Althos had quietly spent the next hour of his evening entering the minds of his worshipers and acquiring the knowledge he had asked for. None of his worshipers denied his demand, and they were all happy to contribute to his overall knowledge base. At this point, the night had truly begun, and the sky above the clearing was well lit and illuminated by a beautiful scattering of stars.

Althos enjoyed the bits and pieces of knowledge he was teasingly receiving from the minds of his worshippers via his mental absorption of their thoughts, secrets, knowledge, and memories as he sat down in the clearing and prepared to draw the rest of his party to him. He contemplated what he knew, and carefully thought about his next few moves.

A lot of Althos' careful consideration for what to do next came to him from a single place: his copy of Amelie's mind. In assessing what the goblin knew the deity learned that Amelie and the squad of goblins were investigating more or less what he was investigating.

She and her allies were part of a strange organization within the forest that functioned similarly to how she thought a druid operated: using magic to keep the peace in diverse biomes and to aid creatures of nature. They were also intrigued and confused by the behavior of the bears and without any druids in their organization, they had to investigate things themselves with relatively little magical aid.

They had first encountered and watched Althos and his party when the party entered the shoreline near the river from the side of the forest that was the territory of the wolves, the same half of the river where Althos sprung to life in.

They quietly made the decision to go and report the presence of the deity to their fellow forest-inhabitants. It was shortly after that decision that the group had unknowingly entered the territory of the dark unicorn and were subsequently ambushed and defeated. When they awoke Althos was already right outside of the secondary lair of the dark unicorn.

Althos now knew about them and their organization so he knew that logically the best plan for him to safely maximize the effectiveness of their ability to complete the quest would be for him and his allies to go elsewhere. Where exactly? Well, Althos' wasn't sure, but that was a question he and his allies could answer together. So he knew what to do next.

After considering his knowledge he knew he should reunite his entire party. He carefully focused and considered how to best draw his allies to the clearing and to politely withdraw them from the company of the goblins. Given that Althos knew, as far as he knew, the extent of their knowledge he saw no point in splitting the party by having some members stay with them and others be with him.

Althos commanded Bazur, mentally communicating with the skillful orc who remained in the company of the goblins, to inform the goblins that they'd be returning to Althos' side and to send him a message when they were ready to be teleported back to where the godling was.

That took merely a quarter of an hour, and once Althos received the message he executed a grander version of the same magic he had used to conjure Ranthor, and within moments all of the orcs and the half-devil priestess were in the clearing alongside Althos' worshippers and Mianthus. They were spread out, just like they had been in the other clearing.

The deity, still in his true form, looked over at them and felt quite pleased with the situation.

Due to the nature of the clearing, and the fact that it resembled the other clearing his party members had been in before, the summoned orcs and the priestess looked around in confusion and saw Althos before they saw more familiar faces. This was understandably confusing to the orcs, who had never seen Althos' divine form but was exciting to the priestess.

She grinned in delight at the deity, and warmth flooded her amber-colored eyes. Before Althos could clear up the orc's confusion, she mentally communicated with them and clarified what the odd creature before them was. The faces of the orcs lit up due to their newfound understanding of the situation.

They grinned and went to converse with their fellow orcs, the same fellows who were founding members of Althos' new faith. Tristan approached the deity, smirking at her master with a bit of mirth in her eyes. When she was close to her master she spoke, teasing him by adding a bit of sadness to her voice.

"So why wasn't I invited to this?"

Althos looked at her, his newfound knowledge from a variety of minds giving him actual awareness of things like being "teased" and the moods of mortal creatures. His response to her was flat.

"I can detect my worshippers. You may be a cleric in my service, and I think, nay I know, that your service is real. But so far you still worship your conception of the second dark saint. We both suspect, if not quite know, that that's me, but I have not yet truly become the second dark saint. I know that it'll take that for you to worship me as a deity and not just your conception of the dark saint. I'm fine with that. One day... I'll surpass that expectation."

