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Blurb: After Piri the nine-tailed fox follows an order from Heaven to destroy a dynasty, she finds herself on trial in Heaven for that very act.  Executed by the gods for the “crime,” she is cast into the cycle of reincarnation, starting at the very bottom – as a worm.  While she slowly accumulates positive karma and earns reincarnation as higher life forms, she also has to navigate inflexible clerks, bureaucratic corruption, and the whims of the gods themselves.  Will Piri ever reincarnate as a fox again?  And once she does, will she be content to stay one?

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Chapter 236: When Gods Go a Cloud Too Far

Next to me, Aurelia tensed.  In the split second before her lips parted to order Cassius gagged, I acted.  A bell-like laugh tinkled out of my throat, and I deliberately relaxed into my throne, draping my tails over the armrests.

“Why, I expected you to keep better track of the souls under your mandate as Assistant Director of Reincarnation.  Since you claim such wisdom and foresight.”

Aurelia cut her eyes at me, silently asking why I was blocking her from executing her threat.  I winked.  I, too, would have loved to see Cassius gagged, to watch his nose and cheeks go red-purple around the wad of cleaning rags that I was sure the imps had on hand.  But it just wasn’t a good look for a Jade Empress to silence her ex-husband who was supposedly in court to defend himself.

“Tell me, Star of Heavenly Joy.”  The smile I flashed him was so dazzling that the Duchess of Lightning’s jaw dropped.  “In all your wisdom and foresight and determination to foil my supposed plots, did you ever consider that I might rise to this?”

On the final word, I shed my nine-tailed fox body and glowed forth in my true soul form.  Crimson light played over the steps of the dais and stained Cassius’ hands and robes and mouth as red as blood.

“She reached Red Tier!” boomed the Duke of Thunder.

“The highest Tier!” cried the Duchess of Lightning.  “She has attained True Goodness!”

“Uh-huh!  Uh-huh!  Ssshe did!” Bobo agreed, bouncing up and down on her coils.

In a blaze of light that had the Duchess of Lightning sighing with envy, I reclaimed my nine-tailed fox form.  Luxuriating in the sensation of each tail growing out to full-fledged fluffiness, I told the gawking gods, “Yes, I attained Red Tier.  Let this be a lesson for all of you – judge a person not by their outward form, but by the nature of the soul within.  I am the living proof of it!”

A lot of ooh’s and aah’s and knowing nods followed that sage pronouncement.  I surveyed the gods with satisfaction, basking in their praise.  For now.  They’d have forgotten again by the time they exited this hall.

Sphaera!  I had to bring her up here, both because I’d promised and because she could record Piri’s Pearls of Wisdom and quote them at anyone with ears to hear.

The tiny quirk of Aurelia’s lips suggested that she’d seen right through me, but that was all right.

“You’re all blind!” Cassius shouted.  “Just like my courtiers on Earth!  You see that beautiful face and you listen to those sickly, pear-sweet words, and you let her charm you to your own destruction!  Why can’t any of you see her for what she truly is?!”

Though the gods were seated, as one, they shifted away from him.

“She’s a Red-Tier soul!” called a god from the back.  The God of Thieves, in fact.  He gave me a wink.  “We just saw for ourselves!”

“We also just saw for ourselves that she can shift forms at will,” Cassius shot back.

“Can we gag him now?” Aurelia murmured.

“It would only make him look right,” I whispered back.  Raising my voice, I boomed over the crowd, “Star of Heavenly Joy!  I see now that you lack the capacity to believe that souls can change!  That souls can be redeemed!”

“Because they can’t!  Because you can’t!  Because you’re still the same sly, manipulative, evil – ”

“Your refusal to believe that souls can change contradicts the very premise and promise of the reincarnation system!  The very system you swore an oath to uphold as Assistant Director of Reincarnation!  Star of Heavenly Joy, We find you guilty of failing at your mandate to administer a fair and effective system of reincarnation.  We find you guilty of subverting it to pursue your private vendettas, to such a degree that you forced the Goddess of Life to grant an unprecedented exception to the injured soul.  We find you guilty of continuing your vendetta even after that, to the point of commanding Lady Dan to rob the Queen Mother of the West so that you could bribe the Goddess of Life.  We find you guilty of refusing to believe in reincarnation’s power to redeem souls even when the evidence is right before your eyes.  You are hereby stripped of your position and sentenced to re-enter the cycle of reincarnation.”

