War Among the Stars

Kalza was summoned to the Empress' throne room. Though his pride was great since he was a god, he was still afraid of this woman. Not as an Empress, though she held a high position among the gods. The highest position in fact. No, he feared her as a mother. Specifically, his mother and Konja's mother. In his mind, he knew her to be reasonable and wise, but in his heart he could not stop his worry.

An emissary led Kalza to the throne room. His booming voice announced their arrival to a quiet throne room.

"Kalza has come to answer the summons of Hezala, Empress of the Pantheon!" The emissary left quickly after, having done his part.

"Kalza, my son. You have done well, though it must have been a difficult decision to make. You have shown maturity as a god, and I have decided it is time to show you some secrets of the cosmos. You must be careful to not reveal this knowledge. It isn't incredibly critical, but it will prevent the younger gods from doing... unnecessary things."

Kalza's nervousness faded as his curiosity grew. Secrets? What secrets did he not know?

Hezala waved her hand, and an image of a planet appeared.

"You know of the mortal plane, a place where we once meddled and were worshipped. A place of much debate and scrutiny. Where your brother was sent to undergo his punishment.

What you don't know is that this plane is but one of many. Like there is a heavenly plane where we live, there are far far more. We only know of some thousand planes, and we only control a small fraction of them. Not that we care to hold domination over the universe." Hezala waved her hand again. The floating image of a planet suddenly split into a vast multitude of images of the same planet all around him, filling up the throne room.

"The important thing to know is that there are other existences who can rival ours. Some we are either at war with, or have some sort of hostile relation with. There are demons, our closest 'neighbours', and there are Celestials, similar to us but terribly arrogant." With another wave of the hand, all the illusory planets disappeared, instead replaced with two figures: a vicious, red-eyed monster with horns and claws, and a creature that looked similar to the gods, but they were smaller and had white-feathered wings protruding from their back.

"I'm telling you this now so you will understand the task I will assign to you next. Any questions so far?"

Kalza was shocked. There was such a huge secret hidden from him? At this moment, his idea of existence had expanded massively. Beyond comprehension even! In this state, with his mother looking at him expectantly, he just said whatever came to his mind.

"Why are we at war? Do we know what they want?" Kalza wanted to bite back his words, but he had realized too late the disrespectful tone he had put forth.

Hezala's eyes cooled. Bringing her hands back to her side, all the summoned images disappeared.

"You are not ready to know that. Your father, Zurok, will brief you tomorrow on your task. You can leave now."

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Konja didn't sleep that night. Though he had restrictions on his divine soul, he could only continue wondering what he was going to do. As light began to peek through his branches, the large black bird began to caw weakly. Though it was hungry, it wasn't as if it hadn't been hungry before. Konja realized that its weakness was due to being dispirited.

He decided to postpone his decision, and devised a plan to keep the black bird around. He grew an acorn quickly, and had it drop down near the bird. It jumped away scared, but was soon curious and glad it was there. While this was happening, Konja slowly loosened the wooden cage to let in more light. Just a little bit, now that he was more confident of what the bird could or could not do.

He fashioned a small pit for water to collect in. Hopefully, it would just catch rainwater later, but it was little effort to fill it up with his own water from the moist ground. At this point, he could only hope the bird would be smart enough to start relieving itself through the grates of its cage. He decided he would eventually grow the cage to hang out further away from his trunk, so its excrement could at least fall away from his person.

For some reason, after having made these arrangements, he felt much more at ease. He hadn't expected to care for the life of a mortal creature, but it wasn't a bad experience. Having gone so much change in perspective already, he wasn't ready to confront that aspect of himself now. So he distracted himself, and looked out around him.

The human forts were the same as before, bustling with industry as people came and went. The recent rain and the warming weather had encouraged more business in fact. There was a merchant caravan that had just entered Konja's field of awareness, heading toward one of the forts.

The goblin village was bustling as well. It seemed that their food stores had been low, and they were desperately hunting and gathering to replenish them now. Luckily, there were quite a few wild edible plants starting to sprout near the village.

The elven village seemed as serene as before. They were busy at work cultivating small miniature orchards dotted around the village. Small magic fruits would grow from thin trees, that the elves would collect and dry later. As Konja watched the elves work with these trees, he started to gain some inspiration.

If he was going to live like a mortal tree, then why not as a magic tree? It would be wholly new territory for Konja though. He had no experience with 'mana', the predominant energy source here on the mortal plane. Gods had always used 'Aether' to impose their will on reality, as it was abundant in the heavenly plane. All gods that used their aether in other planes would eventually have to return to the heavenly plane to recuperate. But here, in the mortal plane, all creatures used mana.

As a mortal creature, he too should use mana, should he not? Wielding a new type of energy was unprecedented for a god, as far as Konja knew. Perhaps this was his avenue for freedom! He felt certain that he would never be as powerful wielding mana as he was when he worked with aether, but beggars can't be choosers.

Honestly, Konja still had reservations about working with mana. In all his life until now, he had always thought of it as something dirty and base, since it was what mortals used. However, as the barriers of his elitism broke down, he began to ignore these associations and look at mana for what it truly was. A substance that could enable him to great heights! Previously, when he had peered into this plane, he had seen impressive dragons that could move mountains, and stone golems that were as large as mountains themselves! There were even somewhat impressive mortal human wizards, though individually their powers were unremarkable in the grand scheme of things.

As he began to consider the possibilities that mana would open to him, he began to become more excited. In true god fashion, he immediately decided that he would master mana and become the most powerful mortal existence on this plane! Perhaps it would be a pale imitation of his previous godhood, but it would still be better than his current state.

Casting out his divine sense, he tried to examine those magic fruit trees in greater detail, but found it was difficult due to the distance. Facing this hurdle, he realized he would have to search for a closer magical plant. He began at the edge of the magical forest, but soon realized that wouldn't work either. It was still too far to look at the inner workings he needed!

He looked around what was close to him, and realized that mana was weakly flowing within himself, the grass, and his captive, the black bird. The mana within him was the normal ambient mana that all trees expelled. It was why he expected the magical aura in this area to eventually be repaired due to his existence. He currently emitted a very small of mana, not much more than the grass by his roots. In fact, the strongest source of mana was from the black bird, though it was still nothing remarkable. Sadly, he expected that wouldn't be able to learn much from the black bird, as their bodies were too different.

Instead, he returned to learning to control his tree body. He set a few goals for himself: attuning his divine sense to recognize and detect mana better, learning how mana was created within his body, and eventually controlling that mana. In his mind, the first task was merely a matter of practice and patience...