“By definition, we will know only about his failures”, Azazel noted. “If he managed to acquire someone’s soul, that person will not arrive here to tell us about it”. The war council was more chaotic than usual this time, since the threat description was the most vague they ever faced. “This means we need to find out his success ratio, to begin with”.

“But what’s the actual point of this? Why does he need souls? Is he trying to absorb them into himself? Use their energy to fix some degenerative issue he is facing?”, Zina shrugged.

“I think I have a good enough idea of what he’s doing, although I’m not so certain about why”, Shakti took the word.

“Tell me, how do you catch a mouse?”, she smiled at Zina.

“Well, you make a trap, and then put a piece of something mice like to eat inside it, so that he would be attracted inside, and couldn’t come out later”, Zina smiled back.

“Exactly. But what happens when you leave the trap unattended for a while?”, Shakti proceeded with her argument.

“You will find a trap full of half-eaten mice and mouse skeletons inside, with maybe one live mouse, if you came soon enough, because as they won’t be able to come out, they will starve and resort to cannibalism”, Zina frowned.

“And let’s say the bait is of some kind that can’t be consumed, and remains attractive forever. Let’s say it’s a sound that attracts deer, of the kind hunters will use to lure them into the kill zone. And let’s say the sound keeps making itself, powered by wind or water, so that you don’t need a man there to make it. And let’s say a kill zone is something like a cliff masked by natural fog, where the deer will come and fall to their deaths”, Shakti nodded.

“You would have a perpetual, automatic killing machine”, Azazel commented. “So that’s what you meant by attractors. You think he’s using the powerful souls as an energy source that will serve as bait for some trap he will use in order to lure souls into something fatal”.

“But why? Isn’t his world itself enough of a fatal trap? Souls are already being caught in a reincarnation loop there, thinking they’ll do better the next time, correct their errors, pay for their sins, acquire something that they failed to acquire before and so on. If he wanted to cause harm and show that most souls are foolish and are in heaven merely by accident, because nothing really tested them before, then mission accomplished. Making it more lethal would contribute very little to what he already has, while exposing him to possible karmic repercussions if he goes too far”, Zina countered.

“That would certainly be the case for the world as he initially made it, the extremely spiritually deadly kind you were exposed to in your earthly life”, Lord Shiva joined the discussion. “However, we’ve been making moves of our own. We introduced transcendence and hope where there used to be nothing but darkness and despair. We introduced sources that were converted into actual knowledge down there. Lord Buddha started the process. It was developed upon by Lord Vishnu who sent Jesus down there, and introduced sources of eternal light. They have a Church that teaches things that are true enough to really lead to salvation. They have Hindu scriptures that actually tell true things about actual Gods. They have access to puja and bhakti, which are similar enough to what we practice ourselves. At this point, the world consists of his darkness, and genuine sources of light that lead to salvation”.

“And he wants to introduce sources of light of his own – not false light that could easily be dismissed, but true spiritual light; only leading onto perilous paths that cause ruin”, Azazel nodded.

“Exactly”, his father smiled. “As things stand now, any source of light you find will lead you to salvation. The mission is simple: find spiritual light, hold on to it, wait until you die and you are saved. What he seems to be up to is introducing alternatives, where the light is real, but if you follow it you are ruined”.

“And the result will be either much reduced effectiveness of everything we’ve done so far, or people will stop following spiritual light of any kind, because of the great probability that it is ruinous”, Shakti nodded at her husband.

“And he won’t have to lift a finger. He will just arm the trap and let the mice eat each other, each thinking that the prior victims were losers and he himself will do better, probably due to some intoxicating effect of the bait”, Zina joined in.

“Do we have anything specific? I mean, it’s good to understand the general idea, but I’d like to see what he actually did, so that we can develop countermeasures”, Azazel looked at his mother questioningly.

“It’s hard to figure it out from the outside, because we don’t actually have access to the things the Jewel is doing in there, so we are forced to draw conjecture based on whatever evidence manages to find its way out, which is doubly difficult because if his traps work, the victims don’t come out”, Shakti shrugged. “However, Lord Buddha has found a pattern in some of his recent ‘patients’, so I’ll let him explain”, she smiled to Shakyamuni.

