“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”.

“This wasn’t supposed to be possible”, Azazel whispered into his wife’s ear. Like all couples, they held onto each other as all Heaven was mourning. Nothing else mattered.

Kay nodded. “A soul of her type should be immortal. She was made of dark blue vajra. Absolutely pure, without inclusions, without discolourations. No karmic debts, no imperfections, only kindness, dedication to her duties, good deeds, devotion to God. In fact, she would have been an obvious candidate for becoming a Goddess”.

“She did everything right. She did exactly what one is supposed to do. She did everything you or I would have done. How is this even possible?”, tears stained his face. “You are supposed to die if you really, really fuck up. Like, sell your soul to Satan, give Satan the Jewel, something of that order. I knew her. She was kind, smart, funny, dedicated to her work, compassionate. Exactly the kind of a person you’d want as your friend. I don’t even want to think how Azrael and Hypatia feel. I’ll know soon enough because we have to go there and comfort them as much as we can, but they must be devastated”, he sighed. “Why did God do this to her? Set her up with a partner who would kill both of them. Why?”

“Because Carol had free will. He could have persisted, reacted like Berfrid had. It would have been a wonderful love story with a happy ending. But if there was no free will, no possibility of a love story ending up as a terrible tragedy, what would any of it matter? Oh, we ended up happily ever after, the way everybody always does; yawn”, she attempted an unconvincing smile. “That’s the problem with that damn world and the one who made it, and we knew it. Everybody is acting as if incarnating there is a normal thing, a way to evolve quickly. The problem is, it can end badly”.

“This is the worst tragedy that ever happened, to my knowledge, and I’m significantly older than dirt. We had souls that made very bad calls and got wrecked or killed. We never had a situation where one did that, and took a perfectly pure and innocent angelic person with them. Tell me what happened with her, how was it possible, what’s going to happen next?”, he whispered in quiet exasperation.

“It’s a reality-breaking paradox. I will try to map what happened, but I’m currently in a state of shock and grief, and that’s messing me up. I’ll try”, she sighed.

“Their fates are forever bound. Sanat Kumar killed him, dismembered his soul and used it to power his damned attractors. She felt nameless dread and a sense of doom as this happened, and as the knowledge connected, the crystalline structure of her soul shattered and she died. They are now both dead, but I don’t think that’s all. Her death caused something terrible in Reality; death of such a perfectly innocent person on a steep upward spiritual trajectory is a reality-breaking paradox, as it is not supposed to happen, ever. Even Christ’s death on Earth, sufficient to tear a permanent hole through it, wasn’t this much of a paradox, as it was merely a physical thing. Death of a perfect crystal of vajra due to no fault of her own, merely because her spouse made a fatal mistake and died, I need to see what actually happened there. They are both gone, there’s no sense to it. It is truly the greatest loss and the greatest tragedy we’ve suffered, and I wish I could say some magic is going to happen and everything is going to be fine and God is going to revive her, but we truly lost her. As for the karmic equations, Sanat Kumar is in the clear for Carol. He was offered an option and he made a wrong call. But I feel there’s more to it”.

“Frozen out of Time”, he whispered.

“What do you mean?”

“He bought him, but not her. She is perfectly innocent, and yet she reached out for him in her love and grief and she died. She couldn’t have saved him because he made a fatal decision of his own accord, but she could go with him. But since their fates are bound, and Sanat Kumar can’t bind her to anything, she could freeze her husband in some state of Eternity, since it is her inalienable claim. She can’t claim Time. She can’t get him back because he lost himself to Sanat Kumar, but Sanat Kumar can’t really do anything with him since her claim to him has seniority – God gave him to her first – and, unlike Sanat Kumar, she is an Eternal. His claim to the Jewel is in Time”.

“She broke more than her own soul. She broke the world itself”, she whispered. “She bound him in Eternity so that he couldn’t perish in Time. But while Sanat Kumar lives, his claim will persist and bind them both. But what will happen as he dies? Will someone inherit the claim? Carol is bound to that world as a power source for some evil, but cannot be consumed by it because he is fate-entangled with his perfect wife, and she is karmically invulnerable. That was Sanat Kumar’s decision. So, once that world and its structures are dissolved, what is left of him will be released, and she bound it to her own Eternity so that it cannot perish in Time. Will we see them again, when that world ends? She wasn’t shattered by the forces of karma, but by her own pain. She should reassemble as the cause of her pain disappears, but can she pull him back together as Sanat Kumar dies and his lease on the Jewel ends? This is all above my pay grade, and I’m not sure we’re not deluding ourselves”.

