[center][h2][colour=gainsboro]Ea Nebel[/colour][/h2][/center]

Her hat did nothing to guard her from the heat. The sun was hot, the air was hotter, and the ash under her sandals still smouldered with fire. Ea Nebel clothed herself in the loose, simple dress and covers of a working woman and wandered that broken place, steadying her feet with her shovel.

Something under dust and ash had once been a feminine shape. She crouched beside it. When she wiped the layer of ash from its surface, it gleamed. [colour=gainsboro]"Your name was Carer,"[/colour] she said. [colour=gainsboro]"You came to a horrible end. There's not much I can do for you. But I'll put you with the ones you cared for. You deserve it."[/colour]

The ones she had cared for were now mostly charcoal.

Immortals and mortals were a troublesome mix. Salt and water, made for one another, inseparable, until the ephemeral water dried away and left only eternal salt, thirsting yet again for its touch. Or perhaps gods were like lye, warming any water it dissolved in, sometimes even boiling it away... Lye that created many things, lye that burned. Ea Nebel had many days to meditate on this. Many days.

At night she would work.

She girded her loins and buried the Homurans by the towns where they had lived. One site for each town. One grave for each body. So many of them were in pieces that she fashioned round urns for them and incinerated them, that their shattered bones might have some semblance of dignity in the smoothness of powder before she lowered them into the once-fertile earth. The carbonised remains scattered around the town the Apostate had destroyed were given the same treatment.

She found them in the streets. She found them in their houses, where they had lain and fainted, sweating to death, fighting an exhausted battle with the heat- or committed suicide. She found them washed up on the beach. She found them in hiding-places around the country where they had been blown up by drones. She buried them. Then she buried the drones.

She saw more memories than she could have counted, had she not been a god.

Ea Nebel knelt at the top of the little hill-cliff, staring down at the great pile of dronescrap she had dumped at its base. It was the only grave such things wanted, needed, or deserved. She'd learned rather little about the Apostate, who had appeared in smoke and fire to punish the massacre. She had learned a [i]lot[/i] about Astus.

Gods had strange natures. Ea Nebel's own father was very far from human. She didn't know how close to the mark she was, herself. Of course mortals would die when they touched with the men of eternity- they were [i]mortal.[/i] The god Astus had raised them up with industry and and with industry struck them down again, according to his nature. She could not begrudge him that. The stolen Homurans of Astus, slaughtered for sin, may as well have been blown away by a fickle wind.

And yet, the more bodies she burned, the more bitter memories she retrieved from broken skulls, the more she understood whose sin that was.

[i]'The door! I'm gonna make it, we're gonna make it, it's right there-'[/i]

[center][i]'Polly! Please, Polly, come and find me, Polly...'[/i][/center]
[right][i]'Water, water. I just need... a bit more water.'[/i][/right]
[center][i]'Fuck- Was that-? No, it can't-'[/i][/center]
[i]'I won't drown. I won't drown. I won't I won't I won't I...'[/i]

[center][i]'To whoever's listening... Should I not make it back, please take care of my sister.'[/i][/center]

Ea Nebel heaped the last spadeful of earth over the place where Carer lay among her people, and threw the shovel down onto the dirt. It was stirred up with her footprints in every direction. Behind her, six-hundred and seven unmarked stones in what had once been a meadow.

[colour=gainsboro][b]"ASTUS!"[/b][/colour]

A fell wind leapt into life and started to wail, blowing away the working clothes and leaving her once more in her black coat, wide stance, fists clenched beside her.

[colour=gainsboro][b]"I am Ea Nebel, Goddess of the Tomb! Look at the work of my hands, Astus! Listen to the memories I have read! You took up the project of Man and Woman, and you [i]failed![/i]"[/b][/colour]

A man named White, crushing that which could not bleed, building war-weapons out of mere scrap. Two carriage-drivers racing fine animals across field and ford with such passion that their wheels were sent up to be repaired, again and again. A mother, crafting new life out of nothing but milk and bread. Visions flared behind Ea Nebel's eyes as she spoke the voice of power.

[colour=gainsboro][b]"Idleness and dependence- No weed of vice grew on this island that [i]you[/i] had not bred! You cut down the tree that was waiting to be pruned. The industry of these people has been [i]wasted[/i] in your fire! I could have done better, Astus! A [i]pauper[/i] could have done better!"[/b][/colour]

The field of urns around her began to rise in a rippling mat of faint light. Hundreds of souls separated from the mass of power, ripped out from the Grey, the Ashen Plains, even the silvered Elysian Fields, flickering like barely-visible warning lights in the searing sky.

[colour=gainsboro][b]"You were [i]lazy,[/i] Astus! You insulted me for [i]nothing![/i]"[/b][/colour]

The gale moaned and whined and spiralled around the center of the island, muffling the stranger and more horrible sound that emanated from the whirling souls, unleashed from death to complete their final task in the realm of the living- sightless, mindless revenge.

Seek a pyre, the deva commanded, and the ghosts did seek it, tunnelling through the earth, through the parched and brittle dead-woods, spiralling, moth-like, in every pond. Some found it. They infested wires, pistons, gears, fatiguing metal, lighting fires, or simply imploding in a violent snap of soul-energy. Seek a pyre, she commanded, so they made one out of every machine and mechanism they could find.

And those that never did- they whirled across the land, hiding, waiting, in their thousands.

Heavy boar-prints appeared in the dust-dry soil. Ea Nebel flicked her coat as the wind died down, and stood on the island no longer.

[hr]
[hider=interacting at last]
Ea Nebel appears to bury all the Homurans whom Astus killed and just kind of left there on the island. She doesn't care all that much about gods killing mortals, at least not yet, but it's a lot of work and a lot of rather nasty memories for her to record. She contemplates gods and mortals a bit and decides that she completely blames Astus for having created this mess. 

When she's done, she reprimands Astus and turns the souls of the dead into thousands of little poltergeist landmines that infest the island. They're pretty mindless, but when they sense a machine nearby, they cause one of a few kinds of damage or malfunction before they promptly expire.

edit: it reads like she was trying to show astus visions before she left, that was just me messing with words, could be interpreted like that if ya want though it's an imagination adventure

6 Vigour start.
1 Vigour spent on harvesting souls to booby-trap the island with. Demigod Graves action, normal price.
5 Vigour remains.
[/hider]