Diana: What You Know
Fanfic for @thisbackworld ’s story (@withthedeadinadeadlanguage ) about a uh parasitic fae death god called (among other things) Madradena.
---
What you know
1. She is living.
She, and she alone. All that's here is her and all that comes here becomes her. The land anoints her as its only god. She is complete. She is living.
2. You are dead.
You, and all who come here. The dead she gathers to herself: the wanting, the incomplete. She alone among them lives: rises, thrives, and falls. All souls desire her: she the flame, she the wanted. All souls between her teeth. She is living. You are dead.
3. She is evil.
This you must remind yourself: all that comes here becomes her, but “here” is not the only place. Her throngs she keeps in misery and in want, and so she fashions herself a necessity. She is living; you are dead. But this is not the only Death. Her world is not inevitable. It is her making, and she must be blamed for it. She is evil.
4. They forget.
Unthinking they yield to her, and she affords them no choice in it. She rises, takes her consort: she feeds, she falls. They forget. She comes again. And perhaps she too forgets, and casts her forgetfulness unwitting as a spell over all the land. No one would know. No one can question it: such a god can not be challenged. They surrender to her and they surrender with her. As one they fall with her. As one they forget.
5. You remember.
You do not know how long you’ve been here, but you know that it has been long (and that is something). Perhaps you came here on different terms. Your memory is your weapon: you remember her past cycles—you and the Hunter, together with the resistance he’s gathered in his following. “We will defeat her,” he says—and says it tirelessly. You do not know that it is enough. You remember, you think, far more than he. You are tired. But so long as he keeps fighting, so also must you. You have, you tell yourself, something very rare among the dead: you have a purpose, and you must not abandon it. It is yourself. You, Diana, shade to the great Hunter.
You remember, and you resist.













