then it becomes, it becomes, it becomes a problem, then--

[monzun]

Monzun watches over their people. They teach their Creature. That was all they knew and all they really wanted initially, when they were freshly-created, and perhaps it ever would have been if another god's cruelty hadn't cut in.

Their goal had never been to be the only god. It was that, and then it had been surviving to oppose Nemesis, and now he was gone, and it seemed they were the only regardless.

("Eh, screw 'em! What've other gods been but trouble for us, huh?")

("Well...It is a bit lonely. And Khazar's actions are the only reason we're around today, isn't that right?")

The power of the Creeds trickle back alongside the power of the people. And then torrents, and a flood. The Miracles they use grow stronger beyond even Wonders' assistance.

Generations of their people live and proliferate and die, and Monzun's strength doesn't waver, but increases even as the populations settle lower than the war efforts and post-war burst their levels to being.

("Yeah! We're badass! Even if it could use a lil more fireballin' to make all this peace more exciting, Boss.")

 Their Creature and people are safe. They revel in being only gentle without consequence but worshippers' occasional disrespect, and they find they care little about that--unless they harm others in their village, and then Creature gentle scolding or abrupt relocation across the land tends to work nearly as well as lightning would have.

Their intervention is needed less even as they notice more. Little beacons where their people were, somewhere well beyond the seas, still worshipping where it once couldn't reach. 

And something else. A shard of something.

Another...another god? Near their people? The numbers waver, some converting to the other, fewer converting to Monzun, as reasonable without them there to demonstrate their power. 

They need to look. 

("Could be a fresh threat we need to squash.")

("Or they may be a new god in need of a Guide?")

A fragment of them even hopes...

...

...Nemesis' brutality means their consciences say nothing while their Teleports are slowly practiced until they look something closer to a Vortex the old gods used.

It's not quite as large. Redder. But far more than a simple Teleport.

The day comes where they reach across the Lands and place it where they sense their lingering people and that god.

("Let's go!")

("It's so exciting! But we don't need to rush quite yet--")

Monzun takes some time to look over their nearest people and discuss. Khazar brought them Disciples; they could bring some possibly willing to convert to another, although they seem confused by the conversation. Do any of theirs know Miracles? Oh? Yes? One of Sable's decedents picked up the Wood Miracle, they hadn't realized that was possible--

A part of them is distant, distant, distant.

Monzun reaches for their Creature and finds they stare down into the Vortex.

Ah. 

It seems their impatience was noticed and acted upon.





In another part of Eden, a Vortex opened on the side of a mountain that Monzun's old Temple still stands on. The air splits with a shocked bellow as a massive Leopard Creature steps onto nothing and tumbles down into the water.

Ouch.

Only a little ouch. It wasn't that far, but Sweetheart wasn't expecting it. She stands and shakes the water off a little--oooh, fish. Scoops up a handful of fresh fish to eat, and then turns around to claw up the mountain to peek over the edge.

There are a few people! Worshipping wrong, or maybe just frightened. That's okay. She's pretty different now. She doesn't mind when they take off running when they un-freeze.

...Most of the trees she grew are missing. She doesn't like that, she worked hard on those.

She climbs up all the way--oh, the Temple's smaller, or she's so big as to match?--and immediately gets to Miracle Watering the withered ones in the worship sites left.

Comments

[lethys]

It cannot be.

And why not, the more rational part of him asks? He felt the loss of Nemesis' presence with all the solemn gravitas it deserved. Why would it be any less likely that this Creature survived the battle? What likelihood stands that this could be another Leopard?

Her head is almost level with where he hovers. At her wave, Lethys comes back to himself enough to realise this and subtly flickers back and rises a little.

Just in time to see the dizzying tear of a Vortex rending itself open beneath him. And to feel the presence of -

- Nemesis? No, no! Different. Less familiar, but familiar still. No.

Before the glitter of Monzun's presence can make it all the way through, Lethys pulls back even further, flitting quickly to "perch" over the nearest high point for a good vantage (and, in his wisdom, be further away from the enemy's temple when they come to survey their territory).