He understood that she was teasing, but his response was as flat and matter of fact as it would have been even if he hadn't understood that she was mostly joking. It was only at the end of his response that some emotion crept into his vision. The emotion of longing. Of desire. A part of him actually wanted the prestige and responsibilities that came with being the second dark saint.

There was a part of him wanted the power that came with commanding an entire plane, and having an untold number of devils at his command. There was also a part of him that wanted her to freely and willingly give herself to him, give her knowledge and her life to him. And he knew that that required successfully conquest of the plane of Infernius.

Tristan stared at him, really peered at his body and then at his face, for a few seconds. Then the priestess smiled and went to go chat with the dark elves. Althos wondered what she had seen when she looked at him that intensely, but then he heard a certain voice speak in his mind for the first time in a while.

[Why hello Althos... I see that you've really come into your own, as far as acquiring knowledge goes, huh? You're weirdly good at this whole, gathering knowledge thing. And the way you go about it is fascinating. You're willing to trade help and power, in exchange for knowledge, secrets, thoughts, and memories? In the ancient past... there was a goddess who acted like that. She was a little insane, but then again perhaps it took a certain kind of insanity for someone to be a deity.]

Althos was pleasantly surprised to hear the voice of the domain of knowledge ring out in his mind. The voice itself spoke with a certain level of confidence, and after it finished speaking Althos could hear it laugh boldly in his mind. It made the deity smile, and so he responded to it quickly and confidently.

[Hey, so far it's worked, right? Even now my brain is hard at work absorbing the memories, knowledge, thoughts, and secrets of my strange cabal. I've learned so much! About sex, about magic, even about other gods... wait, I've learned about other gods?]

Althos started off that exchange with confidence but ended it in a state of confusion. His conscious mind hadn't quite caught up with his subconscious mind, but in the space between the two, he somehow recalled the tales dark elves grew up on. These tales included extensive amounts of knowledge about the old gods. He spent just a few moments willing himself to consciously recall what information laid, unprocessed, in his subconscious.

And then he instantly learned what the gods of the dark elves in the ancient past had been like. Tales of cities set ablaze by out of control priestesses or beset by gigantic monsters, and armies of utterly insane monstrous humanoids pillaging settlements flooded his mind. As knowledge and memories from all three of his dark elven worshipers flooded his mind he felt the fear and respect they had for the gods, and yes for Althos himself, seep into his conscious mind.

For the first time in his whole life, he understood what worshipping a god, in the past, had looked like. Knowledge of the apparent hunger and desire felt by the gods coated his brain and took up the lion's share of his focus. It was a strange feeling to the young god. He wondered about their hunger, their apparent taste for flesh and for the food of mortals intrigued him.

Though there were things he was confused by and curious about from the tales the dark elves told their young and recorded in their own books, there were other things that appealed to him. He felt a pang of jealousy as he considered the sizes of the armies of those gods. In his mind, he recalled the often childhood memories of the elves as they pictured the events of the stories they were told.

Thanks to the knowledge and memories of the elves he could loosely conceptualize the sorts of monsters that lived in the world under the world. He pictured gigantic insects, powerful and nearly blind bipedal lizard people who tore apart other creatures with their jaws, and strange monsters with alien shapes, clashing with the lithe and beautiful dark elves.

He pictured their armies, in some cases hordes of both monstrous humanoids and subterranean beasts working together. In some cases, they could speak to each other and communicate but in others, they were somehow on the same page, despite or perhaps because of their total insanity.

To Althos, whose independent understanding of the world was limited at best, this was confusing knowledge, but also interesting knowledge. He quickly realized that he'd need time to fully process it and be able to know what to do with it. He was silently thankful to his dark elven worshippers because their knowledge was indeed vast and he could already tell he'd learn an incredible amount thanks to it.

In response to the deity's confusion, the voice of the knowledge domain quietly reached into Althos' mind yet again. This time there wasn't confidence seeping into its voice but something else. Something akin to pity, or sympathy.

[I'll check back in with you later. But that said I do want you to know that I really like your style. The other deity like you, the goddess, wasn't as... well she wasn't as open-minded as you are. She had a specific taste. For memories. Only the worst ones really, she was as much a goddess of fear as she was of memories. If you stay like this, open-minded and engaged with your followers I don't doubt that you'll one day become a truly powerful god. Stay strong, and stay wise young one.]

