“Who are you people? Are you in service of Lord Baal?”, an unhinged-looking woman addressed Azrael and Siddharta.

The men looked at each other, and then at her. “We are the Judges of Karma. Our purpose here is to help you with your transition from your experience on Earth. We don’t know who Lord Baal is; I knew of a demon called Baal once, but he is no Lord”, Azrael smiled.

“Stay away from me, you blasphemers!”, the woman screamed and crawled away from them as far as she could before hitting a wall. “Baal is the Lord! He rules above the Earth and is my Master! I was once like you; a blasphemer, proud, ignorant, and I offended the Lord, but Master grew angry and punished me. His priests took me into slavery, and chained me into the dungeon where they they would bring in men to relieve their needs with me, and when I would become pregnant they beat me on the belly until I miscarried, and threw my babies to the dogs to eat them”, she half screamed, half sobbed. “Get away from me! I don’t want to see men ever again. You are all vile pigs who hate and abuse women. I hate you!”, she screamed with such power that the astral furniture of the room started cracking and melting.

Azrael looked significantly at Buddha, who nodded and went out to bring his wife, who was in the adjacent room, dealing with another soul.

“Please, lady, calm down. Nobody here is going to abuse you or harm you in any way. Our role is to help you in any way we can, after your human experience”, Azrael spoke calmly, but the woman looked at him with vile mistrust.

“You don’t serve the Master”, she squealed, as if possessed by evil spirits. “I don’t want to cooperate with you. If Master finds out I had been consorting with his enemies, he will punish me”, she winced and yelled at the same time.

Azrael thought he’d seen the worst of it when he encountered Uriel, or what was left of him, but this was not in any way less terrifying. The woman was, obviously, a deep violet crystal, at some point. However, the crystal was cracked at multiple shatter points, and held itself together with substance that looked like yellowish-brown clay, or dog excrement, and its colour was impure at most places. She was quite literally broken, and also looked like she had endured some sort of a systematic desecration and devastation of her spirit.

“Again, lady, please calm down. You are not in any danger here. Please, tell me your name, and tell me about Lord Baal, so that I may understand of whom you are talking?”, he calmly asked, hoping that Zina and Buddha would come to his aid soon.

“My name is Anthea, Anthea the slave of Baal”, she whined in some disgusting mockery of worship, that felt like whining of a submissive, beaten dog, or a hyena. “It’s good that you want to know about the Lord, because you should all drop on your knees before his feet and worship him in utter submission, and not be arrogant and proud as you now stand”, she squealed insanely. “Baal is the Lord, he is the Master above the Earth. He shines as the Sun at those who serve him, and casts his vengeance on those who oppose him. But I don’t want to talk to you any more. You are a man, and men are pigs and dogs. Men rape and beat women, you are all disgusting and I hate you”, she cowered in fear, as poor Azrael prayed that his friends would hurry up, because he was at his wits’ end here.

To his great relief, they came, and he quickly told them everything he knew, in full memory blocks.

Zina looked at him gravely, and then turned to the crazy woman. “Greetings, Anthea. My name is Zina”, she smiled kindly.

The woman seemed to relax somewhat. “Tell the men to leave. I don’t want them to rape me again, or to have to look at them. The sight of those animals makes me afraid. I hate them”, she squealed.

Zina was shocked by this. “Those two men are great Lords of highest honour and kindness, who have never hurt anyone, and who always treat women with greatest respect. Lord Buddha here is my beloved husband, and Lord Azrael is an angel in charge of the dead, known for his compassion and kindness. I would greatly appreciate it if you stopped insulting them, for this is a grave crime against God”, she shivered slightly.

“Fuck them, they should all go to hell and die!”, the woman screamed and would have crawled deeper into the corner, were it at all possible, and her words were vile curses charged with dark magic that desecrated the space.

“Guys, let me deal with this one alone, so that I might access any reason that’s left in here, and if I fail, please get my Mother and Lord Shiva”, she curtsied to the angel and the God, who stood there in complete consternation, bowed to her in assent and shimmered out.

“So, Anthea, now that we are alone, would you please tell me more about yourself, and about your Master?”, Zina smiled, wrapping the woman inside an energy cocoon of kindness and safety, while praying silently to her husband for patience and support.

…

“So, that’s how Sanat Kumar dealt with angels who rushed in foolishly, proud of their size, purity and status, thinking God’s light will overcome all evil and limitations, and they will just go in, show their power and light and all illusion and its maker will crumble like dust in the glory of Reality they represent”, Lord Shiva scratched his chin. “Apparently, that failed spectacularly”.

“You can’t fight that illusion with power. It literally can’t be overcome in that manner. Also, if you try any kind of an attack, it will be treated as sin and he’ll be allowed to punish you for it. The only ways to fight that thing are, first, the one Lord Buddha tried, which is to divest yourself completely and withdraw your energy from the world-system until you die, doing only good and kind things and refraining from anything that would form attachments; or, second, you could try to get Sanat Kumar to sin against you, which would create an opening for you to exploit. However, since he took care to protect himself from direct involvement in anything there, you would probably need to threaten him enough to get personally involved and deal with you in an unjust way, that’s not covered by the contract everybody “signs” by entering, and which nobody seems to read”, Lady Shakti joined her husband’s analysis.

“I understood quickly that you can’t fight Mara with power while you’re in his territory”, Buddha added. “It was obvious that it wouldn’t work from the fact that he enticed me to try. Then I saw that it would only serve to boost my ego, and all the power I used would bind me in return. So, I did the only reasonable thing: I denied him the thing he wanted. I didn’t fight, I just let go, and that seemed to work quite well. Unfortunately, it did nothing to actually remove him from power or dismantle that world, but it was useful from the position of an individual and his own destiny”, he shrugged.

“And this started as such a wonderful day. I was talking to you and Lady Zina, and I was just thinking how awesome you two are and how much better my life was since you came”, Azrael waved his head in disbelief, still shocked by what he saw earlier.

“We need to assemble the war council”, nodded Krishna. “We need to discuss strategy regarding this”.