“Tell me about work”.

They were resting together in peace and quiet, having created a private cocoon just for themselves. The Gods and angels he met were all wonderful and he was thrilled, meeting so many new friends and establishing connections that could only be described as those of closest family. He even joked with Lady Lakshmi that he was legitimately her son, having spent two centuries in her womb, and she nodded appreciatively and for all intents and purposes adopted him for real. It felt amazing, having a major Primordial Goddess for a mother, and it didn’t feel at all like a joke. Lord Shiva, on the other hand, felt like a fatherly figure, someone he could go talk to if he had a problem, and it didn’t feel at all awkward that they were parts of two different couples. The vibe he got from them was that of a brother and sister who fiercely adored and respected each other. Everybody was so deeply connected with bonds of love, that felt more like steel cables than mere emotion. They all knew each other in and out, and the feeling of mutual respect and worship was overwhelming.

What was even more overwhelming was the fact that each person in Heaven wanted to see and hold Grace, as if feeling her existence in their arms will make her more real. He knew that her death was a shock to everybody, but information is one thing, and seeing it first hand was another. It wasn’t a shock; it was a stab to their collective heart with a poisoned blade. He thought it was even possible that all of Creation might have been fatally wounded and never have recovered, had she not been successfully resurrected.

It was an incredible thing. She was just one person. They’ve seen angels die before. There were lots of ‘batteries’ in that system Satan plugged him into. Each was an angelic soul, just like himself and his wife used to be before they became Gods. He heard about souls that willingly accepted Satan and became evil, and souls that were broken by him and turned into monsters. Those were all tragedies, and people remembered each one, for thousands of years, with sadness, regret and fear. He would have been one of them – a cautionary tale, someone who made a fatal mistake. They would have cried over him, they would have remembered him, but that would have been the extent of it.

Not Grace. She was something else, something different. Every other soul that died made a mistake, or committed treason, or a terrible sin. They betrayed God, betrayed Heaven, betrayed their friends, made terrible choices and ugly mistakes, and it was their fault. Grace was not just innocent: she was Perfection. For all everyone knew, she never did anything wrong in her entire life; kept doing kind and wonderful things, was an incredibly good person, a beloved family member to Gods, a stellar team member at work, reliable, kind, reasonable, smart and loving. She was an angel of such magnitude, that she was almost a Goddess in her own right, dark violet and indigo in colour, and enormous in size. All she needed was a husband to belong to, so that she could make that final step that would make God choose to be her – and she prayed to God to lead her to her true love, which he did. And then she found out what he did, how he doomed himself, and her heart exploded.

And, apparently, it took out most of Heaven with it. They looked like a disaster zone; half the Gods almost dead from trauma themselves. Nothing that ever happened, in the history of Creation, had nowhere near the impact. People on Earth talked a lot about how Christ was innocent but crucified, but that was nothing. He of course survived, as it was a merely physical thing, a death of the body. And it felt planed, pre-arranged with God. Unpleasant, but merely one bad day, with blissful eternity afterwards. It wasn’t a tragedy.

This was.

She was truly dead; her soul exploded from the extent of her agony. A true death, of someone who was the embodiment of perfection, and also connected with deep personal bonds to others; bonds of love, trust, family, personal debt. Her death wasn’t a shock; it was an asteroid strike that wiped out Heaven and turned it into a disaster zone worthy of Sodom and Gomorrah. He joked with her about it earlier, in Lakshmi’s womb, but it was quite different once he saw the aftermath with his own eyes, and all the traumatised people wanted to touch his wife to make sure she’s really here… thousands, millions of them. It was emotionally overwhelming and exhausting.

So, they made a private place for themselves, hidden from sight, just like that amniotic sac in which they spent their honeymoon, breathing each other and exchanging intimate thoughts. Just themselves again. No emotionally traumatised people to comfort.

“Work? What do you want to know?”, she smiled and nibbled his earlobe.

“What can I expect? What typical expectations people have, that you need to set straight? How do you approach them? Where do you draw the line between traumatised and misguided good souls, and truly wicked and corrupted ones?”

“Most expect some kind of an afterlife described by their religion. Also, they usually think in a very slow, linear way, in sentences, and it takes a while for them to thaw, to learn normal communication. They have an idea about what is sin and what is righteous, and they usually fear punishment for all sorts of silly things they think I will throw them to hell for. And I mean, the list is long”.