After that Althos found himself alone in his mind, aside from his unusually quiet advisors. He felt that that was a good point to stop being so introspective, and to return to his worshipers. So the deity got up and approached them, moving for the first time in well over an hour.

He quickly reached them and watched what they were up too. They were interacting with each other, with the elves having gathered around Raverangos and the orcs having gathered around Salifinos. It was curious that they had arranged themselves that way, but that was how they had self-segregated. Althos sighed as he observed them and knew that at some point he'd had to change this and correct them.

During this time he may not have tried to get his followers to interact with each other, but he did set out to learn what the elves wanted. This was done out of politeness, the deity already knew that they wanted to return home. His consideration and desire for them to speak came from absorbing copies of their minds which taught him that as a species the dark elves enjoyed being spoken too and taken seriously even and especially by their superiors.

The deity quietly reached out to his new worshippers, sending them slight variations of the same message.

[What would you like to do? Would you like to accompany me and my party as part of a mixed group, or would you feel more comfortable returning to your home, the city of Undermoon and serving me there in different ways?]

The elves were surprised to hear him reach into their minds. They weren't unhappy about it, just the opposite in fact, and so took a few seconds to compose their responses.

Though their reasons were different each of them said they'd like to return home. Althos was pleased to hear of their reasons, as all three of his worshippers had reasons that were beneficial to him.

Qu'Ren responded first. Her voice was soft even in the strange mental place she and her master exchanged thoughts.

[I want to report that a deity exists again to the ruling council of Undermoon. Dark elves are surprisingly pious people, and so if I report that you exist, and we demonstrate that you will gain a variety of worshippers in a very efficient way and we can begin to formalize your worship. Plus I only really care about power in my own homeland. Unless you willed it I wouldn't be likely to go into the world itself, I'd be more preoccupied with demonstrating my power and fulfilling your will in dark elven lands.]

She was forthright about her wishes, and also made a simple yet true case for her to head home. Althos wondered how they'd demonstrate that he was an actual deity and so he asked her that. She giggled in response and then communicated her thoughts to the deity once more.

[Althos you're being silly. Your weird vestigial magic informs those who receive it that you are a deity, remember? If you resurrect more vestigial traits in other people they'll see the same notifications we saw.

And judging from what you did with my group, and then later on with your group, you can perform these resurrections en-masse which would make things easy. Or you could perform a true resurrection, which is magic that is out of the realm of mortals unless they are high priests but would probably be easy for you to do.]

The elf was silent for a few seconds before quietly adding more to her thoughts.

[If you want to be dramatic if there's a way for you to either enter the city invisibly and perform your vestigial magic on a massive crowd that'd be a great miracle, or if you appeared in the air above the city in a new form and declared your intentions into the mind's of the people before casting the spell that'd be an easy way to ensure no one doubts your divinity.]

While Althos was having this conversation with Qu'Ren and hearing from her, in her own words, what she thought would be the best way to begin to build a cult in the city of Undermoon, the others responded to his message.

In the time since he became an official worshiper of the strange god, a lot of the initial fervor Drow felt had faded into something more manageable. It wasn't gone, nor was his desire to serve, but now he could hide how he felt. He could maintain a veneer of normalcy. The dark elf put that skill on display when he spoke to his master.

[I would like to return home. I would like to bring my family into your fold. My parents are seers, and though they aren't the kindest parents, no dark elves are and I really think that they'd be happy about joining you. Especially if you subject them to what you subjected me and the others too] The dark elf told his master. He was silent for a few more moments, putting his thoughts together.

I want Althos to want my family to join him. To join us. I really need to sell him the idea of persuading my family to join his worshipers. The dark elf thought, his mind a busy place as he tried to formulate the best possible argument in favor of Althos making his family a priority. Eventually, he put something together that he thought made a lot of sense.

