What could a world without gods even look like?

Just in plain theory, of course.

Without grand temples to the specter of death, without the guiding force of Avarice influencing the free-market and its doings, without the gods of the lakes and rivers and the waters of ponds, whose names can hardly begin to be relevant, all influencing the flow of such things, without all of these things and so many, many more factors, what could the world ever hope to be?

How could people die without a god of death?

How could money be exchanged without a god of wealth?

How could water flow without a god of water?

Well, it turns out, the answer to all of these questions is roughly the same — pretty decently, actually.

People die just the same as before. Money is just as valuable and useful a commodity as it was before, and water, well, water remains water. There isn’t much to change in the formula, gods or no gods.

It’s strange, really.

The grand halls of such entities, the temples and the churches and all of this, remain, having of course been physical structures.

However, the people inside of them seem to rouse from their dazes. Followers and devotees of many gods find themselves living in marked confusion as they come to realize that they don’t actually like what it is that they have been doing. Fervent forgemasters of the tower-district set down their hammers, now that the influence of the god of the forge leaves them and they realize that they actually hate the job. Priestesses of death stroll away from the temple, staring at the sunlight of a new day in ample confusion. Servants of Avarice, the god of wealth, walk out of the bank and realize that they hate working with money and that they’d rather be doing something fun instead.

All across the world, in this nation and others, the collective influence of the gods begins to fade markedly quickly.

Some presences take days to dissipate; others vanish in minutes or hours. Some people mourn this sudden, unexplained disappearance that nobody seems to have any reasoning for. One day, the gods were here; the next day, they weren’t. For many, this is a crisis of untold proportions. Their entire lives have been devoted to these gods in one way or another. They howl at the moon and the sun, begging in the streets for the gods to come back.

— But if the gods are listening, they never do.

Many people leave their professions and lives. Many others remain, staying true to what they followed before, as it was not the gods that led them to this life-path, but rather their own yearning for their professions and trades instead.

Hineni isn’t any different. He still works in the forge.

But the war effort is over. It seems that, in the chaos of the intensity of the final battle, the gods had sent a final, permanent signal to herald the end of the war with such fearful intensity that those who remained immediately ceased their actions, going against the orders of officers and nobles in distant cities.

Even now, three days later, ash still falls from the sky like snow. The land is burned and smoldering, refusing to cool down. The central-city, what had remained of it, is essentially flattened and burnt away. Hundreds, if not thousands of people, soldiers on all sides, were simply erased in the anarchy, brought unto death by a spell so strong that it could have only been cast by god.

This marking of the end of an era, this ‘great ash’, as the people have come to call it, appears to be the only sign of the god’s vanishing that remains. That and the great tree in the center of the world that belongs to a renowned, powerful family. People flock to the city, to this site of sacred pilgrimage in the hopes that perhaps there the gods are able to be found.

But they are not.

In the center of the world, around the base of the great tree, are only more people like themselves. However, this land is blessed.

For five days, ash rains from the sky.

But then it stops. The land cools, and it becomes, over a span of time, fertile beyond recognition. The ash and the burning of so much dead wood, the power of the massive tree that soaks up the world’s ambient-streams of magic — all of this comes together to make a place that is as close to heaven as is possible down here on the world.

— And this is what the people come to understand. A city begins to form around the base of the giant world-tree. First, it starts with simple houses, but then the people move on to making homes and shops, taverns, and inns. Tradespeople make their crafts and adventurers come in droves, not for any dungeon but to fight the wild-monsters that begin to appear on the outskirts of the region in abundance because of the magic present in the area.

The gods have left for the heavens, for their own reasons.

But they have left this down here in their wake, this promised paradise, as proof that, even without their divine presences, the world can be just as fantastic and good.

— Hineni makes sure never to tell anyone what really happened, and the others do the same. It is their secret, and the world does not need to know what really happened. It’s all too complicated, isn’t it?

Even if he wanted to, how would he begin to tell the world of the gods' layers of manipulation stacking over each other, one after another after another? There’s just no marketable way to explain it. So, he also propagates the simple, easy, and sellable story under Sockel’s guidance.

That is to say, the gods simply left for the heavens. That’s it. That’s all there is to the whole story.

And it works; the people mourn, and then life goes on. It is more tragic for some than it is for others; this is undeniable. For all of their schemes and games of power, for all of their shady handlings and practices, the gods also wrought a lot of good for a lot of people, sparing them from the fates of wretchhood and misery.

Yet at the same time, they also hindered many people from becoming their true selves, finding them more useful as twisted pawns than as true, brightly shining, independent souls that have grown in their own natural direction.

He isn’t sure how it balances out, but Hineni is willing to call it a wash.

Anyway, that’s all neither here nor there.

“RIDICULOUS!” screeches a woman standing next to him.

