Chapter 12: The Very Very Very Strong Annoyance of the Gods

“We must take that damned hero from that place. I fear it was an…” he trailed off, not finishing the words, even as he sat alone in his room.

Not an error, Zeus did not make mistakes, after all, but perhaps enemy action. Perhaps someone had interfered with the ritual, or clouded the sight of his Oracles.

‘Odin always got the better Dwarves for it,’ he grumbled to himself.

In truth, it could have been the work of an enemy. While much of what he thought was merely the vain, prideful hopes common to Olympus’s children, he thought back to the last group of Blackguards to interfere with the work of his Angels.

He had sent platinum constructs of Law and Order down to Earthrealm, to aid his Clerics in fending off a wave of blasphemy from the Cultists of Jupiter, who had been trying once more to convince his worshippers that they were the same person, a clear act of poaching.

At the same time, a group of unmarked individuals bearing thrice-blessed plutonium daggers had snuck into the city, and made off with his angels.

Suspiciously so, considering the Cultists went to ground the next day, and he had not seen hide nor hair of them since then.

Many would simply declare it the work of evil gods, but the unspoken truth of the matter was that Blackguards were not evil, and despite what even he would say, they did not exactly betray their deity.

They were simply… Deniable. An invention of Loki, that had begrudgingly spread to the other pantheons like wildfire. Only Odin was known not to use Blackguards, but his Valkyries served much the same purpose, albeit in a much louder way.

A god was loathe to lie, but remaining silent was their first and most potent trick. Blackguards, then, were a masterful trickery. Nobody would admit to owning them, and everyone would agree that they betrayed the tenants of their Paladins.

Not technically a lie. Simply a secret kept properly.

His expensive platinum angels were still missing. Perhaps dead, and sold off for scrap, but he had checked, and there had been no surge of the precious metal in the market, and samples he had covertly tested returned a lack of uranium, his doping agent of choice to mark metals blessed by him.

Someone had been interfering, in the general sense, and it had yet to play out as to who, or indeed, what, the nature of the interference was.

This stank of it. The hero was beset by a true Behemoth, a kind of beast normally consigned to the mantle of Miter, comparable to the mightiest of beasts that called the Divine Planes their home.

That had been bad. The hero was not ready for such a challenge after all, but the cheering of threefold gods had bloated the boy’s mana to heights untouched by the rest of his little commune, albeit briefly.

Naturally, they needed no goading. Ares still had a lust for combat, and Eris, a lust for chaos. If the boy had simply moved…

Reality was made of Mana. He may well have had enough to do something… Worthy.

One of the few secrets of the Soul that were kept tightly by the Namesake Gods was the true nature of the Eldritch. Bound not by Law, nor Debt, nor Oath or Worth, but Faith.

It was an easy secret to keep. Faith was the domain of the gods, or so the world believed, but gods did not require it. They did not feed on it, nor did it necessarily grant them strength. That trick was owed to their Oaths of Office, which promised mortals the boons of divine favor, in exchange for proven worship.

It was also why otherworlders made such good pawns. Powered exclusively by the will of the world around them, they could be controlled and cultivated better than a Mortal, in exchange for certain… Quirks.

That those who ‘crossed over’ retained their unnatural powers, or gained new ones at an astonishing rate. It could all be laid at the feet of their ‘Tourist Visa’. Their Eldritch Soul, which the world granted them, so they would not be alone in the world.

Pity became Power.

Zeus sighed, as he reclined on his bench.

Feathery wings unfurled from the seat, as the unnaturally soft metal shifted like a living creature around him.

Not an angel, he had not asked an Oath of Service from it, but a divine organism nonetheless.

“He had the power, and he did nothing,” Zeus mused grievously.

He would howl with offense, if someone dared to say they influenced the mortal. The Soul was not so easily manipulated, without being murdered by yet-greater powers.

Mana was Will, and the boy, however briefly, had gained it in spades. It was not fear that held him back, floated aloft on the tide of magic, even a ratperson would conquer it.

