“This wasn’t supposed to be possible”, Azazel whispered into his wife’s ear. Like all couples, they held onto each other as all Heaven was mourning. Nothing else mattered.

Kay nodded. “A soul of her type should be immortal. She was made of dark blue vajra. Absolutely pure, without inclusions, without discolourations. No karmic debts, no imperfections, only kindness, dedication to her duties, good deeds, devotion to God. In fact, she would have been an obvious candidate for becoming a Goddess”.

“She did everything right. She did exactly what one is supposed to do. She did everything you or I would have done. How is this even possible?”, tears stained his face. “You are supposed to die if you really, really fuck up. Like, sell your soul to Satan, give Satan the Jewel, something of that order. I knew her. She was kind, smart, funny, dedicated to her work, compassionate. Exactly the kind of a person you’d want as your friend. I don’t even want to think how Azrael and Hypatia feel. I’ll know soon enough because we have to go there and comfort them as much as we can, but they must be devastated”, he sighed. “Why did God do this to her? Set her up with a partner who would kill both of them. Why?”

“Because Carol had free will. He could have persisted, reacted like Berfrid had. It would have been a wonderful love story with a happy ending. But if there was no free will, no possibility of a love story ending up as a terrible tragedy, what would any of it matter? Oh, we ended up happily ever after, the way everybody always does; yawn”, she attempted an unconvincing smile. “That’s the problem with that damn world and the one who made it, and we knew it. Everybody is acting as if incarnating there is a normal thing, a way to evolve quickly. The problem is, it can end badly”.

“This is the worst tragedy that ever happened, to my knowledge, and I’m significantly older than dirt. We had souls that made very bad calls and got wrecked or killed. We never had a situation where one did that, and took a perfectly pure and innocent angelic person with them. Tell me what happened with her, how was it possible, what’s going to happen next?”, he whispered in quiet exasperation.

“It’s a reality-breaking paradox. I will try to map what happened, but I’m currently in a state of shock and grief, and that’s messing me up. I’ll try”, she sighed.

“Their fates are forever bound. Sanat Kumar killed him, dismembered his soul and used it to power his damned attractors. She felt nameless dread and a sense of doom as this happened, and as the knowledge connected, the crystalline structure of her soul shattered and she died. They are now both dead, but I don’t think that’s all. Her death caused something terrible in Reality; death of such a perfectly innocent person on a steep upward spiritual trajectory is a reality-breaking paradox, as it is not supposed to happen, ever. Even Christ’s death on Earth, sufficient to tear a permanent hole through it, wasn’t this much of a paradox, as it was merely a physical thing. Death of a perfect crystal of vajra due to no fault of her own, merely because her spouse made a fatal mistake and died, I need to see what actually happened there. They are both gone, there’s no sense to it. It is truly the greatest loss and the greatest tragedy we’ve suffered, and I wish I could say some magic is going to happen and everything is going to be fine and God is going to revive her, but we truly lost her. As for the karmic equations, Sanat Kumar is in the clear for Carol. He was offered an option and he made a wrong call. But I feel there’s more to it”.

“Frozen out of Time”, he whispered.

“What do you mean?”

“He bought him, but not her. She is perfectly innocent, and yet she reached out for him in her love and grief and she died. She couldn’t have saved him because he made a fatal decision of his own accord, but she could go with him. But since their fates are bound, and Sanat Kumar can’t bind her to anything, she could freeze her husband in some state of Eternity, since it is her inalienable claim. She can’t claim Time. She can’t get him back because he lost himself to Sanat Kumar, but Sanat Kumar can’t really do anything with him since her claim to him has seniority – God gave him to her first – and, unlike Sanat Kumar, she is an Eternal. His claim to the Jewel is in Time”.