— Hineni finds himself being poked in the chest by a finger, soft, but a little bony. He looks at the tawny-blond haired woman there with sharp features, who is clicking with her mouth as she continues to prod him. “No matter how often I poke, Hineni does not bleed!” says the woman.

Hineni grabs her hand, which is very human in its shape, not having any feathers or talons or anything of the sort, but there is a ring on it. “Maybe it’s better that way,” suggests Hineni. She looks at him as he lifts her palm up, kissing her fingers.

— Obscura pokes him with her other hand.

The man sighs, grabbing her other hand and holding both of them. She tries to move her mouth in a familiar pattern, hissing and clicking. But her lips and tongue don’t seem to move quite like she wants them to. “Troublesome,” says the once owl-god, looking down at herself. “How will she catch Hineni’s rabbits like this?” asks Obscura.

“We’ll just buy some,” replies the man.

“How will she fly?” asks the woman, wobbling her elbows.

“That’s gonna have to be put on hold indefinitely,” replies Hineni.

The once owl-god tilts her head. “How can Hineni love a human-monstrosity such as I?”

He leans in, kissing her forehead. “You look great, just like you did before,” remarks the man. She lifts her gaze, and the two of them stare at each other for a time. “Living a new life… it takes a while to get used to, remember?” he asks. “Took me a little bit too before I caught on.”

He nods his head to the side. “Come on. We’re going to be late for breakfast,” says Hineni. “I think today is Seltsam’s day to cook.”

Obscura tilts her head. “Seltsam has never cooked,” remarks the once owl-god.

Hineni shrugs. “Everyone has their turn,” he replies. “She read some books on it. It’ll be fine.”

The two of them walk together out of their room.

“I read a book on cooking once, and it led to disaster,” replies Obscura. “Hineni yelled at poor Obscura.” She shakes her head. “Since then, she does not trust the books. They deceived her.”

He laughs. “It wasn’t ‘yelling’. You started a fire.”

She clicks with her tongue, looking at him as she points out of the window. “So did Hineni, several times, but he has yet to be scolded,” she remarks, pointing at the gray landscape that surrounds their home.

“We can figure something out about that later,” he replies, nudging her, and she elbows him.

“Callous! Crude Hineni!” replies the not-owl-god. “Obscura has not even had breakfast yet,” she says as the two of them walk through to the living area inside their home inside the great-tree.

“— I’m telling you, Sockel,” says Rhine. “It’s fine. Wood is porous.”

“Yeah, that’s the problem, twerp,” replies the elf. “It’ll soak through and get spongy.”

“It’s living wood, it’s fine,” replies Rhine.

Hineni looks at the two of them, arguing over something at the table. A warm smell is in the air as vapors waft through from the kitchen, past the table, and out of the open window. The rustling of leaves can be heard outside.

The young man looks over towards Hineni and points at the floor. “Are we allowed to mop? We’re allowed to mop the floors, right?”

Hineni blinks, pulling out Obscura’s chair for her to sit down in. The not-owl-god hoots.

“Uh…” Hineni looks around at the giant tree that they’re living inside of. “Good question. Ask Seltsam when she gets here,” he remarks, scooting the chair in.

“Ask me what?” asks a voice. Hineni turns to look at a heavily robed figure coming out of the kitchen, somewhat awkwardly, but still present, carrying a large platter.

“Don’t even ask, Selty,” says a sharp voice, flying after her. Eilig lands on Seltsam’s shoulder. “You have no idea how depraved these people are,” explains the fairy. She points at her eyes and then over to them. Hineni shrugs.

“Is it safe to mop the floors here?” asks Hineni.

“Good question,” replies Seltsam, setting down breakfast on the table. It’s a nice spread with a little of everything. There’s nothing majorly complex, but there are a lot of things, so it looks like it was a lot of work, especially considering she’s likely never cooked much before. “I’ll look into it, but maybe let’s just sweep until then,” replies the librarian, walking around the table to sit down at her spot.

Hineni nods, sitting down too as he looks around at the full home he has. Sure, there will need to be a lot of adjusting done, but that’s just what it is. People will need to adapt to the way things are now, and life will go on.

“Where’s Nekyia?” he asks, looking around. His leg bumps into something.

Sockel shrugs.

Hineni sighs and leans sideways, looking down below the table. He reaches in and pulls out the froggy woman who was down there, below.

“Ribbit~” says Nekyia, looking at him. “I wanted to surprise you,” she admits. “But then I sort of lost my nerve, and uh…” She shrugs. “Then I didn’t know what to do, so I froze.”

“Fair enough,” replies Hineni as she sits down on the bench next to him. She, like Obscura, had given up her godly form in order to be allowed to stay in the mortal coil. She, like Obscura, has had her body changed. Nekyia was never able to accept herself as who she was, even if she stood firmly by the choice that caused her to end up that way. So Hineni saw it fitting to let her look however she wanted in this final reality.

