So, I Transmigrated Into The Heavenly Realm

24. Someone Else's Memories

24

"After you were injured there was a landslide," The Emperor of Heaven began starting in the middle of the story rather than the beginning.

If this was a movie from the golden age of film, this would be the point where the screen went wibbly wobbly and someone would twang a few strings on a harp. But it's not, so you have to imagine that for yourself.

The battle had taken weeks. The war, a wearying long expanse of time even for immortal beings leaving behind death and destruction in its wake

When Bulmor lay dead, his body disintegrating into ash beneath the sword impaled through his chest, embedding him into the ground, the survivors were left with the cleanup. So few of them were left fully capable of helping out with this strenuous task.

Bodies belonging to members of the Demon Realm littered the battlefields in every realm.

In the last battle only two deities had died belonging to the Heavenly Realm but many were injured or tending to the humans who had been unfortunate enough to cross paths with the scythe of a Death God or fell into an unexpected pool of lava.

Volcano deities weren't particularly all that careful with where they left their byproducts at the best of times.

Among the rubble and the debris of the landslide that had crashed through the valley lay the mounds of armour and weapons that had been collected from the dead and the injured. They rose up from the rock like a morbid monument to victory and loss.

A veritable mountain.

There were plans to melt them down into a memorial statue already forming in the Heavenly Emperor's mind.

It would be good for morale.

The only problem was who to make the statue of.

One of the martial goddesses had raced up to Drulvenus, where he had been sitting on a fold out chair one of his servants had brought for him. She was on the back of a pure gold celestial horse with a flaming mane. The sort that glowed in the dark and only ate specially prepared celestial herbs.

She pointed up to one of the actual mountains just as a horrified scream filled the air.

Elgaldir was back.

The head of everyone present, whether they were from the Heavenly Realm's forces or the defeated army of the Demon Realm swivelled to look at him as if drawn by a magnet.

No-one had been able to predict that it would be so soon and so they were left scrambling together the remaining martial and healing deities to try and prevent some of the chaos that was about to happen. They flew, ran and rode their celestial mounts up the mountain to assist the new God of War.

The party crested the top of the mountain, just in time to see the God of War fall to his knees and pick up something limp and covered in blood. Another body on the field that had yet to be collected. The corpse of the fallen deity seemed impossibly small in his arms in the new form he had been given upon his promotion.

He screamed again, releasing a wave of energy that shook the ground. Some of the lesser deities lost their footing as the mountain moved under their feet. A sound that placed fear into the hearts of everyone present.

At first, they thought that they had lucked out, managing to get to the distressed God before he could cause too much damage to the surrounding environment. Then Elgaldir stood holding the lifeless body in one arm and slammed his sword into the ground.

At first they could only feel the impact of the sword hitting and piercing the ground but then to everyone's surprise, the entire eastern side of the mountain collapsed.

It started with a small boulder being dislodged three quarters of the way up the eastern face of the mountain but it was soon followed by soil, pebbles and other large rocks. As they tumbled down the mountain they gained speed and pulled other debris with it until the entire side of the mountain resembled a flowing river of rock hurtling down into the wheat fields below.

Fields already ruined by the battle and covered in boulders that would take years to remove.

When the rockfall finally came to a stop, fields that had been fertile and full of ripe wheat waiting to be harvested were buried beneath tonnes of rock. Even those that were lucky enough not to be completely buried were still filled with plough breaking rocks that would take years to completely remove with the limitations of human technology.

There were screams as people noticed what had happened.

The humans tried.

They tried for decades but the valley once protected by the God of Wheat was no longer under that protection. What land they did manage to save was no longer fertile enough to sustain the people that remained and so they dispersed across the world away from the valley and belief in the God of Wheat waned.

For those that stayed, the wheat crop failed more times than it yielded, the God of Wheat was no longer there to watch over them.

His temple buried under approximately half a mountain's worth of rock and dirt lay waiting for his return.

"The lack of prayers is likely the cause of why you are so weak right now." explained Drulvenus the Emperor of Heaven, looking down from his throne where Dax was standing. He was now done with his reminiscing about the past.

Dax nodded glad that the other had found an understandable reason of his own for what was going on with Dythos and that he hadn't had to try to make up something himself. Despite the help that System had given him, he still didn't know much about how the magic here actually worked.

It probably wasn't a good idea to think of it as magic either.

Heavenly powers?

That would have to do.

When he left the throne room it was with a sense of relief but also the feeling that he had only been told part of what actually happened back then. Him not having Dythos' memories was certainly an ample opportunity for others to try to obscure and/or twist the past for their own benefit. It was something that he would have to talk to System about.

For now Dax was only left with the furtive glances people around him kept passing one another when they thought he wasn't looking and the mystery that was the God of War.

Mini Theatre

Drulvenus: And those are my memories.

Dax: So you just left all that rock there and ruined hundreds of people's lives?

Drulvenus: There were many more important tasks to deal with at the time.

Dax: And I'm pretty sure you left some stuff out.

Drulvenus: Me? I would never.