Minutes later, as Althos and his party underwent their trek down the other side of the dune, towards the corpse of the titan, Althos once again unfocused. But this time the deity wasn't exploring menus. He was reflecting on the anger that had coursed through him earlier. And chastising himself for it.

I am... immature. He told himself, sighing as he realized it. I have an incredible number of lifetimes of knowledge flowing through me and yet I do things like this... He was, of course, referring to his ruthless taking of the soul of the now truly deceased desert titan. He felt something annoying tugging at his heart. It wasn't guilt or sadness. It was something else.

As the party ventured down the dune, the deity carefully thought about what he was feeling. That was, at least until now, unusual for the rarely introspective deity. He wasn't the sort of person to fixate on feelings, be they someone else's or his own. Previously the god focused on knowledge itself, and ignored various components of learning, such as experience and even feelings.

He wondered why he was doing this for a moment. A few moments of thought allowed him to reach an answer that he felt moderately satisfied with.

I am trying to understand myself. I was bothered by being called stupid, and so now the part of me that deals with emotion is conducting... an investigation to determine more about my feelings. The deity realized, his own odd way of relating to emotions, even his, at first delaying his understanding of the feelings in his heart.

As he ventured further and further down he tried to pinpoint the emotion he felt. The more he thought about it, the more firm a form it took on. At first, the sensation was just a generic unpleasant feeling that nagged at him after he allowed the anger he felt at the titan's insult to fizzle out.

Now, having been the central focus of his thoughts for a few minutes, the emotion felt like something akin to humiliation over his behavior minutes ago in the face of the insult. He didn't quite understand it, but there was a heat in his face that wasn't caused by the warm embrace of the desert sand underneath his feet. It was the flush of shame, though it took the deity some time to realize that on his own.

Perhaps this feeling is... shame? He questioned, genuinely attempting to identify the nagging sensation. Is this what that feels like? He questioned. This is far worse than pain. He complained.

The god didn't find pain all that unpleasant to endure, so this strange complaint could be more sensibly understood as him expressing severe distaste for this sensation. He continued to think as the party reached the halfway point between the top of the sand dune and its bottom.

This is shame isn't it? He realized, his eyes growing wide as he realized that his behavior was shameful. He didn't quite understand shame, as understanding emotions was more difficult for the god than understanding trivia or superficially analyzing memories.

But... did anyone even witness it? He questioned, wondering how it was that he felt shame regarding something he felt was a private affair between himself and the titan he somewhat unfairly characterized as "rude" when in actuality the thing was merely attempting to defend itself or at least secure a route to avenging itself at the expense of an alien invader.

From their home within his mind, Althos' two advisors considered alerting him to the fact that they witnessed the whole battle of the wills in the god's mind. But the two quickly thought better than to widen the cause he had for feeling shame. The god they advised was, for all of his power and all of the knowledge he theoretically possessed, still a youth.

[Giving this... very powerful child cause to turn his rage towards us might not be the wisest move.] Samyaza told the mysterious assistant who had also created a space for herself in the god's mind when asked its opinion on Althos' behavior.

The mysterious entity who had made herself at home in the god's brain didn't entirely disagree but she did share her concerns with the angel. [I can't say I fully disagree with your reasoning here, but Althos' continued subdued at best emotional growth is both concerning and kind of unforgivable at this point.] Her voice was annoyed, and she was clearly tired of being quiet. Perhaps that explained why she was so blunt. She also wasn't done verbally brutalizing the god.

[How long can the "he's a child" excuse work when he's a god who steals memories? Consider the knowledge and memories already at his disposal!] The creature added, boldly revealing her own frustrations in the tone of her voice.

[Those are sharp words. They... aren't wrong, but given his current emotional state, do you think there's a way for us to get him to realize this on his own? Rather than risk our own... lives? Existences?] Samyaza questioned, unsure of how to categorize M.A., which led to the angel struggling to finish its statement.

[That... I don't know. But I sure hope something changes. And soon.] M.A. said, her voice communicating her frustration and exhaustion with Althos' stunted growth as a person, sentiments that Samyaza evidently shared, at least to an extent.

[We need to push him to try to understand himself. I wish there was a way we could organically give him minor tips that encourage him to better understand... emotions in general, honestly, but especially his own, that'd be great.] Samyaza told the mysterious entity dubbed M.A., short for Mental Assistant. Its words were met with a sigh of agreement from Althos' incorporeal advisor.

In the mind-scape of the god, a place that was becoming more and more complicated and littered with assorted statues, only some of which were from Althos' own memories, the two advisors gave each other sympathetic looks.

The trek down to the corpse of the titan took about twenty minutes. Which gave Althos plenty of time to reflect on the words he heard uttered in his mind. Words that were thoroughly humiliating to the god.

