Asher the Insane

51 - Alexandra the Intervening Goddess of Redemption Part 01

I was once again observing Cyrus, my chosen.

I suppose I need to start addressing him by his new name. It has already been a considerable period of time for mortals.

Two decades.

So short a time, but for most of them... Everything they would be or were could have changed in such a short time.

His previous memories of living alone and in perpetual gloom felt so sad when he looked back on them, but things had changed so much since he entered this new world.

He appeared happy, happier than he was before, but still... his heart did not feel so different.

Something inside him was amiss.

He even sent Faye away a few human months ago. He was going through a change.

Since then, I have been taking care of her once again, as it had always been. From the moment of her creation, she harbored ill feelings against mortals.

It was not something I would have ever planned for, but changing the nature of one of my creations after they had been born was not something I favored and tried to avoid if possible.

Even if the years they spent together were a short time for Faye, could they not have built up a slight sense of companionship?

Could I have been wrong about sending her with him?

He seemed to be fine with her, at some times even like her, though it felt like it never was the other way around.

What was I going to do with her?

No, in all the time she had spent serving me, Faye has never disappointed even if she thinks herself that she has fallen short.

At this very moment in his chosen world he, or at the moment rather she, was watching a spectacle of a cult who was, self-described, worshiping Urien.

I thought about asking him to observe what his purported devotees had planned with me.

When I asked Qintoris about this idea of mine, he once again lectured me that Urien preferred his time alone.

I thanked Qintoris. Because if this was how Urien really felt, I would not dare annoy or disturb him - trying to ease and lessen the pain and hurt he found himself in because of the role which had been assigned to him.

His worshipers were in possession of a necklace I had lost or, more accurately, has been stolen by Ioine.

While it was an old tale, it was appropriate for her since she was the goddess of jealousy and desire.

When once, long ago, I confronted her, she hurled it into the cosmos, and up until this point I was unaware of its location. Not because of an inability to find it, but rather negligence.

I thought I'll get it back in due course but that time never seemed to arrive.

What was to come in the next few stages of what the leader of the worshipers was to be planning would truly be woeful.

The most saddened person would be Aebshem himself.

With Asher and the other people held as prisoners, who were tasked by a priest of one of my churches to retrieve my amulet as onlookers, a chant was started by the members of the cult, singing in a chorus.

The altar which was the place the amulet has been set down began to glow and in turn, so did Aebshem, who was absorbing the energy of the people he called his children.

And one by one, they began to drop.

And in precisely one minute, ten thousand people perished, leaving nothing behind but their black robes and hoods; their lives were extinguished, and nothing remained of who they once had been in life.

Woe filled me with every passing. As I thought back to Urien and his utterances against the unnecessary deaths of the mortals who seemed to hate him so.

Aebshem was the only one left.

As I watched, I cried a tear of pity at the sight of the sorrow which unfolded before my eyes. I cried for the lost man who brought himself to his own fall, and the ten thousand who were lost with him that day. But I cried most of all for Urien, for this wretched sight was not something he would endorse and I now understood the pain he feels when you were watching death in your name.

I found solace in the fact that he was not a witness to this carnage.

Their plan was to summon me, and I obliged.