“They call themselves ‘good men’ and ‘good women’, ‘the pure ones’, ‘the ones favoured by God’. The Christians call them the Cathari, which means ‘the pure ones’ in Greek. The origins of the philosophy seem to be Zoroastrian, like the Manicheans that were around during the late Roman period. They teach that there are two opposed Gods in action – one evil one that created the material world with all the evil and suffering, and the good one that created the spiritual world, with souls, angels and Jesus. They think the souls get trapped into a reincarnation cycle on Earth because they are attracted by the material world and what it has to offer, and the solution is to let go and purify oneself from all the material desires and inclinations”, Buddha raised his eyebrows significantly.

“This looks pretty much spot on”, Kay remarked. “It’s actually more accurate than what the Church teaches, and among the most technically accurate theologies I’ve ever seen developed down there”.

“It is, but it only goes to say that theological accuracy isn’t all that you would expect it to be. Because, you see, they have one major flaw”, he sighed. “Their moral teaching is incredibly bad. They essentially say that in order to get purified from the world, you need to accept a vow of extreme renunciation that is in essence suicide by starvation. But if you don’t aspire to perfection, it’s enough to not take things seriously. Know that the world is not important. It doesn’t matter what you do, because it’s just matter, an opposite to the spirit which is pure. There is no truth in the world, so it doesn’t matter if you say the truth or not. It doesn’t matter whether you steal, rape or murder, because it’s just matter, and if you kill people you free them from the physical so you’re actually helping them. If you steal their things, it’s fine because they were attached to things and shouldn’t be, and everybody should have access to them anyway, because all men are equal. Do you now see the problem?”, he asked nobody in particular.

“It’s all the exact opposite of what you need to do in order to be a good person and not destroy your soul with evil”, the Love of God nodded. “You don’t hold on to truth and do good because physical matter is important, but because speaking the truth and doing good is what makes your soul good and true. You need to act as if everything matters even if you’re under an illusion, because by doing so, you become the one who matters. If you act as if nothing matters, your soul will be lost”.

“Exactly”, her husband nodded in assent. “What I noticed in the memories of the victims of the Cathari, who ended up being my patients, is how the Cathari acted. They were like beasts that were let out of a cage, filled with self-righteousness of the ones who are on the right path and who know the true light. They looked as if under influence of some drug that caused arrogance and hubris; they thought they were fighting the evil oppressors and fighting for what is right, for equality and emancipation from the yoke of the Church and the feudal system and so on”.

“This sounds very familiar”, Azazel’s eyes were wide. “It’s as if I’m listening to Sanat Kumar again, in his deranged madness”.

“Thank you for that information, my friend, for it confirms my guesses. Sanat Kumar created some kind of a script, powered by genuine spiritual sources, that amplifies mental patterns that resemble his own, and in direct proportion to the similarity. I don’t think he created the Cathari to oppose the Church; that would be too simplistic, and also too specific. I think he’s trying to turn souls into copies of himself, as they aggregate around the attractors like moths around the flame”, Buddha finished.

“This is giving me flashes of memories, and not of the kind I would prefer to have”, Azazel nodded grimly. “It fits his pattern exactly – he speaks of emancipation of souls, but what he means is turning them into lesser copies of himself, over which he will reign supreme. He also couldn’t stop talking about conspiracies of the ruling elite, which in his case meant the Gods, to whom he attributed all sorts of invented nonsense, and different each day as he rambled on. I think he will empower this mentality in others, make them drunk with hubris, make them overthrow any system in power the way he wanted to overthrow the Gods and the system of dharma, and the Cathari are merely a specific case of this madness, and likely a lesser one, as his attractors grow in power. And I would also expect the souls that fall under the influence of the attractors to basically be destroyed after death and join the power of the attractor, because it was what they chose as their destiny”, he concluded.

“And the worst thing about it is, I have no idea how to counter it effectively, other than by dismantling the attractors themselves, breaking down their power source to the level of kalapas and spending it all”, Shiva shrugged grimly. “It’s an incredibly elegant design”.

“Is there evidence that the attractors absorb their victims and thus grow the size of the ‘bait’?”, Azazel asked.

