Deacon felt spiritually weary after the potion ran its course. His clothes were a mess, and he never wanted that armor he was gifted back more than today. Luckily, he had spare clothes in his bag. A fresh undershirt and new hoody floated out of his bag. They were white and brushed sand colored, respectively. The pants were brown with an interior silk layer for his bait and tackle. He had the idea to get some more patterned duds the next time he was with Mentalba.

Running a hand over his head, Deacon felt his cornrows had come undone during all the fighting. He poured more water over his scalp and shook the monster parts out of his hair. Then he began to re-braid his hair finding it was much longer now. That sent a shiver up his spine. Deacon wondered how it could have grown so long. Cornrows were no longer going to cut it. He assumed he was past the budding stage since he could pull his hair off of his head a good foot in length. Deacon imagined he looked like Warlock from the X-men right now. Hair all wild and jutting in random directions. It took another half hour of shouts from Sun Wu before Deacon was ready to go. His hair now tied in a thick ponytail behind him to keep it out of the way. It looked more like bundle of snakes hanging off the back of his head reaching down to between his shoulder blades.

“Are you finally done doing your hair?” Sun Wu bellowed from above.

“So cranky. Who put sand in your vagina?” Deacon questioned back.

“I don’t have…Ha. That is very funny. Now hurry up,” said Sun Wu.

Deacon looked up the rocky facade of the mountain and contemplated his position. He could just go up there and find out what the trickster god wanted in a series of Spectral Jumps but if he just climbed, he would gain more time to plan. His mind made up; Deacon began the climb.

Not fifteen minutes into the climb, more goats began appearing at the site of the battle. They all seemed to be looking for something before scattering in all directions. None of them seemed to look up much to Deacon’s relief. He was done fighting those damn things. It took another two hours at a measured pace, but Deacon finally climbed up to the summit. To ensure his grip he’d been using his claws the whole time. While there sharpness never dulled, there was a strain on the ligaments in his hand. Standing upright for the first time in hours, Deacon shook out his hands as his claws retracted. He looked around noting the small red roofed temple and the luxurious pillows strewn about the place. There was even a little bean shaped Koi pond complete with a bridge connecting one side from the other.

“Was this always up here?” asked Deacon clearly impressed.

“I was getting bored waiting for you, so I made it. I haven’t had this much time spent in one place in centuries,” explained Sun Wu as he walked toward a small table that had tea kettle steaming next to two palm sized bowls.

“I thought tea ceremonies were for weddings?” Deacon asked with a snicker.

“Would you rebuff my attempt at hospitality so quickly?” queried Sun Wu with a hurt look on his face.

“No. That would be fine,” Deacon said catching his tendency to mouth off at the wrong times.

“Good. We have much to discuss. Come sit, sit,” said Sun Wu.

Deacon approached his end of the table and the comfortable looking pillow that lay on the ground. He poked it with his right hand to see if it would snap up like a bear trap or something. When nothing happened, he plopped himself down, cross legged, and looked over at Sun Wu who was staring at him like he had five heads.

“What?”

“You do not trust easily, do you?”

“When you’ve lived the second life that I have, you wouldn’t either.”

“Second life you say. I knew you were from Earth but are you saying you died to get here?”

“Technically, yes. I was hit by train before I was pulled into this world. Well not this world, this is a Wode prison operating on some very strange rules.”

Sun Wu began pouring the tea very slowly, first into Deacon’s cup and then into his. He placed the tea kettle down and clasped his hands together three times over the tea. Deacon thought it would only be polite to mimic the activity and did just that.

“I do not know this word, Train. Is it a weapon of some kind?”

“No. It’s a large steel carriage that runs along a track. There are several cars attached together and it carries people to and from work. Very heavy. Hardly felt a thing.”

“I see things have changed since I left. That sounds a lot like Gnome tinkering. What little I saw of their society on this world anyway.”

“You are familiar with this worlds gnomes?”

“Yes, when we arrived, we fought through the gnome homeland. It was a mess by the time this worlds gods intervened. Had I known there were people there I could have minimized the damage. I just didn’t see them. Very small.”

“What do you mean we?”

“Myself and that blasted interdimensional eating machine. You see, when I left our world to explore the cosmos, the age of gods was dying. The mortals had begun developing what is referred to as technology. I assume the train that killed you was the result of technology. So I sought a new population to help. Once I was out in the wider cosmos it became apparent that other tribes just had other deities. So I tried traveling interdimensional. That is when I met The Unsatiated. It was gobbling up whole dimensions. That particular dimension housed a clan of beast-men. On my honor as the monkey king, I had to intervene.”