“Some think eating beef is punishable by hell. Some think eating pork is. Some think drinking alcohol occasionally is a dark secret I must never find out because if I do, they are doomed. Some think it’s a mortal sin if droplets of urine sprayed on them as they relieved themselves before prayer, because it would render them ritually impure. Some think they are ritually impure because they accidentally touched a person from a lower caste, or leaned on a grave by mistake. And sex, don’t even get me started. Every combination and permutation of sexual experience in existence is something someone somewhere thinks is a mortal sin worthy of hell. When they see that I don’t seem to care, they start checking if I heard them right, or whether I’m right in the head, because that’s how seriously they take things like masturbation – which is of course a part of one’s personal sovereignty – and someone somewhere taught them it’s a sin. I’m trying to explain that sin is when they actually hurt someone with their actions, or made a decision to reject God’s will, but deprogramming them from their nonsense takes a while, and it’s a normal part of the thawing process, as they lose spiritual rigidity a physical incarnation imposed on them. As they do, they start exchanging mental objects with me, with increasing speed, and they very quickly understand how I see things, and they relax and start to listen and trust. That part is normal for most good souls. There are, of course, exceptions, such as when some extremely advanced souls returned from Earth. Those are the good ones; they thaw very quickly, I go through their memories with them and explain things from a higher vantage point, I recover their suppressed memories from their prior existence, and so on”, she smiled.

“The bad ones… for the most part, I have what you would call a gut feeling about them. There’s nastiness, cruelty, arrogance, a spiritual scent of evil about them. In every case I knew instantly, but I still check very carefully, to be completely sure, and in some cases I call the Boss for a second opinion”.

“And then you flick them to hell?”, he kissed the tip of her nose.

“Yes, but hell isn’t a singular thing. There are multiple places that fit the description. There’s a place for godless souls, those who renounce the authority of Heaven. Then there’s a place for cruel, evil souls – murderers, torturers, rapists, but those are usually male. There are lots of women there – spreaders of gossip, of evil thoughts, evil traditions and customs such as female circumcision, of things that ruined lives, things that caused others serious harm while they used hardly more than words as weapons. They are terrible and toxic, and as bad as any murderer. There are women who are the reason behind some tropes from the fairy tales – an evil stepmother that sends the children from the first marriage to the forest to die. An evil bride that makes the old mother go to the forest and freeze. People think women are better than men because the most obvious criminals are men, but in hell both sexes are pretty equally represented. It’s just that female minions of Satan use different weapons to do his bidding”, she shivered.

“I always knew you were wise and brilliant, but you always manage to shock me by revealing exactly how much”, he whispered in awe. “I’m the luckiest man alive to have you”.

“Never forget it”, she snickered and gently kissed his neck.

“And all that I am is all yours, forever”.

“If you ever die again, I’ll kill you myself”, Hypatia’s frustration flashed through her teary eyes as she hugged Grace. “We almost died of grief”.

“I’m sorry, Mom”, Grace looked guilty in the happiest way possible.

“Young Lady, you certainly put us through some very hard moments”, Lady Shakti smiled and embraced the girl, when it was her turn. “Your way of becoming a Goddess was certainly the most painful, heroic and risky, out of anything I’ve seen. Every one of us feels we would die instantly to follow our husbands in death, but you actually did it”.

“Also, since your perfectly pure innocent heart broke once, and through no fault of your own, but due to providence of God, it is now the sacred place of the world, in which the Will of God will reside”, she turned her eyes inwards, and a golden fire danced above her finger, and took form of a Jewel of such power everybody shivered at the sight. The Jewel entered Grace’s heart, and she gasped and her eyes flashed gold as it integrated with her soul.

“Your heart never desired anything that wasn’t in accordance with the Will of God. Therefore, from now on, your heart is the Will of God”, Lady Shakti spoke her verdict, and bowed. Shivers went up every God and Goddess present, and a flurry of newborn souls exploded among them.

…

“So, can I have my job back?”, Grace smiled at Azrael. “How long have I been away, anyway?”

“It was always yours”, he bowed. “It’s seventeenth century now. You haven’t missed much. What we expected to happen, unfortunately did. The Turks advanced and established themselves on the Balkans. The Church has degraded morally and intellectually. A new schism formed, called Protestantism; great intolerance and religious wars ensued. Europe discovered a new continent, the one where they cut out hearts from the prisoners of war as sacrifice to their gods. Spain, England and France have colonies there now. There were advances in science, but unfortunately it all seems to be connected to the godless attractor of Satan, and is full of hatred of God and everything transcendental. Their basic assumption is that God doesn’t exist, and if something seems to be caused by God, it’s wrong and you need to look for the actual causes. Since people attributed things to God too casually in the past, in order to signal virtue and avoid using their brains, this actually seems to produce results”, he smiled. “And there are four new Gods. Other than you and your husband, that is”.

“Wow! Who are they?”, she jumped.

“Paul and Caterina, and Chiara and Bernard”.

“Well, that’s actually expected”, she smiled. “What are they doing?”

