Characters: Annagovia, Nuggan, gods
Rating: B

Disclaimer: The author makes no claim to owning the rights of anything to do with Terry Pratchett or Discworld.

I Have Seen His Madness
by Amazon Syren

     I was a rather stupid woman when I was alive. So certain of my right to have so much, my right to deny my own people what they needed to thrive.
     Death broadens the mind, or so it seems. One acquires a new perspective, a new way of looking at things.
     I expected to go to heaven, to see Albert again.
     I did not expect this: To be dragged back to the world, to terror and pain and sorrow that I had never, ever known, by prayers.
     Prayers! Me!
     I am not a goddess!
     And yet, it seems, I am.
     I have seen Cori Celesti. I have seen the god I worshipped my whole life.

     He is not… he is not.
     When I was alive, I thought the beatitudes were to his glory (I even wore my hair short when I was young, before I got married). I thought the abominations he decreed were born from good and righteous judgment.

     I was wrong.

     It is a terrible thing, to watch someone you respected so much go mad. I saw it with my father, when the dementia took him.
     In a way, it’s worse to see it happen to a god.

     The other gods – imagine my shock at meeting them (and their shock at meeting me, for that matter) – spoke derisively, if quietly, about him.
     I found him, toying with a lightening bolt and burning his fingers, muttering to himself – gibbering, I might go so far as to say – repeating the same words over and over: righteous, abomination, mine, me, I, wrath, fury, pride, glory, righteous, me, mine…
     And I recognized my country in his words.

     I have heard – whispered, nervous and hushed – that gods sometimes wish that there was someone for gods to pray to.
     I understand.
     I hear the prayers – thousands of them, all the time – and they ask me to intercede for them, to speak to Nuggan as though he were even capable of listening… And I am left, only a woman, without the strength to help my people, barely enough to sooth their aching dreams, with no god for me to pray to, and no-where to go for help.