This turns out to be the roof of the Japanese Wonder, currently filled with the still-devout. He hears the whisper-murmur of their conversation below him turn to warm, pleasant surprise, and then excitement as a tidalwave of healing energy laps across the landscape and spirals up the tower floors, and finds its way to man, beast, and Creature abroad with a surge of power.

Lethys shudders.

Such a demonstration could only mean one thing. He begins to formulate his next move quickly: beg, or flee?

...Until Monzun notices him and reacts, he does neither. Better to watch, and wait.

Laetes draws up beside the Wonder and keeps his gaze locked on the distant shimmer of their rivals, shoulder to shoulder with his god if they'd really been at the same level.

[monzun]

After their shaken-up followers are all gathered to rest and chatter (and commiserate) in their Temple's shadow, Monzun is instantly distracted by management. The nearest village is doing fine, but not as well as they could. What had they been thinking with some of their old field placements?

Sweetheart strides off towards the next village over, and Laetes. And Lethys. People scatter around her feet, and she picks up a few that aren't fast enough and set them closer to their houses.

Gods are indeed faster than Creatures, however. After feeding a few trees into the first Worshop, Monzun cuts across the sky to check on the next, and the God whose Influence is reaching across it--

They know that symbol.

"Lethys!" They alter their course from the Store to examine his shape up close. "Lethys? You live?" Disbelief echoes with hope overlaid with just the first stirrings of anger.

More they the fool to have believed Nemesis, weren't they?

[lethys]

It has been a long time since they saw each other, but even back then, the pinkish fuzz of his coat had given way to dark and ruddy, brackish grey from compelled malice. By now it has washed-out some, from decades of pacing and the occasional nudge from his master to try and break the habit of destruction and cruelty. Perhaps it was meant to be temporary; Laetes remains dull and slightly hunched.

He flashes teeth and rumbles with a low growl as Sweetheart approaches, his fur sticking up like pins - and perhaps tinging ever so slightly blacker at the ends, as if scorched by some unseen flame.

A subtle hand runs down the wolf's back, silently bidding him to stay.

To his credit Lethys does not move from his hovering perch above the Wonder. Even though the strength of their presence nearly blinds. Staring a more powerful god in the face unflinching is a skill he has had plenty of time to hone.

Disbelief, indeed, and they're not the only one. No doubt Monzun would have preferred to find him gone and his Temple razed.

"I am as alive as you deigned to leave me," he barks, only a little defensively. Caution, first. Quickly, he demands: "What of Nemesis?"

He knows. Every particle of his being knows. ...But he has yet to hear it.

[monzun]

"You are," they say wonderingly, drifting up.

And then back down, alongside their voice. "That--that--all-burning, all-sacrificing--bare-Sited pile of Creature shit is gone with the power of the Creeds I wrested from him," they rumble.

Shining Sweetheart arrives with flicking ears, glancing between other-god and other-Creature. Monzun is angry? Monzun is using strings of words she's never heard before, in fact.

Only a little angry, as they drift back again to float above their somewhat-puzzled creature. "...He lead me to believe you--weren't, anymore."

[lethys]

Now Lethys pulls back: the power Monzun wields now is not to be made light of, and despite his best efforts to keep a stranglehold on the uncertainty and fear clawing its way to the forefront, Lethys' symbol and light wane to a thin and watery candle-glow in comparison to Monzun's. It takes all of his self-control not to act: reach for a Miracle, flee, beg. They've given him no reason to just yet.

But they have confirmed this at least: Nemesis is no more, and they wiped him off the face of Eden.

He has plenty of cause to believe them. A spike of - something runs through him, too close to the fear of a new unknown to truly be relief, but similar enough that the cogs begin turning regardless.

Nemesis is gone. Eden is forever changed. Monzun is poised to take his place as power-that-is. And so it goes.

"You and I remain," he declares out loud, affirming this to Monzun - and to himself.

His tone is pensive, slow, and deliberately unclear. He must choose his words with care. Below, Laetes holds his ground, still sustaining a low, rasping growl with pauses only to snatch a breath, eyes fixed up at the towering Leopard as though tasked with an unblinking watch over only one thing in the universe.