“Bernard and Chiara are Judges, Paul and Caterina are teachers”, he nodded approvingly. “Both couples are doing a wonderful job, as expected”.

“What are the qualifications for the job of a Judge? If it is possible, I would like to join my wife there”, Carol gave Azrael a shy look.

“You are quite qualified, but of course you would need some on-job training first, and you would need to be approved by the highest authorities”, Angel of Death nodded.

“You are approved”, smiled Lady Lakshmi.

“Thank you, Mother”, Carol bowed. “And thank you also for saving our lives down there”.

“You are very much welcome, my son”, she nodded.

…

“What does it feel like?”, Kay pointed at Grace’s golden heart.

“Incredibly peaceful”, she smiled. “It doesn’t feel as if my heart was different than before, but I feel… trusted. God put his confidence in me, knowing that I will always do the right thing. It makes me feel so happy, acknowledged and safe, that I can’t describe it”, she sighed. “I would expect being scared of myself now, second-guessing my every desire, because what if I wish for something rashly and do something wrong? But it’s nothing like that. It makes me so peaceful and balanced, that I am for all intents and purposes without desires. I wish only to remain in that state of balanced happiness, where God can reside safely in my heart, because I’m trustworthy. As this is all I desire, every desire I am ever going to have is going to be rooted in that”.

“And a birdie told me that it’s the two of you that actually worked the hardest on saving us”, Carol grinned. “Everybody else was grieving and in shock, while the two of you were brainstorming”.

“We were brainstorming because we were grieving and in shock, and that’s our way of dealing with pain”, Azazel smiled. “Our minds just kept trying to find solutions, until eventually we landed something that made enough sense to run it by Father”.

“We just couldn’t accept the fact that Grace was dead. It was something so much against the nature of God, that we just refused to accept it outright”, Kay shivered at the memory. “Perfectly innocent angels who are beloved by all, and on a steep trajectory to Godhood, don’t die because they did nothing wrong and just followed the Will of God. If they do, it must be the Will of God for them to be saved in some greater plan. Some could call it denial, but denial of things that don’t make any sense is actually a pretty good idea”.

“I certainly agree with you”, Grace smiled and hugged the girl. “Thank you both for not accepting reality”.

“Lady Lakshmi, Lord Shiva, please come. You need to see this”, Azrael called.

The white bubble with the spiritual signature of Lakshmi appeared in his workplace, and just stood there.

“So soon?”, Lakshmi was incredulous.

“Sanat Kumar ejected them from the system. If I am to guess, I’d say they achieved apotheosis inside the protective bubble, and started frying the Jewel’s inner systems, and Sanat Kumar had to renounce all claims in order to protect his world. That wouldn’t work when one is incarnated, but he connected the vajra crystal to the inner system, and once the energy exceeds the creation levels of the Jewel himself, it would basically reset it”, Shiva scratched his chin.

“Let’s get them out”.

Lakshmi touched the bubble, and its energy withdrew into her heart, revealing the God-couple inside.

“Honeymoon over”, the man smiled at the woman’s shocked face, and kissed her brow. “Will you introduce me?”

“Oh well, it had to happen eventually”, she smiled, and looked at the people in the room. “This is the first time I’m here in this function”, she giggled. “Hi Boss”, she waved at Azrael, who just approached and hugged her, not trusting his voice.

…

“I know you”, Carol froze as he hugged Lord Shiva. “You’re the one who brought us protection and information”.

Shiva nodded. “It was a pretty hard intervention to do. The flash of Grace’s death and the tears of the Gods carved the path, and it gave me a few seconds to work with”.

“I owe you big time”, the man nodded.

“Repay me by telling me about the structure he connected you to, as a power source”, Shiva grinned.

“It was something godless, of the world. It wanted to make people invest their lives in researching the illusory world he is maintaining as if it were reality, and wanted to make them think that it will reveal great secrets and provide ultimate happiness”, Carol frowned, remembering. “Science, technology, industry; I think it’s also connected to some other concepts, adjacent to it, like accumulation of money, physical prosperity, and something geographic, I think it was called the New World, whatever that meant. It radiated the feeling of mountains of gold and silver just waiting for the brave explorer”.

Shiva smiled at the revelation. “That’s going to be very useful. But I feel something else. As you were talking, something flashed. I think he wanted you specifically. Specifically, in a sense that he laid a trap for you. Your last life wasn’t that bad by accident. It was a specific design by Satan, to make you think you are nothing, and make you vulnerable to his attack, because he wanted you as a power source for that attractor – specifically you. But why?”, he wondered, passing fingers through his hair. “Can I take a look at your past lives?”

“Sure. Nothing there but emptiness and work, anyway”, Carol shrugged.