“She broke more than her own soul. She broke the world itself”, she whispered. “She bound him in Eternity so that he couldn’t perish in Time. But while Sanat Kumar lives, his claim will persist and bind them both. But what will happen as he dies? Will someone inherit the claim? Carol is bound to that world as a power source for some evil, but cannot be consumed by it because he is fate-entangled with his perfect wife, and she is karmically invulnerable. That was Sanat Kumar’s decision. So, once that world and its structures are dissolved, what is left of him will be released, and she bound it to her own Eternity so that it cannot perish in Time. Will we see them again, when that world ends? She wasn’t shattered by the forces of karma, but by her own pain. She should reassemble as the cause of her pain disappears, but can she pull him back together as Sanat Kumar dies and his lease on the Jewel ends? This is all above my pay grade, and I’m not sure we’re not deluding ourselves”.

“Let’s say we are not. If we’re right, is it possible that God saved Carol by binding him to her before his fatal decision?”, he was reaching hard, and he knew it.

“She got those extra jewels that were supposed to enforce her soul against the adverse effects of empathy, from Lord Shiva, just yesterday, because she’s a Judge. Those things are serious God-level magic, and they are supposed to prevent being harmed by things very much like what killed her. And she’s not exactly supposed to be dead because Eternity binds her together, because of what she is. And her fate is bound to her husband. And I see that she did multiple big favours for Azrael and Hypatia, and those things are God-level obligations. She should be held in Reality by both her own perfection, magic of a Primordial God, and obligations to her by two Gods. Not to mention that the entire Heaven is crying for her. That’s some serious power there, of the kind that creates tulkus of the Gods. It’s possible that we’re reaching because it’s some stage of grief and we won’t let go, but there’s some objectively God-level stuff there, in addition to an unprecedented situation. Carol’s allegiance to Sanat Kumar is an anchor in Time. Can they persist in stasis until it passes?”, she mused.

“I know what we’ll do next”, he nodded.

“Talk to Father?”, she smiled.

“Good girl”, he kissed her hair.

…

“Wow, you kids really did your homework on this”, Shiva nodded. “Let me see if you’re right”.

He opened his palm and looked within. “Wow. You did stumble upon something. The karmic equation would be that God owes her one because he basically did this to her in answer to her innocent prayer. Also, multiple persons of God owe her favours, as she’s just that kind of a wonderful person that always stepped in to save the day when someone had a hard time. And she had my enhancements active, and you are right about those. They can stitch a grieving God together just fine. And she is immortal since she is sinless and faultless. And she is fate-bound to her husband. Which means that the obvious conclusion would be that God did the providence thing and arranged this so that Carol would be saved, and she would get a very large bonus afterwards. But the price is, she is frozen in this soul-destroying agony until Sanat Kumar dies and his claim to the Jewel ends. There’s a lot of ‘ifs’ in the whole thing, and I can’t just time-jump and retrieve them, since he’s anchored in Time. It’s a pickle. Still a fucking tragedy, to be sure, but there’s a justifiable hope that it will end well. Let’s see what we can do to improve the odds”, he looked at his wife significantly, and she nodded.

“The tears and obligations of the Gods. God’s obligation, providence and justice”, he murmured as he weaved a spell; Shakti closed her eyes, and golden fire danced across both their fingers. “Grace is of God”, he whispered. “Carol is of Grace”.

“Her claim is older”, Shakti whispered. “Founded upon God’s providence and justice, and her devotion, which is the nectar of Eternity”.

“Free will has consequences”, Shiva nodded. “But they are to a timely being and in Time. Her claims are eternal, and she belongs to God”.

“Final verdict has been reached”, they whispered in unison. “God’s will be done”.

…

“Guys, we have good news”. Azrael and Hypatia looked up at the smiling Gods, not understanding.

“As it turns out, being everybody’s favourite angel, being sinless, perfect and having everybody including the Providence of God owing you one has its advantages”, Kay giggled.

“Have the two of you gone insane from some ‘refusal to accept reality’ part of the grieving process?”, voiced Azrael.

“Initially”, Zee nodded. “But as it turns out, me being the Blade of Discernment, and her being the Mind of God, together we kind of pack a punch. We figured out some complicated, super convoluted stuff, ran it by Lord Shiva, who decided that it’s worth a shot, and he and his blessed Lady Goddess did some magic of the kind they did when they made the world, and the end result, we’ll see Grace again. It’s just that we have to wait until Sanat Kumar’s lease on the Jewel expires, and Father rips him to shreds as he promised”.

