Journal Through Darkness

Hark! The Herald Angels Sing!

“Glory to the newborn Kings:
peace on earth, and mercy mild,
Gods and sinners reconciled!”
Joyful, all ye Peoples, rise,
join the triumph of the skies;
cry My angelic hosts’ anthem,
“A newborn World, free from Them!”

Prophesy of the New Age, Catechism of Light
Illir, the Bringer of Light, His Radiant Perfection, Lord of Truth, All Father

As you Fall to your Fate you almost meet a Godess…

You find yourselves falling – individually through the mists, the… clouds?
You know you’re together, or can almost feel each other plummeting, but each of you is alone, swiftly, rushingly alone. Outdistancing everything and everyone you’ve ever known. Except each other. You can still feel each other’s presence.
Glowing.
Twinkling.
Looking down, towards your body, towards your destination, you see a singular globe of light, streaking down through clouds, through time, through the universe… You remember a moment ago.
An age ago.
A fight… You were fighting.

Fighting for your lives!

On a desecrated, drifting vessel, you stand on a pitching deck, a giant, black-robed figure standing proud at the helm, swinging an oaken wheel back and forth, tossing the ship sideways, surfing… seas of red, not blood, but streaks of lava and fire incarnate…
You know this river… Styx. And all its denizens…

But master of all upon the River of Fate is Charon. Dread Charon, at the helm of his Soul-Ship, transporting those bound for an afterlife amongst char and ruin…

It is here you are fighting.
It is Him you are fighting.

Or were, but now?

Plummeting.

Towards the maelstrom of Beltine’s Cauldron you fall, only to be stopped, suspended above the racing torrent! By whose hand?
Sarish! Keeper of Oaths, Binder of Demons.
The Lord of All Contracts.

Enter Sarish, God of Arcane Knowledge & Secrets

He intones, and the heavens, the Soul-Stew of Beltine’s cauldron, the very mists through which you dive, endlessly reverberate with His Mighty Voice.

“You swore your Soul to Me once – and until I am satisfied, I claim you as Mine Own! Begone, Witch!” and he swings his curve-bladed dagger, Catspaw, a green gem glinting in the hilt, and it sweeps away Beltine’s Ladle as it descends, about to stir your soul-stuff with the countless others swirling…

Enter Neroth, God of Death

Neroth, God of Death and Undying, Decayed Master of Pestilence and the Slow Rot of Time, leans into the Godly conversation, and His bony hand, as big as the Five-Arched Bridge of Mael-Ruenne, sweeps through you, through the light of you, and you feel a final tug, as you leave your meat behind in the Mortal Realm.
Neroth sighs the doomed, eternal sigh of Undeath, of Everlife, and speaks, a whisper across your bones not-yet-claimed,

“Stripped are thee of thine mortal tether, be thee re-formed, as Sarish wills – not in thine old vestments,” (as He waves his hand through you again, you see your former body fall to the deck, lifeless, and slide into the roiling red seas of the Styx. “Cloak them how Thoust will, Binder. Demon-Lover.”
“I shall claim them… eventually!”
With the passing of Neroth, the cloud-matter lightens, brightens, swirls more strongly, frenetically, spinning you now up, not downwards, but up, ever UP!
Towards the Heavens!
Towards Your Fates…

When the soaring rush of ascendance slowly fades, you find yourselves in a strangely familiar setting. There are others like you, warm bright twinkling lights in the swirling nether, and the Voice.
The Voice of a Guide.
Who reminds you –

“The World is Ending – you must preserve. Only you can preserve…”
“Preserve the Seeds of Life.”
A familiar charge, to your soul’s purpose.
A familiar goad to spur you.