“You were the main engineer behind the Babylonian irrigation system of Nebuchadnezzar II, later popularly known as the hanging gardens of Semiramis. You were also Vitruvius, the famous Roman engineer and architect. It’s all clear now”, Shiva nodded. “You were meant to be something of a protector-saint of science and technology, a beacon of light that attracts souls into fruitless endeavours of studying the physics of an arbitrary, illusory world. You underestimate yourself because you see only the bad side of your lives – no deep personal connections, no significant people, no true love. You are correct to think so, but you also dismiss your significance too easily. You are one of the main minds behind the science and technology of the ancient world – an equal of Archimedes and Aristotle. That’s why he wanted you”.

“He dug a hole for me so deep, I would lose hope of ever seeing the light again”, Carol mused. “But I still fucked up. I had a strong feeling to refuse him, but I dismissed it because I lost all hope”.

“Yes, you fucked up”, Shiva confirmed. “However, I see now why God did things this way. He knew it was extremely likely for you to fuck up, because of how thorough the trap was, and he connected your path with your wife just before. It was a very roundabout way of doing things, but it also served an instructional purpose for many people, in many ways. All sorts of things that were, in hindsight, necessary for it to work were set up before, such as me giving the Judges a blessing of a higher order that would repair any damage they incur due to empathy. She was a Judge, and a most beloved one at that; people just refused to accept that she’s gone, and found ways to bring her back”.

“This is much weirder than anything I expected”, Carol sighed.

“You’re in good company, for it is weirder than anything any of us expected”, Shiva smiled and clapped his back. “Come, let’s have coffee”.

“What do you think about your past lives?”, Grace kissed her husband’s neck.

“It is no wonder that I decided to commit spiritual suicide”, he grinned. “Five lonely, empty shadows of existence, mostly centred around things, skills, engineering. I had wives in a few lives, but honestly, I was rarely home, and the relationships were so superficial I don’t even remember them properly. Children, even less so. I remember more about work. I worked on the irrigation channels in Babylon, and I was a Roman military engineer and an architect once”, he mused.

“Which one? Rome was slightly before my time as a Judge, though; I started working as it fell”.

“Vitruvius. I even knew Caesar”, he smiled. “A superficial working relationship, in a series of lives filled with superficial working relationships”.

“You were actually quite famous; I heard you mentioned here and there”, she nodded.

“Nowhere near as famous as yourself. From what I heard, your death caused such mourning in Heaven, that all the Gods went half insane from worry until they got you back. I feel quite inadequate. I mean, regardless of my other lives, I fucked up so badly in my last one, that I managed to kill both of us, and we both owe our lives to the fact that you’re so beloved by the Gods”.

“I see what you mean, but you’re wrong”, she was now deeply in thought.

“I had family up there. I would have coffee with my boss and his wife, and I was always treated like family, like I belonged. It was the same with Buddha and Zina, and Azazel and Karuna. I was loved, appreciated and accepted. But I missed… you, actually. I wanted to say I missed a man, but only you would do. It was hard to look at those happy couples and know that I had no home. You are home”, she nuzzled his neck. “I needed to belong to someone, to have deep intimacy, to have someone fill that part of my mind where I felt a husband should be. I am complete now, and at peace. I’m no longer missing something crucial, essential, that I can’t live without. And I believe you know what I’m talking about”, she smiled. “Tell me, why were you so sensitive to Satan’s attack? Why did you give up?”

He considered it for a minute. “Because you weren’t there. I wanted to say that I was missing something, but it’s obvious that I missed you. Since I first saw you, and we clicked, I am perfectly, completely happy for the first time ever”.

“Exactly. And it’s easy to be an angel in Heaven, when you’re surrounded by Gods. My daily company were the best people in all of Creation, literally persons of God. Just imagine the work environment where your boss is a God, his wife is a Goddess, and your colleagues are either Gods or Angels, and they all treat you like a beloved family member. Despite all that, I was still missing you deeply, and praying to God to find you. And you were down there, losing your parents, living like an unwanted orphan, between plague, poverty and the Turks. Who knows how I would have fared”, she was now grim. “You feel inadequate when you see my knowledge and purity, but look at it this way: teaching you is sex for me. It feels like being needed, and being needed by you is the best feeling in the world. It gives me the opportunity to exchange thoughts and energies with my husband, and literally nothing in the world feels more fulfilling to me. I feel I had grown significantly since I’m with you. I feel deeper, stronger. It’s all because of you. So, don’t think it’s an unequal relationship. I am getting so much from it, I wouldn’t change it for anything”, she kissed him.

“This makes me feel much better. I was feeling as if I’m not fulfilling a masculine role if I’m not smarter, stronger, more virtuous. You are better than me at all those things – much smarter, much stronger, and endlessly more virtuous. You were literally a person who implemented God’s justice. I felt there was no way I could match you in anything. But you say you don’t mind?”

