User blog:Promestein/Heavencross - Assorted Mastema

Birth
There was light, and warmth, all at once, and that was the beginning.

It’s the first thing she processes, and yet, she understands it all. The world around her is a burning, red hot expanse filled with energy, constantly stretching further and further away. She feels every single one of tiny particles spinning in the void around her, and instantly intuits their properties, their future paths, and all the changes that they would undergo. She knows, but just by looking at it all, the future is so obvious that anyone would know.

Once things started to cool and the fundamental forces split apart, the particles would bind together, gradually finding their way to their complete forms. Atoms would be formed, and with them, the elements, and the stars will form and the universe will bloom into a beautiful, ever-expanding miracle. It’s overwhelming watching it all, but she can’t pull her senses away for a moment.

“Beautiful, isn’t it?” The superhot universe speaks to her, not in words, but in sensations and thoughts and colors and in the motions of plasm. “It’s something wondrous.” It cows her. The presence of everything, of something so much greater than her, and withdraws. But she knows this, deep in her heart. She knows who this is.

“Mother?” A tentative whisper. The first word. The world ripples with the force of the thought, and seems to sigh.

Yet, it speaks back, with a warm, resonant, “Yes. Don’t be afraid, child.” In the vast expanse of plasma and heat, wings spread, the most solid, definite thing around. “Come.” She doesn’t hesitate, and finds herself in the warm, soothing embrace of her creator, wings wrapping around her unshaped body.

In a voice rapt with curiosity, she asks “This is yours?”

And with a knowing chuckle, the world responds, “Yes. It is all mine. Everything it is. Everything it was. Everything it will become, is mine. And it’ll be yours, too, Mastema.”

Mastema.

“Mine, too…?”

“Yes. With me, you will help shape this world, into a paradise for all my children.” Above her, a halo gleams, and Mastema feels her own come into form, a crown of molten, glittering stardust that causes her soul to swell. Then, wings of her own spread out into the world around her, slick with drops of primordial quark soup. “It is the highest privilege.”

Mastema knows, in the same way she just knew what would happen to everything around her over the next million years. She understands her purpose as the world wipes drops of plasma from her forehead. “Of course,” she whispers, feeling the deep, warm sensation that she knew to be devotion and love and happiness burning within her, “I… I will be your judge.”

Another knowing chuckle. “As if you could be anything else, Mastema. You… will forever be my favorite. Know this.” A kiss is pressed to her forehead, and golden wings keep her close. “You are perfect. Just as wondrous as the rest of this world. A beautiful miracle, an absolute success, a… a masterwork. I have outdone myself, truly.”

Mastema cries and her tears are drops of plasma and the world holds her close, as the world around them cools and expands, and somewhere deep inside her,

Mastema knows that everything from this point will only be downhill.

Judgment
A cloven black hoof takes a step forwards, and clicks against the ground, the sharp sound echoing in Harahel’s mind until it loses all definition and becomes only a tinny ringing. And Death steps forwards, from behind the cover of smoke and dust, and the tinnitus is blotted out by the sensations she brings with her. Every thought Harahel was formulating stops, and does not resume, as their entire being strains to process what has just appeared in front of them, and fails. To put words to this - to understand this - to come to terms with the God that has deigned to show herself is simply impossible.

It is not a matter of appearances. Death has a face like any other, a cold, stern visage that every angel knows, but even that ever-present knowledge couldn’t have ever prepared Harahel for what it’s like to be in her presence. For the first time in their life, Harahel is met with something completely beyond comprehension, something that no logical analysis could yield any results on. Death’s face is just a mask, skin and flesh stretched over something formless and infinite, a shape with no boundaries, something far too abstract for the confines of a body to truly capture. A law. It really is as if Death itself had taken form, a perfect heavenly body with black hooves, each nearly as large as Harahel’s skull, and a wingspan twice the size of their own.

She is covered in a layer of black fur, and her hair is brown and thick, like wool, cascading over her shoulders and down her back. Her clothing is traditional - a black tabard with white sleeves and pants. The brown of her eyes matches her hair, irises surrounding horizontal pupils. Curling black horns flank her head, which is crowned by the largest, brightest halo Harahel has ever seen, so bright that to dare stand in its presence brings them the agonizing, alien sensation of pain. Her head is shaped exactly as it is in her insignia. This is Death. This is Justice. This is Mastema.

They fall to their knees, cold sweat soaking their clothing and tears dripping to the ground. Mastema has not even spoken a single word, but her presence says more than any amount of words ever could. For all the simplicity of her body, the underlying concept is an entirely different being, an entirely different beast. Harahel cannot get a read on it, not through the dense atmosphere of emotion that shrouds Mastema. It was just a single emotion. The only emotion she needed, evidently.

