Finally in the general area of the world she considered her home, Anastacia surveyed the lands from atop her throne in the goblin castle. The Firstborn had promised that she would be met by them once more in her goblin realm, but the party had arrived almost an hour ago and there were no simulacra in sight.

Eager to get back to the warmth of the inn, aside from a brief rest in Crescent, they had wasted no time traveling back towards Valor – so the wait was not a terribly welcome surprise.

Outside of Anastacia, who was posted on her throne, and the two simulacra corralling the goblins, the rest of the group was huddled by a fire built in the middle of the castle. Not expecting any more meaningful delays, they had eaten the last of their rations already and the only thing dangling over the fire was a halfway filled copper coffee pot.

“You know, you’re not even supposed to be here. You could just go to the city and wait for us there.” Emilia pointed out to Gilbert and Iris.

“I go where you go.” The inquisitor said defiantly but was clearly not having much fun in the freezing weather.

Gilbert on the other hand was unfazed by the cold as usual. “I’m a bit curious to see where this goes, so I don’t mind.” Though he hid it well, he had run out of pipe tobacco on the last leg of their journey and his mood was just as sour as everyone else’s. In reality, the main reason he refused to move was some sense of pride he had for his hardiness, and leaving the girls alone in the cold went against that.

Anastacia peered into the direction The Firstborn had appeared from last time, but still couldn’t see anything moving among the trees. She sighed and descended from the mound her throne was built on top of to see if the coffee was ready yet. On the way she had to stop to accept a couple of gifts her goblins had brought for their rulers to celebrate their safe return. Naturally, most of the goblins present were no longer the same ones that had been there on their last visit, but even Leggy seemed to get recognized based on the descriptions and names passed on from their predecessors. The new simulacrum’s housecarl title, however, quickly turned into ‘hugscarl’ in the speech of the small critters. Anastacia thought about correcting them, but Leggy had a tendency to greet each individual goblin with a hug, so she deemed the change apt and let it be.

“This Prince of Life sure is taking his time. Is it because his followers are generally thousands of years old and he thinks he’s not in a hurry?” She lamented and sat down by the fire. “Is the coffee done yet? I could really use some…”

Just as the necromancer was about to reach for the lid of their coffee pot, it popped off on its own and out poked a tiny, silvery head of impossibly long hair that only Anastacia could recognize – though the last time they had met, Vilja, the goddess of all things unwanted, hadn’t been quite this small. Maybe fifteen to twenty centimeters tall now, the deity fit well into the pot of nearly boiling water and seemed rather pleased with it.

Gilbert and Emilia raised a brow at the sight, but the inquisitor immediately lost her composure and scrambled away. Vilja, being a god, was untouchable by necromancy, but Iris was barely used to the simulacra as far as beings like that went, and suddenly seeing something that defied the usual caught her off guard.

“I have arrived!” The tiny god declared and splashed around in the coffee.

The old adventurer first glanced at Emilia, wondering if she might have known what was in their coffee, but an identical glance from the priestess revealed that she did not. “Anna, do you know why there’s a tiny naked thing in the coffee?” He asked, almost certain that all weird things eventually led to the necromancer.

“’A thing’ he says!” Vilja protested fiercely. “You call The God of the Undesired ‘a thing’? Well, I suppose all things are things and I am, indeed, a thing among things – but please be more precise in the future.”

The vast roster of divine titles ran across Emilia’s mind until she found one that matched the one she had just heard. “That would make you… Vilja?” She guessed.

“Full marks to Sylvia’s finest! Does she talk about me often?” The kettle goddess inquired, showing no intention of leaving the vessel.

While the rest of the group came to grips with the fact that a literal god had just appeared in front of their eyes, Anastacia was on the verge of tears.

“She… she ruined the coffee.” The necromancer wept over the thing most important to her. “It’s all gone.”

Producing a very small, cracked cup from somewhere deep inside her immense mess of hair, the goddess scooped up a cupful of freshly brewed coffee and started sipping. “Matter of opinion, really. Tastes good to me.”

Being the one actually invested in the divine and finally in the presence of one, Emilia tried to find a way to stay in the conversation. “Excuse me, but are you usually this… small? From what I understand, you’re fairly powerful and this is not what I expected.” She asked.

