The godling's companion had reverted from being a staff to being within the godling's mind and body. It did this when the immature deity began to plan its ambush of the orcs. And in the final moments, before the godling attacked the orcs, the angel was focused on exploring the godling's mind.

Samyaza found itself thankful that the godling had made a mistake. When the godling had last shared its thoughts with the angel it hadn't manually shut off the strange telepathic connection that linked the two and allowed for the thought exchange to happen. This created a situation that allowed the orb angel to peer into the mind of the godling and learn what was going through the deity's mind while also gaining an understanding of its emotions. It had been observing the mind of the godling for a while now.

Originally the creature's mind had been filled with idle observations. Its thoughts revealed a stunning and childlike curiosity about the world around it, which was mildly annoying when mixed with the potency of the deity's senses. Its mind had run a mile a minute as it made inane observations about everything around it and about the smells, sounds, and feelings of so many different things.

But now the godling's mind was a mess. Ever since it had made a mistake in how it dealt with the mice, it had been filled with rage and humiliation. It was a swirling pit of dark emotions and maliciousness. To Samyaza this was an interesting and exciting development because it meant that the godling had a mean streak in it that could be nurtured in a dark direction.

The orb angel's old master had been a creature of darkness, wickedness, and maliciousness. It was exciting to see the seeds of such traits in the godling intrinsically.

[I can't believe that I failed.]

[Someone's gonna pay for this.]

[It's not the fault of those creatures that I messed up, but since they're here and their friend attacked... maybe I can use them to get rid of some of this anger.]

All of the young divinity's thoughts were similarly dark. Samyaza almost felt pity for the orcs, but mostly it found their plight funny. After all the evil creatures didn't really deserve to meet such a gruesome end. It was just incredibly rotten luck that brought them to this community just hours before the godling arrived.

What the ancient angel hadn't yet noticed was that the godling's bloodlust was affecting the angel as well. It's simple-minded and anger-driven ferocity was seeping into the soul of the angel since the angel was essentially in direct contact with the mind of the godling.

Even a being as old and who had as much willpower as the angel wasn't completely immune to mental influence when it shed its physical form and joined someone else as a sort of ride-along spirit. Such an influence could be difficult to spot, and when the angel would spot it, it'd severely annoy the ancient creature.

Minutes after being buried, while the godling was preparing its ambush of the orc's fellow raiders, the orc the godling had defeated and buried earlier in the day, awoke in the dark.

For a moment the orc was afraid. It wasn't a smart orc, among its companions it was in all likelihood the least intelligent orc, and as it wondered what happened to it that was apparent. The first thing the creature thought was that it had died at the hands of its mysterious attacker. In the few moments he thought he was dead he wondered why he had regained consciousness, which if anything served as a reminder that even if orcs as a whole aren't dimwitted, this particular orc was.

Orcs as a whole lacked belief in the afterlife, and the majority of orcs had long since forgotten the brutal deities orcs were once famous for worshiping. The majority of atheistic orcs felt that when they died, they were gone and would never feel anything again. The orc was buried was one of the orcs who had that opinion on what happened for orcs after death.

What changed its mind on the possibility that it was dead was that after a few moments of not breathing its lungs began to hurt and burn. The creature realized that it still needed to breathe but when it opened its mouth to breathe dirt began to flood into its open mouth. The orc panicked and began to flail wildly as if trying to swim up and out of a pool made of dirt and soil.

The orc's luck and low intelligence synced up well with the low wisdom of the godling. The godling hadn't buried the orc deep beneath the earth and hadn't anticipated that the sturdy being would wake up just minutes after the divine being knocked it out. Within moments and purely by accident the rough and muscled hand of the orc burst through the earth it had been buried in. This made the orc realize that it was buried underground, and this minor success granted the orc the morale boost needed to continue the difficult task of freeing itself from its earthen prison.

Within minutes the orc would free itself.

Long after the day would have started for her neighbors and friends throughout the town, had they still been alive, the human child named Selena Moonbond awoke with a sound that was the fusion of a yawn and a sigh. The tiny girl rubbed her eyes so as to deal with the familiar yet gross sensations that plagued her eyes every time she woke up. Shortly after she performed this daily ritual she opened her eyes and couldn't see anything beyond the typical darkness of her family's basement.

She had long since mentally adjusted to the darkness inside the basement she lived in and calmly waited until her eyes had adjusted to the darkness. It took her vision but a moment to adjust and for her vision to become filled with the familiar decorations that adorned her unusual living space. She smiled at the sight of her own drawings and childish decorations. And then she moved with a grace and fluidity that was only rarely found in humans as she leaped off of her bed.

The little girl landed on the floor next to her bed and then quickly and quietly turned to her dresser so that she could begin to search for clothing that she hoped would keep her warm. Within minutes she found a suitable outfit consisting of a thin green coat, a long red dress, and fur-lined boots.

Shortly thereafter she began to walk up the stairs that led out of the basement and into the rest of the house once owned by her family. It wasn't until she had her hand on the door and was in the middle of pulling it open that the scent of dried blood wafted into her nostrils.

