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“Not at all. I think I can guess your question anyhow. Pain. How could God torture himself with the invention of pain, and the suffering of all his infinate parts?” She was keeping very still, Truth noticed, her eyes squinting against even the dim, pre-dawn light.

“As you say, M’Lady.”

“The last leg of my construction. Well, It’s not finished yet. Call it the last leg of my hypothesis. I will need to test it more.” She closed her eyes and breathed steadily. “Perfectibility. We are far from the light of God, lost in the shadows of the world. But we can become better. We can refine ourselves in the fire of pain, discarding the parts of us that are not God. It is a slow process. An imperfect one. But our pain is not our enemy, or some demonic trickery. It is our opportunity.”

She sighed, once, long and deep. Then opened her eyes again. Beyond the exhaustion, beyond the pain, there was something hard as a coffin nail.

“Hell is not eternal, Captain. If it exists, it exists to perfect us, that we may return to God. An eternal punishment for a temporary transgression could never be just, so how could God countenance an eternal punishment? No. Hell is reformatory and temporary. One day, both God and I shall live free of pain. And we both believe that the result is worth the suffering.”

— Slumrat Rising (Volume 3) by Warby Picus (Slumrat Rising, #3)

He remembered Merkovah explaining the problems with obtaining wisdom by revelation. He had a very true, very accurate understanding of what was going on, but it was all filtered through his perspective and his life experiences. It would therefore be, for anyone he explained it to, some degree of wrong.

— Slumrat Rising (Volume 3) by Warby Picus (Slumrat Rising, #3)