The Book of Amascut

Chapter 3

Amascut left the Dreamer, who she know knew was Mah, and the world both of them were abandoned on, which she now knew was Freneskae. The way back home was closed, for she no longer had the help of her brother, the cowardly, traitorous cur. Neither did she have the power of the dark divine warriors, who she now knew as the Mahjarrat, as her brother did when he fled with them. Her power was as nothing compared as the Dark Imperator, the Empty Lord, the king of monsters, when he escaped Mah and made his way across the Universe. Mah had stolen so much from Amascut, so much of her life, so much of her time, so much of her fate, so much of her love, so much of her hatred and played with it, tasted it, crushed it, molded it, shaped it. But the Eye Understood and the Mouth Consumed and the Ear Proclaimed until the Dreamer, drained of life and understanding and willingness to fight the cold poison that ate at her heart since time before Time, dreamed again. Amascut had in turn, stolen little from Mah, but it was enough to make her own way across the Universe.

The Universe was wide. It was wider than she remembered, with many more worlds than she recalled. But with new eyes she judged the worlds and their peoples. She saw their potential and what could have been. She saw what should of been, and what was actually passing before her. She saw terror sown across the Universe, a fear of death and a hunger for life that should have never been. She saw marks of a devourer of worlds, and witnessed the incomprehensible mountains of rotting flesh and decaying spirits, and she heard words that consumed entire star systems and reduced civilization to ash. Many worlds reeked of the poison her sibling, who she now knew was Wen, had planted in her heart in the time before Time, and many of those worlds where also touched by the pretender Lord of Light. Many cried out for mercy to the Judge of Souls and mercy she did grant. She saved many from from the terror she saw and the words she heard and the evil she tasted. She saved many from the hells that their afterlives had become. For them, the only mercy was the oblivion found in Her stomach.

And so the Eye Understood and the Mouth Consumed and the Ear Proclaimed and the Judge showed mercy.

Time passed without any reliable count, but Amascut finally returned home to the Kharid. She saw signs on land that showed the military might of Zaros had pushed far south into the Kharid, but her eye looked far to the north and she saw that Zaros and his monstrous Empire were pushed back. She fell prostrate on the banks of the Elid and sobbed. Had she judged wrong? The Mahjarrat had done what Icthlarin had hoped, they had defended the Kharid and brought peace to its people. And though they hadn't eliminated the threat Zaros posed (for how could they? they were created in his shadow…) they had spared the Kharid from the calamitous intents of the Empty Lord and his Dark Empire.

All Kharid, except for the lands of the Mehkmet and the Auspah and the Bedabin.

From where her tears fell, water welled up from the ground. The trees bent their branches and leaves away from her and the clouds parted above her. Elidinis and Tumeken appeared by her and bade her to rise, and each embraced their long lost daughter. Amascut, still red-haired and handsome, the apple of her Father's eye, had changed as the Kharid had changed but it was Tumeken who perceived the greatest difference. Or, rather, didn't perceive. She was no longer His Eye, she was no longer His Ear, she was no longer His Mouth. Elidinis, noting the cold pain of estrangement overtaking Tumeken's heart and Amascut's growing confusion about Tumeken's distance and Icthlarin's absence urged Amascut to go to her brother. Relief and rage warred as Amascut cast her eye to the far north again, and she pried the battle lines. There she saw Kharidian warriors and a generation of her slayers and warrior priests and priestesses that she had never seen and a portion of the divine warriors they had encountered on Freneskae. But Icthlarin was not there. All the cur ever wanted was to please his father and defend his father's people, but how could he please a father so cold, so harsh? Where was the coward? Elidinis urged Amascut again to go to her brother and then looked to the river.

And the Eye Understood. As she turned her fiery gaze on Tumeken, she descended to the underworld, to the shores of the River Noumenon.