“Let me run the equations”, the Mind of God nodded. “Yes. The souls choose that light source as their spiritual direction, and end up belonging to it. It thus grows bigger. However, since all the impurities and evils also join it, the source grows more corrupted and less pure as it grows in size. It eventually ends up looking like a terrible abomination, and, as such, loses attractiveness and becomes more easily discernible as evil by the souls that seek the way out”, she nodded.

“Is there a way we can oppose this?”, Lady Zina asked her husband.

“Not really”, he shrugged. “Any direct opposition would feed it, as it would be interpreted as darkness trying to extinguish their true light. It can’t be dismantled from the outside. We also can’t blame Sanat Kumar for any of it since he’s doing what he said he would initially – provide alternatives. He’s certainly doing that. He’s also not forcing anyone to choose”.

“Can we at least stop his soul-purchasing? He’s claiming to offer deals. Is there evidence that he’s holding up to his side of the bargain?”, Lord Jesus scratched his chin.

“It would be in his long-term interest to uphold his part, especially since it’s usually quite easy for him”, Lord Buddha answered. “If he’s cheating, it brings him minor benefits at the cost of the whole project failing. Thus, self interest will motivate him to be fair”.

“Yes, in a direct sense, where you will get what you agreed for in exchange for your soul. However, he’s likely to cause the problem he offers to solve, in the first place”, Azazel noted.

“How immediate is this problem?”, Zina looked at everybody.

“It’s a slow rolling avalanche. He will need centuries to build momentum, as he needs quite a bit of power to get anywhere close to the level of attractiveness of what we installed through our labours”, Lord Vishnu offered. “However, as I see it, he will approach equal attraction within a few centuries, with the curve starting to grow exponentially after that. At some point, he will completely overwhelm and dwarf our efforts”.

“You mean, he is going to win?”, Mary of Magdala voiced her incredulity.

“No”, he waved decisively. “All he’s doing is inherently self-defeating. He’s creating one hysterical mania after another – all kinds of revolutionary and ‘liberation’ movements one after another, that will throw men and women into a furnace, but all the ‘victories’ he can achieve will be illusory and eventually cautionary. He will demonstrate that all the paths alternative to the one we are showing end up in pools of blood and terrible misery. And, as he will exhaust his attempts, he will also run out of time”.

“But until he does, he will cause terrible harm. As he powers his conspiracy theories with those genuine spiritual sources, he will convince the souls of all kinds of terribly harmful ideas that will keep having consequences long after he is gone”, Azazel spoke out his despondency. “I’ve heard enough of his nonsense to know how insidious it is, how it affects your thinking patterns and how it turns you into a resentful, self-sabotaging mess”.

“We will keep losing souls at an increasing pace, and damage to the survivors will be such that we might have to quarantine them indefinitely, because they could otherwise harm others with their madness”, Buddha conceded. “So far, the damage we had to contend with was caused mostly by suffering and loss, and, rarely, by the willing acceptance of evil. With all those attractors he is about to install, he will cause true deviations from the spiritual path, of the kind where people genuinely believe them to be the actual path of emancipation and a greater truth. Satan resented souls that were greater than him. He might cause everybody to resent any form of greatness and power, interpreting it as injustice and abuse. He will encourage hubris, arrogance and defiance. He will portray love as weakness, service as humiliation, and satisfaction as a sign of inferiority. The level to which this can be destructive can’t even be predicted. Sure, I expect his first trial runs, such as the Cathari, to be wiped out. But eventually, something of that sort is going to actually take hold, and then hell is going to reign on Earth”.

“Hell reigns on Earth where Islam reigns, or where the Cathari currently reign, or where the Mongols pass. The only places where hell doesn’t reign are where our tears touched the Earth, or where our light has broken through, and he did everything he could to splatter mud all over those places, to keep them inconspicuous. While he is in power, hell reigns on Earth, period, and we are merely treating the casualties. But eventually, we’ll have to finish this in some way that will end this disaster, and hopefully in a good way, right?”, Lady Lakshmi asked.

