Why Lucifer Rebelled Against God

Unconditional love is unconditional surrender

Lucifer spent weeks after that locked in his room. Talking to no one, except to shout at any one who entered that they had to leave. Eventually, Asherah was allowed to sit down next to him in silence. Then to lay her hand on his shoulder. Then to hold him.

As the memories played before her, Jessica, overwhelmed by sympathy, tried to focus on something else. She thought about the fact that Yahweh hadn't just wished his enemy away. Like a literally omnipotent being would have, this confirmed Jessica's previous interpretation of Abrahamic theology. That describing him as such was similar to how supreme courts might be called omnipotent, or Renaissance men as omniscient. The meaning was either contextual — implying the party described was the most powerful within their sphere of influence — or it was a poetic exaggeration. This was supported by the fact that the Son had to die in order to forgive mankind's sins, rather than God just forgive them in a way that didn't involve torturing himself. Judges 1:19 also states, according to some translations, that God tried to drive out enemies of his chosen people, but that he "could not drive out the inhabitants of the valley, because they had chariots of iron." Some had argued that the text referred to God's prophet Juda merely being unable, not God himself.

She couldn't completely shut out what he had been going through, despite her attempts to surf at the top of these memories while thinking of other things. Usiel's parents, the mother Duma and father Minkor, wanted to see Lucifer only a few days after her death; he didn't answer their long distance communication attempts. Didn't open when they came to the house Asherah was keeping him in. The old "His room" had been destroyed along with the rest of Vilon, and the new "his room" was currently in the same building Asherah lived in. She told the two to wait until he was ready.

They handed her a letter for his eyes only. He didn't have the courage to read it for a while. He asked Asherah to read it first, and she did. Told him that it was harmless, even good for him to read. After a day or two, he gathered the will to read. The letter wasn't an accusation of him being too weak to save their daughter, which was what he feared. Instead, they thanked him for all the happy moments he gave her. For all the countless days they played together. That helped, it helped a lot. He started to talk with them. That helped more.

One month after the latest memory, or rather thirty rotations around Raki'a's Sefirot, Lucifer had started to leave his room. To train again, to reach a level close to normal. One day, he found himself being beaten bloody by Asherah. In the physical world there was no violence, they clung to each other, fully clothed and side by side in bed. Yet, in the mental realm the two of them had forged cooperatively, they were adversaries. Within this jointly conceived telepathic dream, he wielded control over his Buraq, while Asherah manipulated a facsimile of Shub-Niggurath.

She didn't want to play the role of that particular monster during their training at first, suggesting creating other enemies. Making someone meet the murderer of their best friend felt too cruel. But he demanded it, knowing Usiel wouldn't have wanted him to live in fear. The first time he saw Shub-Niggurath again, he had woken up and vomited in the real world. The trauma was too much for him. Asherah hugged him for a long time, her face contorted with aches of sympathy and guilt over having put him through that. She was then dismayed when he said they should try again. Lucifer got used to it, even numb, after seeing and fighting Shub-Niggurath time and time again.

They had engineered this mindscape so that harm inflicted here could manifest as pain, even actual but not serious wounds, in the physical world. The fidelity to reality was crucial to Lucifer, he wanted every mistake to be costful.

Lucifer screamed as he jolted awake from the dream, the sensation of Asherah having torn his dream-avatar in two still lingering. Sympathy and guilt once again flooded her expression upon seeing him drenched in sweat, breaths coming in ragged gasps. To her, the thirteen-year-old before her was more child than peer. A fact he resented.