It was laziness.

His ultimate desire, given the motive to reach it, was to do nothing. His will for the world around him was so small, so tight, that it did not extend beyond the room he was in.

The throne room was under renovations. Zeus’s own roars had necessitated that.

“If Power is not enough…” he trailed off. The problem, he realized, was manifold.

Sunnymeat was meant to be safe, but cloistered. Dull and quiet enough that the hero would venture out on his own, and not grow too attached.

He had grown attached, and it had not been quiet, and he lacked the motive to ever leave. Zeus and his conspirators were not stupid, Olympian or not.

Easy to trick, yes, but not bereft of learning a lesson, nor blind to what they could see with their own eyes.

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Rhett was an awkward loner, and this town would gladly coddle him like a nameless child for the rest of his life. His mundanity was a rare, novel thing to them, and their pitiful abilities and typical Mortal monoculture were apparently more than enough keep him entertained.

Saint Titi would have to get him away from there, at any cost, before he became domesticated.

–

Coyote cackled at the sheer beauty of it all, as he darted through the streets of Olympus, heavy pitchblend soil cast up in his wake as he slipped by the feathered fools that called it home.

Truly, he had found a little trickster to keep an eye on.

A towering structure of rings within rings, centered with a scaled eyeball crashed in front of him, humming with vitrifying radiation.

He took a page from his little rat’s book, and suddenly held completely still, sitting down like a common dog.

The massive eye, Oathsworn to lead its shots and never miss, fell inert as one of the two clever promises it had made were proven incompatible in the face of the still target.

Milky white clouded the eye, as it lost from the Broken Oath what it had gained from making it.

Coyote chuckled, surging into motion with a burst of blazing americium, leaping off of the mountain, and into the endless glowing skies.

The Divine Planes was no place for a fear of heights. Amusingly, flight was not required to traverse it, either.

The islands and people of the heavens did not fly at all. They simply fell at different speeds in an endless, looping plane, through the circuit of the heavenly pull.

His limbs spread wide in a way coyotes could not, he dove through the sky, falling faster and faster, directed motion granted only by the ozone flickering by his metal form.

Like a meteor, the god landed on the amalgam of five icy moons, the stone cracking and cratering as he did. A holdover of one of his old adventures for the Mortals.

Even now, the stony corpses cooled, his own private winter in a land of irradiating fire.

As light as the stone was, he knew none of the Olympian angels could follow him properly. The stone was light and spread out, and he was heavy and dense, so his island stood on him, instead of the other way around, by the nature of this place’s own gravity.

To catch him without a lot of hard work, then, would require one to fall faster than he did, or to be lighter than stone. The five dead moons were a place for dense gods and clever mortals, then.

He went to one of the many craters he had left on the moon, far more plentiful than the few he had left on Miter’s own.

In it, he had a little bit of the Endless Waters that were left over from creation. Why didn’t he use them to simply spy from afar, one might ask?

Well, that was no fun at all.

He fell to his belly, and observed the chaos from a safe distance. Many painful, humiliating lessons taught him that sometimes, you shouldn’t laugh at someone while you’re in arm’s reach, after all.

And laugh he did. The old wire-bearded buffoon was furious, blaming the Norse, the Egyptian, even, after a moment to try and recall their names, the obscure Forgotten deities, not having a mind to recall what sort of divine beings kept spying wolves in their retinue.

Of course, what made it all the sweeter was the sight of his own wife, who wondered just what there was to spy on in the Throne Room of all places, what secrecy went on without even her there to take part in.

“Ooooh, she got his ass,” Coyote howled, cackling as moondust flew, mingling with silvery metal in the air.

–

“Oh my gods, I love you Titi!” a Birdperson shouted, her wings letting her get over the crowd to carry her voice that much further over the din of cheering cityfolk.

