Chapter Text
X.
The Great One dreams a dream.
Despite its ox-headed and horse-faced escorts reassuring it of its relative innocence, the small one trembles, not in body but in soul. Language is made obsolete in death, but the mortal mind attempts to grasp at the dregs of it anyways for the comfort of familiarity. Yama, or Yanluo-Dawang, or Yeomra-Daewon or Enma-Dai’O. Slightly different connotations for each name, but the reference remains the same.
The little one trembles, in laughter and fear both. It is so, so human that it almost pains the Great One to make this decision.
But the Great One is tired of dreaming this dream.
The little one is told that it is not here for punishment. Death strips words down to intent and not the meanings given by any societal language. The intent here is not to punish.
Death should also remove oneself’s frame of reference along with oneself’s memories, but here the little one stands, still capable of human language and structured thought by the Great One’s decision. It is a mercy. It is a penance. It is, the Scribe notes of the little one, not necessarily reassured. The Great King simply repeats the statement with all the patience of the long-existing and the addendum that the little one was brought forth for an honor.
The little one attempts not to let oneself’s skepticism show. It is not very successful. The Scribe makes another note and Horse-Face produces a noise that one cannot identify somewhere between indignation and amusement.
The Great One dreams a dream.
The Arbiter, the Judge, the Yan is a position that the Great One holds for all who come to the Great One’s domain, and all who live and breathe become subject to the Great One’s dominion in time.
This makes interlopers a minor issue; a paper wall in the sands of time. Those who would claim the name of Death are no more than an inconvenience, and The Great One does not mind the slight grating of an inconvenience.
This makes mortals who would flaunt against it insolent. The Great One does mind insolence.
There is a list and a world where the Great One is chained by purple-ringed eyes and grated with many inconveniences who are not similarly chained. There is a List of the insolent in such a world where the Judge who needs no Jury cannot also play the Executioner. The title and the job are honors, the Great One insists, and this is true as what is true, is true, is true. It does not mean that the little one is eager to accept or even understands why.
Nevertheless, it bows low.
There has been more than one Yan to assist the Great One, and there have been many, many Executioners, but this List and this world have not yet been subjected to one. The Great One invokes the ultimate respite in the form of a pure land, outside the bounds of Samsara’s cycle, at the end of one's life if only This One succeeds.
In the end, it is not a choice because there is no second option, but the little one, This One, now carries the weight of a mantle and hopes and prays that it is enough.
The Great One allows it to be. Perhaps there is irony to be found in praying to the void when there is a deity directly before oneself.
Ox-Head, Horse-Face, and the Scribe step aside, and the blackness of the Great One’s mouth envelopes all.