“OK, you are starting to make some marginal sense. But you’ll have to actually explain this from the beginning, using words, not big brain shorthand”, Hypatia nodded. “Our minds are not in the best of condition at the moment”.

“Sorry”, Kay giggled. “Let me walk you through it”.

…

Carol was frozen in a state of terrible agony. He regretted his foolish decision as soon as he made it, but then it was too late. Satan commanded his soul to be bound to some evil thing of the world, impaling him onto it like a worm to a hook, and he felt as if his life energy was depleted in order to power terrible godless sin, making it beautiful and attractive.

But then he felt a presence. It was not new; he started feeling it weeks ago, as if some sense that things are going to be fine if he holds on and has faith, which he dismissed as nonsense, as nothing was ever fine in his life. But this now was different; more concrete, as if someone was holding him together. Things didn’t get better, but they also didn’t get worse. And the Presence was something that felt as belonging, eternity, and some kind of love like he never felt – the fatal kind that you feel when you die for someone, and it was completely real. And he could bet, without any reason or evidence that he could point to, that it was female. And she was frozen in mortal agony, because she lost him before she ever found him, whatever that meant.

And he thought, if someone cared for me this much, if that were real, I can live through this nightmare, for as long as it takes, if I see her on the other side.

“I really fucked this up”, he thought. “I wish I could have a second chance to put this right”.

“My Lord, I feel terribly disturbed of late”, Grace addressed her boss, the Angel of Death. “I see no reason for it. I have been progressing quite nicely under your tutorship, and have been praying to God to lead me to my husband so that I could have a true friend to love God with, of the kind you have in Lady Hypatia”

“Have you been distressed by something you have seen treating the deceased?”, Azrael tried to understand.

“Of course I have, like everybody else. But this is different. It feels like something ominous and personal, and I can’t for the life of me understand what”.

Having worked with Grace since the fall of Rome, Azrael knew this had to be serious. She was a very level-headed, calm and dedicated person, and he owed her quite a long list of favours. If she had a problem, it wasn’t business. It was personal, as Grace was family. Also, it had priority over everything else.

“Come, let’s get help”.

…

“So, you’re saying something happened, that is making you feel terribly distressed, and you don’t know what it is?”, Lord Vishnu raised an eyebrow.

“I know it sounds vague, my Lord, but Grace is an incredibly reliable person, and I personally vouch for her. If she’s saying it’s a problem, then it most certainly is”, Azrael spoke in a most serious tone.

Vishnu took his wife’s hand. “My love, I will need your help here, as this seems to be exactly the kind of a problem you excel at solving”.

“You mean, matters of fate, fortune and other kinds of karmic path intersections?”, she smiled. “I’m on it”. She took Grace’s hand and turned her sight inwards, as if searching. Then she froze, and lost colour.

Vishnu immediately made her a chair to sit in, alarmed by the sight.

“What’s wrong?”

“You prayed to God recently to find you a husband, yes?”, Lakshmi stuttered.

“I have”, Grace nodded.

“God indeed lit up a path for both of you to meet soon”, a tear fell down Goddess’ face. “Your karmic paths intersected and he should have been here already, as he left his physical body, but he never arrived”

“What do you mean?”, Grace was confused, but the ominous feeling increased and her hand twitched reflexively.

“Sanat Kumar played a trick on him. I don’t see the details, but there was a desperate situation he was put in, and Satan offered him to resolve it if he swore allegiance to him and gave him his soul. Carol, as that was his name, felt alone and desperate at the time. He was alone for a long time, prayed to God to lead him to his wife, but it seemed that nothing came of it, except for a long series of disasters. He felt his life was a failure, and this looked like something he could do for others, if his own fate was a dead end…”, Lakshmi couldn’t finish, looking at the other woman.

Reality itself shook, as Grace mouthed a wordless “no”, and dropped to her knees.