I can't believe my advisors haven't yet realized I can hear them... Althos thought. quietly, as he reflected on what they said while emboldened by the belief that they themselves were inaudible to the creature they had teamed up with, while inside of him.

Unlike the two of them, he was successfully hiding his thoughts from them, using a mental technique that involved his parallel will.

That is... very humiliating. Thought the god, mortified by the experience of hearing his allies disparage him. The god was already less than enthusiastic, and hearing his trusted allies ponder how to politely inform him of his failure as an understander of emotions, including his own, hurt him.

But to hear allies he genuinely trusted make those remarks inspired introspection, even if that wasn't particularly easy to admit in the moment, and his respect for the two criticizing him made it slightly easier to confess that. He had to come to value them and so he reflected on their words. Minutes of soul-searching, his soul specifically, he came to a conclusion about their criticisms.

But they aren't wrong... and they want me to know better. To do better. The god realized, truly mortified by their disappointment with him and acknowledging the truth of their words.

As the party ventured closer and closer to the corpse, close enough that the creatures Althos had collected along his travels could physically see the thing in the distance, the god remembered a tool he had that many others lacked. A tool that caused the god to grin, slightly.

I have lifetimes of memories. Millions of hours of life, of emotions, of hardship, joy, suffering, and success circulates my brain every second. The god thought, joyously, as he truly contemplated the impact of that.

And for all of those memories... I haven't yet to truly sat down and meticulously analyzed, or experienced them yet. He thought, less joyfully, and chastising himself for not doing more than a simple run-through of the memories that were locked away in his brain.

But I can correct that. I can enter my mind and take my time exploring the memories. Like if I wanted to invade someone's mind, just targeting myself instead of someone else. Living through them, one by one, in the weird, possibly time-slowed dimension of the minds. Maturing in my own way, a godly way. He thought, determination lighting up his eyes.

This new determination improved the god's mood to the extent that he began to speak to his followers, at least temporarily ceasing his unpleasant habit of mopping around and being somewhat curt to this new group of subordinates.

The jackaloids who had joined the god had grown accustomed to his taciturn nature. He had led them through the desert, over several kilometers of sandy wastes, while saying fairly little. Even when he was reuniting with them, healing their memories of him he made it clear that he wasn't overly fond of communication.

That was why it was odd that he gradually began to speak the closer and closer they drew to the corpse in the distance. And their self-proclaimed "father" didn't just speak into their minds, but verbally.

The first thing the god said could easily be understood as a one-off remark. "Can you all smell that?" He asked, his voice carrying far in the bleak and sandy wastes. He was, rather surprisingly referring to an actual smell. A smell that had swiftly polluted the area with its unescapable stink.

His two canine followers looked at each other, a bit surprised to hear him ask something so obvious. It was such an off-putting question that it took them a few seconds to realize he was being sincere.

When they did, the red-furred canine immediately opened her snout to speak, her words coming across not in any humanoid language but in the guttural language of canines.

"Yes, father. The air curses us by forcing us to breathe in this rank stench of... putrefying guts." She said, and her companion, the golden furred canine on the other side of their master nodded his canid head in agreement.

Althos nodded at her, his eyes distant and focused not on them, but on the sight of the titan's corpse, a sight which took up more and more of their vision as the party approached it. "Yes... the smell is truly nauseating." The deity told her, his nose wrinkling as he spoke as if doing so would push away the scent that tried to fill his nostrils.

His focused gaze at the corpse made it clear that he suspected he knew the origin of the smell, and because he did so, his companions did so as well.

The golden-furred jackal was in agreement with his companion and his master, and the thing spoke, desiring a chance to be acknowledged by his master and the creature he thought would best be able to protect him from the dark devil, Paimon.

"Yes, yes! The air reminds me of... it reminds me of the smell of a dying scorpion!" The canine declared, unconfidently, in the bestial second language all jackaloids institutively knew. Althos chuckled at the creature's statement, which made the thing grin.

The jackaloid's face contorted unpleasantly in an effort to match the happy emotion it felt in response to its masters' apparent enjoyment of its statement. The unusual and unpleasant face it made may have scared a lesser creature, but Althos, assuming that the creature was happy with itself, found the face it made to be quite endearing.

"Are you happy?" The deity asked the little coward, hoping that his hunch was correct. There was a glow of eagerness in the deity's eyes as he asked the creature that question and seeing the light confused the canine.

Should I be honest? There's no way this is a trap... right? The thing questioned, asking himself what to do next. But after a few seconds, it remembered Althos as a kindly, powerful and quiet leader and decided to be honest.

"Yes I am! I enjoy making you chuckle. Father, you came back. Making you laugh is the least I can do, a tiny way to aid you." The canine informed his master, referring to the deception that infused the minds of all of the jackaloids aside from Camaxtli that Althos was a sort of father to them, a divine protector whom they served by offering knowledge in exchange for the safety Althos' power brought their community.

