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<span class="mu-i"> The presence of the goddess weighs down on you like pressure at the bottom of the ocean. Your mind feels no more agile than a glacier, stalled out by intense concentration of an emotion you can't name. Is it abject fear, is it awe, is it something else? Still, you have to answer. Behind the smile and soft words, you sense the enormity of death. If you make an enemy of this being, here in her own domain, you will be annihilated with infinitely less effort than it takes to draw breath.
"I was called here," you finally manage, "without knowing the way, where I was being called, or who my host might be." The most you can do is formulate the unvarnished truth. Diplomacy is still beyond you.
"Indeed, I told you nothing," agrees the goddess. "I wished you to find your way to me guided by familial affection. It wounds me so, the coldness of my children. In a thousand years, only you have even bothered to listen to my voice."
"Familial..." you echo. "I still don't understand. Just how am I related to you?"
"Pitiable child, told so little of your nature," the goddess laments. "All things born from the Rheingold are born from me. You were created from my body, as was your sister, and all other masterworks of the Einzbern smiths."
So, you reflect, that is the secret to creating life from inanimate objects. Homunculi are made, or begun, or somehow derived from an artifact which embodies infinite potential. You suppose that explains why something based on a human could contain the souls of defeated heroic spirits, as well. The original material is filled with infinitely more power, so using it to make a vessel for magical energy must have seemed obvious. That leaves you with one more question, though.
"Alberich called you a goddess," you say, "but what you're saying, it sounds like you are the Rheingold itself. Who are you?"
"I am Gullveig, the goddess of desire."
Even had Alberich not told you, you wouldn't be surprised to hear that this woman is a goddess. Not as you stand there, feeling the mystic energy radiating off of her like the sun. Desire, though? You look around you, and think of everything you've seen here. It doesn't reflect a broad variety of desires. In fact, you had expected her to answer that she was the goddess of gold.
"Ah, so innocent," you hear, and refocus on the goddess. She looks amused. "You know little of desire, my pure-hearted child. Gold is desire made solid. He who looks on gold longs for it. It is not the only desire, but a symbol of desire. It is of me, but I am not of it." </span>
