Souls

 
Theia – Goddess of Destiny

Goddess Sarah stood beside her newly ascended sister Theia in the Great Hall on New Eden, gesturing at the stunning and immeasurably large design of the room. “It might not look as intricate as the previous temple, but the actual beauty is in its simplicity. You see, we’re all very different and it’s quite hard to find a common ground in our preferences, so I’m very glad that we managed to design our temple together. … I know you hadn’t been with us when we dreamt up this world, but I hope you still like it.” Theia gave her a hesitant nod before Sarah went on to explain the actual purpose of this room as a point of connection between the Pantheon and the realms of mortals. It gives them a place to receive a guaranteed answer to their prayers. She went on to say that this was a task that would also befall Theia more directly; she is to help mortals to develop and reach a level of intelligence at which they can be guided to believe in the divinity of the godly sisters – connecting them to the Pantheon. Theia basically understood this to be about giving meaning to a whole new set of monuments that would need to be erected across the entirety of the universe; which could only be described as such an endless amount of work, that she dreaded imagining it.

"But of course we don’t all live in this room. Each one of us also has their own ‘domain’.” Sarah stepped closer to one of the walls, which slid aside to reveal a doorway leading to a luscious garden that stretched past the horizon. “Those are basically near infinite realms, that are designed to fit our individual needs and preferences. This one is mine. … I find the beauty of nature very calming.” She paused after waving her door shut again. “Though I have to admit, not all of us have the power to actually create something from nothing. It’s mainly Cassi and I who can do that, which is why we shared our powers when designing the temple together. If not, the others would have had a hard time filling their domains properly. But at the time we didn’t know what you’d like, so we just left it blank. … And while I’d love to help you decorate your room, there’s just, well, a minor problem that you’d need to take care of first, I think.” The Goddess of Life laughed nervously as she shuffled towards the door behind Theia’s throne, “They, uhm, started appearing in there shortly after we all came to power. We’d have done something, it’s just that none of us can touch them. … Since they’re in your room we thought that … well, maybe they’re there for you.” As the door slid open, it revealed an endless white void, … with a large blue carpet in the middle? “I also need to deal with another lost sister of ours. So, yes, good luck.” Sarah unceremoniously shoved Theia into the room, before simply sliding the door shut again.

With the push Theia inadvertently stumbled directly onto the carpet, which gave no resistance to her step. Though when she looked down she noticed that individual strands were trying to flee from her sandaled foot? She quickly stepped out of the odd writhing shape that stretched out below her. As she lifted her foot she noticed the mangled strands of things falling off her sole and landing back on the ground. Carefully she knelt down to more closely inspect this phenomenon, which quickly turned out to be a huge crowd of tiny people. Even more peculiar the flattened people that very unlucky enough to stand beneath her when she entered the room had by now gotten up on again and seemed completely unharmed. In bewilderment the Goddess reached out and picked up one of the tiny beings in the middle of the crowd in front of her.

Willeon Chammes – Knight of the Realm

 Sir Chammes, one of the most skilled knights of the Empire, was riding into battle against the remaining Loyalists guarding the Temple to the false Goddess. He and his men had it on good authority that all the Priestesses had left, leaving only misguided foot folk and nobles to guard these heretical sites. Willeon’s king was convinced that if these buildings would be destroyed, the link between the kingdom and the planes of hell, where these monstrous Priestesses came from, would be severed; and they were finally free. And so they rode into battle. But somehow word must have gotten to the Loyalists – they had been prepared and their archers were ready atop the temple. In a streak of extremely unfortunate luck, Willeon had been hit directly into his eye by one of the arrows. In agonising pain, he fell off his horse, and was promptly trampled to death by his comrades running over him in their blind panic.