On the stage, the Saint of Zeus waved good-naturedly at the crowd with a practiced smile, her holy staff of Heavy Metal Guitarium shining with holy enchantments and additives.

Her skimpy solid-gold robes flowed like silk, speckled with coins and little lightning bolt charms that jingled as she moved, and woven into her hair, two pigtails were tangled artfully in a pair of solid clouds, giving them the volume and lift that the Saintess needed to really wow them.

Not that she needed them. As a survivor of a Malleable demon’s tender mercies, her entire form had to be re-sculpted into something approaching sanity. That came with the ‘perk’ of her saviors deciding that they might as well fix the rest of her problems too.

With all the things she had requested of the flesh-sculpters and alchemists who put her back together, one might never tell she was a former Ogress, save the hue of her grey skin, and towering stature.

“Thank you, Al-Bher, thank you! You folks aren’t half bad! And Zeus likes this new King of yours! Good going on that one!” she exclaimed, giving little air kisses to the gathered citizens of Labernth’s capital city.

The crowd’s cheers grew ever louder. The proof was in the pudding after all, since the Saint had come here on tour, playing her heart out with classics like “Untitled Storm-Summoning Song Number Five”, and “Local Clergy Notification: Goodness Levels Nominal.”

The rains that washed over the desert city would keep it slaked for months to come, and recordings of her latest album would quickly circulate at the gift-shops.

Suddenly, however, she put a finger to her ear, muttering something that her Microphonic staff-topper failed to pick up for the crowd’s benefit.

“Sir, this is a bit of a bad time, I’m currently in the middle of a congregation. Yes, I know I swore to ever be on call, but I’m really close to cutting a sale with the Sultan. Ah crap-”

She suddenly lifted into the air, blinding white light covering the whole of the spectrum erupting from her eyes and mouth, wind howling.

Above, storm clouds gathered, and the skies turned black with power and fury.

Glowing spirits erupted from her form, sweeping through the crowd and swirling the nexus of divine power that the Saint’s body was a conduit to.

“MORTALS. I NEED TITI FOR SOMETHING, DON’T ASK WHY. SHE’LL BE BACK IN A WEEK OR TWO,” the voice of Zeus struck.

A moment later, Titi’s own voice came out. “Thanks for coming, Zeus didn’t do all that stuff people said he did, pay your tithes byeeeeeee-!”

A bolt of lightning struck the stage, detonating it and teleporting the idol to her travel wagon, where the Cultists under her command were already packing things up for her.

They naturally were making sure to include extra posters of the King of Olympus, his good side caught on the portraits with taglines like “Paladins get 500 Gold Starting fee, if a friend joins the Clerics!” and “There’s no such thing as a free meal, support your local non-demonic restaurants today!”

Titi flopped down, released by divine providence onto her couch, groaning as she rubbed a hand down her face. There went the Labernthian Tour.

The hyper-popularity of being the currently active Saint of Zeus was great and all, but it came with a boss that she really had to work around, rather than with. This latest ‘hero’ business was the latest in a long line of scams run by her patron, and it was exhausting keeping his image spic and span in light of it.

Just the anti-mutagenics they would have to give out as alms here after that little “revelation” Zeus gave to the crowd would cut their ratings at the Assorted-Divinities-Bloc here in Al-Bher by a few degrees.

Just securing the Plats for the Olympian Temple’s solid gold fabrics and marble pillars was a cerberus bitch and a half, even without gaffs like these...

Noticing a solid gold mug of steaming wine next to her, she sighed with relief at the spiced flavors, practically pouring the thing down her throat as she hucked her expensive bardic instrument off to the side, letting the Guitarium Staff thunk into the wooden wall of her cart with a wail of shredding metal.

“Thank Zeus for the rest of the pantheon,” she grunted, scratching herself all over as she enjoyed the courtesy blessing of Dionysus and cursed the mandatory solid-gold robes of Zeus. She might not have worshiped the god of excesses, but boy could one argue for the bottle, on days like this.