Some Reflections on Gods
Gods are fucking arseholes.
This is a fact. Not up for debate.
Other facts about gods:
- They are petty bitches
- Every one of them thinks that their goals are the most important thing
- They think human morality and the ideas of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ we like to ascribe to them are “adorable, duckie, just so...quaint”
- Their favourites tend to be madmen and/or psychopaths, because they’re more relatable than normal, sane humans, easier to talk to, and more entertaining
- Mortals favoured by gods also tend to be fucking arseholes
- If you have the misfortune to be a normal person they’ve taken an interest in, it’s probably because they’re going to use you to accomplish some esoteric goal. They just swoop into your life without warning, manipulate you into changing the world whether you want to or not, and bugger off leaving you to deal with the consequences.
- Did I mention they are arseholes? Because I really feel this point cannot be overstated.
- Also, vengeful. It’s pretty difficult to piss off most gods, but if you do, you’re fucked.
See, gods know that mortals suffer, when they use them to their own ends. The things they demand of the mortals they use tend to be difficult and painful, to say nothing of the costs of standing so close to power they were never meant to wield. Some might even say that the value of the work accomplished is in its difficulty and the pain their tools must suffer through to accomplish it. For their favourites, though, they will ensure that someone else pays those prices (for five-hundred years the House of Black served the Dark and prospered against all rational expectations), their lives and happiness worth infinitely less than the favoured few. Like, someone who pissed them off.
Or, if they’re feeling particularly sadistic, offending them means you just volunteered yourself for whatever tasks they may need doing — again, whether you want to help them or not — and make no mistake, if there are consequences for the actions you are forced to take in their service, they’ll be on you.
And it doesn’t happen often, but occasionally one of their favourites will betray them.
That’s what I did.
I broke the Covenant between the Dark and the House of Black, attempting to devote myself instead to the Light, its pro-social opposite.
Gods, as it turns out, think it’s just adorable when rebellious humans (children, all of us, in their eyes) think that they can run away from their own nature. (They’re really fucking patronising about it, too.) Breaking the Covenant as a tangible fuck you to the House of Black was probably the most selfish, short-sighted, overly-dramatic thing I could have done at that point in my life, and the Dark is never offended by breaking shite. (Obviously. Or, well, it seems obvious in hindsight.) If your soul belongs to a god — and mine, no matter how I try to deny it, does — they don’t let it go easily. You will be punished, and when you’ve earned their forgiveness for your attempted transgression (even if you didn’t want their forgiveness), you will continue to serve their ends. Because if it comes down to it, even the gods’ favourites are only mortals — pawns and playthings, like enchanted chessmen. Sure, we might argue, we might try to resist, but we move where they dictate, in the end.
The only thing I accomplished in attempting to turn away from the Dark was a false sense of freedom, and the upending of my entire life as it dragged my thread and all those tied to it from their intended place in the Tapestry of Fate, changing the pattern in ways no mortal can truly comprehend. But make no mistake: what is is not what was always meant to have been.
In breaking the Covenant between my House and the Dark, and the time of hormonal teenage impulsivity and Madness that followed, I simply paved the way for the birth of its new Chosen People: the Lords and Ladies of New Avalon.
(8. Gods are proud, stubborn bastards. If it looks like they’re going to lose, they’ll change the game.)