The Book of Amascut

Chapter 4

On the shore of the River Noumenon, Amascut knew what had happened in her absence before her senses could even experience it, and before her mind could infer it. She had been gone for long ages and the underworld had no Judge. On the opposite shore the Reaper laid down his sorrowful harvest, far more bountiful than the harvest had been collected in ages past. So many were human, but there too were a few of the warrior bird-like men that worshiped the false Lord of Light, and some of the war-ready man-like birds, so like her father, so enamored with justice, yet so unlike her father. In her years of absence, green creatures of every size but of generally of the same hulking man shape had begun to arrive, born for war and proud to have died in battle. Agile pointy eared giants stalked through the crowds desperate to find each other and find solace, and both pointy eared and round eared midgets desperate to make themselves smaller hid from themselves and their shame. Absent were those from the forces of the Empty Lord save for a rare representative of the enslaved lower castes of Pandemonium.

With joy they looked upon the Vaults of the Blessed Underworld
Their bonds broken, their fates by chance no longer that of their Lords
They fell into the river and they were no longer fire
They were no longer boiling hot flesh and no longer searing ash
They were no longer their lives or their deaths
The river swept beyond experience and they were no longer the river
They where what they are in themselves.

The Ferryman, not bound to the Empty Lord and not bound to the Dukes bound to the Empty Lord, yet still bound, floated who he could over his own freedom, in the shadow of the beginnings of a bridge one of his masters had begun building over the river. Now his other master had returned. And she would disapprove of the bridge. This the river knew.

But the river knew still more. In Amascut's absence, and in Icthlarin's naiveté, several powerful souls had crossed the river, worthy souls and foul, evil souls, and they crossed into the afterlife. Warped was the afterlife now, warped into personal hells and havens trapping souls in eternal wells of guilt and shame and rapturous unceasing uncaring joy and abuse. A violent storm of warring spirit and emotion buffeted a mighty wall that rose up and protected the river, and the rest of the underworld, and the world itself from a conflict that had grown far greater than what existed above. The wall was always there, but it was fortified now, and the gates too, now strengthened. New were the massive statues flanking the gates, the Jackal and the Lioness.

A maneless lioness. Not Amascut, a maneless lioness, a random lioness, an ideal lioness, not Amascut as she was, but as Icthlarin and Tumeken and Elidinis and the Kharid and the World and the Universe and Mah wished she was. A memory, an idealized memory, never a reality.

Her rage grew until it dwarfed the statues and she raised her hand to smash them and the gates. The green creatures on the opposite shore rejoiced and readied to prove themselves worthy, readied themselves to be redeemed. But near the false image of the Lioness gathered souls who begged her to stop. The river knew who they were, and in front of Amascut stood and lived generations of slayers of monsters and warrior priests and warrior priestess. The river knew the lives they lived and the lives they ended and the hope that they had that they would be reborn. Before Amascut was the huge mound of bones of all who were ended by the faithful and faithless followers of the way of the slayer. Now the faithless had faith again and their hope was confirmed. They knew Icthlarin had passed on beyond the gate, to shepherd souls through the storm.

The bones were wreathed in flames and Amascut flung open the Gates of the Underworld. The Mouth Consumed the smoke and the Ear Proclaimed the Words that Destroy Civilizations into the emotional maelstrom of the Afterlife. Stones rose from the depths of the River Noumenon to complete the bridge. All on the opposite shore save for the green brutes fled from the river's edge and the bridge for fear of the storm the mad goddess had unleashed, but the brutes charged toward glory. Glory did not rush forward to meet them, for Amascut manipulated it and it filled those that waited for her faithfully and faithlessly by her false image. What met the souls of those green war-eager brutes were the slayers of their bodies reborn as the devourers of their spirits, armed with boundless hatred, unending shame, heart-breaking sadness, ego-shredding guilt, and unrelenting ecstasy. The brutes were barely an impediment to the group of soul devouring beasts that bounded across the bridge to the opposite shore. The majority of the beasts, however, poured into the storm beyond the gate, seeking to destroy heavens and hells alike to consume the souls within.

The Lioness's bountiful mercy lined the shores of the River Noumenon while Amascut awaited at the gates of the underworld for her brother's return.