Chapter Twenty Four.

Murgui happens to be a master of understatement, on top of his mastery of universal law. Earlier of course, was the whole light giggle while casually dropping that this planet was a seal to the endless Void. Since that point, I’ve observed that his sense of scale is just slightly off about these things. He is an incredibly ancient and powerful being, so I plan on mentally revising his evaluations of anything from now on. Which segues wonderfully into his most recent understatement—

“DIE ABOMINATION!!”

—This lady was way more than ‘upset’.

Murgui scooped me up quickly as a blast of fire burned through the side of the plateau we’d been hiding behind.

“How you make lady so angry!?” He shouted as we dodged under a white-hot beam of energy.

“I don’t know! I’ve never seen her before, people are just like this to me down here. Something about me being an archde— left!” Murgui scrambled to get out of the way as I warned him of a bus-sized boulder flying through the space we just vacated.

“No friend, that different kind of angry. That kind just general from leader people saying you are bad. This angry like you have bad breakup, she mad at you!” He stopped suddenly (which luckily made the murderous angel-lady’s next attack overshoot us and miss) and looked at me with a scandalized expression.

“Is this from bad breakup? I am disappointed you breaking hearts, friend.” He shook his head reproachfully while I sputtered in a combination of exasperation and terror.

“WHAT!? No, she’s not my ex! Holyshitrun!!”

The woman let out a banshee scream and charged at us, a blinding spear of light forming in her outstretched hands as a shockwave spread out through the air behind her. Murgui twisted in mid-air, defying physics as the searing blade came within centimeters of my body while she rocketed past with a sonic *boom*.

Murgui picked up speed and started the same space-skipping walk that had brought us out here.

“Is not good to deny love, just make her more angry. Should apologize and maybe she take you back!”

My only response was incoherent screaming as the angel spread her six wings and enormous golden eyes opened in the center of each, glaring hatefully at me before disappearing behind a blinding wave of holy fire.

I’m gonna die. All this and I’m gonna die because an ancient, immortal being doesn’t know the appropriate time to give relationship advice.

A timely skip from Murgui cleared us of the blast while the angel sneered.

“You cannot escape the fury of Heaven, abomination!”

She continued to rant about my impending doom while alternately firing off laser beams and charging us with her spear. Every time she attacked, Murgui would just barely dodge while somehow avoiding all damage to either of us. I started getting frustrated with the continuing stalemate.

“Can’t you fight back!? No energy waves or super-law attacks??”

He looked at me guiltily. “Nomads do not fight… told you, friend! [Harmony] not good for fighting, she just beat us faster if I try.”

Screw it. If you can’t fight back…

My aura spread out around us as far as I could safely stretch it without instantly exhausting myself. When the angel came hurtling through it next I lashed out at her, twisting the laws every way I knew how to try and damage her or shift her course. She snorted contemptuously and a flick of her wings shattered my domain, sending a spike of pain burrowing into my mind.

“Cheap tricks will not save you from [Justice].”

At her words, she raised up her spear and sent out a wave of burning light that encompassed the entire area. Murgui was forced to stop and shield us, bracing with three of his hands and cradling me with the fourth as the temperature spiked upwards. But all that was only a distraction by the angel because the next thing I saw was a feral grin on her face as she was abruptly there, inside the shield.

Giving neither of us time to react, she gave me a whack with her spear that would put MLB to shame and catapulted me off into the distance. I plowed into an ash dune in a daze before a lance of agony shocked me out of it. Shock crystalized my awareness around a horrific reality.

She stabbed me…

The glowing spear she’d summoned had pinned me to solidified ash like a bug. It didn’t make any sense to me, a piercing wound should have just let me flow right around it with some discomfort in my current liquid state. Pain drowned my senses as I briefly struggled before I froze, a sensation like a blade being drawn against glass echoing through my soul. The blazing weapon had pierced deeper than just my physical form— instead of pushing through me into the ash, the spear had pinned my soul to the ground.

The angel stood above me with a gloating smirk on her perfect features. A blazing corona of energy surrounded us in a wide sphere that Murgui seemed unable to cross— the creature wringing his hands anxiously as he teleported around trying to get to me.

“It’s no use, Nomad. Even your kind cannot defy the jurisdiction of Heaven. And you—” She sneered, turning to me. “Will finally return to your rightful place in the Void, abomination!”

Why?

Why was this happening? Why did I keep getting knocked down by beings of such incredible power? Every step of my journey I’d felt like an involuntary passenger, kicked around by one godlike creature after another for reasons completely beyond my control. I had no idea who this person was, but she was going to kill me for the crime of just existing.

She started to glow brighter and brighter, spreading her six wings and rising into the air above as I wracked my brain for anything that could help me. Who is she?? I don’t recognize her, and the only things I’ve seen with wings like that were— It clicked. The Emissary. One of the first creatures I’d seen after dying. I’d been so busy trying not to die outright that I hadn’t made the connection, but once I saw it there was no mistaking the six glowing wings hovering behind her. Impotent fury rose up in me and I couldn’t help screaming out with spite.