“So she does talk about me!” Vilja grinned and leaned against the edge of the pot. “If you must know, I’m just a fragment of me. A while ago, we were trying to make a new god for the craftsmen, which involved me having to eat the old one – who, by the way, wasn’t doing his job. While that did work out in the end, I did sort of get shattered into a few dozen pieces that all fucked off into the woods almost immediately. So, the others are trying to gather them while I handle this errand”

“You were… shattered? Actually, I have several questions about that statement.” The priestess said and started to feverishly list things she wanted to know, all the while the goddess slowly sank deeper into the pot and clearly didn’t intend to answer any of the questions.

This went on for several minutes while Anastacia eventually got over the loss of her coffee. Iris still preferred to watch things unfold from as far away as the castle’s wall let her, and the main worry in Gilbert’s mind was the question whether the coffee was still drinkable or not – he truly cared not for the gods in the slightest.

The goblins had started to notice the commotion as well, and despite the simulacra’s best efforts, started to gather into the castle. In moments, the croaking and screeching filled the air and combined with the priestess’ endless barrage of questions, the goddess quickly grew tired of the situation.

“Distraction!” Vilja suddenly screamed and sprang up to throw a lump of something at a wall, only barely missing the horrified inquisitor.

The lump strange flesh stuck onto the stonewall and quickly began to spread and grow along it, bulging and writhing as it stretched over the stones, all the way from the floor to the top. Several eyes of various creatures opened up along the edges, beaks, mouths and noses sprouted randomly wherever they could and a few malformed limbs clawed at whatever was nearby.

Emilia and Anastacia, who were well aware of how Firstborn looked, were only moderately grossed out by the mass of flesh and bone, but Iris, having encountered yet another pile of things that should have been affected by necromancy but weren’t, could only scream in absolute terror over what she couldn’t explain. Her job as an inquisitor and travels had brought her against various foes, but most of them were just people that happened to be inconvenient for Mournvalley’s purposes of just general nuisances. So, unlike adventurers, who specifically headed out to deal with inexplicable nonsense on a routine basis, she had next to no experience with such things.

When the mass of meat and other bits had reached its full size, it gradually ripped open from the middle in a vertical line, revealing a gateway into a void of white light. Out from this void stepped what was unmistakably mostly a simulacrum, and furthermore, a knight. Though worn down and largely covered in the same fleshy growths as The Firstborn, it had the same bulky build as King and the same aura of authority and might. Some parts of its armor and underlying metal skeleton had been entirely replaced with organic counterparts, and for someone without context, it would have definitely seemed like some level of crime against nature.

While all of this was going on and everyone else was distracted, Vilja quietly gestured for Gilbert to carry her coffeepot outside, away from the commotion. Though he intended to ignored the request, with a snap of her fingers the goddess caused a tin of pipe tobacco to fall out of the sky, and a deal was made. The two, technically not part of whatever was happening in the castle, stepped outside to quietly smoke their pipes and wait for the noise to pass. Having the sense to enjoy such a hobby was perhaps the first respectable thing Gilbert had ever learned about a deity – though the tobacco Vilja had provided was rather mediocre, as no one would throw away a tinful of something good.

“A greeting and an apology for my belated arrival. No followers available within boundaries, alternative entry to mortal realm made slower by other circumstances.” A mouth on the fleshy knight’s shoulder spoke in a weird mix of charming and machine-like voice. “The Prince of Life, a god, a pleasant meeting.” He introduced himself and bowed slightly.

King immediately stopped what he was doing, grasped his spear and thrust it at the newly arrived deity’s chest, only stopping it once the tip had grazed the ancient stone under a thin layer of flesh. The two knights stared at each other, neither of them moving an inch. No one else knew what they were supposed to do and simply let things play out between the two.

“A strange mechanism, fate. Our search divided by it, guided to differing planes altogether. Yet, here the brothers stand, having found the same thing in the end.” The Prince of Life broke the silence after a few, excruciatingly long seconds. “Eternal servitude, a trivial price for our prizes. True, Fah-Raja?”