A dark blue lightning cracked through Creation, as her immortal angelic heart shattered… forever.

…

“Can we do anything?”, Lakshmi asked her husband, who looked half dead from shock.

“They were a true couple”, Shakti whispered. “I can heal her, but her soul will break again. It’s not an injury one can recover from. Imagine your husband dying. That would have been you”.

“He killed both of them by not waiting, by not having faith”, Vishnu whispered. “He didn’t think he mattered”.

“Can we fix this?”, Shiva asked his wife. “I know, free will, he made his choice. But he didn’t choose evil. He just stopped hoping”.

“Free will”, she waved her head. “This is exactly the kind of a choice we are not allowed to interfere with”.

“We had too many happy endings lately. Too many things worked out. Fates that connected. People who waited for each other through untold centuries, who had faith. It mattered so much because that outcome wasn’t guaranteed. They all could have made a fatal error somewhere. Decided God doesn’t care. Decided they don’t matter. Decided their ideal partner is a figment of their imagination, and not something real, or God’s promise. Carol had a terrible feeling before he made his decision to sell his soul to Satan. He felt horrible wrongness, but he did it anyway, because he gave up on hope, on faith, on God, on himself. And with it, he killed both himself and his beautiful, innocent, wonderful wife”, Lakshmi wept. “There’s nothing we can do. They were a destiny-bound couple. There could never be anyone else for either of them”.

“Fuck”, Shiva whispered.

Bernard and Clare sat in the orchard with Lady Zina, as she rested and enjoyed her day.

“I don’t understand why Lord Shiva grows so angry at certain things Satan does. Didn’t he know that already?”, Clare mused.

“I think I understand it, but I am open to our Lady’s correction”, Bernard smiled. “I think he grows especially angry when Satan commits crimes against innocence, as he sees himself as the ultimate protector of the innocent”.

“You are completely right”, Zina smiled back. “I’ve seen what the Turks are doing. They are using strength to intimidate, they target the innocent and the most vulnerable, and they also target the most virtuous ones, making an example out of them by subjecting them to a particularly cruel and torturous death. They enslave women and children. They treat innocence as a weakness to be exploited, and they bow to Satan for his strength. In hindsight, what traumatised me was the attack on innocence and this terrible boastful attitude that behaved as if strength is on their side, and its purpose isn’t to protect innocence, but exploit and destroy it. That’s also what traumatised Lady Hypatia – when an innocent, virtuous family was attacked by Satan from a position of worldly power, as if God can’t help them and he’s the only God”.

“And Lord Shiva sees himself as the power in service of goodness, kindness and innocence; a wall of ultimate strength that protects them and allows them to flourish and express themselves, and doesn’t take kindly to villains and bullies”, Bernard nodded approvingly. “Also, he knows that if something brought a Goddess to tears, it’s a serious problem and then he immediately deals with it. I love his decisiveness in dealing with evil, and also his measures to repair the damage and strengthen the good and the innocent”.

“What do your new jewels feel like, and what are they doing?”, Clare changed the subject.

“They are allowing me to feel empathy and kindness without taking emotional damage”, Zina’s sight turned inwards. “In essence, they are a shield that protects me when I make myself vulnerable, giving me perspective that corrects for the drawback of the process; they light up with great power as I am exposed to terrible things, and this shields my soul from injury”.

“Why didn’t the elders give the Judges such protections to begin with?”

“I don’t know, but I suspect they didn’t expect terrible things of this magnitude to be taking place so frequently, that we couldn’t handle ourselves. After all, our work strengthens us – it gives us experience, perspective and straightforward spiritual magnitude, from all the virtuous karmic actions that we perform, and from all the small injuries we take, and heal. It’s a very rewarding work. But occasionally, we encounter things that traumatise us. It used to be once every long while, but as of recent, it’s been a barrage of terror; imagine looking at a soul that enslaved children, raped their mothers and impaled their fathers as they rose up to protect their families. And not once every five centuries, but every hour. The inability to protect the innocent feels terrible, which is the reason we all love Lord Shiva so much. He is the ultimate wall around us, that allows us to sit here in peace and be kind and vulnerable without fear, instead of being under armour and weapons all the time”.

