Istania, or what was left of her spirit followed behind the great Pathfinder, and his many young Acolytes. The younger talents were powers all on their own, and they surrounded her with the scourging lights of their lanterns. Istania wept not for the dark powers they burned from her, but for the voices of prayers she heard in her mind that delivered the source of those dark powers. She did not indulge the dark thoughts of vengeance that rose with them, at least not any more.

When they had bound her and tortured her soul she had fought for any means to get free. It had all been useless, but she had tried. When the prayers of her followers came it was certainly a temptation, but even then as much power as she gained it wasn't enough before, of all spirits, that of her own daughter released her into the hands of salvation.

She wept for that, and for the voices of thousands of sick children she heard in her mind. They didn't understand and were so confused. They were growing sick...so many growing sick... She heard their coughs and felt their fevers with their prayers…

She had no idea how long she had been here, there was no sun, no stars, or season or reason to judge by. Hell was an ever-changing world of madness outside the lantern lit paths of the Pathfinder Guardians.

Once already they had stopped, and spoken to a God of the Underworld. He had judged Istania pure, and allowed them to move on deeper into the Twisting Narrows. They had taken a ferry across a deadly river of magic that seemed to have a soul of its own made of tattered shreds stitched into its fluid mass. The great pathfinder leader, who must have been some kind of minotaur in life, had paid the ferryman with two gold coins of ancient make. They were moving on now and the path had become paved.

They moved and joined with other Pathfinders now, and she felt many were saddened to see her as they escorted the souls of her followers in their thousands who had died. The tide of them made her weep all the more. Even if they were barren souls, made clean by the various processes and torments of Hell and its judges, she still knew them. She had tried so hard to know all of her children. All, but one.

The great stamping hoof steps of the Elder Pathfinder stopped and his acolytes with him. Istania stopped watching her feet and looked to those around her. Her spirit had no power to take its flesh and blood shape here, but still functioned and felt as she remembered. Even if the ghostly limbs were visible only to her they could no longer touch or help those around her.

The Great Spirit of Regret, Taurus, came to her side, and with his sharp senses found Istania's hand. His great stave of fire burned with a calm, but huge flame that whipped and shook as it came close to Istania, but it's flames found little in her to burn away now.

“What is it?” Istania asked her captor.

“Look. Just over this rise. It is here that madness stops, and the way to the next world is made clear. Look and see the Gates of Eternity.” He explained as he guided her away from the path and gently up a stone set of stairs to something of a lookout tower made into the rolling hills of madness.

Istania came and she gasped at what she saw beyond, and it didn’t stop her tears so much as make them begin anew.

The Gate of Eternity to her eyes was a great and golden portcullis surrounded in marble towers. The great white wall of Heaven stretched on to the left and right into the infinite. A thousand paths, and great rivers ran before the wall where something like a great port or market hosted countless souls guided by the hands of caring and ghostly torch bearers.

Istania felt so many of her followers there down below waiting to be let into the gate, the last of themselves being stripped and made clean before entering the final gates. There was a place for her there. She could feel it. A divine peace like no other waiting inside.

She had been judged, and now there was only this.

Here Taurus did not bring her to a God or some great demon fulfilling a sacred role as Judge, but stood before her himself. He waited some little time looking out over the view with her.

“Here we must stay until you give away all rights you have to the Divine. It will do you no good and shelter you from nothing in the beyond, but we cannot take it from you.” He said after a long few moments. “Do this, or we will grant you final death, and no entry to the Gate before you become a most vile demon or Dark Goddess.”

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Istania listened and looked out and below. She could feel what little was left of her Divinity as the last keys keeping her personality affixed to the battered soul she was now. She felt so small, and it reminded her of earlier days when she could not hold herself in any more than one or two avatars of her true power. Probably if she had ever practiced being whole any time in her later and most powerful stages of life she would have beaten Theadus and unmade him, but she had been so consumed in the countless memories, sadness, and lives of her thousands of selves that had lived with and among her people. It had been too much, and she had realized the intent of his treachery too late.

A grim little smile crossed her face as she remembered the anger his betrayal and the slaughter of her people had engendered. The sensation should only be a memory now, but it burned on in her spirit all the same.

“I have to give it away do I?” She asked.

“You can. Many give their divinity to the Gate. It does not give them favor in the beyond, but it does do some little good in guiding their followers home. Like beacons in the dark. They will sense you have passed within and go more eagerly to join you in the next life.” Taurus answered.