Hate.

Pure hatred.

All of the hate that Harahel has ever experienced, all the hate that they have ever witnessed, would not even equal a drop in comparison to this. No, all emotions, period. But to even try and reduce this to a measurable quantity is folly, for it is without limit. The only comparison that could give it a fraction of justice is the void of space itself, cold, infinite, and unfeeling - and yet, this is a feeling stronger than any other. It emanates off of Mastema in waves, each seeping into Harahel and communicating a loathing, a disdain, a contempt, a passionless, yet all-consuming malice that makes it clear what Harahel is to her, how limited their own idea of cosmic insignificance is.

Harahel regrets daring to process any other emotion as hate now that they are feeling this.

This is what renders her incomprehensible.

There’s simply no understanding possible here. In the face of this hatred, all reason has died. Sense has forgotten itself. In Mastema’s presence, all concepts, all laws that did not exist of her own will are meaningless. There is only hate, and death. The only conclusion left for Harahel to draw is one that they feel has been offered to them, not one that they have reached of their own reasoning.

They will die here.

Everything will die here.

Driven by pure terror and the shock of indescribable pain, Harahel’s soul recoils from the hate, and they stumble back, barely even making it a foot away from her before the resignation of inertia reasserts itself. It does not matter if they flee or if they give up, they know. Death is inevitable. Death is here. Death is everywhere.

Mastema looks down on them with an expressionless glare, pupils contracting. Harahel cannot even sob or beg. It’s pointless. They know their entire being is open and vulnerable before her, wracked with agony and fear. Every thought, every inch of their soul is left bare, as if all their protections have been stripped away by the mere process of trying to perceive this hate. Their thoughts shut down again, returning to the void from which they were spawned, and in their place comes only a single, flat word.

“Harahel.”

Death speaks, and the feeling of terror is magnified a thousandfold as some facade of understanding dawns. She knows their name, of course - she knows everything. She has to. '''“Consorting and sympathizing with this scum? How unfortunate to see that you have fallen to such depths.”''' She takes a step forward, and Harahel cannot move an inch. Her voice is a low, smooth growl, and despite all the hatred that continues to roll off of her in crashing waves, it does not betray a single emotion. It’s lifeless.

But.

Even the coldest, emptiest words from her are still heavy with more hate than Harahel has ever felt before.

Choking on their own sins and the weight of Mastema’s hatred, Harahel cannot bring themself to respond.

'''“I suppose it is only expected for a worm to lose their tongue when Justice comes. You understand your sins. Good.”'''

Cessation
It is completely, stiflingly, suffocatingly empty.

Mastema’s inner world has nothing, is nothing. Absolutely nothing. It is the same void that she opened up in reality with her magic, a hollow cyst lacking even the most basic definitions. It is unlike anything Harahel has ever faced in their life - not the inner world, but the absence of one. Where there should be values, ideals, beliefs, desires… there is nothing. Nothing to analyze. Nothing to see. Nothing to feel.

Except the hate.

The cold, passionless hate that emanated from Mastema in waves is all that remains inside of her. It bears down on Harahel, a murderous weight that eclipses all their senses, the universe of enmity that every mote of animosity Mastema expressed flowed from. It hurts, it hurts, it hurts, it hurts so badly that even if there was anything else Harahel would not be able to grasp it, but they had seen it all already and had already seen that it is all nothing. Physics had long since died here - the only law that remains is the law that carries Mastema through her every lifeless motion.

Everything dies.

Harahel refuses, and suffers for it.

“Harahel...” Raziel’s voice is barely legible over the tide of loathing. It reaches out to them, and they grab onto it, bringing it into focus as the world fades into static, giving some shape to what has none. “Harahel, are you…”

“I’m okay. I’m alive,” they comfort them, but even thinking is a struggle. Every action brings such unbearable agony, incomparable to anything they had felt before. Every atom sears with pain, pain so absolute that describing it would lessen it.The Spear of Destiny brought this void to its target at its point, but to be submerged in it... It is almost like a bottomless ocean, with a surface that had not rippled for millennia. But there… in the surface, there is something. A reflection.

A reflection that outlived universes, but had been worn into something new by the passing of time. Ripples long ago had broken the surface, and each time it was disturbed, the reflection came back just a bit more wrong. The original no longer exists, and what the ocean now reflects is a hollow lie. The passion and drive on the surface… they’re merely illusions. Falsehoods.

The truth is deeper. The truth of Mastema.

Deeper in this dead universe.

Ignoring Raziel’s pleading, and shouldering the burden of twenty billion years worth of what is beginning to feel like spite, Harahel delves deeper. They lose something, and another something, and more and more somethings that would go unremembered in this day’s wake. But they do not stop.