The Rodan forest stretched out in front of Sombra and I. We found ourselves on a well-defined path, one that the people of Comillas once created before they stopped venturing into the forest and the goblins we were about to visit had continued to define by using it themselves. It was a simple dirt path, but it was defined well enough that it stood out from the rest of the forest floor even in the dark.

The air around us was clean, which was an oddity on the surface. There was no ash creating a breathing hazard, and the sky above us was dark but only because it was night and we were in a forest with vast trees looming over us. That was because I intervened and protected the entirety of Puerto Rico by remotely warding away ash and other harmful substances with my powers over ash and volcanoes. I was heartened to see that my efforts were rather effective.

Sombra and I both liked this casual darkness. It was night outside and coupled with the darkened leaves of the trees that loomed over us exceptionally little light reached us on the forest floor. That said, as a god of darkness that didn't inhibit my ability to see in the slightest. And since Sombra had once been an incorporeal demon of darkness she could effortlessly see in the dark. This actually allowed us to wander about unseen even though we were surrounded by animals.

The forest floor was alive and quite loud. Animals roamed very close to us, unbothered by either of our presences. They were unbothered by me because I was their god and they were awakened by me long ago. They were unbothered by Sombra because of her ties to me and the natural energies she radiated as a result of her being a high-level witch in my service.

"From a cave to a forest..." Sombra muttered, softly. She wasn't complaining, she was merely making a pointless observation. Her eyes were open now, though I knew that she possessed potent extrasensory perception abilities that allowed her to perceive her surroundings even while her eyes were closed.

She tightened her grip on my hand, merely to feel that it was there and real. I allowed this and didn't physically react to it. Beside me, she smiled softly. There was a lightness, a gentleness to her now. It belied her true ferocity and the sadistic darkness in her shadowy, immaterial heart.

Our steps were slow, steady, and in sync. With each step, our feet sank a bit into the dirt beneath us as we slowly made our way closer and closer to the goblin encampment. Sombra had been there before. Back when she was possessing Troik, a tiny goblin who was one of my first worshippers. And once I had seen her as a dreadful enemy to be opposed, not as an ally and servant. A small part of me was amazed at how different things were now.

One of the last times I had been this close to the village was when I created Raiz, a dryad who worshiped me and who was the spiritual leader of the goblins. At the time I was accompanied by elves who were learning of my true nature as a god.

Well, they weren't learning of "my" true nature as a god... They were learning of "Cosecha's" true nature. Those elves were among the first to convert to Cosecha's faith, though other elves like them have since become adherents of that particular religion.

High elves and forest elves adored Cosecha and they were among the people for whom notifications that identified me as "Althos" were changed to "Cosecha", allowing me to continue to be myself when among them while not being recognized as a divine-being unless I went in and self-identified as "Cosecha". Elves that worshiped my persona viewed it as a deity of harmony between nature and civilization with potent power over both.

After a few minutes of walking, I quietly and fluidly began to transform. My Althonian body, the usual near-human form I wore like an outfit, melted away and was instantly replaced with the Cosechian form I wore to identify myself as the strange nature and civilization deity who inspired and protected agrarian communities in exchange for their love and worship.

My body swiftly became the alien thing that Cosechians knew sometimes visited their dreams. This was a shift I was used to making so it only took moments for my legs to become the solid hunk of stone and soil that Cosecha had in place of legs, for my arms to become tendrils of water and flames respectively, and for my head to become ethereal and made of clean and gently billowing air. The hand of mine in which Sombra's own hand was intertwined was my watery hand, and she held onto it anyway.

When I was done transforming Sombra turned to look at me and she studied me. We kept walking, or I suppose in my case rolling, towards the village but her eyes were locked on my strange form. This was one of the first times she had ever seen me like this and at all of the other things she had also found the form odd. She didn't say anything though.

Off in the distance, I could see the encampment. That said I had been able to see the encampment off in the distance ever since we arrived in the forest thanks to my impossibly sharp divine senses.