[As you know, my family has a legacy of being oracles. It skipped my entire generation. My siblings and my cousins were also born without oracular powers. If you resurrect these powers in them, I don't doubt become fanatical worshipers of yours out of gratitude, especially when coupled with the knowledge that you can give real power.] The dark elf told his master.

[My family is powerful. We're well-respected and if we serve you, if we worship you, it'll go a long way towards securing control of the city. And our influence isn't limited to one city. Oracles are rare. A whole family of oracles? That's mythic. Dark elves from many different cities listen to us. If we tell them about you... if you convince them to worship you, that means worship of you is going to multiply.] Drow informed his master. Drow pondered how to talk about his parents.

He was thinking of the right thing to say. He was pained as he did that, his eyes wincing to broadcast his discomfort.

[My parents and I aren't on speaking terms. And I have it easy compared to some of my cousins. The fact that I have the freedom to leave Undermoon is... well it's leagues better than what my cousins are forced to do. I plan to return home and demonstrate my new powers.] The dark elf continued.

[When they ask where my powers come from, I'll tell them about you. I'll persuade them to speak to you, to join you. And if they do, they'll worship you. And they'll ease up on my cousins. And my siblings.] Drow said, his mental voice filled with emotion. Althos was respectfully silent, listening to what the dark elf had to say.

At the end of that statement Drow mentally transmitted a picture of the cousins, he mentioned. Althos' mind suddenly contained an image of two handsome dark elven men and one dark elven woman with a dour expression not unlike Drow's own usual expressions.

Both of the men in the mental conversation didn't need to exchange any more words, but that didn't stop Drow from chiming in with one last thought.

[Thanks for asking me what I wanted instead of just doing what you wanted. That's... unexpectedly humble for a god. Even a new one. It reinforces, in my mind anyway, that I made the right choice in worshipping you.]

Drow's mental voice carried newfound respect for the deity he had decided to worship of his own free will. Althos smiled at his worshipper, and the dour young dark elf's normally neutral expression changed, softening just a bit.

The last elf who worshipped Althos was the first one to decide to enter his religion. Milene was also asked for her insights. She wanted to return home as much as her peers did.

[There are dark elves in our city who possess the proper disposition and skills to join you outside of Undermoon, but I am not one of them. Instead, if it were up to me I'd be in the city working as a creator of poisons and potions.

I am an alchemist, if I can create potions and heal people, or create poisons and kill people, with your help and while giving you credit, I can raise your notoriety in a way that best uses my talents. One day I may want to venture out into the greater world, but for now, I know my own limits. Is that fine?]

Althos grinned openly at her and acknowledged the wisdom in her words. He reassured her quietly with a simple message.

[You know yourself best. While I expect you, all of you, to obey me, I don't have specific expectations for you or where you live. While in my service, I will not control your whole lives.]

Althos said that, and then stopped and considered how it differed from what he told the orcs. He mentally smacked himself after realizing that it was nearly the opposite of what he told them, and he began to consider how to correct that. He wouldn't arrive at a satisfactory answer immediately though.

He allowed the large party to interact without directly guiding them for a bit longer, a few minutes and then cleared his throat to get their attention. When they all turned to him, he spoke in the language of the demon and sent a mass telepathic message to his followers to ensure that he was understood by everyone.

"We're resuming the original quest we set out to complete. Ultimately we've got to determine the cause of the bears becoming aggressive, and we've got to stop the bears that are already out of control. There are twelve of them and they are most likely spread out all over the place."

Althos stopped, took a breath, and then continued to speak.

"For now, I say we accompany our elven friends to a location close to their city and see if we happen across any of the bears on the way there. Does anyone have any objections to that?"

He waited to see what his followers had to say and was met with silence. The elves, including Mianthus, were grinning at the deity. They were apparently satisfied with that. And then Althos nodded at his followers, and for the first time in a few hours the crew was on the move, this time also accompanying people but this time they were accompanying fellow followers of Althos, so the deity felt satisfied.

The group reentered the wooded part of the forest for the first time in well over an hour shortly after finishing their conversation.

The party had been traveling for an hour in physical silence but after a while became able to exchange mental messages. This was due to activity by Althos.