The tip of the spear slowly retracted as King stepped down. He gave the other knight one more passing glance before walking out of the castle, obviously not wishing to be in the presence of this god.

Meanwhile, Anastacia had noticed something. The scratches in the worn stone of the deity’s armor, the particular patterns and the fragments missing from his parts, she had seen all of them before. The reason didn’t take long to reach her as she remembered the broken knight she had brought to Valor along with King, the one that had mysteriously disappeared from the guild’s vault.

“I’ve had my fingers in you!” She exclaimed her realization in a questionable manner, which was soon followed by a long and tired sigh from the priestess.

As she was about to, perhaps a bit inappropriately, inspect the simulacrum god’s armor a bit more closely, The Prince gently grasped the necromancer’s hands and kneeled to meet her eyes. “A void longer than a mortal life, then, a flicker in the nothingness. Memory of gentle hands, yet inexperienced. Kindness verified by those that carry the mark of life. For this, gratitude unending.” The mouth on his shoulder stated with as much warmth as it was able to conjure in its speech.

Wherever the cold stone of The Prince’s hand touched, Anastacia could feel the cold on her skin subside as blood rushed into her arms, filling them with strength and life as if she had just exercised rigorously. Even after the simulacrum god let go, the feeling lingered for a while.

While Anastacia tried to the best of her abilities figure out how the simulacrum she had dragged to Valor mere months ago was now supposedly a god, The Prince of Life turned his attention to Emilia. The priestess had been a bit disappointed by Vilja’s escape, so seeing the deity acknowledge her brought her mood right back up.

“Much is owed to The Lady of Joy. For her chosen to take part in a humble request of mine, wonderous. Unfortunate, I have nothing to offer for it. Yet, know that I will stand vigilant by her, in matters divine.” The prince said and bowed again to the priestess.

Emilia answered the bow with one of her own. “I am happy I was able to help, but what about the agreed upon favor on your side? I have tackled with the foul magics imbued into that simulacrum, but their scope was well out of my reach. I assume this is no issue to a deity, such as yourself?” She asked, trying her best to remain calm and not sidetrack things with pointless questions again.

“Sadly untrue. We have taken possession of Spirit. However, for ages he has writhed in grief. Just as joy failed, so did life, night and day, and all else in our arsenal.” The Prince admitted as the several eyes lining his body all frowned.

“Wait, you can’t do anything to help Spirit?” Anastacia asked and grabbed the simulacrum god’s arm. While it would have meant that their mission hadn’t gained them anything, that didn’t bother her in the slightest compared to Spirit’s well-being.

“Not so, entirely.” The Prince calmed her and smiled. “The new god of craftsmen has joined our cause, as will others, in time. Our significance grows among the divine, our words heeded by deities unrelated. I will seek out a god more suitable to cleanse such misery, my followers gain their favor and Spirit will once more return. In time.”

The necromancer wasn’t entirely happy with the answer, but there was very little she could do about it. “How long do you think that will take? Not everyone has an eternity down here.” She asked.

The Prince glanced up at the slowly reddening evening sky. “No telling. But, time for the divine is… convenient. For us, a lengthy task. For you, it might be but a moment. I mean no ill with this delay. Even to us gods, not all things are simple.”

“I’ll give you the benefit of a doubt, this time.” Anastacia said disappointedly. “Just… don’t take too long.”

“Well, that’s sorted.” The priestess was oddly quick to dismiss the somber mood. “Do you have the time to answer a couple of questions? Meeting gods isn’t really a thing that happens on the norm, I mean, I speak with My Lady all the time, but I’d like some other perspectives on things. I promise it’s just a couple of things, maybe a few – a few… subjects. Subjects that might require follow up questions.”

With Iris hyperventilating in the corner, Anastacia fiddling with The Prince’s simulacrum parts, a whole group of goblins straying into the white void the god emerged from and Emilia menacingly approaching the poor deity with a full battery of questions, their ordeal with The Firstborn was concluded.

At the same time, Gilbert and King sat on a log that had been rolled next to the castle and watched as Leggy hid from the god she had abandoned. Between them was a coffee pot, and in it, a tiny goddess puffing away with an even tinier pipe. For a long while, not a word was said between the two that could talk. Gilbert, though he had been successfully bribed, had no real interest in talking with the deity, and for the time being, Vilja had respected that. They were perfectly content watching the goblins go about their business in the snow while waiting for the business inside to be over.

