Chapter Twenty-Three - A Godly Chat

“I know this might sound a little... oh, I don’t even know what the right word for it would be. Pompous? Braggy? Ah, regardless. I can recall a time where just about every person in the world knew me, or of me.

I kind of miss that sense of instant and total respect.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t well known because of my scientific discoveries.”

***

I straightened the lapels of my jacket and gave the little goddess my best skeletal smile. “Do you happen to remember me?” I asked.

It wasn’t impossible that she did, in fact, remember me. After all, two millenia wasn’t all that long to an immortal, and while I had certainly cleared out the pantheon back in my day, that wasn’t to say that I killed every god.

I’m hardly a homicidal maniac. Just a scientist.

The goddess, and I really did need to discover her name at some point, backed away to the far end of the room, then she started to sink down into the waters around her.

“If you run away, I will have to retrieve you,” I warned.

The snake-woman paused.

Her priests were eyeing me with mixed expressions. I suspect that some of them might have been contemplating attacking me. The one with the knife that had slit the goat’s throat was tightening his hand around its handle, bleeding off nervous energy.

“Perhaps you should tell your companions here to leave,” I suggested.

“Who are you to speak to the--” one of the priests began in a low, hissing whisper.

“Stop,” the goddess said. “Stop. Just go, all of you. Leave that thing alone. It is beyond you.”

The priests backed away with all the bowing and scraping one could expect from people in their particular line of work. “That’s appreciated,” I said.

“You’re really Harold,” she said. I couldn’t quite tell, because her voice was still a low whisper, but I had the impression she was a little scared.

“I am,” I said. “No need to worry. I’m just here to ask some... questions”

The goddess and the entire lake shivered. “You’re dead,” she said.

“Undead, actually.”

“No, the god of death, he...”

“Oh yes, he barred me from unlife, something about the undead being his domain and so on. He’s dead. Not undead, ironically enough, just plain old dead.” I waved the comment off dismissively. “If you’re wondering where I’ve been these past two millenia or so, I was asleep. I’m waiting for the opportune time to set up a certain experiment.”

The lamia backed away even more. “You’re here to kill the rest of us,” she whispered.

The twin green orbs floating in my eye sockets rolled. “If that was the case, I’d hardly be here for a chat.”

Her eyes narrowed. “What are you here for, then?”

“Just a chat. I said as much already. Please try to keep up.”

“I never did anything to you,” she said. “I’m a new goddess. The goddess of this lake. I don’t matter much. You want the bigger gods. The old ones from the before times.”

I tilted my head every so slightly to one side. “You’re quick to throw your peers away.”

“I have no peers,” she said.

“I see.” I patted down my coat. The bottom of it was a bit waterlogged, which was quite annoying as it stuck to my equally wet pant legs. “Do you have a name?”

“I am She Who Watches, Silent from the Deep.”

I looked up to her. “I said a name, not a title.”

She had the good graces to blush a little even as she puffed her chest out and tried to keep hold of her injured dignity. “I am Snek.”

“Pleased to meet you. I sense that you’re rather weak for a god. You might very well be telling the truth about being rather new.”

She bristled, her hands opening and closing for a moment before she crossed her arms and glared with impotent rage. “What do you want?”

“As i said, I just woke up quite recently. Some young fool distubed my sleep. I noticed that a few things aren’t working as they ought to, so I figured I’d get to the bottom of that, maybe patch things up along the way. Oh, and I want to see what the current pantheon is like. The last one was a mess.”

The waters in the room’s centre shifted and Snek lowered herself a little while also approaching me. “Are you going to kill the great gods again.”

“It takes a while for gods to become great. If you even want to use that term for such power-hungry and uncivilised creatures. But to answer your question, no, I have no intention of killing any gods or godlings. Not unless I feel that the world would be a better place without them.”

Snek glared, but she relented soon enough. “You won’t kill me?”

“I don’t intend to,” I said. “And I haven’t discovered that you do anything too terrible. You seem to lead some fools on in order to get some daily meals, but I can look past that.”

She nodded and slid just a little closer. “When the pantheon finds out that you’re alive they will panic.”

“How unfortunate for them,” I said. “Now, I have a few questions.”

She shuddered again. “They say that is how you started the last great war. By asking questions.”

“No. I started that because I found answers that I wasn’t satisfied with,” I clarified. “Who is in charge of the current pantheon?”

Snek shifted. “No one. There’s a council now.”

“A council? That’s certainly a step up. Who’s on it?”

“No one you would know, God-Killer.”

“It’s Harold,” I said. “And I suppose that that makes sense. How many members are there in this council?”