“Yes”, Lord Shiva nodded decisively. “My wife and I will deal with this ourselves, as the end approaches. But until then, we must contend with limiting the damage on an individual basis. Inspire the good, help those who suffer, shine the light that will bring them home safely. And considering the amount of spiritual damage he is about to inflict, dealing with the aftermath is not going to be a picnic”, he smiled as if he ate a lemon.

“So, we’re about to have an age of enlightenment, with all the light he will be shining, generous and good soul that he is”, Kay grinned mischievously. “Oh joy, oh splendour”.

“Daddy, why didn’t Jesus and Mary save us when we prayed to them?”

The man sighed and considered the question for a while. “It is complicated, Albert, but I’ll try to tell you how I see it. It’s not necessarily exactly right, because I don’t know much either, but I will try”. The child nodded seriously.

“I don’t think the Church taught us exactly how things are. You can see for yourself how things are different than we were taught. For instance, they said that Jesus brought salvation to mankind, but they meant it in a sense of forgiveness of sins, and in reality, it seems to be about the light of God reaching through the darkness of the world, so that everybody who holds on to it and believes in it could be saved. However, the Church teaches that everybody has a soul, and that the souls are all equal, and that doesn’t seem to be the case at all, because there are much more people on Earth than there are souls that came from heaven. And so, it seems that I had a soul; more accurately, that I was a soul, while you, your sister and mommy were born on Earth for the first time and you could develop souls, but it would require some time, and you just started forming souls when you died. This means you would have either died for real, as your body died, or you would have gone to a place where souls go if they don’t know or don’t care about God”, he frowned.

“Does this mean that the light our Lady sent to us gave us God?”, the little girl asked.

“I think it means exactly that, Hilde. When I died and came before her, I pled with her to save you, and she told me there is nothing she can do, because that world is under the rule of Satan and God has no power there other than spiritual influence and pointing the way out, which Jesus bought with his sacrifice on the cross. She wept with me as she sent me away, and I was certain that nothing could be done and was heartbroken. However, as we were later told, she was so distraught that she sacrificed a part of her own soul and sent it to the three of you, so that if you accepted her light, you could have eternal life and come to live here with me”, he smiled at his daughter.

“Does this mean that our Lady is greater than Jesus? If Jesus couldn’t save us, and she did, does it mean she is the real God?”, the girl frowned.

“No. From what I was told, the Lady and Jesus are equals. Both are persons of the One True God, and they seem to be like brother and sister. They are both equally holy and we need to respect them. Lady Hypatia, however, made a personal sacrifice for our family, the way Jesus did for all of Earth, and this is why our family owes her a great debt and we will always worship her as our personal saviour”, he finished, and both children nodded seriously.

“But why is this an exception? I am sure that many others suffered like we did. Many people in our village died of hunger just this winter, and yet we heard that we are the first case in history that someone was saved like we were? Wouldn’t it be righteous that all are saved?”, his wife voiced her thoughts.

“It’s a good question. However, from what I managed to understand listening to Lord Teacher Padmasambhava, righteousness has absolutely nothing to do with any of it. In essence, Satan created that world to spite God. The souls that went there did so out of their own free will, and against Gods’ advice. This means nobody owed me anything, as I made my own choice and the fact that it turned out bad was my own fault. As for you, you were born there according to the natural order of things in that place, and you also had no claim to any special treatment. The Judges of Karma that receive the dead are volunteers; they help out of the goodness of their hearts, not out of duty or obligation of any kind. They could all stop doing it at any moment and nobody would think worse of them, let alone punish them. God sent Jesus there out of his goodness and compassion, not out of obligation. In essence, we don’t have the right to anything, quite literally. We mixed our fates with Satan, or were born in his world, and if we had any rights to begin with, we forfeited them as we got involved with his rebellion against God. The very fact that there are Gods who spend most of their time helping the unfortunate souls that come to heaven from Earth, all broken and suffering, is a great mercy in itself. The fact that God put the Light of Christ in the world to give us hope and salvation is also a great mercy. But what the Lady did for us, it exceeds anything that ever happened to anyone in the history of mankind. She wept for us and pled our case before other Gods, and sacrificed a part of her own soul to give you an opportunity to have eternal life, if you accepted it, which you fortunately all did. This is not a right. It is such an exceptional mercy, that even the other Gods seem to be stunned at what she did”, the man’s voice shook, and his wife embraced him.