"What will you do now that you hold this power?"

[monzun]

Monzun hesitates over admitting they thought he was a young god in need of guidance. It's...well. Embarrassing. They'd warred against him for fewer years than Nemesis directly, perhaps, but long enough they likely should have recognized his presence if they hadn't taken the old god's word.

"I'll continue tending to my people," they say eventually, glow listing to the side, over the nearby Village the Wonder towers over. "There are fewer mine than I knew on this land, but still many scattered around--here, and the others I've travelled."

The word comes with some irony, being such a mild word for being forced to flee from and chase gods so much.

As things are, though, they can travel when they please.

Sweetheart slowly crouches until she reaches nearly Laetes' eye-level. He, too, seems angry. She dips forward to tap her snout to his in askance. He doesn't need to be angry, she'd rather have that stop.

[lethys]

Laetes snaps at her -

- and a Leash whips into existence, snapping taut and yanking him back so his jaws clatter shut on thin air, causing him to stumble off-balance. He whines, then, and turns seeking eyes up to Lethys.

My people, Monzun said. Lethys knows their symbol is still seared into the hearts and minds of this Village, as with the one by their temple. As it was, as it still sometimes lingers, in the Villages he's reclaimed, inch by anxious inch. Fewer mine than I knew...

He knew nowhere else to run, but was a mistake to stay. He doesn't know their plans for certain, but - in case they wield their power carelessly, they should know what they'd be doing:

"I have no other Temple," he states, matter-of-factly.

Normally this would be a foolish admittance. But their power eclipses his so completely, the time for strategy has long passed. The truth is the only option left. Perhaps knowing they would be wiping him off the face of Eden might give them pause. It did last time...

"Your battle here is already won. My lands are forfeit. Give me time," he asks, in a way that feels familiar. "I will find another Land far from here, but I need time."

[monzun]

Sweetheart flinches back a little. Monzun flickers back over the Creatures, likewise tugging her back a few steps.

She rumbles and jabs a claw forward, arm still long enough to nearly reach the wolf if she leans. Don't they notice how he's acting? She just wants to do something about it!

Monzun swiftly pulls further away, nearly across the Village itself. "Those aren't my people any more." (They are, but Lethys seemed to take care well enough when they weren't raining flame over them. They can stay his.) "I did not plan on taking from you," they say tightly, finally realizing what this may be looking like.

[lethys]

At once the bottom drops out of Lethys' careful treading-on-glass approach. Monzun does not want this Land.

Some small part suggests anxiously that perhaps what Monzun means is—

—they don't need to take from him, points out the long, tired part of him that bent to Nemesis. They already have more power than this Land could afford them. He has been thinking too small. The quaint game of taking Villages, back and forth across the board, cannot mean anything to them now; the power of the Creeds puts them above that. No, they don't care. The rules are thrown away and do not matter. (Such rules were all that amused Nemesis.)

If ichor could run cold.

Laetes, sensing something from his god, begins to slowly back away, the Leash falling slack. His eyes dart from Lethys to Sweetheart to Monzun.

"What will you do?"

His voice carries the usual echo of godhood, but it sounds hollow.

[monzun]

Monzun is familiar with...finding things unfamiliar. Having a lack of understanding where many but a treasured few followers expected them to be all-knowing, merely because they could hear their simplest collective prayers.

Sweetheart, as she tends to, begins a Gesture--a Gesture she considers of Water, but then changes to a greater one, of Healing. There was already Healing done, but she knows this one is best, and perhaps Laetes could use it. She doesn't need to be all that close to do it.

Monzun darts back a little in the direction of their Temple, cutting a sharp line of red shine in the air. "You asked and I answered this moments ago." But they're missing something, and they despise it.

("Perhaps he thinks you're lying, Leader? We know Nemesis liked to twist words, after all...")

"And I am not lying about it!" they add roughly.

[lethys]

"What will you do to me?"

His tone is genuine, and his symbol flickers back to full brightness.