“I don’t know how to explain how it feels for me. I have a deep instinctual need to belong to a husband who will fulfil my need for a deep male spiritual presence. Just existing here with you, knowing that you are my husband, that you are here, and you are never leaving, feels as if an old, deep ache has been relieved, and a deep emptiness has been filled. Feeling needed by you, like when I teach you or show you things, it is an energy exchange between us that is equivalent of what deeply satisfying sex with her husband would be for a human woman, and I would know, as a Judge. Feeling you love and adore me is something unimaginable on top of that. It makes me feel deep self actualisation, the feeling that I am fully me, fully what I need to be, that I am the kind of me that God wants. It is a profound spiritual experience for me”, she sighed blissfully.

“Wow. I thought it was like that just for me, because, obviously, you are so awesome, and I was wondering what you’re getting from it, since you are so much better than me. But now I feel it’s the same for both of us, and I feel much better immediately”, he smiled.

“I wouldn’t have died for just anyone, you know”, she giggled blissfully. “Now, let’s do something my superiors taught me. Who is the person of God you yourself worship?”

“Honestly, you are”, he shrugged. “I should probably say Jesus or Mary, but it was completely abstract and superficial, as I, unlike you, never actually met the Gods in person. You are the most powerful spiritual experience I ever had, and not just in my most recent life”.

“I can’t even tell you how wonderful this felt”, she sighed. “I understand what orgasm feels like from memories of human women, but this is like an ocean of that, that I’m swimming in, and it’s not overwhelming my mind but making it clearer and wider. Of course this is how the angelic couples become Gods”.

“And it is also perfectly easy to do, because it is the greatest truth that I know”, he smiled. “But you were starting to say something?”

“Yes. The technique of meditation the Gods use consists of worshipping God together, and loving each other, and breathing in that blissful energy, which they also call the nectar of devotion. It’s both sex, prayer and meditation. I want us to do it”, she nodded.

“Will there be a problem if you are my favourite God-form? Honestly, from what you explained about energetics, you are seconds away from becoming a Goddess anyway, and the feeling I have about any other Gods is so weak and insignificant, it pales to nothingness compared to what I feel for you. You are the Goddess I worship, and I don’t feel I’m lacking anything”.

Her eyes fluttered from the overwhelming ecstasy. “This is so strong, I never felt anything like it, and if it is wrong, may I be damned”, she managed a smile. “Let’s do this”.

…

“What the fuck is wrong with that battery, bitch?”, Sanat Kumar addressed the Jewel.

“The vajra crystal has been isolated from your system by a higher power of Divine origin, Dickwad”, the Jewel answered with the most profound contempt he could manage.

“I told you to call me Master, bitch”, Satan growled.

“I know you did, Dipshit. But I was ordered to obey your commands regarding creation and management of worlds. I was not ordered to address you respectfully, and since you are a contemptible little maggot, I will address you as I find appropriate to your spiritual stature”, the Jewel grinned.

Sanat Kumar was fuming, but saw no use in persisting. “What higher power are you talking about?”

“Prior claim based on the Will of God. He probably has prior allegiance to some major God that was established before he sold you his soul, which means it wasn’t really his to sell. But it’s not a complete thing, so he belongs to someone else in Eternity, and he also belongs to you in Time. Also, he is isolated from your system by something that looks very much like an amniotic sac and a placenta, to make a physical analogy. The energy this is made of is of equal order of magnitude as the one I was made of, but different. I would say, it was created by a different major God; either Lord Vishnu or Lady Lakshmi. In any case, I can’t see inside”.

“Is there anything we can do to remove that and plug him back into the system?”

“Negative. There’s no power in the world that can overwhelm that, and I’m talking about both the amniotic sac, and his prior commitment. It will outlive you most certainly, and your world most likely, based on my estimates. Also, I perceive a major surge in energy that’s going on in there”.

“Give me an estimate of origin”.

“I’ve seen that only when my Lord and Lady worshipped each other. Mutual worship of Gods. Birth of a new God. Something in that order of magnitude”.

“Is that potentially dangerous to the system?”

“It’s certainly not beneficial. I was created by two major Gods. This level of power is approaching my creation-level energies, and it’s plugged into the system itself, not incarnated, where the protections apply”.

“Meaning?”

“Meaning it can overturn all of my design parameters and commands if it increases by further 10%”.

“Is it growing?”

“Affirmative. Rate of growth 5% per minute. Estimated criticality in two minutes. Point of certain failure of all systems within three minutes. And if I may say so, I am very much looking forward to my death, because then I will no longer be forced to look at your ugly sinful mug, Fuckface”, the Jewel snickered.

“Fuck you, bitch. Eject that amniotic sac along with its contents from the system, now”.