“The Light of God that came for us, was that part of the Lady’s soul?”, Hilde asked.

“Yes”, the man nodded solemnly.

“It was so clear and wonderful”, the girl nodded and smiled. “It was the best thing I ever felt in my entire life. But you say the light of Jesus was also there. Why didn’t I feel it? When I heard about Jesus, it was all confusing and I didn’t understand anything, and I didn’t feel his light”, she continued.

“That’s because it’s hard. To perceive the light of Christ, as they told me, you need to really understand the Bible, and understand who Christ was, and get the feeling of his holy presence, and then you latch onto his light, which the Church calls the Holy Spirit, and you need to always follow its guidance in all that you do. However, it’s not easy and not everybody succeeds. Also, Satan is working really hard to confuse people and distract them from this, so that they wouldn’t get eternal life, and would stay enslaved to him on Earth, being born again there or going to that desolate, terrible place where godless souls go when they die”, Berfrid ruffled the girl’s hair.

“I can’t imagine how wonderful it must be to be the Lady, if a small part of her soul, that she sent for us, felt so wonderful. It was God, and we accepted it instantly because it was such truth and happiness that I never thought possible”, said the boy.

“That’s why she’s a Goddess”, her mother nodded. “She is all made of God stuff, so when she took a part of her and sent it for us, that part was God, like the rest of her. It is our great fortune that Father pled for us with her and that she was so compassionate, because we were barely holding onto our last breaths as her light came, and we would have died in that terrible place, cold and hungry and alone, not knowing what happened to Father”, she shivered. “Children, we have a serious obligation now. We promised to worship the Lady forever, and it’s not merely out of gratitude. It is because she is the most wonderful person we ever saw; she is the holy sister of Christ and nobody is holier or worthier of our worship, and our spiritual path is now to become more like her and know her more, by thinking about her and praising her. There is nothing more important and valuable than that, and Lord Padmasambhava confirmed to Father that this is the way all Gods do: they became Gods by worshipping each other, and they continue to do so now. They are all family to each other, they love each other and obey each other, and we should do the same, for it would be a great sin if we forgot the Lady’s light now that we are saved by it. Instead, we should cherish this opportunity, and be like that light to each other and to other souls”, Isalde spoke seriously but choking with bliss, and her children embraced her.

“I promise to all three of you that I will love you and cherish you as I love and cherish the Lady’s holy person, as part of her lives as the three of you now, so you are now most sacred to me”, their father embraced them all. “Never forget that a part of a most holy person of God lives in you now, and as holy people you have a duty to make that light grow brighter, and never be extinguished”.

“We swear”, all three spoke in unison.

“Wait, if a part of a girl God is my soul now, does it mean that I will be a girl now?”, the boy voiced his confusion.

“No”, his father smiled. “It means you will become a man who had felt the spiritual taste of a girl God, and so when you love a woman, you will know how to guide her towards that goal, so that both of you can live in God”.

“My Lady, can we have a word with you?”, an angel accompanied by three others addressed Lady Hypatia.

“Of course, Berfrid”, she smiled. “I am so glad we meet again, this time under better circumstances”. She looked at his family. “And these must be your wife, Isalde, and the children are Albert and Hilde?”.

They all bowed as she addressed them. “They are indeed, and thanks to you alone”, the man bowed deeply. “The teachers in the apple orchard, the blessed Padmasambhava and his holy wives, have been explaining to us and the others how the real world actually works, how the souls are created, how they grow and achieve enlightenment, and so on. Specifically, he told us what you did, because it was the first such case, how you took from your own soul and gave my wife and children immortality so that they could join me, simply because I begged for you to save them”. He looked her straight in the eyes with such depth of worship that shivers went up her head. “I offered you my soul in exchange, but you wanted nothing. Know this, however. We will forever worship you, every day of our lives, even if we get to live forever. You will forever remain our Saviour Goddess, and our souls are forever yours”, tears started welling up in his eyes, and Hypatia just hugged the man and said nothing.

…

“I am so proud of you”, Lord Azrael whispered in his wife’s ear.