“Let’s say we are not. If we’re right, is it possible that God saved Carol by binding him to her before his fatal decision?”, he was reaching hard, and he knew it.

“She got those extra jewels that were supposed to enforce her soul against the adverse effects of empathy, from Lord Shiva, just yesterday, because she’s a Judge. Those things are serious God-level magic, and they are supposed to prevent being harmed by things very much like what killed her. And she’s not exactly supposed to be dead because Eternity binds her together, because of what she is. And her fate is bound to her husband. And I see that she did multiple big favours for Azrael and Hypatia, and those things are God-level obligations. She should be held in Reality by both her own perfection, magic of a Primordial God, and obligations to her by two Gods. Not to mention that the entire Heaven is crying for her. That’s some serious power there, of the kind that creates tulkus of the Gods. It’s possible that we’re reaching because it’s some stage of grief and we won’t let go, but there’s some objectively God-level stuff there, in addition to an unprecedented situation. Carol’s allegiance to Sanat Kumar is an anchor in Time. Can they persist in stasis until it passes?”, she mused.

“I know what we’ll do next”, he nodded.

“Talk to Father?”, she smiled.

“Good girl”, he kissed her hair.

…

“Wow, you kids really did your homework on this”, Shiva nodded. “Let me see if you’re right”.

He opened his palm and his sight turned inwards. “Wow. You did stumble upon something. The karmic equation would be that God owes her one because he basically did this to her in answer to her innocent prayer. Also, multiple persons of God owe her favours, as she’s just that kind of a wonderful person that always stepped in to save the day when someone had a hard time. And she had my enhancements active, and you are right about those. They can stitch a grieving God together just fine. And she is immortal since she is sinless and faultless. And she is fate-bound to her husband. Which means that the obvious conclusion would be that God did the providence thing and arranged this so that Carol would be saved, and she would get a very large bonus afterwards. But the price is, she is frozen in this soul-destroying agony until Sanat Kumar dies and his claim to the Jewel ends. There’s a lot of ‘ifs’ in the whole thing, and I can’t just time-jump and retrieve them, since he’s anchored in Time. It’s a pickle. Still a fucking tragedy, to be sure, but there’s a justifiable hope that it will end well. Let’s see what we can do to improve the odds”, he looked at his wife significantly, and she nodded.

“The tears and obligations of the Gods. God’s obligation, providence and justice”, he murmured as he weaved a spell; Shakti closed her eyes, and golden fire danced across both their fingers. “Grace is of God”, he whispered. “Carol is of Grace”.

“Her claim is older”, Shakti whispered. “Founded upon God’s providence and justice, and her devotion, which is the nectar of Eternity”.

“Free will has consequences”, Shiva nodded. “But they are to a timely being and in Time. Her claims are eternal, and she belongs to God”.

“Final verdict has been reached”, they whispered in unison. “God’s will be done”.

…

“Guys, we have good news”. Azrael and Hypatia looked up at the smiling Gods, not understanding.

“As it turns out, being everybody’s favourite angel, being sinless, perfect and having everybody including the Providence of God owing you one has its advantages”, Kay giggled.

“Have the two of you gone insane from some ‘refusal to accept reality’ part of the grieving process?”, voiced Azrael.

“Initially”, Zee nodded. “But as it turns out, me being the Blade of Discernment, and her being the Mind of God, together we kind of pack a punch. We figured out some complicated, super convoluted stuff, ran it by Lord Shiva, who decided that it’s worth a shot, and he and his blessed Lady Goddess did some magic of the kind they did when they made the world, and the end result, we’ll see Grace again. It’s just that we have to wait until Sanat Kumar’s lease on the Jewel expires, and Father rips him to shreds as he promised”.

“OK, you are starting to make some marginal sense. But you’ll have to actually explain this from the beginning, using words, not big brain shorthand”, Hypatia nodded. “Our minds are not in the best of condition at the moment”.

“Sorry”, Kay giggled. “Let me walk you through it”.

…

Carol was frozen in a state of terrible agony. He regretted his foolish decision as soon as he made it, but then it was too late. Satan commanded his soul to be bound to some evil thing of the world, impaling him onto it like a worm to a hook, and he felt as if his life energy was depleted in order to power terrible godless sin, making it beautiful and attractive.

But then he felt a presence. It was not new; he started feeling it weeks ago, as if some sense that things are going to be fine if he holds on and has faith, which he dismissed as nonsense, as nothing was ever fine in his life. But this now was different; more concrete, as if someone was holding him together. Things didn’t get better, but they also didn’t get worse. And the Presence was something that felt as belonging, eternity, and some kind of love like he never felt – the fatal kind that you feel when you die for someone, and it was completely real. And he could bet, without any reason or evidence that he could point to, that it was female. And she was frozen in mortal agony, because she lost him before she ever found him, whatever that meant.