One of the ways Althos killed time while they were hiking through the forest was through the creation of a complex network of mental links that allowed the members of his extended party to have conversations in spite of language barriers.

The elves mentally messaged their master, who had chosen to stay in his deity-form while walking through the forest. They did this because they sensed their companions growing impatient.

[Althos, we are beginning to approach the entrance to the region we live in. We want to thank you and your allies for your patience.]

Althos commanded them to message the orcs and the others themselves, and moments later the first exciting event of the hike occurred. Althos' radar sent him a notification he had been waiting for for a while now.

The deity sent out a mental message to the entirety of his party, and he cast a spell on them as well. The spell he cast was a fusion of illusion and mind-magic. It rendered them all, including himself utterly silent to their surroundings and hit them all with a weaker version of the camouflage effect.

[Look alive everyone. I'm detecting a bear within the area. If it's aggressive I want y'all to fight it. I want to watch how you fight.]

Althos was telling them several whole truths and a single, partial truth. The main parts of that statement were true. Althos' radar had picked up a bear, relatively nearby. There was a chance it was aggressive. And if it was, he wanted them to fight it.

The partial truth was his reasoning behind wanting them to fight it. If the bear approached them aggressively he wanted them to fight it first, because they may not kill it. That would give the young deity a chance to be sure if it was one of the creatures he was asked to put down, before killing it as he had accidentally done to another bear. After that happened the quest itself had chastised him, which had been annoying.

In all honesty, the deity did want to see how they fought when they weren't bolstered by his abilities, something he had gotten to glimpse when he and his allies fought against the humans back in the town he first met the orcs in. Now they had more allies and thus could handle bigger threats so Althos felt more secure in their ability to prepare and adequately handle real enemies, which a single bear shouldn't have been anyway.

Althos' thoughts became more and more focused as they neared the bear. At first, it was hundreds of meters away, yet now that they were tracking it, each step brought them a bit closer to it.

Althos found that he took to hunting quite easily. He was naturally a quiet sort, not fond of talking all that much, and even in his large divine form, he was light on his feet and nearly silent. His radar was activate in the corner of his vision and alerted him to nearby creatures which he took pains to hide his party from, especially as they inched closer and closer to the bear.

He crept through the forest with the ease of a carnivore on the prowl. His thick feet barely touched the ground as he wandered deeper and deeper into the woods. Behind him, his allies followed closely and kept watch.

He and his allies had long since departed from the conventional path often walked along by humanoids. Now they were in the wilder part of the forest, an area not unlike that where Althos and M.A. found Silander.

Around them, the trees grew thicker, with longer branches and darker leaves, than they did in other parts of the forest. The grass at their feet grew taller, the bushes produced more berries.

The cries and howls of wild animals came at them from all directions. The air smelled purer, and the vague whispers of magic surrounded them, calling out to them unconsciously, keeping the party on edge. The whispers of magic only grew louder and more constant the deeper they went into this likely uncharted part of the forest.

Eventually, they were close enough to the bear that not only did Raverangos and Althos see the beast but so did Althos' allies. The beast was far larger than the other bear Althos had come across. The creature had found or emptied a den built for or by other animals, a den that was too small for its massive form and had occupied it, filling the entire thing with its incredible frame.

At the moment the beast was asleep, lazily laying on the ground and its massive frame shook each time the creature snored. Althos watched it and noticed various things that stood out to him. The first was the creature's fur.

The creature had a jet black coat, but one that was cut up in places, and that was filled with fur that was tossed around due to some recent activity. The area around its face, in particular, stood out, not only because that area had the same kind of messy fur, but also because Althos could vaguely make out a sort of indistinct slime leaking out of its mouth.

The others weren't close enough to see the slime yet, but Althos suspected that they'd see it as drool, or sweat, because in addition to seeing it Althos could make out a vague, fiendish aura radiating from the pool below the creature's mouth that owed its existence to the sleeping, leaking creature.

Raverangos saw the same thing and mentally messaged its master.

[Whatever happened to that bear is the fault of a demon. Some kind of... slime demon, most likely.]