At Their Mercy

Chapter 15: Lines are drawn

A/N: Hey it's ya non-binary boi, back at it again. I just finished three 12-hour night shifts in a row in the ICU at the hospital, so sorry this is a little late and/or if it's not a glorious chapter.

I would like to take this moment to address a few things that may not be clear regarding the gods and deities' etiquette, traditions, and laws.

-Lower deities greet the greater deities and gods/Guardians with a hand gesture to the chest to show respect and acknowledge their power. Not doing so is considered offensive and narcissistic. Generally, very insulting.

-Deities rarely attack other deities, it usually becomes messy. Most importantly, lower deities do not attack higher ones. Not only is it seen as lowkey suicidal, but it is also a general unspoken law of deities. Dream and Nightmare clash due to their troubled past, and Dream's motivation is to somehow restore his brother's sanity. This is a generally accepted fact.

-In terms of certain deities, Reaper cannot take souls that are not due to pass, and he cannot spare those that must be reaped. Life may use her powers to heal those on the brink of death, however, bringing back the dead is another forbidden act. Erratum cannot create worlds or rewrite them to their will and want. While they can dig through files and force run a story that is already made, they cannot make major changes to the world. While they CAN use their strings to pierce through the mind and experience that person's thoughts and past, this is not without repercussion after an extended period of time (that will be something that is explored later, hehehe).

-There is another situational power regarding Dream and Nightmare (which is a favourite of mine) in the sense that while they can exert auras to influence emotions, they can also siphon the positive and negative ones respective to their domain. This is generally not an acceptable thing, as it is seen as manipulative and a perversion of natural emotional balance. Nightmare doesn't care about that, obviously.

I'm sure there's more I'm not thinking about at the moment, but here's just a starting guide for this. This hopefully can explain some behaviours and rationales for some of the motivations and actions of others that may be confusing. Feel free to ask questions though for clarification.

Enjoy.

Errata was finding that their patience was being tested on a daily basis now.

They were aware that Fresh was intentionally being as obnoxious as possible to get Erratum to release him, but that wasn't going to happen. They weren't sure how to fix the problem with Fresh, but they couldn't let them out to continue to cycle through bodies. The best they could do right now was keep him here so his stolen body stayed in stasis while they figured out a plan. They had way too many things on their plate and it was beginning to finally catch up with them.

"Yo my glitchtastic godly bro!" Erratum took a steadying breath as they opened their eyes. "Whatcha doin'?" He questioned as the rest of the residents gathered near the altar and settled down. Geno settled comfortably beside Reaper now, the other draping a wing gently around him.

"I don't know how else to describe it other than our daily therapy session." Geno offered as he absently ran his fingers over the black feathers. "It started off as Errata checking how we were adjusting to our new home, but dark and emotional stuff kept bubbling to the surface. Now it's become a time where we just sit and try not to be emotionally constipated anymore." He explained, to which Fresh gave a perturbed expression.