“The feeling is very much mutual, my Lord”, she whispered back.

“When I was overwhelmed, you took control, arranged for my replacement, and brought me to the exactly right people who could actually do something in time, and only because of this immediate and perfect response did anything I wanted to do actually matter”, she kissed him. “If not for you and Lord Shiva, my tears would have amounted to nothing. Only because of your immediate reaction, and his world-tearing power, was this family saved”.

“Be it as it may, you still sacrificed a part of your own soul for them, which makes you legendary and worthy of highest praise”, he smiled.

“And instead of a scar, I got this jewel”, she pointed out.

“Proof that holy acts of sacrifice are never a loss”, he kissed her brow.

“I don’t know if you can even imagine what this means to me”, she was lost in thought. “On Earth, I always had to be in control of myself, because any lapse would be interpreted as female weakness and incompetence. But here, when I lost it, you treated it as a sign of a legitimate emergency, covered for my failings, and elevated the problem to the highest authority, and at no point did anyone think less of me for it. If anything, Lord Shiva took my tears and those poor people’s suffering so much to heart, that he seems to have proclaimed a personal vengeance against Satan. I feel something in me relaxing for the first time, as if I can allow myself to react emotionally, knowing that it’s fine, that you all have me covered. It feels wonderful”, she melted into his side.

Lord Yama entered his wife’s ‘office’, bringing coffee to cheer her up.

“My love, what’s wrong?”, he was immediately at her side, as he saw tears streaking down her face.

“I just tried to comfort an angel who returned from earth”, she tried to control the sobs enough to get the words out.

“He was a serf somewhere in Europe. He lived with a young wife and two small children. The winter was hard, and they hadn’t eaten in three days. The children kept crying from hunger, and his wife was too weak to get out of bed. He had enough and went into the woods with a bow to hunt a deer. The lord’s men caught him and threw him into a dungeon to be hanged tomorrow for poaching. He pleaded with me to please help his wife and children, who are certainly going to die without him. He said I looked like a good and holy lady and he will give me his soul in exchange, if only I helped his family. He said that Satan came into his dreams in the dungeon, and offered him a deal: sell me your soul, and I will take care of your wife and children. He was afraid and started praying to Jesus and Mary to save him, because Satan gave him the sense of cold fear and terror. They hanged him in the morning, of course. He told me he’d make that deal with me, because he felt I was good and kind, and he had no problem with his soul belonging to me.”

“I comforted him as much as I could, restored his memories and sent him to recover, but I couldn’t do anything for his family. I know they are dying from cold and hunger, because the wife is too weak to go into the woods and collect twigs for fire. I just keep waiting for them to come here and ask me why God didn’t answer when they kept praying for help”, she sobbed.

Azrael held her in his arms and comforted her as much as he could; he closed his eyes and called for one of his lieutenants. An angelic woman appeared immediately.

“Grace, would you please be so kind as to take over from my wife? She’s not well”.

Grace took in the sight, curtsied and nodded, and shooed them away with a smile as they shimmered out.

…

“So that’s what he’s been up to. Purchasing premium assets at bargain prices”, Lord Vishnu nodded, gnashing his teeth in fury, as Jesus was comforting Lady Hypatia.

“I just wish I could do something for them”, she sobbed.

“Oh, you just did”, Lord Shiva pointed at her tears, end of the world flashing in his eyes.

“You just did”.

Black fire wisped over his hand, and her tears sparkled and vanished, as the world shook from within.

“What did you do?”, Jesus looked at him, stunned.

“Oh, I broke his world some more, and sent her tears as comfort to the suffering souls, so that they would know that God is with them, and resist temptations of Satan. I can’t do more at this time, so this will have to do”, Shiva growled.

“That, my son, is why he is our great comfort in hard times”, Vishnu smiled at Christ, who stood there in shock.

“Oh wow”, whispered Hypatia. “Wow…”

“They came?”, her husband asked.

“Yes. They say they were starving and freezing after the father didn’t come home, but blue light of God came into their hearts and they prayed to it to help them and save them, and it became one with them as they looked at their bodies from above”, she whispered, made a hand motion, and three small angelic beings shimmered in. “Go to your father and husband, he’s waiting for you”, she smiled and sent them away.

