Adulation of false Gods

"Grant us eyes, so that we may see. Grant us eyes so we may bear witness to Your divine light of fire. Grant us eyes so we can see fire of creation. Grant us eyes so we bear witness to the burning flames of retribution. Grant us eyes so we see our sin, our greed, our wrath.

Grant us eyes so we may burn into our vision the light of creation."

Memoirs: 1:5

It was blinding in its elegance, a white so pure that his eyes almost burn away at the sight. A sight so pretty, so hauntingly attractive in what could never be classed anything else than divinity.

And like moths to a flame, he helplessly walks towards it. Helplessly walks towards something he has no notion, no idea not even a sliver of what it is.

It wasn't a matter of what it looked it because it was simply beyond comprehension to say it all at once. A thousand words but none of them find a way to his tongue.

Infact all thoughts cease when he enters what was to him divine light.

And though it burnt, though every nerve began flaring up in rejection of this he still walks in.

He still walks forward

For now, cometh not the hour to fear divine subjugation

Now cometh the hour to bathe in its light.

He looks at the field of white, on the floor of paper-thin clear ground that revealed nothing underneath. That felt like walking on glass but at the same time paper thin, made of something not made by human hands.

Something left unstained by them.

And as he finally tears his eyes from the inhuman ground he realizes.

There wasn't a sky.

It felt like a dream.

A world birthed from fake scenarios created in someone's head because no other explanation could fit this.

No words either.

Where there should be a sky with a sun existed light.

Nothing but pure light.

No source.

No direction.

Only illuminating

Burning

Light.

"But this is not a dream"

The voice, sounded angelic the first time, then the echoes came with thousands of voices.

Voices of people he used to know, people he had heard on the street.

Everyone

And everything

All at once.

His ears began bleeding after it ended, but he realized as he craned his neck to look towards where the voice had come from. He couldn't find it in him to hate it. Even as his ears bled, he couldn't think of it as danger.

His brain didn't register it as an enemy.

So, he wasn't surprised.

No, he wasn't surprised at all when he looked and his eyes began bleeding. He had no shock at all when out of tear ducts came rivers of blood.

Infact, he invited the warmth of it. It made him realize that this was no dream.

That this was reality.

As he looked and tried to reaffirm what this was. What this creature was.

He felt his mind break inside of his own skull.

A wheel in another, a pattern repeated twice. Spinning without any thing to create friction or movement. Burning without anything to be lit ablaze from. Seemingly floating on nothing it encircled something.

And that's when he saw it.

His stomach twisted and turned into knots in five different places as he finally sees what seemed off about it from the beginning.

He could accept it floating, he could accept the wheels turning with no ground. Magic can create many things outside of the human comprehension.

However.

A rafflesia of eyes on the wheels is something that he could not ever even think of justifying with any mean of thamaturgy.

No magic could cause infernos to be on each either.

No magic could cause what it seemed like God's eye at the middle staring down at him and seemingly judging him unworthy.

Nothing could be explained.

"This is a realm beyond your comprehension-

Before he could even hear the rest, his ears begin bleeding again.

But this time.

He felt his ears burn, burn like coal was put into them and then the bleeding stopped.

"You will be my avatar Lute"

"The one who blows the horn of the end of the beginning and the beginning of the end"

"All your hatred

All the rage you feel

Give it to me and I will make you stronger than you could ever comprehend

Give it to me and your flames of hatred will burn brighter than anyone else's"

"They already do" he replied, not expecting his voice to be as firm as it was when coming out, the tumor like lump in his throat didn't help the thought either.

"Everyone and everything I've known has just been taken away and you think my hatred isn't already burning stronger than anyone else could even dream of?"

"What even are you to think my hatred isn't an inferno that won't ever calm down?"

"Good"

"You're perfect"

"What I am you don't have to know

You need only use my powers and make sure even their ashes fade away"

Something enters him, his nerves all flare. His veins boil and his blood bubbles and then as at the moment of his birth.

He screams.

And the voice that comes out

Wasn't the one he was speaking with just a few moments ago.

This one had something else to it.

A certain thing that made it inhuman right down to the core.

A certain inflection in its tone that made it sound utterly detached from humans.

And perhaps it was.

For the Lute who had entered the door of light wasn't the same who would walk out.

The Lute who had just yesterday been happy about joining the war effort after years of training wasn't the same as he who signalled the beginning of the end