The land of the soul was both familiar and wildly, fundamentally different, Iseult thought. She was walking the same lands as the living, but in some kind of pocket dimension above, superseded on top of the living world, like looking through a veil. Perhaps the most notable difference was the existence of time here. Time was a superstate for regions of high energy, areas of emotional or physical resonance reverberating loud enough that they passed across the veil, existing in looping tandem. The more poignant the energy, the more visible and long lasting the event occurring in the soulscape. Events like blossoming flowers only existed fleetingly, blooming and unblooming simultaneously, an event only comprehensible to a peaceful soul. Isuelt, freshly hatched as such a soul, marveled as she watched.
What seemed like ghosts passed her by as she walked in the gardens, their trajectories briefly impressed on the space before fading away. Humans? She could only assume these were the living, continuing on with their lives, unaware of what was happening on the orthogonal dimension. Several times one passed through her, leaving her with a whisper of their thoughts, so slight she couldn’t quite discern unless the sentiment was very loud.
The starbeing that had followed her into the park turned to walk away, the unbirth of her father as a god assured and so its task apparently completed. ‘Wait!’ Iseult cried out, unwilling to be abandoned just yet. The starbeing seemed the only one around able to perceive the soul world, the only other higher level being in sight, and she wasn’t quite ready to be alone. The starbeing turned back, its face a swirling milky galaxy, stars birthing and dying across its form in heavenly splendor. ‘What, what now?’ Iseult asked, unbalanced and insecure by the all rapid changes, ‘what happens next?’ She knew she was dead as she had seen it happen. She had transformed her soul, released her mortal coil, but what happened after death was something she hadn’t considered. Was she alive in some new sense? There were several religions that pontificated on the subject, though her current situation was not one of the options she had heard of.
Avis’ followers claimed that the soul diffused into wind to be carried on the wings of the great bird, their residual ghost-magic contributing to the wonders Avis would return to human-kind. The more ancient Csialeide sect held that no such thing as a soul existed, that humans were just dust gollums that returned to dust once the spark of life went out, to be metabolized by the great snail god, and only those sacrificed to her would be granted immortality by means of absorption into her shell. It was praised as an honor, though Iseult thoughtit was more a horror, given the corrosive properties of Csialeide’s body and the damage done to the sacrifice throughout the process. Noctua, the blue moon god, the smaller of the two moons orbiting the ringed planet was a patron of many. As the god of dreams most people beseeched him in some form, despite the ominous belief that the spirit of the deceased would be forever lost to the dreamscape. The worshiper was doomed to wander in the living’s dreams forever after their death, many driven mad by eternity, the madness feeding into the dreams of the living, creating some of the more outrageous dreams among dreamers.
It was common for various gods to be worshiped, common for someone to choose even several deities to offer prayers to. Was this afterlife that she was experiencing the true one? Or would the belief one held affect the nature of the afterlife one died into? With the other afterlifes she had heard of, she had a vague understanding of what would be expected of her, a roadmap for her dead-life. But here, in this strange dimensional plane, what was expected of her, the rules she was to now exist by, were a mystery.
The starbeing cocked its head, somehow portraying a sense of bemusement despite its lack of visible expression. ‘Whatever you want.’ They said, as if it were the most obvious thing. Which it was, but it was also an entirely unhelpful thing to say, Iseult thought with frustration, her foot stamping reflexively, a welcome remnant of the bratty councilman's daughter pushing to the surface. She wanted something a little more structured.
Iseult had wanted to be an architect when she grew up. Not to say that was her entire life, she was a teenager after all, with an obsession for all things pink, zombies, and her idol, the super star Ira Faye. And as with all her interests, when she liked something she really, really liked it, pursuing it with a single-minded enthusiasm. As demonstrated by her appearance, a reconstruction of Ira’s trademark style, pink hair and pink heart shaped irises. She had studied extensively, or as extensively as a high school student could while on a fixed school schedule. Iseult had secretly and without her father’s knowledge taken an internship with the city planning department, attended as many environmental and ecology lectures as were available for sustainable design at the local university, and soldiered through her mathematics and computer aided design coursework, with quite a bit of tutoring from her friends. She regularly organized weekend trips to historical architecture in the city for her friend group, each of them getting their own personalized brochure, to their fond annoyance. Iseult was the sort of person who required a guide book several days in advance so that she could do extraneous research in order to know which of the exhibits she wanted to see first in a museum, and organized the visit by chronology with a pink highlighted path through the floorplan. She needed more information and Iseult always found a way to get exactly what she needed.
She stared at the starbeing flatly, arms crossed, pink eyes narrowed a fraction. The starbeing shifted a little, readjusting their footing, seeming to understand that they were being rebuked without Iseult needing to clarify her feelings. ‘I don’t usually deal with mortal souls,’ they said bashfully, ‘just newly born gods. My children.’ Iseult’s chin dropped in disbelief. This was the parent of all gods?! She didn’t even know that was something that could exist. Gods had always seemed to be eternal endless beings, she hadn’t spent much time thinking about where they came from, she wasn’t particularly devout to any god during her life. But of course they had to come from somewhere. Right? ‘Does that mean, are you the first god?’ She asked, hesitant to even put such a strange idea into words. ‘Hm. Sort of. Though it's more that, I’m just first. The first anything.’ That only left Iseult with more confusion, but she seemed to have reached confusion bedrock and more questions on this subject would only continue to confound the issue. She frowned, internally blaming annoying deities with their beyond human knowledge.
