Soul Realm, aka “The Afterlife”
No matter how often he visited the spirit realm, the negative light reflection cast in the pallid greenish-white hue sent an unshakable shiver up his spine. Everything was lesser here. The pale shadow of the light plane dulled the senses. In the great beyond, the massive black star known as the Ebon Maw devoured the departed souls too weak to resist its pull.
Resembling a supermassive black hole whose only pull was on souls. Falling into its obsidian depths to be churned and chewed. Stripped free of emotions, memories, and any baggage brought over from life. Reduced down to only the raw soul energy, ready for reentry into the other realms. All part of the process, the cycle. He knew this because he’d been present at its inception. Well, technically a part of him. The rest of his soul shards were scattered across the cycle by design.
The spectral form of the dreadwyrm Bahumet floated before the ghostly solar system his mother’s world used to inhabit. Having been born and battled under his given name of Bahumet. This wasn’t his first trip through the cycle of life. He’d come here hoping to see the wyrm mother of fate one final time, even if it was through the spectral realm. But her world was gone. He tried to scry her presence, and she slipped through his mind like water around stones in a river. Puzzled, he gave up with a sigh. She was either dead, consumed, or had placed a powerful compulsion spell on her location. If Maleficus had come for her, would his mother have resisted? Or would she have embraced it as he had? Disappointment banged through him at his lack of answers.
Bahumet used his Form Shift ability and changed to his human-esque shape. His normal red mane appeared pallid grey in the muted realm. His draconic wings spread out behind him like ivory-scaled angel wings. Two sets of horns protruding from his forehead kept his hair back. Bahumet looked more like a ghostly negative demon than a humanoid-shifted void dragon. He was bereft of his physical body, anchored behind in the mortal plane. The pantheon had trapped it within a supermassive black hole if he recalled correctly. His last few moments were always hazy. A fact he understood with post-mortem awareness. Now that he’d separated his soul from his body, parts of the ward on his soul had loosened. Pieces of his mind tingled as they reintegrated. Like limbs regaining feeling. He was massive and fragmented. Not whole. This wasn’t the first death of the overall entity he belonged to. One such tingling limb was the fact that he bore another name. One as old as the void itself. Xanofex.
His power flared as he resisted the ever present tug of the maw against his soul. At his strength, resisting the maw’s pull was a trivial thing. It was always a trivial thing, and yet he allowed himself to take part in it every time. The Ebon Maw served like a warm bath for his soul. It tore away the pain and memories of existence, even if only temporarily. In his long and exhaustingly painful experience, rebirth was one of the few experiences that never lost its luster and made existence at all worth going through.
A dimensional doorway cleaved the realm in two next to him in a concise 1.8-meter tall slash. Light spilled in from the realm of the living, splashing everything in a shade of gold that felt wrong for the plane of spirits. The edges of the doorway glowed with radiant golden energy from straight clean lines. The polar opposite of a void gate’s cracked and jagged edges like an angry violet scar.
A radiant woman with long ivory hair, glowing azure eyes, and blue robes drifted through the tear in reality and halted next to him. Her hair swam about her as if riding currents of water. He knew instinctually it was actually her power, the immensity of her aura doing that. A warm, soothing aether bathed him. He basked in the warmth for a moment, allowing himself a final moment with an old friend.
“So begins your rest anew then?”
He nodded, a weariness setting in that he’d long suppressed. “Soon,” he replied in a cultured, draconic accent. War. Loss. Change. They were heavy burdens to carry, and he was glad to always unburden himself to the Maw. He felt cowardly for it. She’d always stood to watch as he constantly let the Maw reclaim him. But then, compared to her, he did far heavier lifting in his brief incarnations.
“I’m tired. This war was costly, and this sector feels diminished for it. With Maleficus slain finally, and the pantheon shattered… there’s little left for me. Let the survivors forge their destinies,” he added wearily.
“You always enjoyed offering others a choice and a chance.”
“If only I had one of my own,” he said ruefully. He missed the pained look the radiant woman gave him. “How long do you think we’ll have before they move again?” he asked.
The radiant woman frowned, shaking her head. Her brows strained, and he could sense the effort it was taking to maintain her presence here. Being anchored between all realms meant manifesting in any realm specifically required twice the effort. Her power was vast, but not unlimited. And it dwindled with each new crisis and intervention. A fact their opponents exploited all too eagerly.
