Pathfinder: Circumscribing the Locust Part III

If a flawless diamond could know itself, could be aware of its own perfection, then such a gem would be Pharasma, Lady of Graves. At times She would turn Her horizonless vision into Herself and see Her own being as glyphs of gold written as a single infinite web spanning through voids alight with the electricity of Her own thoughts...how could She not marvel, not wonder at Her own manufacture?

Residing atop the Great Spire that spiraled in an impossible ascent through the lawful plane of Axis into the Astral Void, She could look out from the vantage of this Aleph at Everything Else. This is how She knew that Her existence was something unique in It's purity of Law and was not to be found in the rest of the infinite fractal city of Axis, in the other planes of the Outer and Inner Spheres, and certainly not in the roiling chaos of the Maelstorm of Limbo nor the Abyss's churning cacophony.

Even the light shining out of souls to pass into Her divine eye was sullied, though it was the perfection of the facets within Herself that allowed the Lady to refract these identities and distill their colors so that She could direct the dead to their respective rewards. It was a Duty that was Herself, one She performed even when it meant giving these spirits over to forces arrayed against Law. It was this flawless execution of duty that ensured only She was fit to judge the never ending line of petitioners and grant audience to all the varied exemplar courts (save the daemons whose hunger for souls could not be controlled) who sought to claim them.

Even now several incarnations of Herself awaited the dead as they walked through the great necropolis of Her domain, organized by inevitables and petitioners of Law into lines upon the celestial staircases of the Spire. As they completed their ascent and approached one of the multiple cores of Her being, Pharasma processed  through the tracks of morality they'd made in Time. When their place in line brought them before altars and thrones where an avatar of blazing diamond awaited them, the Lady offered the greatest communion that could ever be given: Justice.

From this moment of judgment, the mortal seeming petitioners of Law known as axiomites led them away to emissaries of their post-life destinations. This caused surprise in many of the dead for though they appeared as they did in life, upon moving axiomates became crystalline, honey golden mist which flowed through the air as continuations of the equations on the walls.

Others might have become bored with the millenial spanning repetetiveness, or feel sorrow for those cosigned to the Lower Plabes, but Pharasma's very being, very dharma, lay in Her role as psychopomp.

An old man, died as a husk regretting only that he could not control his 'sinner' children from beyond the grave. Hell. The screaming man was taken by gilded winds of mathematics to the devils beyond.

A warrior, clad in rent black armor. Mercenary. Cruel without thought to tyranny or anarchy, a passion merely for gold. Genocidiere. Abaddo--

Pharasma stopped, taking notice that the light of skull faced Groetus, the moon who was God of the End Times, shone upon this soul. Silently howling silver light pierced through windows in one of the many houses of judgment that appeared as throne room.

She rose from her platinum seat and stood towering over the soul, moving to remove the helmet of this figure in genderless heavy plate then stopping.

A flash like the core of a white gold star, and the armor smoked from within then cracked apart to reveal a strong but elderly Ulfen man with a neatly squared white goatee that matched the stubble covering his head. Hard cornflower blue eyes. Compared to the souls behind him, his light seemed greatly diminished.

The axiomites who served as attendants appeared confused, especially when they sensed their goddess was clutching something so tightly in her left hand her serene face bore the hint of strain. It was like looking at a crack in flawless marble, one that might swallow them whole. Yet duty was also who they were and why their afterlives were in this realm, and so they escorted the stunned man to the lapping Waters of Styx which licked the Spire's base. Also, seeing the Goddess in such a state had revived long dead feelings of panic.

Pharasma watched them go, knowing Charon would know what she had done. What She had done. For the first time since the inception of Herself Pharasma was fearful of looking at what She knew was inside Her. A Flaw in the diamond, a Tarnish upon the gold.

Must the Law be broken so that it might be Saved?