“Seven. There are seven. I’m too small and weak to be part of it.” She looked on the verge of pouting.

“How unfortunate. And where does the council meet?”

There was a very dangerous gleam in the snake-goddess’ eyes. Like someone who had just found someone else to do all of their dirty work for them. I think she wanted to use me. Not that I minded all that much. She could think whatever she wanted.

“They meet at the top of the Path to Heaven. It’s to the northeast of my lake.”She gestured more or less in that direction then slid her arm back over the other. “That’s where you’ll want to go to get your answers.”

“Some of my answers,” I said. “I may have more questions for you. What happened to the system?”

Snek shrugged. “I don’t know. It broke.”

“Why?”

“Aren’t you the one that broke it?” she asked.

“No, actually. At least, I don’t think so.” I tapped my chin a few times and tried to think back to anything I’d done that might have broken things. Nothing came to mind.

“We don’t need the system anyway,” Snek said. “We’re fine the way we are.”

“Having a system would encourage scientific reasoning and growth,” I countered.

“That’s what made you.”

I hummed. That was a good rejoinder. Had the system been disabled--or rather, changed--to counter the possibility of another man becoming too powerful? That sounded somewhat likely.

“Interesting. Another question then, has anyone changed anything about magic? The way it works, the weave?”

Snek shook her head. “No. Not since the god of magic... not since you ate the god of magic.”

“I didn’t quite eat it,” I corrected. “And that’s good to hear.”

“There are lots of minor gods of magic, most of them stuck to a dao of one sort or another.” She stuck her head up. “Most are very weak.”

“I see. What happened to the gods after I left?”

Snek hissed. “It was ruined. The whole world. No gods to keep things in order and... and we coped. We tried our best, and now the world is okay once more.”

Hardly. “Do all the gods remember me as you do?”

Snek shook her head. “I’m new, but not that new. I was alive when you were last active, but I was small, less than a godling then. Others, the truly new ones. They appeared later, some hundreds of years later, others even more recently. These godlings will not know of you as any more than stories.”

I gave her a skeletal grin. “Good. I do like the idea of starting over.”

“You’ll be hunted and killed,” Snek said. Then she backpedaled. “Not by me. But the council? The new pantheon? They do not like the idea of newcomers growing too strong. They won’t tolerate you.”

“How unfortunate for them.” I had a few more curiosities to dig into, but having all the answers just given to me wasn’t nearly as amusing as discovering them myself. “I think I’ll be off, Snek. But I might be back, one of these days. Do try to behave.”

The goddess swallowed. “Go. Please.”

I nodded to her, set my coat on straight, and stepped out of the pagoda.

I was greeted on the bridge by a dozen priests with spears and swords, all of them glaring daggers at me.

“Mass Teleport.”

A dozen splashes sounded out in the lake some hundred or so necrometers behind me. They probably knew how to swim, being priests of a lake goddess and all.

Now that my path was clear, I adjusted my great coat, reapplied my disguise magic, and hummed a little ditty to myself as I walked through the temple compound. No one chose to confront me. I reached the main streets of Dolsrus and, after a bit of reorientation, started to make my way back towards the inn.

My curiosity, far from being sated, was actually very much inflamed. I now had an excuse, an opportunity, to head out and explore this not-quite-new world a little more. And perhaps I didn’t need to wait until the end of time to recreate it as I want.

But that would have to be a small side project. My next stop would be the Path to Heaven, where I would hopefully be able to interrogate someone who knew a little bit more about what was going on.

In the meantime, I had a limpet to train a little more, and a maid to give my pants to. They kept sticking to my bony legs and at that moment, that bothered me more than any gods.

When I arrived at the Come Inn it was to find the first floor of the inn rowdy and loud with eating customers and a few nearly-drunk rabble rousers. I didn’t mind the chaos so much, it was a nice nostalgic return to the days when I was one of those adventurers in a tavern somewhere.

In my rooms, the chaos was entirely different.

“Papa!” Alex said as he looked up from his spot kneeling in the bathroom. His dress was currently in the tub, and he had a brush in hand. “If you want me to clean your pants, now’s the time. I’m cleaning the blood off my dress.”

“Did anything happen?” I asked.

“Not really,” Alex said. “What about with you?”

“A rather uneventful evening, actually,” I said. “Is the limpet here?”

“She’s sleeping.”

I nodded. “I suppose we can wait until the sun comes back up before we head out. We’re going to the Path to Heaven tomorrow. I have some people I want to ask a few questions of.”

“Okay, Daddy,” Alex said. “I hope you get all the answers you want.”

“I don’t,” I said. “That wouldn’t be nearly as fun.”