“I think I understand now. He is the ultimate male power”, Chiara nodded. “He builds a wall around the innocent, and kills a prowling wolf. Then, when the innocent ask what he was doing, he says he was out fishing”, she giggled, as Bernard grinned and nodded in approval.

“I approached my work with the same sentiment. I would identify the wolves that prowled and tried to seduce the innocent, and I would make an example out of them. Seeing Lord Shiva deal with evil and shield the good makes me feel the power of righteousness of God”, he nodded. “The children can only giggle safely in the grass if the wolf is cowering in fear. Righteousness needs to have teeth, lest it become a mockery”.

“About the wolf; I don’t expect the Turks to suddenly become any better?”, his wife wondered.

“No, but they will feel deep instinctive terror when they think about doing evil deeds. It was there before, but it is much stronger now, and Satan’s attractors can no longer mask it. There is a terror of ultimate doom that looks at them from the place where they used to feel power and safety before”, Zina shrugged. “If that doesn’t work, I will throw them into hell when they arrive, and hell now has teeth and will devour them permanently, instead of merely storing them safely, and the terror of that hell feeds that feeling of doom that the Lord linked deeply to the world”.

“I fear worse forms of spiritual corruption than the Turks”, Bernard mused. “And Satan might exploit the new developments in order to whine about God not allowing free will because the souls get punished if they don’t do as he likes”.

“You’re probably right about both”, Zina shrugged. “The Turks rule with fear, but something attractive yet poisonous will likely prove more destructive. And about freedom, I think he misunderstands its meaning. Freedom isn’t ability to do whatever you like – for instance, go to this place and crucify and impale the innocent souls and laugh at their cries. Freedom is a state when the innocent souls can sit here in peace, have coffee and love each other in complete safety from him and all else that is evil”, she smiled. “Freedom is a state where God is manifested in his true nature, and the wolf trembles in fear, in dark places”.

“And people like myself will hunt him even there”, Bernard nodded. “Because there must be no safe place for evil to hide and gather strength”.

“I think I will go see the elders and ask to serve as a Judge myself. I kind of miss my old job”, he smiled.

“And wherever you go, I will follow”, Chiara nodded and embraced him.

“It’s a literal hell on Earth”, Zina shivered, venting to her husband. “I mean, I’ve been around for a long time”.

“Since the times of Gilgamesh?”, Buddha smiled.

“More-less”, she nodded. “And I’ve seen violence, and cruelty, and ignorance, and madness, and evil”. Her face was dark. “Islam was always a great evil, but the Turks, they are probably its worst manifestation. The Assyrians were extremely cruel, but these, if anything, are taking the crown. Do you know what their version of a national pastime is? Impalement. They are out-doing each other, inventing more cruel ways to do it, for instance how to make the victim live longer. Their actions are turning them into such monsters, I had no alternative to throwing them all to hell. The problem is, this spiritual disease is spreading. I recently had to deal with a Wallachian ruler, Vlad Dracula, who not only adopted this pastime of the Turks, but elevated the practice to a whole new level. At one point he impaled twenty thousand people as a deterrent to the Turks. He was so obsessed with it, that when he was imprisoned by the Hungarians, in the dungeon he used to impale rats, birds and other small animals. Satan is really turning people into his own image there”, she cried. “They learn to be so cruel and evil, that nothing can be done to repair the damage. Their victims, traumatised as they may be, are quite easy for me to heal. The perpetrators of those evils, on the other hand, are so spiritually warped, that it is fortunate that there’s no shortage of space in hell, for it would be overflowing with those I dumped in there recently. It’s a tragedy, but it is also their choice. Each of them had the option to rather die than do evil. I have seen many who did just that, and such choices made them wonderful, regardless of the terrible suffering some of them went through”, she sighed.