His voice is urgent and to be heard! and there is a ripple of pausing and muttering across the Village as, unintentionally, mortals catch the echoes.

Yes, Nemesis lied. But he had no need to lie to Lethys. His most faithful; his right hand. His god of least concern. Nemesis could crush Lethys like a bug. Why waste the energy lying?

Lethys expects the truth — he does not expect it to be kind.

Laetes flinches back, dragging his feet to shuffle away, covering his face for a blow that does not come. When the Miracle hits, it hits a cringing thing, and Laetes' eyes flick wide.

Laetes dares a questioning stare over the pointed fur of his arms, peering at Sweetheart in shock.

[monzun]

The words should be nothing against their burning power, but still strikes them with a chill as much as a most powerful Miracle could.

They answered this--!

...unless they did not?

Monzun stops.

With the tentativeness of a new stream breaking off from a river as spring cracks through ice:

"What?"

It dawns that no, they did not. They've spoken of Lethys' territory and his people. They have not spoken of Lethys himself.

There is a strange sensation, somewhere. An echo of how it feels when they'd been too desperate for too long, and their most loyal had collapsed to their deaths at the Temple they should have been safest serving at. (There are not enough doing so here for that, though, even when they stretch their senses to quickly check again.)

"I will do nothing," they say finally. "Without Nemesis, I have no reason to war with you. Or...anything else?" Monzun adds uncertainly. They still don't understand what he's expecting, if he doesn't believe they'll simply blow his Temple away.

Almost entirely oblivious, even to Lethys shouting, Sweetheart is bouncing on her feet a little. See, see, Laetes? Is that any better?

--But at the name 'Nemesis,' her eyes flick back up and her own teeth flash. What? What about him? Monzun sinks from the sky to tap a pat over her back--it is nothing, nothing at all.

[lethys]

At the name, Laetes' ears flatten back; with all the conversation, and confusing as it is, suddenly he understands his role: defer.

So he shrinks. With a warmth in his limbs and sore paw-pads cooled, the comfort floods in. He rejects it easily. Laetes pads back and takes his place behind the imaginary war-line drawn before his god. He lowers to all fours, one clawed paw against his knee, one flat to the ground. And he watches Sweetheart: no more snapping. Baleful eyes meet hers.

Lethys holds. Carefully he processes what this could mean, all thousand-and-one interpretations. A flattened part of him dares: Monzun sounds as though they concede.

Flickering uncertainly, like a candle flame on too short a wick, Lethys hangs-fire. Considers.

"Nothing," he repeats.

[monzun]

Sweetheart's head swivels to follow Laetes as he bows, confused as her god, nearly as uncomfortable--but for different ways. Nemesis is dead, she knows dead, she was united with her god to kill him, but the prayers that built his Wonders and channeled into her still...taste. Rot and reaching into her head and making everything wrong.

The Creature delicately steps away (as much as a mountain-sized thing can) and paces back around the Villages. From where the gods speak to the Guru's Temple to her own home Temple and back, she needs to check it.

Nemesis is dead. There are no curses here, but the itch in her bones is always back when she hears about him and this is the best way to make sure.

"Nothing." A third time, bouncing between them as an attack between shields.

Although...

"Unless you steal my Creature again. You would come to regret that. From both of us," they think to clarify.

[lethys]

"I did as I was ordered," Lethys fires back. (No. As he was taught. To pretend Nemesis had enough interest in him to order anything — any interest in him, in the end...)

But that is not the point.

Lethys watches the Leopard pace. As Laetes did. Anticipatory. Anxious, checking, seeking something her god cannot provide.

His mind is elsewhere.

"You wish me to remain." ...To clarify.

[monzun]

"Then this is no concern for us to have." They weren't worried in the first place, in truth. They still don't know how he did it, but they could take villages from him now far more easily. They'd just rather not. The idea of their Creature missing by another god's work, even briefly, is as upsetting as the war that they'd likely need to wage after.

Sweetheart returns. Holding another tree, Monzun notes absently when she plants it somewhere near the beach.