“Difficult to say. But I recognize his handiwork in Maleficus’ deeds. Had the dragon seized control of the galaxy, I know Maleficus would have challenged the Titans.”
He frowned at the thought of the titans. They were a bigger problem for another time. For now? He just wanted to sleep. To wake up and be someone unimportant with trivial problems for a change. He wanted to be free of his divine burdens and obligations. Even if temporarily. He wondered what it would be like to have a curfew. Or have to worry about what to eat.
The radiant woman placed a hand on his shoulder, nodding to the Maw. It loomed in the distance. A massive negative contrast star in a pallid white star field speckled with black stars. If he strained, he could see all the individual souls slowly wandering toward the dark center. All part of the endless cycle of existence. A great engine he and the deity next to him helped create. A delaying action to buy time.
For a fleeting moment, he allowed himself to remember a time when death and return were a choice and not a predetermined outcome. How low creation had fallen. But there were no more abominations rising. And that was good enough for him.
“How long have we been doing this?” he asked softly, still watching the horizon.
“Too long,” she said with a weariness matching his own.
“All we’ve done is constantly react. Always rushing to avert some immense disaster. Our fight is a struggle against inevitability if we don’t become proactive,” he sighed. The thought of taking the fight to the others sat ill with him. Most of them were his friends once. Though they likely felt betrayed by him when he’d turned his back on them. Some choices just couldn’t be abided though. He turned to the radiant woman floating next to him.
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“I leave it to you to plan and push things towards that intent.”
Light pulsed from her, brilliant gold aether illuminating the surrounding space. She cast a ward on his soul. A traveler’s ward to maintain the core of his soul’s coherence against the Maw. It was kind of cheating around the process. Well, more of a loophole, he knew. Though it didn’t make it feel less wrong somehow.
System Info: Gold Seal applied. You’ve been given A Gold Sealed Ward. The strongest and rarest of wards. Beyond a mortal's understanding and even most gods. So complex and strong, and yet so simple. It will prevent alteration of the aether of your soul. Not even the Ebon Maw will be able to chew you up and spit you out completely. Lucky you!
He willed the system missive to close with a casual wave.
“When next you awaken, I’ll have set a new stage for you.”
For a fleeting moment, if he couldn’t be free, he almost wished he could simply cease existence. But the ward on his soul meant that even if he went through, it would scrub only the surface clean. The core of who he was, what he was, would remain intact. But for as much as he wanted to be done, there was just as strong a side of him that couldn’t leave things alone. Not as they were. Not after everything sacrificed so far. He had to shepherd a better future for all. He owed them that much.
His brows furrowed as a stray thought stole words before he could silence it. “How much longer must we persist like this?”
The radiant woman frowned, offering him a sympathetic expression. “I’m sorry Xan, would that I had any other options I would happily allow you the peace and freedom you yearn for.”
Hearing his true name was still… weird. Separating what he was born as vs what he’d inherited was always strange. The burden the name Xanofex carried was heavy, though he felt like he’d given it his best. He gave her a dismissive shake of his head. “No, this is our mess. We decided this was the best way forward.” He let out a weary sigh. A wispy white and green spirit swished by him on its way to the maw, chilling his breath for a moment. As the small frosty cloud billowed away, it too being pulled towards the Maw, he turned to regard his long-time friend and ally. “We have to find a way to finish this before everything unravels again.”
“We will. Now go rest. You’ve earned it.”
He allowed the Maw to tug him forward. Slowly, he drifted away from her. Turning to face her, it occurred to him just now that she’d watched him leave like this several times. He’d never thought about how that felt. The burden of standing watch. Unable to act as their creation ripped itself to pieces continuously, from within and from out. They each played their roles as guardians. No, not guardians, stewards of creation.
“See you in the next life, Amata.”
“Dream well, old friend.”
He drifted back around to face the Maw. He knew what it was, and that he’d crossed the threshold several times. He didn’t remember what it was like to go through. Scary as it was, he was actually looking forward to the novelty of the experience. He studied the Maw.
System Info: The Ebon Maw
You sense an end, and a beginning, within its obsidian expanse.
Proceeding will end your progress and cause you to restart.
