It hurts the most, in the beginning; freshly remade and newly ascended, bright with enthusiasm and dreams.
It hurts the most, the first realization of death and rebirth. Reawakening in a new body, a new mind. Yours-but-not-but-yours; sharp-edged memories of shrilling sirens and white-hot almost-wreckage and is it still murder if the victim wakes up seconds later?
It hurts the most. You woke up, but how many did not, will not? Mortals to your not. Crew hired and trained and connected with because why not, they're people too and snuffed out in a heartbeat of sirens and white-hot wreckage.
Undying dead.
Ascended mortal.
Immortal.
Demigod.
It stops mattering, after one death, or two, or three; sometimes it takes dozens to burn away the last wisp of mortality.
(Lost like your soul, left behind with your mortality. A tendril of mist burned away by the harsh blaze of reality. This is what you are now.)
It stops mattering, the little deaths. The little ones that inhabit your ships (inhabit you) and perform the tiny bits of maintenance and work that you cannot, will not. White cells in a body (your body) of metal and death, keeping the whole healthy as best they can. Sometimes they escape, fleeing before the might of other demigods, unworthy of notice and therefore unharmed even as you are killed once more.
It stops mattering. You woke up. Found another ship. Hired new crew. Paid their families the death-due that had long ago become common; not even a dent in your wallet, unworthy of note, a simple rounding error. No thought to the little ones, the mortal ones left behind, floating and praying for rescue.
(Prayer is such a foolish thing, isn't it? It does nothing. No one is out there in the great beyond, listening and aiding and saving those cast aside by the demigods that roam the stars. That rule the stars.)
It becomes a sport, the death-games you once abhorred; revenge against a pirate, brutal and swift and oh so sweet.
It becomes a sport, hunting and hurting and killing. One death becomes two, three, soon outnumbering the stars. Kill and be killed, hunt and be hunted; adrenaline and ecstasy your new religion. There is no great divine, but you are a demigod and you bow to no one.
(Except when you do. There are demigods out there more fearsome than the brittle chill of space; older and wiser and broken in ways you envy-pity-desire-fear. And maybe one day you will join their ranks in the minds of other, younger demigods, but you will never catch them and so you bow your head and bite your tongue and plot to bring about their fall from grace.)
It becomes a sport. War for war's sake. For holding territory. For shattered honor. For revenge. You, who alone can amass the wealth of empires, a small cog in a greater wheel of bloodsport and give-and-take that embroils many of your kind because what else is there to do.
(When you cannot die, death does not seem so fearsome. When you cannot die, war does not seem so wasteful, reduced to resources and willpower and interest. When you cannot die, you live long enough for alliances to shift, to change and mutate and flux until you're fighting alongside your enemy and facing your best friend across the battlefield. And maybe you'll forgive; and maybe you won't.
Because it also means you can live long enough to put a bounty on their head and then destroy all they cared for.
Never let it be said demigods aren't capricious and cruel.)
The little ones cannot understand you, though you share their form; pilot and warmonger and industrialist and trader and pirate and explorer and a million-and-one other hats that you tried out of desperation and boredom and curiosity.
The little ones cannot understand you, though a few try. Desperate to pierce the veil between mortal-and-not, trying to understand what makes a demigod tick, they push and prod and stare and wonder. Marveling from afar, they hire you for foolish little errands you complete in a moment's effortless work.
The little ones cannot understand. It is not (it is) the immortality that makes you tick, makes you aloof and dangerous and coldblooded. It is (is not) the boredom that comes with immortality. An infinity of infinities stretch before you, open and bright (frozen and dark) and filled with hope and wonder (monstrosities and death). Unbound, you stretch towards what fascinates, what dazzles, what draws.
(And the only price was your soul. But what little cost, compared to the universe at your fingertips. An infinity of infinities.
And the little ones may see you as a monster. But what matter they, when you alone can destroy entire fleets of little ones?
They're so cute, thinking their armadas are capable of controlling or destroying. You play nice because it amuses you.
It doesn't always amuse you.)
The little ones will always outnumber you, no matter how much time passes and how many more little ones cast aside their mortality and ascend.
The little ones will always outnumber you, but that's okay. Like a cat stalking a mouse, they bring you amusement.
(It is a dark, vicious amusement sometimes, but it is still amusement. Their little wars are adorable.)
The little ones will always outnumber you. Until they don't. Until the great empires fall and the tribes break and the survivors scatter to the distant edges of the universe. Until death calls and ends all their little lives.
(And if you have a bit more to do with that than most, what matter it? They no longer amused you.
And that, you feel, is the greatest sin of all.)
And if a small part of you hungers for that day, when the power of the little ones breaks, no one has to know.
And if a small part of you hungers for that day, when the chaos and self-rule of the unclaimed lands comes to the empires' doors. When the tribes break and the little ones scatter, weakened and separate and ripe for the picking.
And if a small part of you hungers... well.
We're all soulless monsters on the inside.
(And that's why they fear us.)