“The Turks, they are abducting Christian children. They call it devshirme, a tribute in blood. The boys are trained to be an especially cruel infantry force for the empire, the Janissaries, or they are castrated and put to service in the harems. They are raised in Islam, taught to be cruel and evil. The eunuchs in the harems enforce cruel discipline upon the women, whipping their feet for disobedience or strangling them to death with a silken scarf when the order comes. When there’s a change of a Sultan, the new one usually ‘refreshes’ the harem, ordering all the girls to be murdered and the ‘fresh’ ones brought in. They treat living people like furniture”, she sobbed.

Lord Buddha embraced her. “Satan must be smiling at them, for they are creating the kind of a world and are being the kind of people he desires – warped, cruel and without God”.

“It’s interesting how they think they are all about God – Allah this, Allah that, they are constantly praying, bowing and other nonsense, while turning into Satan incarnate”, she noted. “I’m seriously traumatised, I need time off to heal from this”.

“What we need”, he nodded, “is to elevate this problem to the higher-ups”.

…

“You are not the only Judge who is traumatised by the recent surge of cruelty and madness”, Lord Shiva comforted Lady Zina, kissing her hand. “But something needs to be done about this, as it is getting out of hand”, he nodded to himself. “We need a final punishment, and a deterrent”. He lifted a finger, and black lightning flashed. “I killed everybody in that hell where you’ve been putting the cruel and merciless bastards. And now…”, his sight turned inwards and a flash of gold went through the world. “Now a warning has been placed in that world. Treat others cruelly and mercilessly, become a subject of Satan, become an expression of his will in the world, and your fate is sealed. Eternal death, no mercy”, he nodded. “I modified that hell, as well. It is now destructive. We used to keep them there in case we found a way to rehabilitate them. I kept my eye on them there – there was no rehabilitation, no desire to do better and be better. Just resentment, evil, a desire for vengeance upon the Gods, and the only regret they had was for things not ending well for them. There is no place for that kind of beings in any world. They had their free will and they chose to be thus. Now God is manifesting His free will not to allow them to exist. Cleanup will eventually have to be done, but Earth is going to be a serious cleanup job in any case, so this doesn’t make much of a difference”, he grinned. “As for you, sweetheart, I am sorry you had to witness all that evil. This goes for all the other Judges as well. Let me make it up to you, at least somewhat”, he smiled and a golden light flashed, replacing their spiritual injuries and weariness with jewels of highest energy density, that would protect them from all similar damage in the future.

“Wow”, Zina mouthed silently.

“You really do get shit done”, Buddha grinned at Lord Shiva.

“Kindness and mercy are my first, second and third choices”, the Great Lord smiled back. “But when someone laughs at mercy, and thinks cruelty is their strength, I’m here to remind everyone that mercy is not here because I lack other options”, black fire flashed in his eyes.

“Submission to Satan is not a safe choice. It’s a death sentence. And I made that message ring loud and clear”.

“They are free to fuck around, but I am also free to make them find out”.

“What is happening down there?” Padmasambhava and his wives were, quite expectedly, overrun by the millions of confused newcomers who were more interested in the bare fundamentals of their new situation, than complex theory. As a result, they felt as if they’re forced to teach kindergarten. Of the kind where ‘children’ were all raving lunatics.

“You know about the plague”, Kay smiled at her friend and handed him a cup, which he gratefully accepted. “The physical issues with the interruption of lives and destruction of the sophisticated aspects of the European civilization are obvious. However, there are also sociological and geopolitical ramifications. The Mongol empire seems to be collapsing because of the plague. Constantinople is half-empty, because half the population died. It is not going to be able to resist Muslim invasion, which is going to be either very bad or outright terrible, depending on the level of resistance Europe will be able to field to counter their advance, but Constantinople was the last heavily fortified position. On the positive side, Spain seems to be gaining ground and will likely oust the invaders from their part of Europe”, she made a dispassionate delivery.