“I am a GOD!  You cannot do this, DEMON!”  Fists clenched, Cassius actually lunged for the dais.

In a flash, Dusty was there.  “Not another step, CONVICT!”

“Out of the way, horse!”

Cassius’ hand came up, but before he could blast out light, Dusty spun and kicked with his hind legs.  His hooves connected squarely with the center of Cassius’ chest and sent him flying like a bolt of flapping white cloth.  Star sprites and imps scattered.  Cassius landed with a thump right in the doorway.

“You are hereby sentenced to reincarnate as a tapeworm!” I pronounced.

“A tapeworm!  Why, you – ”

Spluttering, Cassius floundered around in his baggy robes and tripped over his hem as he struggled back to his feet.

“You see what she’s doing?” he bellowed at the gods.  As one, they twirled in their chairs and faced forward, turning their backs on him.  “She’s making sure I will never earn any positive karma for the rest of existence!  This is her revenge!  Eternal torture!”

“Ah.”  Feigning confusion, I put a finger to my cheek and tipped my head sideways.  “But weren’t you the one who just said that souls can never change?  If that is the case, then why should it matter what you reincarnate as?  You shall simply have the outer form that reflects your true nature for the rest of your existence.”

“Fiat.”  Aurelia jumped in.  “Let it be done.”

I wouldn’t have minded gloating some more, but I supposed that would have clashed with the gracious image I was trying to project.

“Fiat,” I repeated.  “Let it be done.”

Still, I couldn’t help the sigh of contentment that escaped me as Dusty clamped his teeth down on the back of Cassius’ robes, lifted him up, and bore him off to his eternal punishment.

Aurelia didn’t chide me for it.

///

In a show of clemency, we demoted Lady Dan to a normal crane spirit and expelled her from Heaven, which she seemed to consider a fate even worse than Cassius’.  And then it was time to put the Goddess of Life on trial.

The regular prison uniform resembled her signature white gown too closely for my liking, so the imp laundresses dug out the most stained, yellowed set of linen robes they could find.  Goodness knew which god they’d once belonged to, because they were so large they would have drowned even Den in his I’m-a-giant-powerful-dragon-king-RAAAR! form.  Just to move at all, the Goddess of Life had to bundle up the skirts and sling them over her shoulder, where they drooped down her back and dragged behind her.  By the time she stopped before the dais, they’d accumulated a most satisfying crust of dirt, dust, twigs, dried leaves, and loose hair.  It was kind of hard to look imposing when you resembled a mop that needed to be dunked in a bucket and wrung out.

Several janitor imps flexed their fingers unconsciously.

“Director of Human Lives,” I proclaimed, “you are charged with accepting property stolen from the Queen Mother of the West, for repeatedly commissioning the murder of Matriarch Lodia of the Temple to All Heaven, and for failing at your mandate to watch over and guide the lives of humans on Earth.  How do you plead?”

Her eyes slanted up at me, dark and venomous.  “I have done none of those things.  It is you who should be on trial for treason.  And you!”  She raked the gods with her icy gaze.  “Traitors, all of you!  You abandoned the Jade Emperor in his hour of need.  You hid in your fine palaces.  I, and I alone, took action to stop her!”

She started to point dramatically at me, but her arm got tangled in all that excess fabric.

The gods murmured and averted their eyes.  Most of them had hidden until the fighting was over and only one side was left standing, at which point they’d taken that side.  Twisted though her logic was, the Goddess of Life had been the only one with the strength to follow through on her convictions that night.  As a former demon, I could respect that.

As a Jade Empress, I would punish that.

“Is that a plea of innocence?” I inquired.

“I refuse to plead anything.  I refuse to take any action that might sanctify the legitimacy of this ‘court’.”

“Let it be recorded as a plea of innocence then.”  I nodded to Floridiana, who made a show of writing it down.

Aurelia picked up the prosecution.  “Goddess of Life, you are charged with knowingly accepting Peaches of Immortality stolen from the Queen Mother of the West as a bribe.  As a long-time resident of Heaven, you should have known that the punishment for that crime is expulsion.”

“I did not know they were stolen!  They were delivered to my office by the Assistant Director of Reincarnation as a gift.  How was I supposed to know he stole them?”

