Snowblind Inbox

[warriorscribe]

[Such a wondrous device. Are there little invisible couriers for these messages?]

Comments

[warriorscribe]

[Enoch follows him to that dialect naturally, after a moment to process what he's heard.]

Is that the tale they tell of her? Interesting how it has changed. Ishtar's current incarnation was indeed raised by a man named Sin, but she did not voluntarily go to The Darkness, and the souls trapped there - I am sure she would have wanted to free them, but the salvageable souls are few and far between. Her first incarnation's remains were taken to The Darkness before her soul could part from them. Her second one was abducted by a demon as bait so he could have me. It was there that her trapped soul took its rightful place in her body, though I was not there to witness it and only informed ten years after it happened.

[...It sounds really bad when he actually lays it all out, doesn't it? He'll have to ask Ishtar what happened, exactly, to the soul born with that body. Had it merged with hers? Was it always a part of hers? He'd assumed they were always somehow one and the same since Michael had said she had been "transfigured into Ishtar", but now that he's vocally called attention to the ten-year divide between the birth of that second body and her original soul, he isn't sure.]

[cahooted]

It is a tale of the times yes. It is much longer, I wished not to recite in its entirety.

[And yes, yes Enoch, that does sound a little sketchy. That sounds a little bit like possession there.] In the mythology, she is regarded as the Babylonian goddess of war, love and fertility.

[warriorscribe]

She is admirably strong, and certainly blessed. But not a goddess. I wonder where the idea came from.

What else does the tale say about what Ishtar does?

[cahooted]

She courted the hero Gilgamesh but he refused her so she sent the Bull of Heaven after him.

[warriorscribe]

I don't think that's true of my world at all. She was certainly involved with him, but I don't know in what way. While I have met Gilgamesh briefly, it was well after they parted ways, and he had yet to take Uruk's throne.

[Also, hundreds of years ago so he only barely remembers him.]

[cahooted]

That is a thing of good for in the tale she is of wrath and revenge over it.

[He's not sure if the bodysnatching thing is much better, though.]

[warriorscribe]

I would imagine a goddess of love and fertility would take rejection very poorly. It must have seemed foolish to her, if not outright mad.

In fact, it's strange to think of from my own perspective. An heir to a king or a king himself could hardly do better for the royal lineage or his public image. It's an intriguing rejection, to say the least. Your world's version must have had some deep distrust or distaste for her.

[cahooted]

Yes, it is written she was quite enraged. She even asked the helps of other gods for her strife of revenge.

Some stories do. It is dependent always on the words of the legends. They differ in their words of her.

[warriorscribe]

Are there any that are more accepted as truth than others?

These events and this Ishtar's nature are foreign to me, I'm afraid I can't help using my own experience.

[cahooted]

[Flynn scratches his ear.]

They're regarded as myths, so there is no competition for the truth there?

There is another story where she ventures into the underworld and dies. It ends with... [Flynn frowns, trailing off.] It ends with her receiving a new body as well.

[warriorscribe]

[Perhaps that's for the best, considering the one surviving record of himself he knows about... Though at the revelation of something closer to his own world's events he pauses, startled. Maybe it's not so foreign after all.]

Interesting. Does anything else set that story apart?

[cahooted]

She does end up with all the clothes off her body.

[He means to put it more eloquently but it gets lost in his language skills.]

[warriorscribe]

[He can't help but laugh.]

As in a true rebirth, I take it, though I don't doubt the writer's imagination was quite vivid.

Given the one of my world lived in danger of attack at all times, it's good she was not resurrected unarmed and unclothed like this one seems to have been.

[cahooted]

[Yeahhh about that.]

Before. The story proceeds that she passes gate after gate into the underworld.

At each gate she is compelled to shed a piece of her regalia. Finally, she falls naked and powerless before Ereshkigal.

[warriorscribe]

Ereshkigal?

[Give him a moment...]

Oh, I remember now, yes. The goddess of the underworld.

And no other tale of Ishtar has this theme?

[cahooted]

I don't recall any other at this point in time. I will have to put my mind to this thought some more.

[warriorscribe]

Never underestimate the bored or the lonely, but there's a lesson about not taking your worldly protection into the underworld to be had as well.

[It's not totally pointless (but it probably was).]

There is a rather frightening truth to that, actually. While my Heavenly armor remained on my body in The Darkness, my weapons could not follow me there.

[cahooted]

What is The Darkness you speak of?

Have you ventured into the underworld, too?

[warriorscribe]

It is what most Earthly nations call the underworld, though it is no natural place for a human soul to come to rest. Heaven is the only place a soul should be - in The Darkness, they fuel demons' power and become twisted into their pawns. I have been there several times, venturing into its pits to gather the remains of Ishtar's first body, in which she imbued her prophecy.

[And then there was that other time where he jumped in to save a little girl even though he knew she was just being used as bait. No excuse not to save the innocent even if he knew it was a trap. But he's not going to talk about that.]

[cahooted]

[Flynn frowns; that was a long and complicated explanation and his brain needs a moment to decipher all the possible meanings behind the words.]

All souls go to Heaven in your world then?

[warriorscribe]

[That's perfectly fine - immersion is the best teacher, after all, and Enoch is willing to wait. He's half-expecting to have to answer a question, but he's glad when Flynn's response comes and it's correct. Mostly.]

Ideally. It's where a soul is compelled to go after its body dies, but if it is chained to Earth somehow, or if a demon has laid claim to it, or has been stalking the dying person in the hopes of snatching up their soul, they can be stolen away.

The Tower the Grigori built was accomplished with the aid of a demon prince. In return, he claimed all the souls of those who died within it. For three hundred years, anyone who lived and died there was condemned by default. The Grigori had a veritable army of twisted souls. There were lines of victims fed into the depths of Belial's domain.

[cahooted]

[Flynn listens solemnly. On the one hand he likes the idea of a default Heaven – no sinners left behind for arbitrary rules on morality and wrongdoing.

On the other hand, and again he needs a moment to work through the message, three hundred years of automatic condemnation sounds quite unfair to him.]

It does not have a pleasant sound.

[warriorscribe]

It's not pleasant. Humans taken alive may be saved, but souls, once twisted, may only have hope of purification by perishing again to a holy weapon. Only Ishtar's soul managed to wander The Darkness without becoming corrupted, because of her strong blessings.

Even so, I'm still not sure they've truly gone to Heaven when they are defeated. I don't know if Heaven can mend the damage the demons inflicted on them.

[cahooted]

This is great woe. I feel a pain very great for the souls perished.

[It's a bit dramatic but he is not really sure how else to express himself.]

[warriorscribe]

[He gets it. Dramatic or not, it's genuine.]

So do I. So many people, tricked for so long with nothing more than a promise of an easier, more comfortable life. They had no idea they were trading away the hardships of an ordinary life for an eternity of suffering after death.