Archive Of Potentialities.

Short story: Of Slime and Blood -- 8

The question has been asked multiple times, and there has always been a clear answer. These beings ranked very low on the list of this world's mysteries after all.

The question?

What exactly are gods?

Whether it be the priest praying within the cathedral or the Magia researching within the College, the answer remains the same.

Gods are the manifestations of the varied concepts and phenomena that find existence on this planet.

From the heat of the sun to the biting cold of polar winds.

From the very concept of gravity to the mundane feelings of mortals, everything has a presiding god – or had, at some point.

Conflicts among the divine never end in the “death” of the losing party. Instead, the victors choose to assimilate the weaker side, concept and all.

But this choice was what preserved the planet for this long. By assimilating the losing side, the concept they govern remains under control and has no room to run wild or disappear entirely – which in some cases of the long forgotten past, would've spelled the end of the world for both mortals and the divine.

A convenient and sustainable system, one might say.

But then, another question exists, and contrary to the first, this one has no clear answer, for it has never happened before.

Not that no one was willing to make it a reality, but that no one was able to. The very laws of the world forbade this outcome to an even higher degree than it did the occurrence of Magic, making even Magia helpless.

The question?

What would happen if a god experienced true “death”?

Deicide was unheard of, the furthest anyone ever got in the pursuit of such a feat created the Null gods – courtesy of blasphemous humankind – who had faded into irrelevance and had their names and domains forgotten, but even then, the laws of the world prevented their true disappearance.

But what if the perpetrator was completely above said laws?

Needless to say, even the Magia mostly devoid of feelings of self preservation would shy away from reaching the answer to this question.

But alas, things have been set in motion, with no inhabitant of the world being none the wiser.

The question they pondered and thought about, but were too weak and scared to earnestly pursue a satisfactory answer, will now be answered for them.

And as always, choice was a cruel illusion.

.
.

I wonder when this world's winter will arrive….

I turned away from Luminus and Erich, who were making relatively short work of the rude priests or whatever, and I peered beyond the surface layer of this world's reality, looking for the spectator.

Now, I didn't feel the gaze of a person or some other kind of conventional entity, it was much more eerie actually.

The earth, the plants, the animals. I could feel their attention on me.

And not just the ones in the immediate vicinity, but all over the planet.

Like a single being was using them as their eyes and ears.

It didn't take long to realize that someone was exercising authority over some concept, and the one in question….

[[Nature.]]