Xanofex acknowledged the missive mentally. He marveled at the jet-black star in front of him. It seemed so distant and yet massive. He’d seen the Maw just beyond the horizon, no matter what location he visited the Soul Realm from. His position was now dangerously closer than he’d ever cared to be in normal circumstances. Fully aware of its purpose, he’d not thought to tease its pull. All around him, it drew souls into the event horizon of the Maw. Their essences churned and reclaimed. Energy can be changed from one form to another, but it can’t be created or destroyed.
He reached out as a spirit wafted by, his hand weaving through the pallid white smoky trail it left. His own skin, as white as marble, contrasted with the standard violet-black scales of his previous draconic body. He spread his wings wide and rolled lazily in a circle as the Maw pulled him ever closer with the promise of something new. He turned back to Amata, who stood vigil in all her radiance. She did him the honor of watching to the very end. He missed his friends and all the people he fought alongside. If he was lucky, maybe he’d run into them again in the next life.
System Info: You are now entering the Ebon Maw.
All previous stats and data will be erased.
Will you proceed? Yes/No
Yes, he thought. It was time. He felt a warmth wash over him and the last thing Amata would see of him was his ivory-scaled wings wrapped around his porcelain white skin, and a contented smile creep out from behind his long ash-colored mane as it danced around him like it was windswept.
Then, oblivion claimed him, and reality blew away from him like so much dust in the wind.
***
As Xanofex fell into the Ebon Maw, Amaterasu lingered a moment longer. Knowing that Xan would fuss if she left before his journey had concluded. The crystal she wore around her neck glowed and pulsed warmly. The anchor point for the ward she’d cast over Xan’s soul. He’d not retain much of his magic or memory, but his soul would remain intact. The core of what he was. That would survive the journey where others would not.
There were many ways to avoid the dissolution of the soul. Most of the elder gods anchored their souls to their magic and then left that magic in the realm of the living. Sometimes that magic would be regathered and they could conduct an awakening to resurrect the god. Though this introduced the possibility of that magic being pillaged by others, diminishing the chances of return. Others used tombs or sacred vaults tethered to their souls. When they reincarnated, they would be inexorably drawn to their tombs, then reclaim their power and soul shards.
But even the eldest god didn’t compare to her or Xan. Where they wielded great power, she and Xan were power. Some could confuse them for Titans. But even that would be false.
“Not Titans,” she said softly into the realm of the dead. No secrets were kept here, and no one could scry her. This was the realm of unburdening oneself of the previous life. It had become something of a private confessional for her over the eons. “The First,” she said with a sad smile.
The eldest gods knew some secrets of the universe. She and Xan wrote the book as Persaetheus would joke. She held the crystal necklace tightly for a moment before slashing another tear in reality that glowed at the edges with a golden white hue as light magic motes drifted free of the straight, clean crack. Wasting no time, she slid through the hole and emerged into the realm she’d created for herself. The interstice between the realms where aether gathered and condensed into the crystal. A plane specifically only she and Xan were aware of.
It allowed her to stand watch over all, untouched by the children of reality. The silent witness to her catastrophic and drastic actions to save everything from certain doom. So much ruin and intense loss. She understood Xan’s need to traverse the Maw. He withstood so much. Endured so much. She’d often contemplated doing so herself. But she stood strong in her task because Xanofex needed her to. So she might one day pass on the burdens and responsibility of saving everything to him.
She was unfortunately tethered here. The lynchpin holding it all together. Without her to counterbalance the threat of Atlas breaking free of his prison by the dark ones, it would all unravel, and the abominations would emerge again. And that said nothing of Erebos' threat. So she stood vigil and acted through Xan. Bringing him back when she needed a champion among mortals to fight back into the darkness. Even though he often was of the darkness, she knew that sometimes you had to fight fire with fire, or in Xan’s case? Void with void. Xan was her own personal agent of change.
And when creation needed her? She would bring him back again. And he would rise, as he always did. To save it all again, as often as she needed him to. Because that’s just who he was. She turned to watch the Prime Crystal. Some distance away, she gave a glance to the dimensional twin of the Obsidian Palace, whose main occupant was her most useful charge and avatar.
“Soon,” she said softly before drifting towards the crystal and leaving the palace behind for now.