“They were Peaches of Immortality,” I pointed out.  “Not regular old peaches you buy in an open-air market.  Where did you think they came from?  Unless your defense is that you don’t know a Peach of Immortality when you see one?”

At the insinuation that she was so insignificant she’d never been invited to one of the Queen Mother of the West’s peach-eating banquets, the Goddess of Life bristled.  “Who wouldn’t recognize a Peach of Immortality?  I simply assumed that the Bureau of the Sky was doing its job properly.  I trusted the Assistant Director of the Sky – ” she glared at Aurelia, who regarded her serenely – “to perform her duties faithfully and competently and to oversee the grounds of Heaven, including the peach orchard, as specified by her mandate.  How was I to know that she had neglected them and allowed three Peaches to be stolen from under her nose?”

“You seem well-acquainted with the inner workings of the Bureau of the Sky.  Were you aware that a high-ranking employee there, the crane maiden Lady Dan, was intimately linked to the Assistant Director of Reincarnation?” I asked so Aurelia wouldn’t have to.

The Goddess of Life twisted her lips with distaste.  “Why would I follow the sordid personal lives of my colleagues?”

“Head Clerk Shimmer.”  I didn’t raise my voice or scan the hall for him.  I knew he had to be here.  And, indeed, a figure separated itself from the crowd of the black-robed star sprites to bow before the dais.  “Is it true that the Goddess of Life was unaware of the liaison between Lady Dan and the Assistant Director of Reincarnation?”

Straightening, he replied, “No, Heavenly Majesty.  All of Heaven was aware of it.”

“You wretched clerk.  You dare – ” hissed the Goddess of Life.

He flinched but carefully kept his eyes on mine.  “I can’t imagine how she wouldn’t have known.”

Behind him came a chorus of nods and “Yes, yes, we all knew” from the gods, many of whom were smirking.  Aurelia’s fingers tightened on the armrests of her throne.  I’d bet a tail (since I could always reform it if I lost) that she had been the last to find out.

“Head Clerk Shimmer,” I continued, “in your opinion as someone who worked so closely with the Goddess of Life, how likely is it that she failed to infer that Lady Dan might have procured the Peaches illegally on behalf of her lover?”

The clerk shuffled half a step away from his former boss.  “In my opinion, it is unlikely.  She was aware that he was desperate for an audience with her.  Her reaction to his bribe was, and I quote, ‘Let us see what gift the Star of Heavenly Joy sends to curry my favor’.”

The gods gasped and frowned.  Taking a bribe was as natural to them as ignoring an imp.  But to be exposed publicly for taking a bribe, and so blatant a bribe as that – well, some things were simply a cloud too far.

“Thank you, Head Clerk Shimmer.”  Aurelia inclined her head at him, and he melted gratefully back into the black-robed mass.  “Now for the second charge: that of attempting to murder the Matriarch of the Temple to All Heaven, which has been so instrumental in enriching Heaven – ”

“I did not!  It was not the Temple to All Heaven!  It was the Temple to the Kitchen God!”  Furious, the Goddess of Life wobbled in a circle so she could glare at her fellow Directors and Assistant Directors one by one.  “I brought up the issue of the Kitchen God setting up a personal cult, and you all ignored me!  It was only because I took action that they revised it into the Temple to All Heaven.  You should all be thanking me!”

“Be that as it may,” called the Farmer God from the second row, “we decided as a committee to monitor the situation and to discuss taking action only if it continued to be an issue.  If you went behind our backs to murder the young woman, then you violated the committee’s decision.”

“I did not – ”

Her denial was interrupted by a scuffle halfway down the hall.  Den and Dusty were hauling a reluctant Dragon King of the Western Sea down the aisle, with a hangdog oystragon shuffling after them.

“Tell them!” Den commanded when they’d finally wrestled our Western Sea attackers to the foot of the dais.  “Tell everyone how the Goddess of Life ordered you to murder Koh Lodia!”

///

A/N: Thanks to my awesome Patreon backers, Autocharth, BananaBobert, Celia, Charlotte, Ed, Elddir Mot, Flaringhorizon, Fuzzycakes, Just a Kerbal, Kimani, Lindsey, Michael, TheLunaticCo, V0lcano, and Anonymous!