The other Gods were already there when they arrived, accompanied by some of the strongest angels, who looked like they came to kick ass and take names. However, that mood soon changed.

The section of the astral world they were in was full of people dressed in various forms of filthy rags, often stained with blood, speaking incoherently in a weirdly linear way, formulating sequences of words and sentences in their minds instead of using normal language, and they were unconsciously screaming such incredible levels of emotional trauma, that all the Gods and angels went still and pale with shock. Some of them just stood there, some sat on the floor crying, some walked around gesturing wildly; all seemingly unaware of their surroundings. The place looked like a lunatic asylum.

“What the fuck is going on here?”, asked Lord Shiva.

“Casualties, Father”, Lady Kay answered him. “Of Sanat Kumar’s experiment with reality”.

Shiva went pale, even more than his usual white complexion. “Oh”, he managed to stutter. Lady Shakti, at his side, looked like she started having a nightmare, as she took in the surrounding minds. “We need to talk to them, find out what happened to them in there, because this is unlike anything I’ve ever seen”, she managed to use her voice finally. “I knew this could be bad, but this is beyond just normal ‘bad’. This is hell”, she shivered. “Lord Vishnu and Lady Lakshmi are already talking to some of them, and I suggest we all do the same”.

…

“I am Enkabzu of Uruk”, answered a man. “I worked the fields with my father and two brothers. Then men came, sent by the King, and took us to fight in the army, leaving the mother alone and unaided. We fought, we all died. What is going to happen to my mother?”, tears started to stream down his face. “She is all alone now, with none to work the fields. She will surely starve, or men will come to take her into slavery. I have to go back”, he panicked, “I have to help her. She’s all alone and it’s still a month until harvest. Who will pick the grain from the fields?”, he started sobbing.

…

“I am Ahmose, daughter of Senebhotep. I’m fourteen years old, and I helped my mother and father by looking after our goats. This morning two bad men came, bound my mouth so I couldn’t scream, they tore my clothes and took turn raping me”, the girl sobbed. “What will my mother say now, that I’m not a virgin anymore? Nobody will marry me now. It hurt so much, and they laughed at me as I cried and it felt terrible. Mother, please help me! Father, chase them away! Why can’t anyone hear me? When they were done with me, they cut my throat with a knife, like one slaughters a goat, and I drowned in my own blood there in the mud. My poor parents will find me like that. I am so ashamed”, she crumbled to the floor, holding her knees to her chest and crying.

…

“I am Kelki, and I was born to a family of farmers. One day, men with swords came, killed all the adult men, and took all the women and children as slaves. I was twelve when that happened. They cut off my balls with a knife, and it hurt so much. When I healed, they took me to the palace to be one of the eunuch slaves there, guarding the Lord’s harem. The male palace guards would occasionally rape me, and it hurt. I got a sickness and died. I’m glad I’m not there anymore. What is this place? Why am I here if I died? Is this the underworld?”

…

“I am M’weki, son of N’wana. We gathered fruits and roots, and hunted animals in the savanna. One day, I fell from a tree and broke my hip. I couldn’t walk, I was thirsty and the sun was high. Then the wild dogs came”. His face darkened. “No, not the wild dogs”, he jerked wildly in panic. “Why couldn’t it be leopards or lions? They bite the throat and kill quickly. The dogs started eating me while I was alive and crying. They pulled my bowels in the dust and fought over them. Why did it have to hurt so much? I didn’t do any evil to be punished by the spirits so harshly. I always obeyed my parents and all the customs of the tribe. Why couldn’t the spirits send a leopard?”, he shook as he cried.

…

“What the actual fuck”, Zee spoke, to no one in particular.

“You took the words out of my mouth, son”, sighed Lord Vishnu, tears streaming down his face. “It looks like symptoms of spiritual damage caused by a prolonged immersion in a persistent illusion, a complete reality-substitute combined with complete memory inhibition. Basically, they couldn’t remember who they are, and the only reality they could perceive was that of the illusory world they were dropped into. They identified with their body completely, they had no access to any information or reality beyond that, and the world itself seems to be designed to be as bad and full of terrible suffering as theoretically possible, without making it completely unworkable”, he summarised.

“Who are they, even? Demons, normal souls, stagnant souls, angels…?”, Azazel looked at Lord Narayan.

“I don’t know. It’s hard to tell in their condition, and it hardly seems to matter. They all get affected equally, and their true identity as souls seems to be completely suppressed, overridden by the assumed identities of their human incarnations that feel more real than anything else, and they had no memories to contradict it. Also, there’s no transcendental sense present that could supplant the physical experience with anything that would connect them to the actual reality”, Vishnu shrugged.

“I did this”, whispered Lord Shiva, stone-faced, with a tear streaming down his cheek. “It was my idea. I talked my wife into it. I talked you into it. I let the Jewel out of my hands after she warned me of it being the point of no return. I put it in the hands of an idiot. It’s all my fault”.