Far away from the little girl and her developing encounter with horror, the warriors who had placed themselves at great risk during their initial attack on the town found themselves facing a far greater threat in the form of an enraged godling.

The orcs were bold. Even in its rage the godling could admit and admire that. It could detect the level of bloodlust it was emitting and it knew, in the same mysterious way that it knew other seemingly random things, that lesser orcs would have fainted if exposed to the level of bloodlust it was freely releasing into the air.

The creature had hidden itself from them while waiting for them to move into position, but when it threw itself at them the creature made no attempt to keep its presence a secret. It made a terrifying noise by hissing and allowing its voice to bounce off of the huts that surrounded it, which paralyzed the orcs when they realized that it was impossible to determine where the noise was coming from.

The orcs were taken by surprise when a shape emerged from the shadows of one of the huts and lunged at them, moving at a speed that they could only barely perceive. In an instant, the being had moved from its hiding place meters away from them to a small gap in their formation.

It could only occupy this space by hunching over and reducing the space the creature took up as much as it could due to its normally significant height. Almost the same instant the orcs noticed the godling had gotten between them it attacked, unleashing a flurry of limbs at them.

The godling's first strike was a dazzling multi-limbed attack that scattered the orcs. Two orcs received tremendously powerful blows from the godling's fists that had so much weight and power behind them that they dented the heavy breastplates the orcs had on.

Both orcs received a scar the shape of the fists imprinted on their chest like a brand. The force of the punches threw the orcs off their feet and sent them sprawling through the air until they landed on their backs, meters away from their previous location.

The other orc was blown away from its siblings by a truly devastating kick that caught the creature where its abdominal muscles met its pectoral muscles and tore a hole through the thick armor the warrior wore. The armor might have been torn through but it did succeed in just barely protecting the creature from instant death.

The force of the blow lifted the creature off of the ground and sent it sailing through the air. What stopped the orc from flying further was a wall of hardened mud that was part of one of the nearby huts. The orc smashed into it, and every one of the warriors in the fight could hear the sickening crunch of bones breaking. The orc fell from the wall and landed on its knees, its face facing the ground beneath it and its eyes wide in shock and pain. It barely clung to consciousness.

The godling stood still for a moment to survey the scene following its explosive first strike and then retracted its limbs so that it could stand properly. It found the pain-filled moans of the orcs to be filled with the perfect amount of agony and enjoyed the smell of the fear coming off of its prey in waves.

The godling enjoyed the sight of the orcs in pain. Though it didn't articulate it, it wondered what the flesh of such creatures would taste like. Samyaza watched this conflict, growing increasingly delighted and fond of the godling with each dark observation that entered the godling's mind.

The orcs were too busy clutching their chests and trying to recover from the terrifying power and mythic might of the godling to notice its eyes transform. At the start of the fight, the godling's eyes were pupilless golden orbs and after the godling attacked the warriors its eyes shifted into a cruel shade of crimson as if to match the creature's enjoyment of the pain it was inflicting.

Back in her home, the little girl didn't immediately encounter any corpses. Even though she could clearly smell the unmistakable scent of blood mixed with the thick smells of bits of unnamable viscera, what greeted her when she opened the door leading out of her room and stepped beyond it wasn't the brutalized corpses of her parents. Instead, she was actually greeted by what was left behind following an orcish rampage through her home.

Last night she had spent an hour here before she went to bed, yet she couldn't recognize this room. If something hadn't been bolted to the floor like the table in the center of the room was, it wasn't where it had been when the little girl went to sleep. It was like there had been a miniature tornado that scattered the items that belonged in the room.

The table she had dinner at had a single cruel-looking knife stuck in the middle of it and from the knife dripped small droplets of blood which created a small pool of blood right below the blade. The chairs her father had handmade for their home laid shattered in a corner of the room, near where the unlit fire pit where she helped tend too was quietly smoldering, apparently and somewhat weirdly left untouched by the orcs.

The horror of it all silenced the little girl, but she knew she needed to look for her family. Despite the terror etching its way into her heart, she did what she could to steel herself and turned to head towards the door that would lead into her parent's room.

The godling stood where the three orcs had been just moments ago. It gave off an air of intimidation, partially due to its seemingly calm nature even though internally it was raging, and glared at the three orcs it viewed as little more than punching bags. The four creatures, the godling, and its three enemies stayed still for over an entire minute while each of them contemplated what to do next.

The three orcs had the combat instincts needed to understand that if they stayed down they wouldn't be able to beat the godling. Despite that knowledge, they found themselves unable to stand up or try to rally together. This was due to a wave of emotions they were unfamiliar with, emotions like insecurity and fear, overcoming the usual calmness and stubbornness the trio experienced in a fight. These emotions assailed their mental fortitude and crippled their ability to recover from the attacks enough to fight back.

Unsurprisingly the first of the combatants to move was the godling. It pounced at the orc who had taken the most damage, the one slumped against the wall and laughed as it charged. The sound was shockingly high pitched, and filled with mirth which made it all the more terrifying to the orcs who wouldn't have suspected such a sound to come from someone eagerly terrorizing them.

