“If I may make a suggestion.” It was Scientia who spoke, his voice still grand and ancient and the other gods practically leaned in to see what his plan to divide the workload was. “I say we assign ourselves areas of focus. Like how Zeus ruled the sky, Poseidon the sea and Hades the underworld, we should all focus on an aspect of creation, ensuring both a relatively even workload and opening avenues for us to develop specialised skillsets which we may not have attained if we all worked on everything together.”

“Sounds good to me” said Mark at roughly the same time as Damon muttered “Well obviously, we’d all have individual goals.”

Holly smiled, albeit in a noticeably forced way and said “Hey, knock it off Damon, just because it’s obvious doesn’t mean it can’t be a good idea. Does anyone else have any suggestions?”

“Of course not.” came Damon’s retort. “It’s what every mythological pantheon has done since the start of time, why would we do things a different way?”

Mark looked across at him, clearly concerned. “Hey dude, chill out. I know this day’s been pretty intense for everyone, so I can understand why tensions are running high, but if we’re gonna make any progress and get along, we gotta remain as calm as possible.”

Damon feigned remorse and tried to look as downcast as possible. “You're right Mark, of course.”

Bizarrely, or perhaps obviously, it was Rich who objected to Mark’s claim. “What?! Calm?! Calms boring why do we have to be calm?”

Mark looked away from Damon to Rizzleritchensteineonizziism, equally concerned, yet a tad more condescending. “I meant we shouldn’t be angry at each other Rich; you can be as excitable as you want”

Rich looked indignant. “If you didn’t want us angry at each other, don’t call me Rich! Rizzleritchensteineonizziism! The first ever! Remember it!”

“Remember it? I can’t pronounce it” cried Mark before remembering himself. “Sorry, tensions. Look, Rich, I think it’s a cool name, but I really can’t pronounce it. Will you please accept nicknames, at least amongst the 6 of us?”

“My followers will hunt yours for sport!” yelled Rich, accentuating his point with the first thunderbolt this world had ever seen which he made strike the obelisk behind him. “but okay, fine”

Mark smiled. “Thanks. If you have a nickname you prefer, we can go with that, so lemme know if there is something you’d rather go with. Um, also, you were joking about the hunting for sport, right?”

Rizzleritchensteineonizziism grinned a maniacal grin that actually stretched off his thin lightning bolt face. “We’ll see who shoulda made everyone immortal soon, won’t we? MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!”

Mark paled. “Rich? Your joking, right?”

The eccentric god deflated, and the flames and lightning that were part of him dimmed. “Yeah, it was a joke. Don’t call attention to it, it ruins the fun.”

Damon had been staring incredulously as he watched all this go on. “Okay, this has all been very touching” he announced “but we should probably sort out our roles, appearances and names and everything soon. We don’t have forever; we do need to get on.”

“One more thing!” burst out the goddess soon to be named Aomy. She felt the others all turn to look at her and it didn’t take a genius to infer that she very much regretted speaking up, by the reddening of her face and the way she began to quickly hunch in on herself. “I, er, yeah. We should probably ask Rizzle-Ritchen-Steineo-Nizzi-ism”, she was sounding the word out, chunk by chunk, to make sure she said it right. “if he did have a preferred nickname. Like, so we don’t keep calling him Rich if he doesn’t like it. Like…” she trailed off as she immediately regretted keeping this train of thought running outside her head instead of inside it. “Rizzle?”

“No!” cried Rich “Anything less than Rizzleritchensteineonizziism is an insult! If you are to spit in my face and shorten the best word I’ve ever come up with in the last half an hour, then you can do it however you want, I’ll have no part in it.”

“Okay, we’ve gotten very distracted” declared Damon. “We should really get on with deciding our roles.”

Holly looked around at the other six deities. “Does anyone have any preferences?”

The soon to be god of knowledge opened his mouth to speak, glad to finally announce the purpose he’d given himself at the start of creation but he was swiftly interrupted

“Magic!” exclaimed Rizzleritchensteineonizziism, his eyes alight with possibilities. “I wanna make magic!”