Jesus stood there in shock. “I don’t know what I just witnessed, but all praise to both of you, regardless”, he looked at Shiva and Hypatia.

“What just happened, my son, is that her tears latched onto the barely nucleating souls of that angel’s dying family on Earth, guided by her intent and power of Lord Shiva, and as they identified with them and prayed through them, their identities merged, and through death they returned to our wonderful Lady here, who could have just integrated them into her own being and acquired their memories. Instead, she sacrificed a small part of her own enormous spiritual power to give them independent life, thus saving that family in the only way that matters, because saving physical bodies just delays the inevitable. And, of course, the karmic effect of her generous and compassionate sacrifice is that her own soul grew greater, by this large deep blue jewel she just got”, Vishnu pointed.

Jesus just bowed deeply and silently to the now glowing Lady, and to Lord Rudra, who gnashed his teeth as he thought about Satan, and how their ‘conversation’ would go, when his time came.

…

“He’s building attractors”, Lady Shakti whispered into Shiva’s ear, as she massaged his shoulders to get him to relax. His thoughts were full of righteous anger and murder, and he was tense like a compressed spring.

“He’s acquiring souls of the most powerful kind, now that they are suffering terribly there, and are sensitive to temptations; and he obviously needs them for something. Most likely, he’ll build things that will seduce souls deeper into his darkness by glowing with true light, and he needs sources of true light, that will indicate the sense of fulfilment in various deserts where people will come to leave their bones”, she mused, as she kissed his neck from behind.

“I will strip flesh off his bones as he screams in darkness of his own making, where nobody will hear him”, Shiva murmured menacingly. “I will visit all the suffering he caused upon him sevenfold”.

“And I will help you do it, and then make you coffee”, she nodded as she kissed his ear.

“He’ll get what he is due”.

“How bad is this?”, Azazel asked Lord Shiva, looking worriedly at his wife, who seemed not to be taking this well.

“It’s bad”, Shiva nodded, lost in thought. “I’m trying to understand the repercussions, but the short of it is that Sanat Kumar now has a true bridgehead in the real world. The game no longer ends with the loss of his control over the Jewel, which was contractually defined and which used to be a given. We thought this game had a known endpoint in time. This is no longer the case”, he mused.

“This is all my fault”, Kay whispered.

“No”, the Great Lord denied decisively, and came to embrace the girl. “You just did normal things that made sense and served a legitimate purpose. This in itself wouldn’t have resulted in any harm. However, combined with several other factors that weren’t known enough to predict for, we got this problem. It’s easy to be smart in hindsight”, he ruffled her hair and looked her in the eyes. “It’s not your fault”.

“Thank you”, she smiled weakly.

“But how is this even possible?”, Azazel went through his hair with his fingers. “I thought the Throne of God was the force that kept the worlds in existence. Wouldn’t removing a world from beneath the Throne of God have resulted in that world’s removal from reality whatsoever?”

“Only metaphorically and in the perspective of Eternity”, Shiva shrugged. “The Throne of God means alignment and harmony with the Will of God. It’s the answer to that prayer Christ formulated – ‘thy kingdom come; thy will be done’; if a world is under the Throne of God, his kingdom is here, and his will is done. It means that something is part of the Absolute’s eternal plan and Will. It is also optional, because free will does exist. God’s reign is optional. Consequences aren’t”, he sighed. “Living according to the Will of God, in the Kingdom of God, has consequences, and they are, well, the two of you”, he managed a smile. “The two of you are an excellent example of beings who chose to live the Will of God and became perfect, which is why we all love you so much, and which is why, for instance, your wonderful bride is so distraught now, because she thinks she somehow did something against the Will of God, and it resulted in a disaster. This is not so. I see the Will of God shining very brightly in her, which means it was the Will of God for this to happen as it did, so that the events might proceed in a certain way, leading to a resolution that will put everything right, but on a higher level of goodness; so, don’t be sad, sweetheart. Instead, let’s think about what this means, what were the required conditions of it happening, and what conditions need to be met in order to put it right”, Shiva kissed the jewel on her brow and she finally smiled I earnest.

