason, and I could not do anything.
Across the city centre, my body in the hands of the Goddess has reached buildings where our leaders lived. Half of them were sleeping, half of them were working. First, we went for the sleeping rooms. With a small gesture of my hands, bolts and blades and sharp icicles impaled all of them in an instant. The black blood was flowing through the water, warming it up. Ice enveloped my hands, my fins, my tail. They were as hard and sharp as knives. My body moved, and the politicians and leaders who were in their awake hours, as I’d reached their rooms, were impaled all the same. I could not have time to wonder whether this was the power of the Goddess herself, or the power she had given me.
She moved my hand, a swiping motion in front of my eyes, and a throne appeared. At the side, a small engraving, in the language of Elves, runes I could not read before, but I read without a thought, it said Leto, the Queen of the Underseas. I panicked, and though I could not move, I wanted to run. The goddess, either unaware, or ignoring the feeling I could not express, moved my body further, and I felt the ice on my fins healing their torn state, healing their ugly color to a healthy green. One of my duty-assigned leaders saw me, on the way to my room. They hurried towards me, not seeing my face, as they were behind, and reached for my hand. The ice scratched them, and burned them. They hissed, and flew in front, to stop me.
“Leto, what is the meaning of this? The students whose sector you are assigned to said none of them saw you. Do you want to be exiled? Or even worse, sa-” they could not finish their sentence before they started choking, their breath hitched and stopped. The Goddess’ eyes stared at them, and the movement she did with my fingers I could barely feel. “Silence.” she said through my mouth, her voice apparent. We swam forward, leaving another dead body in our wake. We swam to my room, and to my surprise, we did not stop. She pulled my body further, from the closet-sized servant rooms, as mine was, further to the rooms of promising mages, clerics, children with talent. With a disgust I could hear coming from my mouth again, the Goddess waved my hand across the biggest room, killing its resident, a royal child, heir to the leader of the community, in an instant.
The body moved as if on its own, and it was put outside, through a window made out of soft liquid glass that it passed through. And so, I was in the room, door behind me locked. I felt the Goddess leave my body, and appear in front of me, for first time, as herself. She was almost bigger than myself, her gills were covered behind fur that floated around her neck, and she had legs, which surprised me for a brief moment, but her skin was dark blue, and I could see the scales on it. Her eyes had pupils, bright green on black, her blonder hair floated everywhere.
“What do you say, Leto?” she extended her arms, and I, in control of my body again, did not hesitate to take them. She pulled me closer, and I found myself in the Goddess’s embrace, dragging my hands along the fur and her hair, her sharp scales and cold body. Her embrace was tight and strong, and I could feel her hands feeling my body, relaxing. I did not know what she wanted me to answer, but soon my mind became blank again, and I could not focus on anything anymore.
I woke up, again, in her embrace. The robes she wore were discarded, and I could feel the scales of her chest, uncovered, unlike ours. Her skin was moving slightly, like the ocean, and her cold hands held me close, close so I could hear the slow thumps of her heart. I could feel it, resonating through her entire body, the water around us acclimating to the resonance. I wanted to close my eyes again, thinking of the previous hours, not let her know I was up, and what would follow. I did not know, but I was afraid.
“You cannot be afraid, darling. I will not harm you.”
I hitched my breath. “My apologies. I did not know you would...” I stopped myself. I did not want to finish that sentence and insult her any further.
“The changes that you did yesterday were real, Leto. Do you understand?” I thought for a minute. I did not know I did those changes. But I did, of course. I nodded, and she pulled me up, to be face to face with her. My hands could not let go of her, they hovered on her hips. I nodded again.
“You will rule in my name. I will give you power to do so. Do you agree?”
I nodded again. “Speak.” she said. “Yes, anything, My Goddess.” I said. “Do you wish for more?” she asked. “No, my Goddess. I will perform what I must in your name, always.”
She smiled. She landed a gentle kiss on my mouth, and, fully clothed again, she reached for my arm, carved a rune I did not recognize on my forearm, right below my hand. It disappeared as soon as I looked at it again, and I felt my hands, my fins, my tail become cold again. She smiled, a vision I dared not forget, for the sweetness and love coursed through me thanks to it, and she disappeared. I could not wait for the time I would see her again.
I swam, my fins and tail translucent white, to the throne, and I sat. Listening to the words of my Goddess, she helped me rule, and I helped our small community to become a Kingdom, and eventually, to rule over the entire world of Niflheimr, my own world of Darkness.
Leto
they/them/theirs & she/her/hers
Leto is a merfolk warlock of the Fathomless Goddess, Deep Sea Sorcerer, Queen of Niflheim and Queen of the Deep.
They were born into society that values magic and natural talent, and they were born with none. The talentless would be divided into warriors and servants, Leto ended up a servant. Niflheim's society never slept, keeping half the population up while half the population sleep, knowing no day nor night. Completely underwater, they lived to defend their cities from neighbouring cities.
One day-cycle, Leto heard the Goddess' voice. They confessed this to one of the mages they were looking after, Tilliane, who called them a liar and told them to not spread lies. Leto listened, and the Goddess' first challenge for Leto was to sacrifice Tilliane.
Leto showed the power of the Goddess, and rebuilt the society of Niflheim in ten years, putting merfolk into leading class.
Once a world of various Merfolk and triton communities, they were unified by the hand of the Queen Leto. Once a society divided by the arcane talent, now everyone has their own duties and jobs not based on magic.
Common races of Niflheim:
- Merfolk: hightened to the highest in the social standing by the Queen who united all communities and kingdoms, they rule and live free. Highest education, mostly leaders in Temples.
- Sirens: the siren species are almost indistinguishable from merfolk, often confused, except for their scaley wings that make up their tail. Their voices charm people by default, so they often do not use them.
- Naga: the naga race has been enslaved as servants, fufilling duties previously done by lower class merfolk. Many previous low class merfolk do not treat them badly, on virtue of knowing the hardships. They rarely have education, unless the merfolk they serve decide to teach them.
- The Naga race worships an old god, the sea god before Skadi became the Goddess. They call her the Frozen One/Lady M – Marzana/Morana. They all pretend to praise Skadi as their Goddess, but most of them have their own beliefs. They do not support the cultists, they’d rather keep what they have than lose more than they’d like.
- Triton: they are fairly common, but mostly low class, unless married into a merfolk family. Often do not have Naga servants.
- rare but seen races: yuan-ti, gith, water genasi, lizardfolk
- Less seen races live in small communities, disregarded by the higher class citizens, they do not participate in important rituals. They rarely share the religion of the Goddess.