And he thought, if someone cared for me this much, if that were real, I can live through this nightmare, for as long as it takes, if I see her on the other side.

“I really fucked this up”, he thought. “I wish I could have a second chance to put this right”.

“My Lord, I feel terribly disturbed of late”, Grace addressed her boss, the Angel of Death. “I see no reason for it. I have been progressing quite nicely under your tutorship, and have been praying to God to lead me to my husband so that I could have a true friend to love God with, of the kind you have in Lady Hypatia”

“Have you been distressed by something you have seen treating the deceased?”, Azrael tried to understand.

“Of course I have, like everybody else. But this is different. It feels like something ominous and personal, and I can’t for the life of me understand what”.

Having worked with Grace since the fall of Rome, Azrael knew this had to be serious. She was a very level-headed, calm and dedicated person, and he owed her quite a long list of favours. If she had a problem, it wasn’t business. It was personal, as Grace was family. Also, it had priority over everything else.

“Come, let’s get help”.

…

“So, you’re saying something happened, that is making you feel terribly distressed, and you don’t know what it is?”, Lord Vishnu raised an eyebrow.

“I know it sounds vague, my Lord, but Grace is an incredibly reliable person, and I personally vouch for her. If she’s saying it’s a problem, then it most certainly is”, Azrael spoke in a most serious tone.

Vishnu took his wife’s hand. “My love, I will need your help here, as this seems to be exactly the kind of a problem you excel at solving”.

“You mean, matters of fate, fortune and other kinds of karmic path intersections?”, she smiled. “I’m on it”. She took Grace’s hand and turned her sight inwards, as if searching. Then she froze, and lost colour.

Vishnu immediately made her a chair to sit in, alarmed by the sight.

“What’s wrong?”

“You prayed to God recently to find you a husband, yes?”, Lakshmi stuttered.

“I have”, Grace nodded.

“God indeed lit up a path for both of you to meet soon”, a tear fell down Goddess’ face. “Your karmic paths intersected and he should have been here already, as he left his physical body, but he never arrived”

“What do you mean?”, Grace was confused, but the ominous feeling increased and her hand twitched reflexively.

“Sanat Kumar played a trick on him. I don’t see the details, but there was a desperate situation he was put in, and Satan offered him to resolve it if he swore allegiance to him and gave him his soul. Carol, as that was his name, felt alone and desperate at the time. He was alone for a long time, prayed to God to lead him to his wife, but it seemed that nothing came of it, except for a long series of disasters. He felt his life was a failure, and this looked like something he could do for others, if his own fate was a dead end…”, Lakshmi couldn’t finish, looking at the other woman.

Reality itself shook, as Grace mouthed a wordless “no”, and dropped to her knees.

A dark blue lightning cracked through Creation, as her immortal angelic heart shattered… forever.

…

“Can we do anything?”, Lakshmi asked her husband, who looked half dead from shock.

“They were a true couple”, Shakti whispered. “I can heal her, but her soul will break again. It’s not an injury one can recover from. Imagine your husband dying. That would have been you”.

“He killed both of them by not waiting, by not having faith”, Vishnu whispered. “He didn’t think he mattered”.

“Can we fix this?”, Shiva asked his wife. “I know, free will, he made his choice. But he didn’t choose evil. He just stopped hoping”.

“Free will”, she waved her head. “This is exactly the kind of a choice we are not allowed to interfere with”.

“We had too many happy endings lately. Too many things worked out. Fates that connected. People who waited for each other through untold centuries, who had faith. It mattered so much because that outcome wasn’t guaranteed. They all could have made a fatal error somewhere. Decided God doesn’t care. Decided they don’t matter. Decided their ideal partner is a figment of their imagination, and not something real, or God’s promise. Carol had a terrible feeling before he made his decision to sell his soul to Satan. He felt horrible wrongness, but he did it anyway, because he gave up on hope, on faith, on God, on himself. And with it, he killed both himself and his beautiful, innocent, wonderful wife”, Lakshmi wept. “There’s nothing we can do. They were a destiny-bound couple. There could never be anyone else for either of them”.

“Fuck”, Shiva whispered.

Bernard and Clare sat in the orchard with Lady Zina, as she rested and enjoyed her day.

“I don’t understand why Lord Shiva grows so angry at certain things Satan does. Didn’t he know that already?”, Clare mused.

“I think I understand it, but I am open to our Lady’s correction”, Bernard smiled. “I think he grows especially angry when Satan commits crimes against innocence, as he sees himself as the ultimate protector of the innocent”.