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‘Well, you’re on the soul plane now, a soul transformed. If you want you can continue to wander, or you could diffuse your energy and reconstitute with other souls’ energy to make a new soul and be reborn. It really depends on you.’ Anything she wanted? She hadn’t had endless possibilities in,well, ever. The pressures of being a public figure’s daughter, reduced to just his family name, had been hanging over her head, stifling her future for so long that to have it suddenly removed was overwhelming. It presented a problem Iseult had never been given an opportunity to consider. What did she want? Her mortal goals, well, they were irrelevant now. The shift in values left her reeling. She needed something else to think about, at least for the moment, until she could process. Something more tangible.
‘What are you called?’ Iseult asked, as politely as she could. The starbeing made a slight bow, a dignified dip of the head, ‘I am Orikka. Parent of gods and god of moribund, the cusp of life and death.’ Iseult nodded, it made sense now, why the starbeing would be there at the dawn of a new god. ‘Were you disappointed that a new god wasn’t formed?’ She asked, cocking her head, curly bangs falling into her eyes, wondering at the god’s view of her, what she must look like from the view of a millenia old starbeing. Orikka paused, gathering their thoughts. ‘Gods are my children, but they are also pitiable. They are at their core, damaged. A corrupted soul. Kin killing leaves a terrible mark, magnifying the magic of the godseed, yes, but also causing it to seek out other souls indiscriminately, consuming their energy in an unconscious attempt to correct the damage. It can be a dangerous thing, if left to fester,’ the looked up and away, facing the sky as they spoke, a sort of wistful sadness in their voice. They looked back down at her, voice stabilizing a little, ‘it is often the reason for the eversleep, a godsoul so heavy with the weight of corruption, with the weight of the ghosts it’s consumed that it becomes exhausted. A thousand million souls careening through space and time, trying to find solace is a heavy energy to bear. They are like dormant volcanoes, ready to erupt at the slightest provocation, to rend space and time apart as the souls seek wildly to find peace, the peace they are denied from by the afterlife.’
Orikka paused, seeming surprised at how much it had shared. ‘It’s nice. Having someone to tell. After having borne the burden of knowledge alone for so long. I didn't want to worry my children. But I have been searching for a solution for so long. Your case was an interesting aberration. One that I’m not convinced will be reproducible,’ Iseult shifted legs, a little uncomfortable at the thought of being an aberration, a rather unflattering descriptor. They continued on, ‘I won’t make an attempt on my children’s lives by taking their godseed from them,’ they said firmly, as if Iseult had suggested it, ‘and even if I were, tampering with a corrupted godseed could have devastating consequences for the world.’ Iseult rather wished Orikka had not shared quite as much, as now she bore the unwelcome burden of knowledge as well. It was a heavy and unwelcome weight.
‘So, I should avoid gods, right? If they consume souls?’ It was the piece of information most relevant to her that she had gleaned. The starbeing nodded, ‘They would consume you, so yes, it would be advisable.’ Iseult threw up her hands, exacerbated. That would have been important information to pass on before leaving. ‘Anything else that would be advisable for me to know?’ she asked, not even attempting to hide her sarcasm. Orikka drew back slightly, as if her irritation was surprising. ‘Being consumed is not a terrible thing. Gods can release some of the excessive soul energy with magic, the manipulation of soul bodies. It’s like a teapot, letting off steam through a vent rather than exploding. Many of the afterlives purported by each god are fact rather than fiction, their use of the souls in their domain passed on in stories to their devotees.’ Iseult thought that was quite interesting. The idea of being a part of something larger than herself appealed to her, as did the idea of not being alone in this strange new world. However, of the afterlives that were familiar to her and the gods she was aware of, there was no god Iseult would be interested in contributing her soul power to. Perhaps she should shop around? See what other gods there were that she hadn’t yet heard of.
‘Why am I not being consumed by you, if you are a god?’ She wondered aloud, quickly regretting the question at the thought the god might take it as an invitation. ‘I have never killed any kin. I am the only god that can make that claim, and as such I am the only god capable of interacting with the soul scape, capable of controlling myself when it comes to consuming souls, not just a mindless vacuum,’ they paused, as if gauging Iseult’s interest and attention. Apparently finding a satisfactory response they continued, ‘I hope to find a solution so that my children can do the same, some way to awaken them to the higher dimension of time, free them from the fetters of ignorance.’ Iseult wasn’t sure what to feel about that. It felt unfair, that a being could kill their kin, a being like her father, and then get unimaginable power from both soul-ghosts and other pure souls like her, their only disadvantage being the inability to interact with the soul dimension.
‘Wait wait wait,’ Iseult said, gathering her thoughts on something the god mentioned about the eversleepers, making the connection between them and Orikka’s pressing need to find a way for gods to access the dimension in which the pure souls resided. ‘Pure souls? Are you saying that gods need to purify themselves, so that they can interact with the soul world so they won't blow up the world?!’ Every revelation was as jarring as the last. If that was truly the case, it sounded more reasonable, some sort of penance in order to receive absolution from their crimes, a way to release the souls they had trapped in consuming them. Also, the idea of eversleeping gods, just waiting to blow up, needing some way to purify themselves and safely release their built up soul corruption seemed necessary. But as a girl with a strong sense of justice, some sense of remorse and ablution by the corrupted seemed key. The god nodded. Well, that seemed a worthy cause. ‘I’m going to help you,’ Iseult announced, decisively.