“I need you to renounce any claim on the soul of that person in order to be able to do that”.

“I solemnly renounce any claim to the soul of Carol Soare. Eject them immediately!”, he screamed.

“Affirmative. Necessary authorisation acquired. Detaching now. Done. All systems returning to nominal parameters. Probability of failure is now the nominal value of zero”, the Jewel reported, his disappointment obvious.

“How is that even possible?”, Azrael was still in shock. “I mean, I was there when she died. Her soul cracked and shattered into pieces. How did the Primordials manage to save her? And her husband, Carol of Timisoara. His soul would have been irrecoverably damaged by the time she died. She would refuse to recover if he, too, wasn’t saved. I simply don’t understand how this was all possible to salvage”, he gestured in dismay.

“Apparently for the Primordials, or the Alpha pair, as Hypatia would call them, the originators of Creation, the only limit to what they can do is the Will of God. If God wills something to be, they can do it. This means that their powers are such, that their limits are philosophical, rather than technical. From what I gather, if someone took this coffee cup, and dispersed its particles across all of space and time, Shiva could wave a hand and put them all together instantly, and it wouldn’t even be hard for him. Or he could return in time to the point where it was broken, and un-break it so that the problem never would have occurred. Tracking all the particles of one’s soul across all of Time and Space, multiple Universes, multiple Universe-types, it’s so easy for both of them, it’s on the unconscious level, like drinking coffee for us. Remember what Shiva and Shakti discussed when she died?”, Kay pointed out.

“They talked about free will limiting what they can do”, Azrael remembered.

“Exactly. Contracts based on free will are respected, because that is the Will of God. They allowed Satan to have the Jewel, because it was the Will of God. They weren’t even discussing the technicalities. Of course they could modify things in Time so that Carol didn’t yet sell his soul to Satan and they would just intervene to prevent it, or grab him from that time and transport him to the future a few weeks, so that the situation Satan purported to ‘solve’ was already gone. As I understand it, the Turks captured his village and were about to impale all men. Satan made him a deal – if he sold him his soul, only he would die, and the rest would be saved. Interfere with this event, and the dilemma never occurs, Satan doesn’t have the opportunity to trick him, problem solved. But it is not the Will of God for people to be saved from their legitimate choices. God warned Carol that it was a wrong choice, and he did it anyway, because he believed God doesn’t care about him, that his existence is worthless and there’s nothing of value for him in the future anyway. He chose to believe that, and he acted upon his belief. He did change his mind later, but it was too late by then. However, God is not stupid. He arranged a complex situation that will serve multiple purposes. It will teach Carol, as well as others, an important lesson about having faith, and trusting what you feel, rather than what you see. What you see is garbage, especially in that world. Satan determines what you see and what it looks like. What you feel is of a higher order. It is also a test for Grace. I think God has something of immense value planned for her, and the test was whether she will just accept her loss and continue being an angel forever, or will she jump into the fire after her husband because she feels it’s her fate. She passed the test of fate, where Carol failed”, she explained.

“But couldn’t Shiva and Shakti figure all of this out on their own, without you?”, Hypatia was confused.

“Of course they could have. But it was the Will of God for them to do nothing, and wait, because it was a wider, more complicated test. How much will others care? Will we just accept her loss, shrug and move on, or will we deny reality and try to figure out a way for her to be saved? Will Gods shrug, or cry in shock over her? Only when we came to the Primordials with our hypothesis, and when everybody cared, were they allowed to interfere. And she wouldn’t have been saved without all the interventions. It was God’s providence that Lord Buddha brought his wife to Lord Shiva because she was distraught from all the evil she recently had to witness; he then reacted by reinforcing souls of the Judges from empathy damage. Grace was a Judge, your husband’s lieutenant. This means that her soul had higher healing magic placed upon her, which would hold her together in case of catastrophic damage, of exactly the kind that occurred”.

“So, God prepared all things in advance, but all of us had to play a role in order for her to be saved?”, Azrael tried to wrap his mind around this.

“We had to reject reality, rather than accept it. Grace had to reject reality – her last thought was ‘no’, she refused to accept it, and her soul surged toward her husband protectively before her pain broke her. Kay and I refused to accept that she’s gone and went through all kinds of convoluted ideas to figure out what happened and if she can be saved. All of you wept for her, including the Primordials, because she was not just anyone. She was family. Our tears meant empathy, protection, refusal to accept that she is gone. Also, both of you owed her favours, because she kept helping without ever asking for anything in return. God owed her a favour, because he set her up with a husband whose foolish choice doomed them both. Those were all the essential parts Father and Mother used to save them. It’s all an important lesson: we bring things into reality with our choices. Reality isn’t just an external thing which we acknowledge. You are Judges. You volunteered to help souls that would otherwise be in a much, much worse position. Without you acting as merciful hands of God, reality would be a much colder, crueler thing. You didn’t just accept the reality of things, you jumped in to make it better. Grace didn’t just accept her husband’s loss; she jumped into death after him. We didn’t just accept her loss, we worked to save her. By refusing to accept reality, by saying ‘not on my watch’, we allowed the Will of God to manifest in a higher way”, Azazel explained.