“Yup, that seems fitting.” Replied Holly warmly. “Unless anyone else wants it, I’d quite like to be a god of nature. I’ve always been super into that stuff, and I’ve seen enough documentaries to probably be able to throw together a food chain that doesn’t collapse in on itself.”

“Wait, first, are we sure we can trust Rich with magic” objected Damon. “I don’t want our world to be blown apart because he impulsively made magic too explosive.”

“Noooo, I think Rizzlerich is uniquely qualified among us to make magic” was Holly’s response. “Can any of y’all imagine anything more fitting for him? Plus, he doesn’t seem like he’s actually impulsive enough to accidentally nuke the world, right Rizzlerich?”

“Stop trying to make me a nickname! They’ll never work!”

“Rizzlerich, please.” Pleaded Holly

Rizzleritchensteineonizziism stared into space for a moment before relenting and deflating. “Fiiiiine. I promise not to make magic too cool, I’ll reign myself in”

Holly smiled. “Thanks Rich.” She turned to face the other gods and asked “Okay, if that’s all sorted shall we move on?”

Before anyone could answer Rizzleritchensteineonizziism burst into the conversation again, yelling “Do you have a god name? Y’know if you’ve decided on a god role, d’you have a god name, or form or anything?”

Holly thought for a moment. “I don’t know, maybe like Naturum or something? I don’t have a form, I’ll have to think about that.”

Rich looked confused. “You all thought about your forms before making them?” he asked.

“I’m surprised you speak Latin.” said the Thoth impersonating god, his confident voice booming out across the pillar and ignoring Rich’s query.

“Oh, Naturum’s not real Latin, I just wanted to have a name that sounded kinda Latin-y, y’know cos Latin-y sounding words sound all impressive and godlike.” came Naturum’s easy reply

Imperceptible to all but the most perceptive of the gods, Scientia winced. “Then I shall be Sciencia” he declared, grand voice betraying no hint of his wincing “and I shall be your god of knowledge. I shall catalogue this new universe, both so the 5 of you will have an encyclopaedia of knowledge to draw from, so you don’t have to keep track of all relevant information pertaining to your duties yourself and so the most studious of mortals may be rewarded with information that will help drive our world to a new age.”

Naturum wrinkled her nose slightly. “Well, it’s a bit of a naff name, isn’t it? You do more than science, why didn’t you call yourself like, knowledgia or something if you wanted a Latin name.”

Scientia definitely winced this time, but he quickly recovered, smiled and said, “While both would be accurate uses of Latin, I believe Scientia sounds better.”

Naturum smiled back. “Fair enough. Well, anyone else got any ideas for what they wanna do?”

It was Mark who spoke next. “I think I do. I’d quite like to do geography. I did get an A star in it for my A-levels.”

“Name? God form?” cried Rizzleritchensteineonizziism.

“I was thinking, maybe Loma” responded Loma. “Sounds solid, dependable like the Earth and like how I intend to be for all of you.”

“Volcanoes aren’t dependable. They explode. What about instead you go by Lomabobomboomboompow?” came Rizzleritchensteineonizziism’s erratic response.

Loma smiled. “Maybe I’ll leave the volcanoes to you Rich. I did have an idea for what form to go with by the way.” While he spoke, his skin turned to rich earth, upon his shoulders grew vibrant grass and his form grew larger, stockier. This caused his clothes to tear away (not revealing anything because he’d gotten rid of anything to reveal once he’d decided on his transformation) and the hair on his head began to fade while the hair on his face began to grow.

This beard hair changed to become an incredible waterfall that faded out of existence once it passed his neck. Then, his body began to change, become lumpier, as miniature mountains and hills grew upon it, rivers flowed down his body and his mouth changed to stone creating a cave entrance on his face, his teeth too becoming stone to form stalactites and mites. He looked like landmass given humanoid form, ancient and unmovable, primal and powerful.