For the brave knight, the moment seemed to last forever, but once it was over, and everything had turned black, he knew he had died. But this calm wasn’t meant for him for long. Shortly afterwards a white light pulled him into a strange and blinding new world. Still in full armour, he landed on a vast shimmering white ground, that clunked loudly against his body. As he tried to stand up, he noticed his hands, his whole body really, burning in a translucent blue, that generally seemed to make himself partially transparent. He must have looked like a spectre, but his worries about his wellbeing faded once he managed to look around. There were several more men standing around him, all just as confused as him. After discussing their most recent memories it became obvious that they all had died, and that this must be some sort of afterlife. But given that there was nothing else in this endless world, they reasoned that this must be purgatory, and their true afterlife was still to come. Over time many more appeared, and since there was nowhere to go, they all just huddled together and tried to talk about their lives. It was frightening for Willeon to hear about lands that seemed beyond everything he had known, but they all shared their knowledge of the cruel goddess that tormented them. Eventually the crowd became too large to still know everyone, and that’s just how it seemed to be from then on, surrounded by unfamiliar people from strange places forever more. With enough time this ate away at the sanity of some, but after becoming too weak from screaming and crying, they all eventually came back to terms with the fact that this was their existence now. Willeon was about to give up hope himself, when suddenly a radiant figure appeared in the distance at the edge of the crowd. She seemed taller than any mountain he knew, but gazing up to her, he knew he was on his path to a great afterlife.

The titanic beauty at the horizon looked nothing like the demon that was portrayed in these temples at home. Dressed in a simple grey sheet, and with her hairs adorning the colours of the night sky, she seemed like the Goddess of the people – the caring human deity that his grandparents talked about. She seemed so calm and graceful as she knelt down to come closer to them all. In a surprised expression, her burning purple eyes seemingly gazed down directly at him, and he fell to his knees. Stuck between her immense fingers he was plucked off the ground and brought up to her shining eyes. He was ready to be welcomed to the life after death.

Theia – Goddess of Destiny

Judging by his armor, Theia had seemingly picked up a little knight. She didn’t quite understand why, but as she looked him up and down, the memories of her divine predecessors came to her. This was a dead mortal – one who had used up his time in the realm of the living. He would now need to be consumed, so that the essence of his depleted time could be rewound and fed back into new developed lives across the universe. Many many eons ago these mortals would be judged by their merits in life; those who performed exceptionally kind or noble deeds would be sent to a heaven of some sort, where they could frolic with the Gods for an eternity. Those who committed unspeakable evils would also see their remaining time stretched out into the endless, but they instead would be cast to a perpetuity of torment. Neither of these acts had any particular reason to them – they just served to entertain long lost gods. Though the last goddess, before her ascension, didn’t seem to care for this level of micro-management. She simply inhaled her dead, and automatically turned them into new time for the universe. And those already left in the hell and heaven of the past were turned into a flaming cup of immortal ice cream that was seemingly very enjoyable.

Theia recoiled when she “remembered” how much “she herself” enjoyed that cup of ice cream in the past. She also didn’t like the idea of having to consume the souls of the dead to spin new strands of time, but with the last goddess having been gone for so long, there was quite the queue of dead stuck here with her in purgatory. And she couldn’t just leave them roaming around here, if she was to live in this domain… Carefully she raised the little soul to her eyes to look at the little strand of time that dangled from his being: He hadn’t accomplished a lot in his life … and he actively seemed to despise those beneath his standing as a knight of his home realm. She saw him bully several peasants, even snatching food away from starving beggars in the past. An awful person, but surely, he wouldn’t deserve endless torment … Carefully she turned him over, before raising the speck up to her lips. He was almost entirely engulfed by the pillow-like pink flesh that framed her mouth. And as the little knight felt himself pressed into the soft wall in front of him, an enormous wind started to pull at him; but instead of getting himself sucked into the vortex, the enormous fingers beside him held him firmly in place. However, he still felt his form slowly dwindling as the wind dragged at him; his plate mail fell away and vanished in the air as he regressed to the age of a young man. He started to struggle and fight once he realised he would reach his boyhood again soon, but there was nothing he could do against the strength of the giant woman that surrounded him. And just a moment later his consciousness faded, and the last of his time was taken back by its rightful owner. Everyone alive only loans their time from her, and almost all will see her come back to collect.
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The taste of used time was surprisingly pleasant and produced a sort of tickling in her chest as her heart was working to recycle the strand. Trying to banish these thoughts, Theia quickly got up again to figure out how to organise this. Though as she looked down at the crowd at her feet, she quickly realised that they had begun swarming her. They were all around her feet and staring up at her … directly up her dress. Beet red, Theia kick a large chunk of the crowd aside, their spectral bodies seemingly flying far enough away to cover distances that could encompass large cities. Angrily she tried to march out of the sea of people, inadvertently stepping on countless more of them. Once she reached clear ground she turned around and commanded everyone to stop running after her: “Everyone will have their turn; you will be judged on the lives you lead and then sent to your afterlife. But please, form a queue!” Dragging her sandal across the ground left a scuff mark, behind which people quickly began lining up.