"Yes. Unless you would prefer elsewhere," they say abruptly, swinging back thoughtfully in a half-circle. "Is this not your home? Or was it another place? The land of more snow?" They still remember Khazar's announcing him as though "of the snowy realm" was his title; this lead to their own taking "of the seaside storms", though they've dropped the "seaside" since.

[lethys]

Lethys falters, stutters, hangs haphazardly to one side. They wish nothing. And when was the last time he was asked this? Named?

Fearful, but with the mention of snow throwing him neatly for a loop:

"Do they live?"

It is almost quiet.

[monzun]

They? Ah, the people of the snow. "The last I was there, yes. That was some time ago," the longest since they've visited any Land as of yet, "so you must...allow me to..."

Monzun dips back, red pulsing reaching, reaching as they've only just recently (in godly terms) learned how, for all those little flickers of faith and hopes and prayers and hates drumming dripping humming dancing rippling all the way across the world back to them.

"...The land is full of life. The ones that worship me still, at least...although few from the snow do much anymore," they say.

Sweetheart Gestures once more. Look at this, Laetes, this impressive thing she can do: making more trees, and this particular tree much larger. See? See?

...And if she scoots the water over to dampen his tail, Monzun is a little too distracted right now to tell her off! Ha!

"There's a Village," they're preoccupied noticing. "I believe. Not mine. Where your Temple was? Is it yours?"

It occurs to them he might not be able to sense without Creeds. (Pieces of Creed? They still don't know the right name.) "I could look for you," they add, with much lower energy. The new freedom of travel is pleasing. Their enthusiasm for speeding ahead is not since killing several of their own people trying.

[lethys]

He is not shocked at how easily they appear to reach for this information. Nemesis was the same.

He is surprised however to hear that anything might remain. He felt the Temple's destruction like a scar in his light, and that part of the world went dark to him. But if anything remains...

He used to be stronger, more capable of this, but if he focuses hard ...

...glimpses of somewhere distant. Quiet and few enough that he hears nothing unless he listens, and even then only small flashes. The soft crunch of fur footwraps through snow; the glisten of morning on the settled flakes; mutterings and a slow wave of a hand in prayer where the snow is deep and untrodden, and a dance would cost energy more valuably spent elsewhere. Overnight snow dusted from a tiny altar of salvaged temple wood, preserved in the cold.

Lethys snaps back to himself at the sound of Laetes' sharp, affronted bark.

"Laetes! Enough from you! Leave!"

The Wolf makes a haggard grumbling sound, still clutching the soaked fur of his tail, and skulks away - backwards, at first, to keep Sweetheart well in his sights, before turning and beginning a reluctant lope back towards Lethys' lands, duly scolded for his distraction.

Lethys is a little dizzied. Whether from overreaching, or the realisation itself that embers of faith yet burn for him in the snow, he isn't sure.

...But there is reality to account for. As deeply as it cuts, his remaining faith encroaches on theirs. Lethys steels himself, and coldly instructs:

"You will have to kill them. I have no power to turn away such determined followers." A pause, and for his own ragged pride: "Nor do I desire to."

[monzun]

They sink nearer to the soil, disgruntled. "I will not. I said I could go and look, not redecorate for you." Monzun is distracted from the meaning of his words somewhat, absolute points of view clashing but also they see what Sweetheart is doing over there;

"None of that, now," Monzun says crossly, and yanks away the tree she was about to fling across the land at Laetes' back. She jumps with a rumble-yowl of offense and gets a small swat on the wrist for it. Come on, she picked a small one, he can catch it!

But Monzun is not dealing with an aggressive Creature who might goad their Sweetheart into both crushing the nearby buildings so easily. Act friendly, not act as if attacking. They redirect her attention to the nearby water, to eat or gather fish for whoever she pleases instead.

The tree is dropped into the green-roofed Workshop, and their attention swings back to the land's first Village. Speaking of redecorating...

They begin plucking a few more just-grown trees and feeding them through, as well. Those fields genuinely require a redo.