He turned to the other gods. “What do you think?” he asked, his voice now deep, rumbly and sounding faintly like boulders tumbling down a mountain in an avalanche.

Naturum whistled. “Looking good Mar- I mean Loma. Nice!”

“Indeed” declared Damon. “Now I believe it is my turn to announce my role. I shall be a supervisor, a leader to you all, someone who can monitor everyone’s behaviour and whose instructions can provide a degree of cohesion not usually attainable.”

Naturum wrinkled her nose again. “Seems like leadership should be something we all vote on, if it’s even necessary.”

Damon smiled, ignored her and turned to face the last god. “And you. Who will you be?”

The god with no name looked round at the others and feeling the attention once more on her shrank into her hoodie. “I, er. Civilisation? Seems pretty useful and no one’s covered that yet.”

The nameless goddess had many grievances with civilisations from Earth and really didn’t want to see them repeated in this one. Still, she would have loved more time to procrastinate that decision and once it had been made, countless doubts swirled in her head.

“You’ve bitten off more than you can chew” one voice said. “There’s no way you can be responsible for whole civilisations.”

“You realise leading a civilisation will mean talking to a lotta people you don’t know? Good luck” jeered another.

A third voice. “Hey, look alive, someone’s talking to you”

“Huh?”

“Name? God form?” It was Rizzleritchensteineonizziism asking as usual.

“Oh sorry, musta spaced out” said the god of civilisations sheepishly. “I had terrible sleep last night” While technically true, she felt awake and sharp since arriving in the new universe. Truth be told, it had been a reliable excuse in the old world and had fully become a habit to use it even when wide awake when she felt she needed to justify herself.

“And, er, to be honest, no I don’t have one. Or any idea of one really. Um, I’m sure I’ll think of something.”

Naturum, smiled at the stammering god. “If you want, I could help you come up with some stuff later? Could be fun.”

The stammering god smiled back, relieved. “Ah, yeah, yeah that would be nice. Thanks.”

“Well then” exclaimed Naturum cheerfully. “Now we’ve divvied up the workload what do y’all wanna do now?”

Loma turned his primordial head around to look at all the others, and in his deep, rumbling voice he said “Well, I don’t know about you all, but I feel like I need a rest. What do you all say to us relaxing for a day and coming back to work tomorrow?”

Damon sneered dismissively. “We haven’t done anything today though.”

Loma shrugged a mighty mountain moving shrug. “I suppose not. But we did just talk to actual God and find out we’re gods ourselves. I think the shock of that warrants a break.”

Naturum nodded. “I could do with some time to process before we start our godly responsibilities.”

“Yeah, I think I’d like some time to think too.” Agreed the civilisation goddess

“I will acquiesce to whatever you wish to do.” said Scientia. “Although I may personally do little relaxing and do as much research into this world as possible.”

Naturum looked to Damon and Rizzleritchensteineonizziism. “And you two?”

“Mmmmm, might make some magic by myself” responded Rich.

“If he does that, then I’ll monitor him” declared Damon.

“Well, we’re all in agreement then” said Loma, cheerfully. “Who wants to play some Nimbus: Never Ending with me?”

The civilisation goddess frowned. “I thought that game wasn’t out yet?”

Loma smiled. “It doesn’t have to be” he said, and with a flourish a green game box appeared in his hand. His smile widened to a grin. “There are certain perks to omnipotence.”

“Oooh, I’m in!” cried Rizzleritchensteineonizziism

“Yeah, I’m down” said the goddess of civilisation, with a little more confidence in her voice than before.

“Then, as I shall no longer be monitoring Rich, I will be retreating to my private quarters.” Said Damon.

“Sure you don’t want to join us Damon?” asked Loma. “Wait, we don’t have private quarters.”

“No?” responded the silver god. “Then I guess we shall have to make some.”

And thus, as the gods each went their separate ways, the day of revels began.