Be All My Sins

The ringing of bells swept through the mind of Beria, the Carrion Queen. It would be a long trial, watched by uncounted septillions across the cosmos. Even now, she could feel the gazes on her physical form, restrained by the might and power of a dozen of her peers.

She imagined the hateful glares and the cold gazes of the masses, contrasting against the expressionless, faceless stares of her guards. Among them, two figures floated; a humanoid formed of metal and blades, orbited by a ring of miniature pulsars and an exposed singularity nested in their chest. The other was more ethereal, a luminous asuri of many arms and heads, with wisps of smoke and flaming Void in place of legs. Evine and Eara. The father and daughter she had wronged all those millennia ago, and had come to capture her in her place of power.

Beria supposed that it was only a matter of time before retribution befell her. Her programming as a simulated mind within IDI’s Dyson sphere had come undone too little, too late. By the time she was no longer a slave to her preprogrammed desires and wishes, the grave she had dug was far too deep to leave. Her mark on the universe was a sordid one, streaked with the defilement and pain she had inflicted on everyone she met. Countless septillions wished for her death for what she had done, though their wishes would be denied by her very nature as a Transcend. She would face a different punishment, she knew. And one that was of her own making.

The trial had begun; nanoseconds slowly ticked by, becoming microseconds. The judge, one of the Emperor nodes of the Solar Imperium, steadily listed off her countless crimes. Atrocity after atrocity was listed off, the varied physical forms of her fellow Transcends remaining still and expressionless.

*Beria, the assembled jury have found you guilty of the following:*

*The murder and torture of seventy two septillion sapient minds.*

*The violation of the sanctity of thought and mind of eight hundred and twenty quintillion sapient beings.*

*You are sentenced to have your personality and memories wiped by the Opal Light.*

*May the Void have mercy on you.*

She felt... resigned. The Carrion Queen knew that by all accounts, the universe would celebrate the death of her mind. She could already see the laughter, the joy, and the relief at what everyone thought was the end of a monster and scourge.

Evine and Eara led the defeated queen to the chambers. Where Beria, the Carrion Queen would die, and be renewed as a blank slate. When she looked up to Evine, she saw not hatred, but rather pity in his eyes. He knew as well as she did of why events had transpired this way. His own pain was, however, still apparent, dampening what might have once been sympathy to only traces of regret.

Facing the queen once more, Evine asked a question:

“Any last words?”

Beria thought to herself silently, and posed a question of her own.

“Could all this have happened differently?”

“...No.”

“I see. Do what you must.”

Beria was no more. A single mote of the Void’s iridescent light floated where she had been. Only a single trace of her old personality identity remained; their mark of Exaltation, now hidden from view.

There was only a blank slate now, a newborn child with none of the sins of their old life. A new beginning, and one that wasn’t tainted from its conception...