“That’s what this is about!? What, am I a black mark on your record?? I was supposed to just die or accept slavery then!?”

Her gaze snapped towards me and a glare from her twisted the spear, grating it painfully against my soul.

“Yes. It is not your place to question the Heavens, mortal.” She spat the word out like a curse. “And now you will suffer for your transgressions!” Raising her hands, the glow around her expanded and solidified into a series of concentric rings seeming to expand infinitely into the air above us, looking like an enormous portal into a realm of brilliant light. I could just barely make out twelve blurred figures seated equidistant around the circle’s edges, though the light was too bright to see any features. The Emissary herself was shrouded in light, so I could barely see when she lowered her hand to point at me, but her voice was deafening.

“Let the light of the Sovereign Host cleanse this creature, and restore the balance of this world. [JUDGEMENT OF HEAVEN]”

The light descended, and for a brief moment, I burned. Until there was nothing left. But it didn’t stop. My body evaporated like mist under the sun but the spear still held my soul pinned, searing the very core of my being. The power of Heaven poured onto me like an avalanche of crushing weight, howling and demanding that I submit. That I give in to the judgement of those deemed to be my ‘betters’ for the good of all.

The weight pushed against the spear pinning my soul until a *crack* resounded through me and the world went black.

I found myself floating in a vast empty space, mercifully free of pain for the moment. Curling mist drifted towards me from beyond my perception and for a moment, I thought I'd died again. It was almost a relief, and I felt a brief flash of shame at that. Until I looked up and saw the spear.

Only the tip was visible, inverted above me and driving slowly down. Somehow as large as a mountain and thin as a needle it dominated my perception the moment I noticed its golden point, hanging like a guillotine blade above me. I chuckled mirthlessly as the scene reminded me of my earliest words after I entered this world.

Well… shit.

I might not be dead yet, but I was definitely dying. Time passed with infinite slowness as my ultimate death approached and I just... sat there and watched it come. Whispers echoed out from the spear, thousands of voices speaking judgement and demanding ‘Submit!’, but they were unnecessary— I’d already given up. Swirling mist crowded closer to me as the spear descended and looking out into it only confirmed my despair. The mist was me, my memories. Every out-matched fight, every pointless struggle since coming here played back to me in succession. I watched my [Blightlings] grow with a sad smile and couldn’t help a twinge of guilt.

Sorry guys, I tried but I just… can’t do this.

I watched idly as my life passed by and not even the shoggoth memories burned me here until everything came to a screeching halt.

“Is this all you are… little flesh-thief?”

Dezzahn’s contemptuous words resounded out with the same force that had broken me before. The memories halting and repeating that simple phrase over and over.

“Is this all you are…”

Unable to answer at first, I couldn’t help a stubborn irritation rising through me.

“..all you are…”

The spear’s whispers now clashed with the echoes of Dezzahn’s words, ringing out in a growing discordant cacophony that tried to bury me as my fury rose to meet it.

“-Submit!-”

“Is this—”

“Unworthy!”

“—all you are…”

“Accept fate!”

“Is this all we are?”

Everything froze. The swirling mist had condensed in front of me, forming a loose nebula in the shape of a person. The voice was dispassionate and cold, the question an idle passing thought almost beneath it to ask.

[Cosmos], my Ideal made manifest in my soul. I probably should have been awed by the literal manifestation of cosmic power, but by then I was too angry to care.

“No!” My voice finally hissed out.

Deep within the nebulous form of my Ideal, a spark lit. Like watching a star ignite for the first time within the depths of space, light grew within as it first mirrored my anger and then utterly surpassed me with sheer volcanic rage.

“Then why… Do we kneel!?”

Sworls of black fire churned around us as the mist combusted, the energy of my soul burning hotter and hotter to fuel the wrath of my Ideal. It raged against the judgement imposed on us, on me. But it wasn’t enough, something was still missing. I looked at the nebula that was my Ideal, peering into it truly for the first time. In it I could see the darkest depths of space— mysterious and beautiful, terrifying and grand. Vast and powerful beyond human comprehension, I’d tied my very soul to it. And that was the problem.

I’d deliberately separated myself from my Ideal. Time and time again, I’d struggled to hold on to my humanity in a place of monsters. But the power I needed wasn’t something humans were meant to possess. If I wanted it to be mine, there would be a price. So I reached out and pulled. [Cosmos] obeyed.

The nebula leapt into me, the mist that once filled my soul burning away faster with every second as the black fire spread. Pain crashed into me in waves… and was ignored.

“We— no.” I dismissed the last conceit of separation I kept.

“I am [Cosmos]. My will is [Law].”

Fire rose behind me like a wave, sending me hurtling up towards the spear that still whispered at me to submit.

“[Law] does not bow.”