At some point, the old adventurer happened to glance at his side and noticed Vilja struggling to fill her pipe properly. She seemed to be trying to jam in as much tobacco as divinely possible, with no regard to airflow or other aspects of the art of pipe smoking. This almost broke the adventurer’s heart to see and he could no longer stay silent.

“Did no one teach you how to pack a pipe? It’s like you’re trying to plug the whole thing on purpose.” He asked and shook his head disapprovingly.

“No? Aren’t you supposed to just ram it in there and light it?” The goddess wondered. “I am a literal god, who do you think there is to teach me about something as mundane and mortal as this?”

Gilbert sighed. “Guess there isn’t a god for good taste then.” He grunted and emptied his own pipe by tapping it against his knee. “Apparently it’s going to be me. I can’t bear to look at that, probably wouldn’t even get much sleep knowing you’re out there, committing such crimes. And if you hear a faint hum from the north, it’s my father, spinning in his grave until I fix this. So come on now, empty the bowl.”

Vilja smiled absolutely delightedly and emptied her pipe like she had seen Gilbert do.

“You take a bit of tobacco and just drop it into the bowl, then just fill it all the way up like that. Don’t pinch it, just gently drop it in.” The old adventurer started to go through the process, being very careful to show each step to the goddess. “Now, press the tobacco down lightly. Don’t crush it against the bottom, just compress it a bit. Then draw air through the stem and make sure the air is flowing freely, if you feel much resistance, you’ve pressed down too hard and need to start over. Once you’ve got a decent first fill done, fill it to the top again and press it down like before – usually takes two or three fills like this. Keep making sure the air flows, and if it doesn’t, just unpack and try again.”

Because of her temporary, size-related problems, Vilja had to use the smaller bits of tobacco from the tin, but she seemed to get the gist of it. Though it took her more than a couple of tries to figure things out, a sufficient enough fill was eventually achieved and she proudly displayed it to her teacher. Gilbert inspected the tiny pipe and gave it a barely passing mark with a grunt.

“And now I just light it?” The goddess asked.

The adventurer wondered if he should ask one of the goblins or King to bring him a burning piece of wood from the campfire. “Well, yes, but how exactly do you plan on doing that?”

“I just snap my fingers and fire happens, because you know, god.” Vilja explained and pointed at her face.

Gilbert immediately tapped her on the head with his pipe, something which would have no doubt caused Emilia a minor heart attack had she seen it, and something a mortal man probably should have thought about more before doing. “Wrong.” He stated and took out a couple of wooden sticks from a pouch on his belt. “Can you light one of these?”

Vilja snapped her fingers and a small flame engulfed the tip of one of the sticks.

“You move the flame over the bowl and lightly drag air through for a few times to char the tobacco. Only once that’s done, you move the flame even closer and continue doing the same until the whole thing is burning evenly.” The adventurer continued the lesson and lit his pipe. “With your size, it’s probably easier to just move the pipe, but you get the idea.”

Gilbert held the flame in Vilja’s reach while she repeated the process, and for the first time, the goddess properly lit a properly packed pipe. In celebration, the two continued to sit there in silence for a while.

With the lesson over, Gilbert began to wonder why a god would even bother to smoke a pipe in the first place, it was hard to believe an immortal divine being got much out of such a trivial thing. However it may have been, the goddess cheerily exhaled the smoke into the cold air and watched the embers burn.

“Shouldn’t you be out there, doing whatever divine nonsense you’re supposed to be about.” The adventurer suddenly asked. He didn’t really intend to sound rude, but the goddess lazing around in a coffee pot didn’t exactly improve his views on how indifferent and lazy the gods really seemed.

Vilja laughed. “Oh! But I am working right now! My two tasks here might be self-imposed, but I consider them more important than most of my work.”

Gilbert scoffed. “Lounging around counts as divine works now?”