Sun Wu took a break from explaining to sip some tea and Deacon did the same. Deacon didn’t know if he was buying this story yet. It would explain how a myth from Earth came to be here though. Damn, this is good tea.

“Please, continue.”

“I fought The Unsatiated for twelve days straight. It didn’t progress further nor did it give ground. I tried ever spell I knew but the best I could do was keep it at bay. Then the Dimensional Sentinels caught up with me. You see we are not supposed to travel between dimensions uninvited. You can go into dungeons and use known portals to do it. That’s considered normal, but punching holes in reality gets them riled up. Now I was facing a battle on two fronts. One against the dimension eater and another against the damn sentinels. The sentinels just erase matter with their attacks. I tried several times to reason with them to no avail. Then I tried dodging their attacks in a just such a way that they hit The Unsatiated. That hurt him. After every successful hit, the monster had to stop moving and munch on the world around it. The damage wasn’t enough to kill it with all the available material around it to feed on.”

Sun Wu stopped for another sip. This is when Deacon felt a tingle in the back of his head. Something was bothering him. He just couldn’t put his finger on it. Sun Wu continued his story once again grabbing Deacon’s attention.

“I decided that running was better than being eaten or disintegration. The only problem was I’d be leaving the poor mortals defenseless against the other two. So I did what any benevolent deity would do. I smashed open a path to this world and pushed them all through. I’m not sure where they landed but it had to be better than there. That’s when the Sentinels all rushed me. I told you before they don’t like that. As they spun around to pursue me The Unsatiated struck, gobbling up their rear guard. They were now split between the two of us. That was when the dimensional energies in the whole I created ran rampant. The next thing I knew both The Unsatiated, and I were stomping the gnome lands flat as we fought.”

“But that doesn’t explain this place, just how you made it to this world.”

“I’m getting there. Finish your tea. Like I said, we ruined the tiny peoples land and ten gods appeared in brilliant flashes of light around us. They began to draw in holy energies in vast quantities before lines were drawn instantly in the air, on the ground, and everywhere in between. It was dieacraft like I’d never seen. An entire pantheon using miracle level energy all at the same time with one single purpose. Nothing like that existed back on Earth. We spent too much time fighting each other to produce something of this complexity. Turns out it was a containment ritual that fed off our own energies to keep us here.”

“They call it a Wode. It’s where they put problematic beings of immense power. I had to stop one a couple of months ago.”

“Who is telling this story me, or you? In any event, I’ve been in here since.”

“But why hasn’t it run out of things to eat?”

“That’s just it, it’s like a snake eating it’s own tail. This place is powered by our own energies. The more it eats, the more this Wode creates. Forever. I need to get out of here, demon spawn. I spent years trying to kill it, then I spent years running from it. I’m just so bored. You and that other one were the most exciting thing to happen in here for centuries.”

Deacon could almost touch the desperation in Sun Wu’s voice. As the patron saint of attention deficit disorder, this prison must be the worst kind of punishment. While Deacon contemplated, he felt a slight rumble in the ground beneath him. Only the slightest tremble through the pillow. Then Sun Wu began speaking again as he threw something onto the table.

“I propose the following. You carry me out of here in that lovely dragon shaped chamber you have in your that soul of yours and I will grant you this shard of divinity. That will reduce my overall godly power enough that this would be possible. To sweeten the deal I will teach you how to fight. You are terrible at it. If it wasn’t for your champions mantle allowing you to just keep going after the point a normal warrior would have dropped dead from exhaustion, you would be a stain down on the rocks.”

“You’re crazy. You think I could just take you out of here? The gods would just shove me back in here with you. It’s clear you’re some kind of Sentinels most wanted as well. Besides, I don’t even know how to get myself out of here. I obviously can’t defeat you in combat to open the way and I don’t even know how to fight that sleeping monstrosity back there.”

“Simple, I would just concede defeat to you as long as you accept my bargain. Anything is better than another thousand years here. Besides, you don’t really have a choice.”

“Why is that?” Deacon asked as it started to get darker.

“After I put a sound ward around the mountain and temple, I then woke up The Unsatiated as soon as you started to climb,” answered Sun Wu gesturing with his now empty tea cup over Deacon’s right shoulder.