“You are completely right”, Zina smiled back. “I’ve seen what the Turks are doing. They are using strength to intimidate, they target the innocent and the most vulnerable, and they also target the most virtuous ones, making an example out of them by subjecting them to a particularly cruel and torturous death. They enslave women and children. They treat innocence as a weakness to be exploited, and they bow to Satan for his strength. In hindsight, what traumatised me was the attack on innocence and this terrible boastful attitude that behaved as if strength is on their side, and its purpose isn’t to protect innocence, but exploit and destroy it. That’s also what traumatised Lady Hypatia – when an innocent, virtuous family was attacked by Satan from a position of worldly power, as if God can’t help them and he’s the only God”.

“And Lord Shiva sees himself as the power in service of goodness, kindness and innocence; a wall of ultimate strength that protects them and allows them to flourish and express themselves, and doesn’t take kindly to villains and bullies”, Bernard nodded approvingly. “Also, he knows that if something brought a Goddess to tears, it’s a serious problem and then he immediately deals with it. I love his decisiveness in dealing with evil, and also his measures to repair the damage and strengthen the good and the innocent”.

“What do your new jewels feel like, and what are they doing?”, Clare changed the subject.

“They are allowing me to feel empathy and kindness without taking emotional damage”, Zina’s sight turned inwards. “In essence, they are a shield that protects me when I make myself vulnerable, giving me perspective that corrects for the drawback of the process; they light up with great power as I am exposed to terrible things, and this shields my soul from injury”.

“Why didn’t the elders give the Judges such protections to begin with?”

“I don’t know, but I suspect they didn’t expect terrible things of this magnitude to be taking place so frequently, that we couldn’t handle ourselves. After all, our work strengthens us – it gives us experience, perspective and straightforward spiritual magnitude, from all the virtuous karmic actions that we perform, and from all the small injuries we take, and heal. It’s a very rewarding work. But occasionally, we encounter things that traumatise us. It used to be once every long while, but as of recent, it’s been a barrage of terror; imagine looking at a soul that enslaved children, raped their mothers and impaled their fathers as they rose up to protect their families. And not once every five centuries, but every hour. The inability to protect the innocent feels terrible, which is the reason we all love Lord Shiva so much. He is the ultimate wall around us, that allows us to sit here in peace and be kind and vulnerable without fear, instead of being under armour and weapons all the time”.

“I think I understand now. He is the ultimate male power”, Chiara nodded. “He builds a wall around the innocent, and kills a prowling wolf. Then, when the innocent ask what he was doing, he says he was out fishing”, she giggled, as Bernard grinned and nodded in approval.

“I approached my work with the same sentiment. I would identify the wolves that prowled and tried to seduce the innocent, and I would make an example out of them. Seeing Lord Shiva deal with evil and shield the good makes me feel the power of righteousness of God”, he nodded. “The children can only giggle safely in the grass if the wolf is cowering in fear. Righteousness needs to have teeth, lest it become a mockery”.

“About the wolf; I don’t expect the Turks to suddenly become any better?”, his wife wondered.

“No, but they will feel deep instinctive terror when they think about doing evil deeds. It was there before, but it is much stronger now, and Satan’s attractors can no longer mask it. There is a terror of ultimate doom that looks at them from the place where they used to feel power and safety before”, Zina shrugged. “If that doesn’t work, I will throw them into hell when they arrive, and hell now has teeth and will devour them permanently, instead of merely storing them safely, and the terror of that hell feeds that feeling of doom that the Lord linked deeply to the world”.

“I fear worse forms of spiritual corruption than the Turks”, Bernard mused. “And Satan might exploit the new developments in order to whine about God not allowing free will because the souls get punished if they don’t do as he likes”.

“You’re probably right about both”, Zina shrugged. “The Turks rule with fear, but something attractive yet poisonous will likely prove more destructive. And about freedom, I think he misunderstands its meaning. Freedom isn’t ability to do whatever you like – for instance, go to this place and crucify and impale the innocent souls and laugh at their cries. Freedom is a state when the innocent souls can sit here in peace, have coffee and love each other in complete safety from him and all else that is evil”, she smiled. “Freedom is a state where God is manifested in his true nature, and the wolf trembles in fear, in dark places”.

“And people like myself will hunt him even there”, Bernard nodded. “Because there must be no safe place for evil to hide and gather strength”.

“I think I will go see the elders and ask to serve as a Judge myself. I kind of miss my old job”, he smiled.

“And wherever you go, I will follow”, Chiara nodded and embraced him.