So, I Transmigrated Into The Heavenly Realm

61. Searching for Dythos

Chapter 61

They'd searched high and low for Dythos all over the Heavenly City. Elgaldir had even sent some of the most trusted staff under his command to the mountain where the Wheat God had spent so many years submerged in the healing lake.

There were no signs of him.

Beneath the water, the chains hung slackly, almost touching the sand at the lake bed. It's surface glasslike once more in its placidity. Not a single  dry leaf had been disturbed since they had left there, no glowing mushroom eaten and empty stood the temple by the shore.

The cave had been entirely silent, apart from the crunch of gravel beneath the feet of the searchers.

He wasn't in the Palace of the Wheat God. 

Dythos wasn't at the War Department. 

No-one had seen him climb the steps of the Emperor of Heaven's palace. 

Mother Willow could not sense him in her garden or, indeed, any of the gardens her green fingers knew the soil of. Even the mass of plant life that had sprung from him and rapidly covered almost the entire city, was quickly wilting now that he was no longer lending it his energy.

Elgaldir's anxiety was skyrocketing with every hour that passed without news of his husband. At first, he had been scared that Dythos finding out about their relationship and just how deep their relationship truly had been in the past, would destroy the friendship that they had been cultivating. It was everything he had been scared of but now, hours into the search, all he wanted to know was that Dythos was safe.

It didn't matter if the Wheat God hated him for keeping this secret.

As long as he was safe, that was all that mattered. 

Finding the whereabouts of the Wheat God had subsumed all his thoughts.

Right now, Dythos seemed like he had left the Heavenly Realm entirely. If almost emptying the War Department of all but the most vital personnel still needed for work in the Mortal Realm hadn't resulted in him being discovered here within two or three hours at the most, then he wasn't here. The martial deities were not people that did things half-heartedly and none of them would have dared face the ire of their highly distressed boss if they had been found slacking off.

Those who remembered the first one hundred years after Elgaldir had been unchained knew all too well what he was capable of doing in the name of his husband.

What the depth of that love could enable him to do.

Dythos being alone somewhere in the Mortal Realm or the Underworld was scary. For all he knew, he could be unconsciously lying in need of help, in a place no-one could see him. The Wheat God's powers were highly unpredictable and draining what little energy he had managed to gain over the weeks he'd been here.

Elgaldir shivered, the hand holding his sword began shaking of its own accord and his throat tightened vice like on itself. The God of War winced. He needed to do something and he needed to do it sooner rather than later if he wasn't going to lose control of his own powers. He found himself sweating just standing, his body hyper aware of every movement of the people around him as they gathered to report what they hadn't found.

His hand gripped the hilt of his sword tightly in a clammy palm in an effort to stop it from shaking quite so noticeably. Someone had retrieved it for him from where it had fallen earlier among the vines and flowers. Its familiar weight and the texture of the hilt beneath his fingers helped to centre him in the present despite how much his mind wanted to wander in the past.