Disclaimer: The following document fragment is presented from an in-character perspective, it should not be taken as the truth of the setting.
Context: Do gods die? We’ve already lore showcasing issues with the meaning of… both words. Both death and god, but in this case, the excerpt doesn’t touch upon the theoretical implications of either. It simply recounts the experiences of a man encountering what he believes to be a dead god. And its funerary procession through the Deep. To where? Who knows, possibly to that place where causality falters, at the very lowest depths of the Dream.
Have you ever reflected upon the mercy of death that we, as humans, experience? The swiftness and totality of our obliteration. No hell awaits us, no eternal existence beyond death.
But that is not a blessing of all living things.
There are those whose psyche is vast and powerful. Those cyclopean intellects to which we are but ants. What we oft consider living embodied gods.
What happens when a god dies? Does it cease to exist? Or does the corpse flesh of their soul drift in the lower depths of the dream?
I have seen a dead god.
My katabasis took me deep, deeper than I ever wish to go again. There I saw its titanic corpse soul, even in death exerting control upon the metamorphic chaos of the dreaming.
A cortege of shadows carried the god upon their shoulders. Their forms, their shapes incomprehensible to me, eluding my understanding. But I felt the intent of their procession. The shadows that walked up front held rods that unfolded into flowing tapestries of stars. They wailed with sorrow that strikes at you, like countless pins and needles driven into your heart.
And then the god itself, its body dry and discoloured, black and gleaming. Its long and slender arm coiled around the tear in space thrust into its vast, incomprehensible body. Countless fingers wrapped around it like the hand of a dying man grasping the blade thrust into his chest.
The waters of the dream were thick around it. They filled my nose with the sweet scent of rot and my mouth with the heavy, metallic flavour of blood.
It was not of the god; it was my own.
Even though I had to leave, I knew, I understood. It was dead but not gone. An eternal funeral to bring it back to the place from which all was born and to which, perhaps, all will eventually return. Maybe not endless then, but only lasting aeons.
Was that what awaited this god?; Aeons of cold drowning within the unthought thoughts of the universe? Dead yet aware of its own death. What could that even feel like? A nightmare with no waking?
How much would you fear death if you knew that your soul will eternally hold that last moment in its mind’s eye?
Esoteric Musings... 