Theia was impressed with how easy it was to control these people … but she couldn’t be kneeling here judging all of them with a hunched back; that’d get uncomfortable really quickly. In a bid of desperation she did the only thing she could think of; with a wave of her hand she pulled the contents of the Architect’s office from the Skybarrier Temple into this realm. Her old life, which was basically just a glass desk, an old swivel chair, a filing cabinet and her grandfather’s pendulum clock, now stood at her feet, at a miniscule scale. With another sweeping gesture she enlarged the items to fit her new divine stature. It definitely wouldn’t look as grandiose as what her sisters had, but it’d make due for now. Before she took a seat, she willed a little portal into existence that connected the scuff mark on the floor with the desk. Commandingly she ordered the first person to step through, who promptly did as he’d been told. … Though Theia didn’t realise that the long queue of people stretching out in front of her desk could still all see her striped underwear, even when she was crossing her legs…

Not long after she had begun, Theia realised that it’d be more efficient to do the sorting first, and then process all humans at once; and so she began dropping those who would need to be absorbed into a repurposed candy bowl on her desk. But once she encountered someone who has lived such a devoted life, that she’d deserve to move on to a heaven of some sort, Theia scrambled to find a place for her – she couldn’t just leave them standing on the table. She began to regret losing her toolbelt when she ascended, and she vowed to find something to wear with pockets once she was done for the moment, though in a desperate bid to leave the little woman somewhere, she simply pulled at the top of her dress, and dropped the woman into the right cup of her bra. She firmly informed her that, if she moved, she would lose her ticket to heaven, and unsurprisingly the little one remained perfectly still. A few more people were added to that collection, before Theia had to deal with such a terrible man, that he’d need to be sent to a hell, that also wouldn’t exist yet. He earned a temporary spot in her left cup; an undeserving fate for the rape crimes he committed. Though luckily there weren’t many people deserving of these special fates in total, and the majority just seemed to be dropped into the bowl on the table. Though most peculiarly no matter how many people were dropped in there, the thing never overflowed.

It had taken a while, but After hours of staring at people’s lives and judging them on their accomplishments, she eventually had the line dwindled down to the last person, who was unceremoniously dropped into the candy bowl as well. Theia thought about how she would need help with this in the future, especially once she was called to pick up on her other divine duties as well. But for now she just dreaded what had to come next; but then again, she also thought how actually eating something seemed quite refreshing now. She picked up the bowl and brought it up to her lips; the thing was teeming with now terrified beings, who all knew that their fate wouldn’t be as wonderful as they had hoped at the start. The giant pink lips at the rim of their world parted, revealing a dark and moist cavern behind it. As the Goddess began to tip the bowl towards her, many could feel her warm breath washing over them, though that did little to quench the panic that broke out.

Desperately these people tried to climb over one another to escape their demise, but it was no use; just moments later the bowl was tilted enough for all of them to just stream down into her mouth. Like living chocolate sprinkles they were dumped onto her tongue before slithering down her tongue. As the first people fell out of view at the back of the Goddess’s throat, their terrified screams grew louder. It produced an odd and tickling feeling in Theia’s mouth, that sent a shiver through her jaw. Though as she kept pouring she also realised that these little beings went down as easily as a breath of air, negating the need to swallow, even if she instinctively wanted to. After less than a minute the river of people flowing through her mouth died down, and the last of them vanished inside her. Though unbeknownst to the Goddess, a few souls actually managed to escape her by climbing on top of their fellows and jumping off the side of the bowl. But they only bounced off her cleavage before being thrown between the mounds of flesh that’d be their prison. Whether they managed to clamber their way out or to either of the two groups in her bra was to be seen.

With a sigh Theia placed the empty bowl back on her table. After composing herself she got up again and started walking towards the door – she needed to talk to Sarah about creating a new set of heaven and hell for these souls. But she didn’t notice the little dead mortal who just popped into her realm directly under her foot. He didn’t feel the pain of getting his torso rammed into his hips, but that’d change soon – once his body will have reformed and he’d have been judged for the murders he committed, he will face an eternity of suffering.