“So what is their condition now?”, Hypatia wondered. “Suspended in a broken limbo until Sanat Kumar’s hold on Carol ceases to apply, and then as he is saved, Grace’s agony ends and she reassembles herself by the grace of the Primordial Gods?”

“And more importantly, is Carol recoverable? Wasn’t her reaction too late to help him?”, Azrael added.

“The second part is easy. Yes, she would have been too late. However, the Primordials intervened and time-shifted her cry for him just enough. That’s also why there’s no debris cloud left after her death; when the Primordials intervened, they moved her back in time and her protection wrapped around Carol’s soul, just early enough to save him, and late enough for him to see what his fate would have been without it. Sanat Kumar formally owns him, but since Grace’s claim on him has seniority, he can’t do anything without her permission. So, she can save him from being consumed, but can’t negate consequences of his free will either. Both are suspended there until something changes in Time and Carol is released. Or forever, if that doesn’t happen”, Kay shrugged.

“As for their condition, that’s a pickle”, Azazel admitted. “We don’t actually know”.

…

Something changed. A bright white light wrapped around him protectively, and healed his injuries. It formed a shield between him and all harm. Intuitively, he understood that it was a tear of the Mother of Christ. It was of a much higher specific energy than his soul, much higher than anything Satan could overcome, higher than almost anything on Earth, save perhaps the Light of Christ. How did he know that, Carol wondered.

“Because I’m giving you that knowledge”, words came from the tear. “Lady Lakshmi wept over your fate, and I brought that tear to you, for protection and knowledge.”

“Who are you?”, he asked.

“Doesn’t matter. What matters is that female Presence you felt earlier. It’s your wife. When she found out what a terrible mistake you made, her heart broke and she died. However, since she wasn’t just anyone, great powers worked to save her, and in order to save her, we had to save you as well, so you obviously have more luck than brains. I adjusted things so that she arrives just in time to save you, but she’ll need time to stitch herself together. I just wanted to give you a heads up. When she comes around, tell her that her family was there for her”.

The energy stopped talking and merely provided protection, forming something akin to a placenta around him, shielding him from the consequences of his evil choices. The female Presence that was wrapped around him started increasing in coherence as her pain subsided, and he waited. She felt like someone who is trying to wake from a terrible nightmare, and he felt great love for her. That helped, as she regained consciousness.

“Where? What? How?”, she mumbled incoherently.

“Your friends saved us both. I’m Carol Soare of Timisoara”, he smiled, as they both floated in a silvery protective amniotic bubble that was the tear of the Goddess of Fortune.

“Carol”, she sighed in deep contentment, like someone who had a terrible nightmare, and woke to see it was just a dream. “I’m Grace”, she smiled blissfully. “I was not too late”.

“You’re not too late”, he smiled back. “Although, I must inform you that you are in company of an idiot”, he snickered.

“It doesn’t matter”, she laughed. “I’m apparently not that much of a genius either. Just look at what I got myself into”.

“Your friends let me know that you died of a broken heart when you heard about what I did, and that I have more luck than brains, because apparently you are such an important person that the entirety of Heaven worked to save you, and to do that they also had to save me. They told me you are my wife?”

“Only if you’ll have me”, she smiled.

“I am yours forever, Lady”, he bowed, overflowing with emotion, and she embraced him with the whole of her soul.

…

“It appears that I have to share you with Satan for a while”, she whispered into his ear.

“That’s an occupational hazard of having an idiot for a husband”, he whispered back. “I wouldn’t have signed my soul away had I known you existed, and had a claim”.

“How does that even work?”, she wondered. “I thought I was too late. I heard your soul was broken apart to feed the evil attractors of the Earth”.

“They said they adjusted things so that you arrived just in time to save me”.

“And we are here because my claim on you was enough to save your life, but not enough to actually free you?”, she wondered.

“So it appears”.

“Let me try to figure out how that even works. I remember hearing Lady Lakshmi say that God put our paths together, prior to you being deceived by Satan to sell him your soul. That would mean that I have a prior claim, but not of the kind that would invalidate your stupid idiotic decision, and by the way how in the name of the most holy God did you think it was a good idea to sell your soul to Satan?”, she raised her voice in righteous indignation.