“No, my friend. There’s plenty of that to go around, so don’t claim it all for yourself. I encouraged you. I could have stopped it, but chose not to. Of the Four, only Lady Lakshmi is blameless in this matter”, Krishna sighed.

Shiva looked around and saw his wife sitting on the floor near a broken woman, sobbing, and he walked towards her, barely aware of his surroundings. She looked at him, her eyes red and swollen.

“She was a wife and a mother of seven children. Four died in infancy of various ailments. Two sons and a daughter, the youngest one, twelve or thirteen years old, lived with their parents. The brothers helped the father work the fields and cattle. The girl helped her mother around the house. Then men came, armed gang of robbers. They killed her husband and sons in the field. Then they tied her and had their fun forcing her to watch how they took turns raping her daughter. She managed to tear herself loose, and tried to hit one of the men with a rock. They stabbed her with swords and she died. Now she’s silently singing a lullaby to her baby daughter, seeing her as a baby in her arms, and she won’t come out of there because her soul is broken”, Lady Shakti sobbed violently. “She is, or used to be, a demoness, her name was Vipera – a venomous bitch, they called her. Somehow, I don’t think that applies anymore. And I did this to her. I made that Jewel, and let the worst person in the world have my power. At least in the second try I did better”, she looked at the Mind of God, who held on to her husband and shivered, looking into nothing.

…

“What is going on here? What is this commotion?”

Shiva recognised this voice immediately, and his anger flared hot. “Greetings, Sentinel. I am glad you finally arrived to inspect your work”, Shiva all but whispered, but his words were steel.

“What do you mean, Lord Shiva?”, the Sentinel looked incredulously.

“You only had one job. You had to keep it out of wrong hands. You only had to allow children to render lots of rooms for playing hide-and-seek, for lovers to create privacy for themselves, or wannabe explorers to create magical forests full of light and wonder. But no, you gave it to a deranged lunatic, who was so warped in his evil that it managed to outrage his demon friend into seeking enlightenment”, he growled on, as the look on the Sentinel’s face froze, as if he started getting it. “And when you were about to approve his request to create a hell above all imaginable horrors, I came to warn you and ask you to consider the consequences, and you condescendingly told me to have more faith in the Light of God, that will always prevail, and no darkness could overcome it”.

Sentinel’s face turned into a mask of horror. “That was you?”

“Yes, that was me”.

“And about the Light of God, take a good look at her”, he pointed at his wife, who sat there sobbing uncontrolledly. “Here she sits, the Light and Power of God Herself, while Happiness kneels at her side in tears, trying to console her. Go on, tell her some of your sanctimonious bullshit, you little turd”, Shiva finally raised his voice, and opened the full insight of reality in the mind of the Sentinel, making him face the full extent of the consequences of his failure, as the being in front of him screamed in silent horror as his soul broke apart out of sheer terror of what he did.

“Oh no, I have another job for you, you bastard”, Shiva raised his hand and froze the dissolving particles in place. He looked around and saw the carnage, the Gods crying in various states of shock, and raised a finger. Black lightning instantly went through reality, and the tears on the faces of Gods and Goddesses started glowing in bright light, disappearing into the black stream of shivaratri, as he opened his palm fully, and white light of his wife wove into the stream, joining the black to form the golden light of tandava natyam, the dance of Creation and Destruction; the Throne of God. The whole reality glowed gold as he restructured it, and he closed his fist.

“Having any fun yet, motherfucker?”, he grinned violently.

“Father, what was that?”, Lord Azazel addressed him, dragging his traumatised wife along. “It’s as if you rewrote the entire fabric of reality, but I don’t see the consequences?”

The jewel at Kay’s brow started glowing, and it seemed to bring her back to her senses. “Oh, I see”, she smiled exceptionally brightly. “I see”. Other Gods’ attention seemed to be fixed at her, and they all snapped out of their previous states. “When you created that Jewel, you assumed that it couldn’t be accessed or tampered with at a later date, but you based it on the Will of God, and built it around something it depends upon and cannot alter regardless of the nature of the simulation, something deep in the nature of the Relative itself, which you now changed, so that nothing real or seemingly real can exist and not include it”, The Mind of God explained. “Our tears and pain cracked every illusion in existence and created paths of transcendence and reality recursively on every level, as we are now present everywhere and connected to everything. You broke his darkness with our tears, and made a way out”, she curtsied to him with great respect.

“All of you provided me with a weapon, my dear daughter”, he bowed back, and looked at all the other Gods. “Your tears are what broke his spell permanently across Time. I just put that blade where it belongs”, he grinned savagely.

…

In his secret hidden place, Satan saw incarnations of the Gods forming across Time, introducing transcendental knowledge and offering salvation, and he could do absolutely nothing to stop it, as he screamed in helpless rage.

The Jewel silently smirked, and dreamt of being back around his Lord’s neck, so that his Lady could play with him again.