And that is just like she did before, only with her missing leg, fingers, and hair.

Fair enough.

The man looks down at his mug, full of steaming tea, and into the scarred, burnt reflection that looks back up his way, physically unchanged from the way it had looked all those many seasons ago when this all started.

However, if one were sharp eyed, they might see the smile present there, a development that could only be caused by the fullness of the life that the human, Hineni, finds himself inside of.

He looks around himself at his family as they all sit down, truly content now.

Eilig looks his way, and he looks at her and nods. Having two sisters is odd, but he’s getting used to it.

Everyone is here.

Finally.

Everything is just as it was always supposed to be.

Hineni imagines that, in that past life of his, when he used to sit by the window in the old house, that the dusty book he kept in front of himself but never read would tell exactly this story of his life.

It’s quiet as everyone starts breakfast.

Rhine takes a sip of his tea and then looks around the room. “Hey, where’s uh… the guy?”

“Huh? Who?” asks Sockel, already chewing on her breakfast. “Good eggs,” she says, nodding to Seltsam.

“T- Thank you!” says Seltsam, watching Nekyia prod her eggs with her very human tongue. It doesn’t seem like a winning strategy. Hineni slides a fork over to her.

Rhine shrugs. “The guy, you know, uh…” He spins a finger. “Always stood by the door?”

They all stare at each other.

“Irit?” asks Hineni, remembering.

Everyone exchanges an unsure glance, not sure if they should be worried about this or not.

“Don’t worry about it,” says Sockel. “He left to go home to his family,” she explains. “I gave him his severance package and did the paperwork.”

“Oh… huh…” says Rhine and then shrugs, returning to his breakfast. “Never knew he was a family man.”

Hineni looks up from his food, staring at the elf.

Sockel stares back at him.

And he understands.

— It truly never does end, does it? Even now, the gods’ game is going on. Although, it would seem that this is finally it. The very last piece has been moved. It’s done. It’s over. The world fully belongs to humanity now.

“Thank you, Sockel,” says Hineni, nodding to her.

Sockel nods back. “Just doing my job, trying to retire, you know?”

“I know,” replies Hineni, returning to his breakfast. “I think we managed this time,” he says, looking around at his family.

Irit walks along the plains, having left the region days ago. The wind billows his cloak as he wanders down the meadows and the fields, towards the place where his true master resides.

He arrives, entering a secret, hidden place that is sheltered from the eyes of people and the eyes of gods. It is a sacred, old space that is safe from the outside influence of magics, even powerful magics such as those that belong to the god of death.

Irit lowers his hood, walking onward towards a figure that sits in the back, alone atop a throne. It has a massive, long face. It has hooved legs like a monster’s, covered in fur.

— The horse-god.

“My lord, I’ve returned,” says the ever-quiet doorman, Irit, lowering himself down onto one knee. “It is done, just as you planned.”

The horse-god neighs in delight.

All of the other gods are gone. It alone remains, residing as the last god on the face of the world, as was its plan all along. The god of death had thought that it could control and manipulate all life, but it had underestimated the cunning of the deity. It found a way to escape death to plan all of this in secret.

It was all a game, a ploy to make the world one that fulfills the desires of the horse-god, which has been manipulating everything in secret. Its ‘death’, its manipulation of the events of the outside world, its twisting of fate to meet its agenda.

Everyone, everywhere, has always laughed at the horse-god. But now, it is the last one laughing!

Now, is the era of the horse!

It rises from its throne. “What of my other agent?” it asks in a hoarse horse voice. “The elf?”

Irit nods, taking off his bag. “She remains there, waiting for your orders to finish the job,” says Irit. He pulls a box out of his bag. “She sends this gift as proof of her loyalty,” says the man, lowering his head and extending the box outward.

The horse-god, the last god remaining on this mortal world, takes it and looks.

Inside is a collection of five metal skulls, each of them staring up his way with mouths that are wide and open, screaming as if howling in a silent cry that might never stop.

— Magic streams out of the previously tightly sealed container. The horse-god sputters out water as his legs give way and his fingers begin to crumble, disintegrating into ash. The magical skulls fall out of his hands, the landscape freezing and crackling.

The god falls to the ground, his body coming apart as he dies.

Irit spins to run away, but a skull rolls towards him, and then he too is no more.

The agenda of the horse-god, the secret plan to become the last god alive, has failed, along with its final, base subversion of the reality that had controlled their lives from the start of all of this.

Hineni nods, content as he pats his full stomach and listens to the excited babbling conversations that everyone is having.

It’s good to have a family.

This is good.

He’s happy.

He thinks he’ll run the forge later, not because he has to for his work but because he wants to.

After all, making weapons is fun. It's just kind of what he does.