We were now close enough that Sombra's eyes widened as she began to become able to see the home of the goblin's off in the distance. She tried to tighten her grip on my hand, but instead put too much strength in her grip and her fingers slid through the watery tendril she was holding onto. She gasped, the sound conveying both her shock and annoyance in equal measure.

"Althos!" She hissed. I chuckled, the sound airy and soft due to the current physical nature of my head at the moment. I retracted my tendril away from her for a moment and quietly used my powers over ice to freeze the appendage solid in the vague shape of a hand. I used telekinesis to grab her hand and return it to mine, since she was so insistent on holding it.

She shivered as she felt the coldness of the ice touch her bare skin, but she didn't pull her hand back and instead began to grin again. Her behavior was fascinating to me, even though I didn't make any moves to let her know this. We continued to close in on the encampment until we were finally close enough that scouts protecting the encampment could see us.

In the time since I last visited this place, during the first week I had a moment of peace and practiced my powers, following my completion of the tutorial, the encampment had changed. The once tiny encampment had expanded, but thanks to the help and leadership of Raiz it had expanded in conjunction with nature and the changes were subtle enough to be difficult to notice.

I studied Sombra, quietly watching to see if she noticed the subtle ways in which the settlement had expanded outward. I watched as she lightly relaxed and grew used to the temperature of my "hand", which took up a fair amount of the attention she was willing to give. Inwardly I sighed in disappointment, but I was unsurprised.

At the moment Sombra and I were still on the path, and still a healthy distance away from the old outskirts of the encampment, but we were inching closer and closer to the entrance I had once walked through the day I gained my first worshippers. We were not far at all from the expanded encampment either.

Trees ahead of us just outside of the actual path provided natural cover for a series of holes that led underground and to the series of chambers that most goblins slept in. Raiz had cleverly used her powers to speed the growth of the trees closest to the path leading to and from the encampment, while goblins dug the holes that led underground so that they could slyly spy on anyone approaching their home. It was a wise defense, and it would have gone undetected by many creatures, just not me.

Thanks to both my senses and my detection-based abilities I was keenly aware of the fact that ahead of us there were a few goblins who were currently hiding behind trees and were able to see us as faint specks in the distance. I could feel their eyes on me, and I wondered if Sombra could too, but if she did she was indifferent to their gazes. The praereptor demon was at ease now and as usual she was indifferent to just about everything else.

Sombra was unlike anyone else I had ever met. She was perfectly content nearly all of the time. It was honestly unsettling, even for me.

The strange and shadowy demoness was a surprisingly powerful creature. Ever since she had become a witch in my service she had practiced her magic every single day without fail, even when on missions I had ordered her to fulfill and she had become quite potent when it came to fire magic. She also frequently prayed and was an earnestly pious individual. She was not at all like the other demons I had begun to get to know, even forsaking violence most of the time unless I commanded or allowed her to indulge in the base instincts of her kind.

Sombra was quieter than many other Althonians, especially in comparison to the other demons I had managed to transform into my servants and worshippers. She lacked the manic energy her demonic peers radiated perpetually and was far more suited to subtle or delicate tasks like interrogation or capturing someone alive than many of them were.

As we inched nearer and nearer to the goblin encampment I heard the shocked and excited gasps of the scouts ahead of us. I cracked a smile and turned my head towards them, making eye contact with one of several goblins and the goblin in question leaped back in shock at the fact that I could see him, far ahead of us. He gasped as he leaped back and the goblins turned to face him. He opened his fang-filled mouth to speak and began to babble excitedly at his companions.

"I... I think it can see us!" He told his companions. A part of me was tempted to reach out mentally and alert the goblin as to who was I was, but instead I decided to save some time and reach out to Raiz herself. As I began to do so I retracted my hand from Sombra's, and allowed my icy hand to melt back into water.

I momentarily closed my eyes and began to extend my mind until I made contact with the second individual to become a cleric in service to me, who also happened to be the very first creature I ever created by hand: Raiz, the dryadic cleric-druid. And when I did so I began to whisper to my arboreal servant.