The godling opened its fist like a claw in mid-air and imagined how satisfying it'd feel to rip through the heavy armor the orc it kicked wore, deliberately aiming for what little armor clung to the brute's body.

Samyaza watched this scene from inside of the godling's mind. It savored the viciousness of the godling's thoughts and for a moment almost wanted the godling to kill the orcs before it. Then it mentally kicked itself.

The godling had powerful emotions and with such chaotic thoughts, it was capable of unconsciously influencing anyone who dared reside within its mind even momentarily. But Samyaza was an eons-old angel possessing considerable willpower and it managed to use that willpower to resist the urge to want the godling to kill.

Its aversion to the immature god murdering creatures wasn't altruistic. The angel understood how godly powers worked, and how the gods of the distant past gained power. It wanted the godling to defeat and overwhelm the orcs because in doing so it stood to gain servants and its first worshippers.

The gods of the past gained strength from their worshippers. They could gain new powers and increase in might if mortals believed in them and served them. And orcs believed in strength and the strong, making them excellent first servants for a god like the godling who possessed immense power and had fairly limited knowledge.

What passed for "culture" among the often simple-minded and brutal orcs was an adherence to the idea of might making right. The strong were served. And the weak served. Unlike many other monstrous humanoids, orcs had fairly little xenophobia which led to them being found in the service of a range of mighty beings.

Orc lieutenants and orcish bodyguards were relatively common in armies of darkness and orcs found frequent employment in the service of despots and tyrants. Samyaza knew that and after the godling had avoided murdering the first orc it came across, the angel began to plan an experiment. And the angel knew that if the godling murdered the orcs its experiment would be harder to implement. So the angel kicked itself for letting the godling's bloodthirst go so far without being checked.

The angel knew that the godling in its current state might well kill the orcs. So it needed to interfere. And it needed to do that in that very moment before the godling finished its pounce onto the injured orc.

[Godling, stop! WAIT!]

The angel's mental shout was more effective than it anticipated it being.

In moments of desperation, orcs could suddenly and dynamically spring into action. The terror of seeing the powerful godling pounce at their heavily injured sibling spurred the other orcs, who were themselves seriously injured, to action. But if it hadn't been for the timely intervention of the angel, the godling would have been soaring through the air too quickly for the orcs to catch up with the deity.

The angel's mental shout surprised the godling and disrupted its concentration, causing the creature to land on the ground and stay still for just a second while it tried to figure out what its companion wanted. The second was enough for the two orcs who caught up with the deity and instantly lashed out while their attacker was on the ground.

Both orcs gathered as much strength as they could in their fists, and launched said fists like fireballs at the godling. One of the orcs aimed for the face of the deity, and the other aimed for its stomach. Both were shouting as their thick fists sailed through the air.

The deity smiled as it realized that it was about to take a hit and felt no particular desire to try and dodge the fists of its opponents. It felt a mixture of emotions in the milliseconds it waited to feel the impact of the strikes. More than anything else though, the deity felt curious as to what the blows would feel like.

The nightmarish cross between a massive ape and a gigantic pig that stood at least three and a half meters tall snorted impatiently. It stomped its weighty hoof onto the ground it stood on and let loose a string of blasphemous expletives cursing the plane of its birth.

For the last few minutes, this brutish creature had felt compelled to stand in one seemingly random corner of the layer of the nightmarish plane of existence once called The Heart of Darkness it arrogantly dared to call itself the guardian of.

The scene that surrounded it was a macabre one. It stood in a dark chamber, located in an even darker ruined and nearly abandoned castle which itself was located in a landscape of fire and brimstone.

It was surrounded by what looked like long-dead corpses of nightmarish amalgamations of various sorts of creatures crudely strewn onto dangling and diseased hooks. Some of the creatures were unholy fusions of humans and anglerfish. Others were like centaurs but instead of being half human and half horse, they were various creatures mixed with horses.

Perhaps three or four times a minute one or another of the creatures would let loose a ghastly groan that would have terrified humans but was utterly boring to the creature of pure malice and pride who stood in the room.

It was from this dark plane of the universe that demons sprung, roared, and blazed into existence. This unthinkably large plane of existence was home to trillions of dark demons, and more sprung into existence every hour. But in the ages since the disappearance of the gods and their powerful peers, all of the old portals into the Heart of Darkness shut off.

Currently, portals in and out of the realm were incredibly rare and had always been temporary. But the strange demon felt its wicked and abominable heart telling it that one would spring into existence soon if it could just be a bit more patient.

The creature obeyed the compulsion it felt. It looked remarkably patient, for a demon, as it dared to hope one of the almost mythically rare portals out of the hellscape it lived in would spring into existence soon, allowing the creature to plague and terrorize a world where it was an alien.

If the creature was truly lucky, it'd get to visit a world that had yet to be visited by demons. That thought was powerful enough that if it had needed too the creature would have stayed where it was for hours. But the creature wasn't going to wait much longer.