“For your information, I’m doing much more than that.” The goddess pouted at the suggestion of her laziness. “You see, my friend over there might be new to this godhood thing – even newer than me, but it has been a long time since he even loosely resembled anything mortal. I do trust him in general, but I just need to make sure our business here doesn’t come at a cost to mortals. Gods can admittedly be fairly blind to the struggles of the little people, demand more than a person can take, be too intrusive… That sort of stuff. I’m just making sure you all get to live your lives.”

“Very well.” The adventurer nodded, hiding what little admiration such self-awareness deserved. “And the second task?”

Vilja grinned widely, showing her sharp teeth to the old adventurer, who found something oddly familiar about the grin. “That’s for me to know.”

Gilbert immediately dropped the subject as his very limited interest in the matter ran out. This obviously exasperated the goddess, who had finally managed to get the stubborn man to speak to her in an almost normal manner.

“’Why would a god smoke?’ He ponders furiously. ‘Why would a perfect divine entity go out of her way to inhale smoke?’” Vilja started to narrate what she figured were Gilbert’s thoughts. “’Oh no, can she read my mind?’ He worries.”

Unwilling to fall for the provocation, Gilbert paid it no mind and continued watching the sun set over the snow-covered trees. It did slightly annoy him that Vilja had managed to guess one of the thoughts he had earlier, but there was absolutely no way that he would ever admit such a thing.

“Well, since you’re so eager to know, I do it because I like the scent. I know some people can’t stand it, but for me, it keeps memories of a different time intact. The scent of smoke and delicious food, cheery chattering of drunkards, each with a million amazing stories to tell. Friends around my table, laughing at a dumb joke someone made. A quick puff of smoke and I’m there once more – for a while.” The goddess of useless and unwanted things explained with a sudden melancholy tone and fiddled with a makeshift necklace she wore. “It’s not all fun and games, you know? This godhood of mine, that is. I have new, increasingly weird, friends with their own tales from times so long ago that they might as well not have happened. I have thousands of times more time to listen to them than I did before, thousands of times more time to make more stories with them – but I’m starting to realize that I don’t have a guaranteed ending point anymore.

“As a mortal, you got a few centuries at the absolute most if you were lucky. Even if you outlasted all your friends and loved ones, it’s only by a few painful years – but I don’t have that anymore. From your perspective, time flows nicely, day by day, hour by hour, but for me it’s a nightmare. When I’m not here, I can’t tell the passage of time at all. It hasn’t been long since I left the mortal realm, but it has felt like I’ve been a god for thousands of years. Every time I blink, I fear a hundred years has passed without me even noticing. As a god, that really shouldn’t bother me, since all it means is that I didn’t need the time anyway, but I wasn’t born to last for eternity and it’s all still very worrying. Losing a century sounds terrible!

“But that’s not even the worst of it, I’m sure, with time I will get used to some of those things. The biggest thing that bothers me is that all things become unneeded sooner or later – all things. Where exactly does that put me, the one meant to consume and devour all that will never be needed again? These are thing things I ponder, but a quick puff of smoke and for a moment, I’m somewhere different.”

Gilbert hadn’t really wondered if gods had worries that didn’t involve their followers, so it certainly surprised him to hear of such personal troubles all of a sudden. For a brief moment, it almost made him feel bad for the coffee pot deity. However, when he tried to covertly glance at Vilja, what he saw was a wide grin and a giggling goddess.

“HA! Got you to care!” Vilja laughed at her successful ruse.

The old adventurer exhaustedly sighed, drew as much smoke as his years of practice allowed him to and blew it all directly at the deity, as if it achieved anything but made her lose it even harder.

After a good while of uncontrollable laughing, the goddess was interrupted by a lapse in the screeches and chatting echoing from inside the castle. “Looks like my friend left, I better follow – it’s not good for us to dally here for long.” She said, still snickering. “I’ll find you again. Later!”

When Gilbert finally dared to look to his side, the coffee pot was now lacking both Vilja and the coffee that had been in it. He let out a sigh of relief and emptied his pipe, finally ready to head home.

Suddenly Anastacia’s head popped out of the doorway into the castle. “Aaaand she’s gone as well. F- Duck…” She muttered. “Who wants to be the one that tells Xammy that we met two gods and didn’t remember to ask either of them to return her weight?”