[lethys]

Lethys is taken aback. The question circles: why? He remembers catching a distant glimpse of a strange carving, far off beyond his realm, and sneering at the realisation that Monzun's followers would stray. The next time he looked, it was gone. He knows such things are not beneath their disdain. What self-respecting god does not guard against stolen worship?

...But their attention has drifted again, away from the other god shining over their territory and towards building. As if he were not here at all.

Through the shock, Lethys is a little insulted. He knows they could crush him like a mortal under their thumb, if they so chose. But that they don't even show concern that he's here is purely insulting.

He is left hanging over the Village with no audience. Pride damaged, perhaps unreasonably so, but nothing else. It begins to sink in that he is alive, and looking to stay that way a little longer.

And Nemesis is dead.

Lethys flickers to one side, and back. He glides to the nearest mountaintop and hovers there, watching Monzun from afar. His thoughts won't sit still long enough for him to pin any of them down.

Eventually he flits back to his Temple and to the Village beside it. He conjures miraculous rations into their stores. And probes, gingerly, at the distant sound of prayers in the cold. And again, and again, and again, crosses the landscape almost to Monzun's Village borders and finds himself returning to his Temple without thinking about it.

He lives. And Nemesis is dead.

Laetes, who has been Leashed to the Pen and held there, peers up at his listless god and whines.

It is another mortal day and night before Monzun will find Lethys streaking over and flaring too-bright and too-close, demanding their full attention.

"What do you want? Tell me!"

[monzun]

Monzun has done as they planned, so far: a few fields have been made closer to their Village stores, a few more poorly-placed ones burned (after being blocked off by Sweetheart and several rocks), and they've decided to start fixing up that mountain by the green-roofed Village. Without their god, a few had begun replanting the forests destroyed by the old holy war, but it was very slow going, and many houses were looking quite shabby because of it.

And, simply enough, Monzun enjoys forests.

They work side-by-side with their Creature to grow them, just as they did when they first learned of Miracles in times centuries past, when Monzun couldn't even cast under their own power.

"Greetings, Lethys," they say dryly, as if his appearance hadn't had their hand jerk from the forest they'd been watering to somewhere far to the left. (A single straw-covered house suddenly suffers a deluge on half of it. The people who come out expect Laetes and are confused not to see anything at all.) "I thought I'd answered that already, and am doing such right now."

[lethys]

"Not this!" he insists, sweeping a Gesture across the land, broad and wide and spiralling, painting their view of it blue. "If not to destroy me, why linger here? Why do you not seize what you already won?"

Surely they must have a long-term goal. Something beyond his knowledge. To ask is already overstepping but he can't stand not knowing. For his cruelty, at least Nemesis was clear.

Feeling frantic and out of sorts, and half-watching Monzun's rainwater soak the roof, Lethys absently traces for a Storm - not that he can cast, even if this was anything more than a fidget. So far away from his own Influence the blue tinge of power sprinkles away from him like dust in the wind.

"What is this for? What is your true aim?"

[monzun]

Some already-building frustration dissipates with his blue. "Lethys, you perplex me," they say.

("Let him wonder! He doesn't need to know jack about you, getting all uppity in your face like that! Not that you have a face...")

("He's certainly expecting more enmity than you're giving. Perhaps we should be careful not to stoke the flames, so to speak?")

"I did not win anything," they say tiredly. "I was forced to wage war I did not want, for people I did not desire, to kill a god that tried to destroy everything I knew first. I would have left it all alone if not for that."

They twist a Gesture, smaller and tighter, for more watering.

[lethys]

Lethys flicks from one side to the other as they speak, anxiously processing. He doesn't like the answer they give him.

His temper erupts.

"Eden is a battleground! Every realm is won or lost! If not Nemesis, sooner or later your realm would be challenged. You claim the power you won was against your will? If that were true, you would have fallen to him in an instant!"

Some drive led them to this point. There are no accidental victories. Lethys will not accept their victory over him was by chance.

"You chased me here because I took your Creature. Was that the only reason? What of taking ground from me in the end? You dare tell me my banishment was not your desire then?"