“The worse problem is that Europe went mad. There seems to be a biological reason why infectious disease and xenophobia and paranoia are very tightly correlated. Obviously, strangers tend to introduce pathogens your group doesn’t have immunity for, and getting rid of strangers is a biological instinct for dealing with epidemics. Unfortunately, it almost never seems to work right. And also, they don’t have an intellectual understanding of infectious diseases. Their theories are all completely wrong as they don’t understand the concept of microscopic organisms that cause infection. They think it’s caused by a combination of impure environment and personal moral weakness. So, as the Catholic clergy assisted the sick and the dying, they disproportionally got infected and died, which people interpreted as a sign of moral corruption of the Church, and not a sign of compassion, which it was. On the other hand, as some group didn’t get sick, people interpreted it as a sign that they are the ones who ‘poisoned’ them, and persecuted those minorities – the Jews, for instance. Also, as neither the official medicine nor the Church could help them, people asked all sorts of weird groups for helps – remnants of Paganism, village herbalists, various heretical groups hiding from the public eye, and outright witches; you know the kind, usually some old woman making potions and powders that contain all sorts of dangerous substances that can kill you if you mess up the dosage, and are hallucinogenic in the best of cases. So, you have a population that is already more than half crazy. You have a witch that gives someone a strong hallucinogen prepared from plants, toads and fungi. That person hallucinates Satan and demons. Everybody concludes that the witch is in league with the Devil if she can summon him to torture the poor person. Occasionally the victim of poisoning actually dies due to overdose. People decide that the witches caused the plague because they are in league with the Devil, and they invent all sorts of stories, and it soon becomes completely insane and loses almost all touch with reality. They torture the witch until she would confess that she personally killed Jesus, and use ‘confession’ as confirmation of their insane theories. They bring that to the Inquisition, which tells them that they are insane and it’s all in their heads, but they don’t accept the answer because the Church is ‘discredited’ and they go to the worldly authorities, which burn the woman at a stake as entertainment for the crazy mob. Also, they burn the Jews and the occasional heretic for good measure. In addition to that, the Church has a problem, because so many monks and clerics died from the plague, that their monasteries are empty and they try to fill them with people who are sorely unqualified compared to the cream of the crop they used to collect earlier. As a result, the standard of education of the clergy is greatly inferior and the reputation of the Church degrades further. All kinds of things try to fill the vacuum, from the developing sciences to outright nonsense; but mostly outright nonsense. The top of the Church handles mostly politics. Since there is a serious drop in the spiritual level of the whole civilization, various complaints form against the Church, and there is increasing talk of need for reformation, but there’s nothing concrete yet. There is, however, abundance of prejudice, paranoia, xenophobia, hatred and spiritual darkness. There’s going to be a terrible century at least, and then, I’m afraid, Satan’s actual plans are going to start coming to fruition, and we’ll see his attractors starting to match or even overpower the Divine light we managed to permeate the world with”.

“No wonder I’ve been getting all sorts of weird questions from the newcomers”, he nodded. “And by weird, I mean all sorts of nonexistent demons and nonsense which they treat as if they were fact and not hallucination. Their grasp on reality is tenuous at best, which makes our work here twice as hard as it ought to be, because we first need to dissuade them of outright nonsense, which is hard, and only then can we teach them anything true and useful, which is all taking a toll on us. Imagine trying to talk to a person who thinks the Jews caused the plague by consorting with all sorts of demons to poison wells, and that their madness and base urges are caused by succubi, incubi and other sorts of nonexistent demonic beings sent by the Jews and the witches. And if you convince them it’s all nonsense, then they think absolutely everything spiritual is unreal and nonsense as well”, he sighed in exasperation. “We are tired of this”.

Kay just hugged him. “Please try to hold on. Hopefully it will get better, but until then, I can buy you breathing room by freezing local time for those crowds, so that you can take some time off whenever you feel overwhelmed, which seems to be now”. Her jewel flashed, and the masses of disturbed souls froze in place. “Go take the girls somewhere and meditate. Or swim in a pond. Or tickle Jess and Mandy for me”, she giggled. “They won’t even know you were missing until I release them”.

“Thank you, sweetheart”, he sighed deeply and managed a smile. “You are a life saver”.