Libero’s final crime was nothing of note. A simple traipse through the garden of the patron of Order, where he grew perfectly symmetrical white flowers. He moved to a tune that no one else could hear, and his dance was so wild and free that he trampled a plot of them before he’d even realized it. In the moment he did, he was swept up by the Gods of Order, Justice, and Discipline and brought before them so that he might receive proper punishment for his misgivings. The God of Order, naturally, pressed that this was simply the final nail in a coffin filled with disrespect and disregard. He asked that they punish him with the full extent of their reach. The God of Justice, on the other hand, insisted that this faux pas deserved nothing of the sort. She dismissed him as bitter and insisted that they let Libero go with a warning.

       When the God of Discipline’s turn to speak came, she came down on the side of Justice. t was such a small crime, she insisted, and so the punishment should be sized to match. This greatly surprised Order, but it mattered very little to him. His strength outmatched his sisters’. Without their blessing, he sentenced Libero to the Nothing. There, Libero would be forced to sit in contemplation until his name was no longer spoken and he faded to the ether.

       The moment that Libero found himself there, he found it so unforgivable a punishment that he vowed no one would ever find themselves locked in there again. He stretched himself as far as he would go, making himself larger than imaginable so that he could take up as much space as possible. He took fistfuls of the flowers he’d trampled, and he scattered them where his body would not go. And when that still did not fill the space, he took a deep breath and held it until his lungs were filled with miasma, which he then breathed out to engulf any open gaps. He has not moved since.

       I have never been to The Nothing, and so I have never seen Libero. I have only heard of him in the whispers of the oppressed, or in stories told to me by the Gods who recall him with fondness. I sat at my patron’s feet as he described to me a fledgling filled with light and joy and zest for life that many had forgotten by the time of his appearance. And as I heard these stories of him, I wondered: what was Libero created to do? Was he once a God of child-like wonder? Or was he meant to be the patron of the good time: the air in your lungs as you dance around the fire; or the taste of wine on the tip of your tongue; or the way that your heart flutters when something excites you for the very first time?

       Perhaps he was imagined to be a martyr all along. Perhaps, from the very moment he took his first breath, he was meant to fill The Nothing so that no one would ever go there again. He is kept there by the downtrodden that cry out to him, and he stays so that they may never find themselves in his pitiable state.

       Were I strong enough to fight the Gods, I might go take his place so that he could dance once more. His current fate does him no justice. Perhaps that is why she and her sister split themselves from the body that they once shared with Order, but that is a story for another time.

       -From the Oracle Notes of Kaelmorn Teverin