The sincerity of the jackaloid's statement surprised Althos, who due to his lack of understanding of emotions didn't fully understand just how the jackal who had just spoken felt about the deity. He didn't understand how the jackal's cowardly nature made it view Althos as a powerful and protective figure deserving of both worship and small acts of service.

I... really should learn about emotions, shouldn't I? The deity further realized, the simple exchange and his awareness of his ignorance regarding the feelings he invoked in his worshipers causing him to accept the importance of genuinely understanding not only his own emotions but those of his worshippers as well. At that moment he felt deeply grateful to the odd, cowardly jackaloid.

Althos' chance to examine the emotion of shame came when he and his followers reached the rapidly deteriorating corpse of the desert titan. When they reached the thing, the smell they had complained about before had become so intense that it made their eyes water.

Their only reprieve from the smell came when Althos mercifully cast a spell on all of them, the scorpion included, that tricked their senses into smelling something far more pleasant than the actual scent that assailed them. This made it possible for the creatures to stand just steps away from the colossal corpse.

Althos walked up to the thing and gently placed a hand on it, accidentally acting in a way that implied the deity cared for the corpse. As he examined it, he quietly gritted his teeth and did his best to stomach a bit of annoyance he felt, trying to commit to understanding emotions and even taking responsibility for how he felt.

He tired of allowing his emotions to be reactionary and purposefully channeled his thorough mortification at the statements his advisors made just minutes ago so as to stay calm. The effort was successful enough that his followers didn't notice anything was amiss, while he stood beside the mountain-like corpse.

If I get them to believe I'm somehow using magic on this corpse to absorb memories or something, I can sit down and take a second to think about... the many things I need to think about. He thought, eager to have a chance to try to deceive other creatures, even his own servants. But a brief moment of introspection made the god realize that such a desire was unnecessary and possibly even unhelpful.

Why do I feel the need to deceive my servants even when I wouldn't actually help my self by doing it? He questioned, wondering why he was tending to want to do deceptive things to some of his servants, and then he had a strict policy of being honest when possible with other servants.

Oh no... this is that weird unequal treatment thing again isn't it? He realized, growing annoyed with himself as he remembered how differently he treated the dark elves and the orcs before he called himself out and reflected on how unlawful it was for him to treat creatures of the same type so differently. Rather than sigh in annoyance, he huffed at himself, his own immature and inconsistently now not just annoying his followers, but annoying even himself.

I'm gonna need to thoroughly investigate my heart aren't I? He realized, feeling temporarily inconvenienced by the amount of introspection he suspected he'd need to do. The god quietly sighed, as he accepted that this too was his fault and would take effort to overcome.

Alright... the truth. The deity thought, quietly silencing the urge he felt to lie to his followers. He turned to his allies and spoke to them. "I am going to sit down and reflect. I want to take a second to ponder my emotions. If you'd like to join me... that wouldn't be bad." He smiled when he said that, but he quickly continued speaking.

"And fret not, the spell I cast on you will not wear off during this time, so the smell from earlier will not begin to bother you." His voice was confident and powerful as he spoke, indicating that he wasn't giving his followers a choice. But the members of his new, odd pack accepted their master's declaration without complaint, all three of them nodding at the god.

Moments later Althos was sitting on the floor near the corpse of the desert titan. The deity took a deep breath, and for the first time in his life really and truly entered his own mind, replicating the process by which he invaded the minds of other creatures and just targetting himself instead of an innocent creature whose memories he felt entitled too.

Unlike when he entered the minds of other creatures, entering his own mind was easy and instantaneous, taking him directly to the interior of his mind. He was taken to a place that was deeper than the entry-level mind-scape which Samyaza and M.A. had made their new homes. A stranger place.

Instead of entering a strange field filled with statues, the god appeared on the sandy shore of an odd and massive lake-like place that extended farther than he could see. Well... this is weird. And not at all what I was expecting. The deity thought, thinking just to hear something in a space that was impossibly quiet.

The deity thought, truly mystified by this development, since he had never been to a lake before and even the memories he stole of the things were not memories he had ever truly focused on.

He took in his surroundings carefully, turning immediately so that he could see what laid behind him before doing anything else. He was greeted by the sight of the familiar infinite and all-encompassing darkness that surrounded the boundaries of the minds of other creatures. He was almost comforted by the eerie sight, kind of grateful for something familiar in a sea of unfamiliarity.

Nice to see that somethings never change. He thought to himself, grinning awkwardly at his own attempt at a quip, and also his attempt to gather the resolve needed to ready himself to turn around and face the unknown, whatever odd mysteries awaited him in or around the odd mental lake.

After a few seconds, or the equivalent of seconds since the god had found, over a handful of explorations of the weird mind-scapes he had visited so far, that time tended to slow down while in minds, the deity boldly turned around towards the lake.