You Get Waylaid and Taken Aside...

You head for the Halls of Judgement but are intercepted by a seraph, bearing the livery of Atarah, Her holy symbol that you designed only a few hours ago, a black pentacle cradled in a silver crescent moon and surmounted by yellow flames on a blue background, blazoned on his tabard. "You are not dead yet young master, and your liege would fain see you now..." He intones, and you follow along silently running to keep up with him.

Off to the left of the halls of judgement you come upon a massive temple, much like the Parthenon in it's heyday but all together grander and huger, dwarfing anything you have seen outside of WH40K manuals you read ere you were out of high school in your past life, and adorned in such splendor that you can scarce gaze upon it without going blind such is it's beauty. You close your eyes against the brilliance and follow the seraph by the light of his golden halo which shines through them clearly, until at last you stand in what you realize must be the central sanctum.

"Fear not for your eyesight and other senses my young Prophet, for I have cast an illusion over you which moderates what you will perceive for mortal consumption." An achingly beautiful contralto voice comes thundering from where you guess the throne would be and you look on the face of your Goddess.

How does one describe a rainbow to a man struck blind in the cradle? Or a symphony to one born both physically deaf and tone deaf, so that not even the beat of the largest drum can move them? How can you explain the feel of silk to someone born with Paresthesias? Or the scent of a woman to a congenital Anosmiac? IF it were possible for me to do this, to put into words what you, the reader, lack the senses to experience, I could describe what 'you', as Richard Tamarack, Jedi Knight and Prophet of Atarah, see, hear, feel and smell in that moment: but were I so gifted I would be a Prophet in my own right and have more important things to do with that gift than write the story you are now reading.

Suffice it to say that for a moment, you, the character, see the merest fraction of the TRUE glory of your Goddess and her throne room, and for a hands' count of seconds you pass out in shock.

When you come to things are muted still further by his Goddess's power, and she looks at you gravely. Prophets these days! You leave even a sliver of The Truth revealed and they just up and pass out! She mutters like the ringing of 10000 church bells from miles distant, and you stand looking about yourself in awe. Millions of torches, candles, and braziers that burn with colorless flame and shed colorless light, the smoke from which puts the finest of incense ever devised by mortal man to shame, line the colonnaded walls of this room so large the ceiling has it's own weather systems, each one you can intuitively tell being the fire of the faith of one world where Atarah is worshiped. The floor is an ever shifting mosaic of precocious stones, mapping the paths of universes as they move relative to each other through the AEther, projecting courses, probable events that could shift that course, and notes to Atarah about how this might work for or against her interests and those of her worshipers, though you lack the godlike comprehension and speed of intellect to be able to read them, so fast do the words shift. The ceiling, what you can see of it behind the clouds, which only enhance it's beauty by denying you the full spectacle at once: make's the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican look like the work of a gifted 5 year old, and not merely because of it's vastly increased canvas: every line, every dot, every color, tint, hue and shade PERFECTLY chosen and executed, and each section telling a small fraction of the tale of Atarah's long long existence. Far behind you, a distance you could not possibly have traversed in so short a time without divine intervention, you briefly spot a crew of angels hard at work painting a new panel, and just before a thunderhead hides it, you think you make out your own new face being worked into the mural...

Atarah lets you so gawp for PRECISELY eight seconds, her sacred number, then wordlessly calls your attention back to herself where she sits in a throne carved from an entire mountain made of purest alabaster. She is radiant, Helen of Troy, Cleopatra, the Queen of Sheba, and every Disny Princess COMBINE could not hold a CANDLE to her beauty! She is of every 'race', and at the same time none at all, as well as every Race: elf, orc, human, goblin, and any other you care to name, and though you should not be able to, and some should drive you mad with horror at the mere sight of them, you can see them all at the same time and none inspire any emotion in you save reverential awe. Then she speaks, and her physical perfection falls away to nothing before her voice.

She is singing though she is speaking, a whole orchestra of sound drawn from nature, the notes of the triangle the music of a rainstorm drumming on your window, or the crash of the surf and lighting bolt for the percussion section, the woodwinds gentle summer breezes through marsh grass, the brass the eruption of a volcano or blaze of a forest fire, while the strings are the whine of a tornado or hurricane tearing asunder the vanity of false preachers and traitors to the faith, yet all of it silent, for such a cacophony if actually given utterance would not sound half so musical, only directly in your mind can she assemble this glory in a way your feeble human senses may comprehend and appreciate.

You have succeeded in saving the soul of my 'First Martyr' Keishara I see. I wish her luck in your choice of parent for her, either will have drawbacks, but also advantages, the one of which is the other in the opposite case. She states. Now, recite! She commands, and you start reciting anything you can think of, poetry, the Gettysburg Address, the preamble to the constitution, your former social security number, before she commands Stop! and you instantly shut up.

Not a single word of the holy book they gifted you with is known to you? She queries, already knowing the answer.

"No my Lady, I hav-" and you are instantly struck dumb mid word, your lungs, throat, mouth and tongue forming words but no sound issuing forth.

Others called to the Prophet's road before you have failed to head the gift they were so given, and those of my station long ago found an easy and efficient way to remedy that situation. One such on your own world was Mohamed, Chosen by Allah to spread his message there, and though he was lenient I am not so gentle with those who spurn their duties to me. She declares.

You would ask what she means but you can't speak right now, and a split second later two burly angels with wings of yellow fire appear to either side of you.

'As kneading goes into the making of bread so beatings into the creation of a philosopher!' Atarah intones, and one of the angels seizes your arms and pins them behind your back while the other starts punching you in the gut, face, chest legs, forehead pretty much everywhere except the groin, perhaps out of courtesy to your 'passenger' held there. At first you just take the beating because the angel never hit's quite the same place twice, but then you start getting ANGRY and throw your feet up to kick the angel in the jumble-y bits, which doesn't seem to phase him at all, except he starts paying more attention to your legs, beating them so savagely and swiftly that the muscles are too bruised to obey your commands when you try to kick him in the jaw just a few seconds later. Then the angels spin you around and start working over your back side hitting your head into the other's chest again and again, punching your buttocks so hard that you will not be able to sit for a week, and bruising your spine till you are certain you will be paralyzed, until at last you feel ribs, without the layers of muscle on your front to shield them, begin to crack and dislocate, and though no sound emerges you are screaming in agony! Only then does Atarah say Stop! and the angels let your battered and bruised near corpse fall to the floor, where you lie whimpering.

"Ah, ha, huh, ugh..." You intone mournfully and realize your voice has been restored!

Now, Again, Recite! Atarah commands, and you look at her with HATE in your eyes.

"Go, to, hell!" You croak, and she merely responds As you wish.

The throne room vanishes for an instant and is replaced by a sealed stone jar, into which you are painfully folded! You KNOW with the same certainty that you knew the torches in the throne room were flames of Faith, that you are cut off from ALL Faith and all divinity here, your goddess has placed you in the divine equivalent of an oubliette...