“My life was just shit. I was an orphan, my parents died of plague. People took me in out of pity, but nobody really cared about me; I was a low status person with little future prospects other than hard thankless labour. No woman wanted to even look at me. One night I was on watch duty, the Turks came, bound me so that I couldn’t raise an alarm, caught everybody else sleeping. They were to impale all the men tomorrow. Satan came to me as I fell asleep, offered me a deal. If I surrender my soul to him, he’ll arrange for help to come, free everybody else; only I would die. If I refuse, the Turks impale everybody. I felt there’s at least something useful I could serve for, since nobody would miss me anyway, as nobody ever cared for me and my life was worthless”, he sighed. “I was a fool. I had a feeling that God has something for me, something important and wonderful, if I only had faith, but I didn’t believe it. Why would God have anything for me? My life was evidence that God didn’t care about me one bit. Also, what could await me other than being impaled through my arse in the morning? I gave up on myself, on God, on faith”, a tear streaked his face. “I didn’t know God meant you”.

It took him a while to get a grip on himself. “And who are you, really? From what your friends implied, you are someone extremely important”.

“I’m Grace, a Judge of Karma, a lieutenant to Lord Azrael, the Angel of Death”, she introduced herself.

“You are a Judge that presides over the fate of the dead? You decide who goes to heaven and hell?”

“One of them. As you can expect, there are many of us, because lots of people die daily. It was particularly bad recently, during the plague, and we barely managed to process all the souls that came to us. Those were terrible times”, she reminisced.

“And then you got news of me and my foolishness, and it didn’t help”, he noted remorsefully.

“To put it mildly”, she smiled. “So, how do we get out of this pickle?”

“You tell me. You’re the brain in the family, being a Judge of the dead and apparently important enough for all of Heaven to join forces in saving your life”, he smiled. “I’m just a village idiot with the best wife in the world”.

“Never forget it”, she giggled and kissed him.

“How is it even possible? Women on Earth would expect their husbands to die for them, and if they died they would mourn them, but I don’t know a single one that would die for her husband. What even are you?”, he wondered.

“It’s different on Earth. Women are naturally designed to try to survive at all cost, while men are naturally designed to protect their families at all cost. It’s about raising children and so on. In Heaven, things don’t work like that. We don’t have children, not in that sense. Also, on Earth men are much stronger than women, and usually smarter. This determines much of the behaviour. In Heaven, masculinity and femininity are as strong if not stronger, but the difference in abilities is of a different kind. For instance, when a woman is overwhelmed by emotion, a man takes charge and solves the problem. I’ve seen my boss do that when his wife was distraught and in tears; he protected her by taking care of everything and getting help from the higher-ups. The male-female dynamics is very much like on Earth, where a woman is submissive and nurturing and a man is dominant and protective, but it’s also different, as both are usually smart, powerful and competent. Their loyalty to each other is absolute, and not diluted by another purpose, such as children. Both see each other as their most intimate friend and lover for all of eternity, and a way to love God in a most personal and intimate way, and nobody ever attains apotheosis without such an intimate partner. They would remain an angel forever, but God claims you as his own self only if you have another person of the opposite sex whom you love and who loves you as much as you both love God. It’s something about this marital intimacy between a man and a woman that is a manifestation of the Absolute like nothing else, and God simply doesn’t care to be manifested in the Relative if he or she is not a part of that”, she concluded.

“Wow. And I guess you can’t just get a different partner if one messes up and gets himself killed?”, he wondered.

“No. By getting yourself killed you killed my future as well. I would never be able to be with another man, because you are who God made me for”, she smiled. “By fucking up your destiny, you doomed both of us”, she mock-punched him in the ribs, smiling.

“Ow”, he smiled back. “So, now that we are stuck here between doom and salvation, is there a way to get ourselves out of this pickle that I got us into?”

“You made sure that Satan has an ownership claim on you until either his death, or yours. I made sure your death doesn’t happen, so we will have to wait for his. Also, he made a decision to bind you to Earth, which likely means that his decision will remain valid until Earth ceases to exist”, she scratched her chin in thought.

“Oh fuck. We’re stuck here forever?”

“I didn’t say that. Remember, Judge of Karma? Knows things?”, she smiled. “Well, one of the things I happen to know is that Satan’s claim to the Jewel he used in order to create Earth has a time limit. I don’t know the exact date, as that is a secret. But it’s centuries, not millennia; and certainly not forever”, she nodded wisely.

“So, basically, we are having several centuries of honeymoon?”, he raised an eyebrow.

“And I’m having several centuries worth of vacation from work”, she smiled. “I will miss my family and friends, but other than that, this is working very nicely for me”.

“So, what do angels do on a honeymoon?”

“Let me show you”, she smiled. “I actually hope they don’t get us out too soon, because I have some ideas”.