CH1087 The gods and their choices (Patreon)

The spell prepared with their divinity in the realm above, the ten gods responsible had descended to the world below only long enough to cast it before returning, erupting into mad, victorious laughter as they rejoined the rest of their cohort who’d waited behind.

The plan had been simple in its own way. They hadn’t been able to kill Ben without immediately making him ascend, and the chance of failure that came with ripping out his soul was too great for any one of them to want to admit, but that had led to a third opening. Don’t banish his soul, trap his entire body in that lower realm to suffer and die, leaving no escape or ascension for him once his flesh failed. They’d needed to find a god who presented as neutral to start the ruse, who had enough believers of the other co-conspirators' races as well for other deities to descend upon to make opening such a hole through reality possible, and they’d had to manipulate those believers in such a way that the secret couldn’t be gleamed in their thoughts by that dastardly mind reader, but in the end, they’d done it. Ben was gone, and the rest of the world would be infinitely safer for their choice.

If only he’d learned to manage his greed, Eneth thought, his lips peeling back into a wide smile. Then the fool wouldn’t have been so blinded by the offer of a single blessing.

The thought only made him want to laugh more. After everything that had happened, everything he himself had been subjected to because of that mortal, humiliation after humiliation, he’d finally won, and to that war god, victory was sweet.

“This is it,” Olensia roared. “No more dancing in a mortal’s palm and no more having his power hanging over us all! We’ll never have to worry about what he’ll do when he ascends, we-”

The words were cut off as their celebration was interrupted. Far sooner than any of them hoped, their deeds were already discovered as one god forced his way into that realm, the cube’s speed smashed into Olensia’s head to knock him away, and there was no point in trying to hide things. What they’d done was always going to be discovered eventually, they’d been hoping they’d at least have a few hours first, but with Myriad there, all they could do was accept what was to come.

“Yes, yes, you caught us,” Eneth said, holding up his hands. “We broke our laws, so let’s gather everyone for a meeting about how to deal with us-”

A bit of sarcasm couldn’t help but slip through his voice as he said it, but Eneth was still entirely unprepared for Myriad’s reaction. Even though the cube’s believer base was growing at a fast pace, all things considered, he was still a small god and he would spend his faith recklessly, giving his believers endless blessings and skills to make himself more appealing. By all accounts, he should have still been weak, yet there was one thing Eneth and many others didn’t know about. All of the soul tiles constantly generating faith for Myriad.

Unlike other deities, Myriad wasn’t specialized; the unique nature of his existence had stripped him of any dedicated divinity, but in exchange, he was flexible, and all of his strength was put towards the rage filling him in that moment.

His body had smashed into Olensia with additional force the other gods around couldn’t realize, but when he moved onto Eneth next to silence the foolishness that god was trying to spout, Myriad’s frame opened, up, revealing the same horrors within that would shut down his believers minds when inspecting their souls and closed around that reptilian war god, trapping him within himself and feeling Eneth try to fight his way out, while Myriad tried to break him down from within.

Myriad was a construct as much as he was a god, after all. A thing designed to contain souls, and while a god was not quite the same, it wasn’t substantially different either. They had form, but of a different sort than anything in the mortal plane, being just as much souls as they were the shapes they projected, with Myriad taking in what he could, piece by piece.

He felt Eneth struggle and scream from within him, and while Myriad had no intention of making that god a part of himself like any of his believers would become, he was more than willing to try to use his innate properties to rip that deity apart, peeling away layers of him while the cube threw himself against the rest as the others began to react, spending their faith to attack and largely winning in the end.

As powerful as Myriad had grown compared to even just a few years prior, he had set himself up against gods who had maintained faith bases for thousands of years, earning and saving what their believers dedicated to them, and when he was already so outnumbered, there was no getting around it. Enough of them there were gods of combat, and with that domain came the power to oppress him as strikes rained down on his body, battering him in a way he couldn’t avoid and filled the cube with pain that was ignored. He didn’t care what happened; that group had murdered his apostle, his friend, and he’d see them pay if it killed him.

But all of the desire in the world was nothing in the face of a difference in power, and as the strikes continued to come, eventually hands clawed at him, holding him in place and tearing him open to free Eneth, the reptilian god jumping out, enraged as he did.

His body was a mess; the others could see entire patches of scales had disappeared from the war god’s divine form, but Eneth said nothing about it. His focus was entirely on Myriad, still held down by the others as he lashed out, throwing blow after blow at the cube while he screamed.

“You think you have the right to be mad when you can’t even control a single believer! All of this, everything we’d had to do and the faith we had to waste doing it, was all because you were willing to let one mortal get too full of himself, and now you think you’re allowed to be the one raging over all of this? You drove things to this point as much as he did, you-”

His fists, leaving dents in Myriad’s body for the strength and rage behind them, were caught, bringing the beating to an end as the group was surrounded, Phixth crushed Eneth’s hands in his own and spoke through clenched teeth as the other deities who’d come with him to control things kept anyone from going further.

“All of you, with me. Now.”

In the meeting, for once, things were deadly silent. Despite the gravity of what had happened, nobody said a word, even when so many clearly wanted to. All the gods sharing that world waited for Phixth, radiating a rage like none had seen from him before, to speak.

“You murdered a mortal who wasn’t your own,” he said finally, the cold tone not matching the depthless anger he was giving off. “And released more than a few damned souls doing it, too.”

“We-” one among them tried to defend themselves, not given the chance.

“You murdered a mortal who’d been single-handedly increasing our chances of winning this impossible war!” Phixth yelled at them, a few of those responsible left to flinch back. “Do you not grasp the gravity of what’s happened here? Both what you’ve done and what Ben had been doing for us? Were all of your pathetic fears and grievances really so great that it had to come to this? Give me one good reason we shouldn’t kill you all where you stand!”