“I give the Divine Right of Purity to the Gate.” Istania said at once then, experimentally, and felt that part of her tear away. It was less painful than it was a sublime sense of loss.

It gave her the clarity of thought and anger to decide on what she needed to do next. For a few moments before that she thought she might hesitate, having already anticipated this, and what she would do with her hard earned divine rights.

“Very good. Three more to go.” Taurus said. “You need not give all to the gate, but–”

“I give the Divine Right of Restoration to the demon spirit of my daughter Penelope Inyx for releasing me from the grips of demons that bound my soul and so that she might fix the wrong that I made so long ago. I give the Divine Right of Conquest to my living adopted son, Ivan, Son of Nathaniel, so he might claim rightful vengeance upon that bastard Theadus, and I give my last and final rite, the Divine Right of Cultivation to my dear friend Halspus, Goddess of Knowledge of Ballenlight so their might be something left of that world to see when my son kills that son of a bitch.” Istania growled, feeling the last of herself come unbound, the remaining pieces of her revealing the remaining core that was the unstoppable rage of a mother's sorrowful anger.

Taurus seemed surprised, and looked at her in shock.

“It will give none, but the last any true power. They are only keys to power they cannot yet reach.” He exclaimed.

As the last of what was her came apart from the surface of her soul revealing the infinite mass of magic within made ready for the Gate she smiled and managed some few last words.

“Tell that to Theadus when he stands here.” Her soul pulsed in a roar of intensity that blew at the Pathfinder as the last of what truly made Istania herself came apart in explosive fashion.

The soul that remained was like any of those around. It was stripped of all levers, spouts, and other illusory machinations that might draw out the magic inside, but still it seethed. Still it glowed brightly, but it was ready. There was always something buried deep within that made it to the next life, but that was by design. It was how souls grew, and how they aged.

Taurus recovered, and by the light of his torch he led the soul down the path and to the Gate. Though he had to wait a moment for his acolytes to stand from where they had all fallen.

It gave him time to stretch out his mighty senses and feel the Divine Rights find their way home. He suddenly felt mistaken, or at least a little confused. This had never happened before in the countless passage of years he had served as a Pathfinder. Never in his time had a soul even ascended to Godhood, lasted through the tests only to fail and remained impassioned in the face of the majesty of the Gate. He wondered at that, and at the glowing mass of the soul beside him as his Acolytes broke away into the crowd. He joined the queue with the silent soul of Istania at his side; its shape and form now no different or intelligible from the other souls waiting to pass into Eternity until it woke again.

Yet as everything should have settled into place something tickled at his senses, he whirled, raising his staff and causing other less experienced Pathfinders to clasp the souls they accompanied and pull them aside. There was nothing there but a flicker of shadow, a horned shape in the madness of the outer realms, a horned and slender being slipping away, its position given away by only one thing. Taurus gasped as the Divine Rite settled into the shadow and the being smiled at him; perfectly at home within the strangled nonsense realm of nightmares beyond the torch lit path.

When Penelope reappeared from her 'walk' Samiel had several questions in mind, but they stopped dead in his mind as Penelope joined him at the table in her cottage once more. She was smiling, her pure white ivory fangs gleaming, and her horns devouring nearly all the light in the room. She was grinning ear to ear, and softly humming to herself.

“I was wondering where my vindictive spirit came from.” She said, seeming to muse to herself aloud. “I finally got that answer. I guess it was dear old mom all along. I knew dad was nice on the inside. Just a little bit of a perv, but he's half goat so who's to say what he can and can't fuck?” She said with a malevolent giggle that broke into full blown demonic cackling.

Samiel had to brace himself against the dark allure released with the gale of laughter, and when it finally ended the little cottage was something more. He looked up and around and began to recognize the shapes and design on the building. He strode to one of the tall plain glass windows and pushed back the curtains revealing ghostly light visible in a very dark garden.

A figure sat there, seeming at rest, before it noticed his gaze and an iron rod lantern flail weapon appeared to his sight, raised in both of the figures hands. It stood summoning a great wash of flame into its lantern from those around it.

Samiel stepped away from the window feeling out the power of the Shroud, the true Shroud that would have consumed his Father's Lord Christ had Samiel not been found out and blasted from even the immortal angel's memories. He felt Penelope's touch upon the fabric of its cursed reality and the link to Ivan pulse with strength.

When he looked back to Penelope she was smiling and back to her normal self. The stone work had certainly changed to match a room connected to the Parish of Ivan's lost home, and that sort of explained what had replaced Penelope's own demonic garden outside.

“One more to go.” Penelope said, waving one finger up in glee.