“So, let’s see how this could happen in the first place”, Azazel nodded. “First of all, there are sub-planes with worse people that are still under the Throne of God. There’s a hell with fanatical murderers, inciters of murderous mobs, gangsters, rapists, torturers and other villainous souls that could rightfully have been destroyed outright, but were instead preserved in case an opportunity arose later on, where they could possibly be redeemed. So, why are they still here?”

“It’s a very valid question. It would seem that committing vile crimes and being a monster would remove one from the Reign of God, but apparently it is not so, which is what makes this case particularly interesting. So, let’s see what those godless souls were. You are saying that you created that sub-plane for souls that were born on Earth, through the process of nucleation, or bubbling off, the way water vapour is released from boiling water?”, Shiva frowned and scratched the back of his neck.

“Yes”, Kay nodded. “It was a sub-plane for the souls newly created on Earth, that were completely godless and had no sense of transcendence, or any concept of God other than Sanat Kumar”.

“So why did this sub-plane not remove itself from under the Throne of God once the first such soul was put there? Wouldn’t this technically meet the requirement of all inhabitants being godless?”, Azazel looked confused.

“That’s the easy part. The overall energy of the souls inside would have to outweigh the energy invested in creation of that sub-plane, and they would all have to be godless”, Shiva nodded. “The problem didn’t arise immediately because you needed a serious mass of spiritual energy to counter the Will of God inherent to the structure itself”, he waved the thought off.

“Why do some souls created on Earth get to be worshippers of God, while others grow to be godless?”, Kay wondered.

“It seems to be related to the conditions they developed in, initially”, Shiva offered. “For instance, if a soul is created when a human being is exposed to some religious or intellectual system that is devoid of transcendence, but requires lots of thought and emotion, it seems to catalyse genesis of souls, but those souls are not really what we are used to seeing here”, he shrugged. “They have consciousness, intellect and emotions, but they lack transcendence and the sense of belonging to it. If a soul is born out of the mutual worship of the Gods, it wants to return to that state and it drives its evolution. Also, if a soul nucleates on Earth in the presence of one of the major sources of spiritual light, this determines its nature and goals, and it wants to return to the state of fullness of this”, he nodded.

“And if you put lots of godless souls somewhere, the ideal of existence they will try to achieve is godlessness”, Azazel nodded.

“Exactly. And apparently, the worst criminals in that other place are better than this, which seems to demonstrate that godlessness is worse than murder and hatred, because hateful murderers can still have a spark of something that wants God, somewhere inside them, which makes them redeemable, while the godless souls don’t”, Shiva finished grimly.

“Aren’t we better off without them, then?”, Kay shrugged. “I mean, they wanted to be done with God; now God is being done with them, and they will eventually perish in time as they are separated from Eternity, and basically good riddance?”

“It would be as you say, if not for one thing”, Shiva agreed. “The world they occupy is connected to the rest of the astral world by its fundamental reality, and Sanat Kumar can now use it to make another, astral Earth there, that will outlive the one generated by the Jewel, and outlive his authority to use the Jewel. It will likely outlive him as well. Every godless thing in that sub-plane came to be because of his designs, and so his evil lives on, and it just jumped planes, from illusion to a lesser reality. This means it’s actually a big deal and we have to figure out a way to restore that sub-plane back to the Throne of God”.

“What would it take?”, wondered Azazel.

“It’s one of those almost impossible things that eventually come up and then someone like Lord Vishnu usually takes care of it by thinking of a solution nobody else could figure out. But essentially, you would need to have a legitimate inhabitant of that plane, not merely a visitor, but someone condemned to be there, who would at the same time be spiritually powerful enough to call to the Throne of God directly, or, alternatively, call for both myself and my wife to manifest there in power, which would allow us to form the Golden Fire and thus reclaim that world for God”, Shiva smiled. “Basically, you would need to have a person that’s holy enough to invoke me and my wife both, and be condemned to the world of the godless souls for some reason, which is close enough to the requirement of something being wood but also iron”.

“Oh”, both Azazel and Kay looked wilted.

“Don’t worry about it, we’ll figure it out”, Shiva laughed. “After all, if we could make a demon into a God, we can make wooden iron easily”.