Again, some of those who’d taken part looked fearful, but it wasn’t any of the ones responsible who answered, but instead, other gods among them, who’d been happy enough to act like neutral parties in their previous discussions whenever the topic of Ben had come up.

“Phixth, killing them over one mortal is clearly going too far,” one said, with dozens more murmuring in agreement, only raising the rage in the room as those who loved and appreciated Ben were forced to hear it. “And we still have the war to think about. We should just confine them to their realms until tempers have a chance to cool.”

“Just one mortal? Have a chance to cool?” Nare spat, able to contain himself no longer. “Do you hear yourself? If I were to take action to murder your apostle, would you be so accepting of it? Would any of you? We’ve reached a point where, by all rights, we owe the world to Ben, and you think they should go unpunished? None of you have believers who haven’t benefited from him in one way or another!”

“None of us have believers who aren’t alive thanks to his work either,” Helori added. “And that’s what you want to do with his murderer? Give them a timeout? How dare you!”

“I believe the greater point is that we have other priorities to worry about,” a different god said, trying to be more diplomatic than the last. “Yes, they were wrong to do that, and yes, they should be punished, but we have time before we need to decide what that punishment should be. Considering that we need all the help we can get for the last wave, we can’t be recklessly killing any of our fighting force-”

“Like they just fucking did?” Nare spat. “I would trade all of their lives a hundred times over for Ben’s and still feel like I would be the winner of such a deal! This has to be properly punished; you can’t all just let such a thing slide because these worthless sacks of shit might be able to contribute a bit to the next wave!”

“It wouldn’t just cause issues up here. Can you imagine the chaos it would cause their believers if their gods suddenly died? Such a thing wouldn’t instantly switch them to worshipping others. It would be lost faith that could have been gathered and better spent for the world at large.”

“Do you really think that word about what these gods have done won’t cause enough chaos of its own?” Anailia asked, striking an opposing form for the others. “How do you think any mortal will react when they learn a group of gods conspired to murder someone in cold blood?”

“I think word getting out would weaken faith in all of the gods here as a whole, in a time when it’s most needed,” Eneth finally spoke, raising the tempers of the room, even as others agreed.

“He’s right,” a different god said, not on Eneth’s side but knowing the truth of it. “We have to delay this, whatever decision we make. We can’t let mortal faith in us crash so low when we’re so close to the next wave.”

Around the room, Phixth could see agreement, both from gods with no choice but to accept the cold logic of that fact, as well as gods who themselves had been hoping for such a thing. As Ben had grown in power and continued to reach limits far beyond both mortal and the divine, fear of him had grown too, and foolishly, when they’d all begun to calm down in past meetings, he’d let himself believe that it was because they were beginning to understand Ben’s worth beyond any hypothetical fear. Now, though, he could see how misplaced his trust had been. Even if they hadn’t all been in on it, someone had told them to ease up on their outrage, and he’d been tricked, just like anyone else who was on that boy’s side.

I told him that no matter what happened, cooler heads would prevail, Phixth cursed himself. I told him that no matter what some felt, we were all focused on the greater good of the world, only for it to come to this.

He was disgusted, but he was also powerless. His given role had been to mediate matters regarding Ben, and as things were, it seemed that was to be the last time such a thing was needed, leaving a foul taste in his mouth for how it looked like it would turn out.

There’d always been extremes when it came to that mortal, but it seemed that no matter how many he held the favour of up there, more still were just happy to see him gone. Through it all, Phixth cast his eyes to Myriad, the god who treasured the boy most of all saying nothing, as aware as anyone else as to what was going to happen.

“So that’s what the majority wants?” Phixth asked. “To confine them?”

“It’s the best course of action for the time,” enough agreed, viewing the crime as something minor. “We can figure out the rest once the world is at peace.”

A pretty way of saying never, then, Phixth understood. Even if the demons and their evil god let them be, if they survived the next wave, their planet would need decades, if not centuries, until it would truly be safe again. In that time, excuses would be made, and the gods responsible for that atrocity would work hard enough that others would be able to argue for leniency. After all, what would the life of one mortal be compared against efforts they would spend to protect the world?

“Wrong,” Anailia said, bucking expectations as she moved. “You can all hold them if you like, so be it, but you won’t find my people will remain ignorant on what was done today. Their actions will be spoken of, and they’ll be remembered.”

“You’ll destabilize the world,” some tried to argue. “Everything we’ve built up-”

“So be it. If the mortals stop giving us faith because of these fools, then we’ll work with what we've grown in all of this time. If it means their believers are too ashamed to proclaim themselves worshipers of these foul gods, then it’s all the better.”

“I agree,” Nare said, standing up. “That boy was my friend, and you will not sweep his death away for convenience’s sake. The entire world is going to know that apparently, we’ve had evil gods hidden on this planet all along.”

As the two of them said it, more of them joined, all of the deities who favoured Ben and enough to bring genuine worry to the perpetrating gods’ eyes. Even if they wouldn’t be killed, their churches would be devastated, and for all of those who were neutral or pretending to be neutral watching, they were able to do the math. Just like it would be inconvenient to kill those twenty for their acts, it would be impossible to stop well over a hundred who were going to share word of what happened, regardless of the consequences and the greater good be damned, meaning the facts were clear. The gods responsible would be locked away, named and blamed to the mortals of the world, and they’d all just have to hope that their own mortals wouldn’t lose faith and that the worshipers of the offending gods wouldn’t revolt.