Chapter 31.North

The chokers had considered taking advantage of the weakness of the goliath forces as they advanced in class, but the second avatar was floating between the advancing goliaths and the choker city. This far from the sun, the glow of my avatars was becoming very prominent. In spawn territory, my avatars could be missed. Not here. It would probably only get worse the farther north we went. We'd draw everything for hundreds of leagues. A problem for later, however.

The response was similar to what I'd come to expect, but also slightly different. People were called to the wall by the soldiers, but those that answered were far from excited to see the wall and whatever may have been waiting for them there. It took them two weeks to leave the top layer of the pyramid, more accurately it took them two weeks to gather the pompous procession that would leave the top layer. They spent another week greeting those on the second highest level, their opulent finery a sharp contrast to the armor worn by the regular population there. They took even longer on the middle layer, but it was spent within the pyramid and I didn't bother looking inside as I was still focused on Thya's advancement. Other layers were built on top of platforms on the sides of the pyramids, the third layer was barely more than a door into the depths of the construction. They were much faster on the other levels, walking slowly but not talking to anyone on the fourth layer and almost running to pass across the tent city as fast as possible.

These people were much more confident than what I'd expected. Either that or they were so focused on pomp and ceremony that they left a possible enemy at the gates for almost a month before they mounted the wall. The one leading the procession was leaking so strongly that she could very well be class four. Unless she followed along with goliath trends and cultivated body and will circuits. If she was class four, the army of goliaths was destined to fail. None of them had even had class three will circuitry. Just under a hundred thousand examples and Aughil was still the most impressive goliath I'd met.

More surprising than the power of the individual was the will she carried. A strand of will that was divine in density. The spawn were right, beyond the sun's influence was where all the gods lived. Now I was faced with a question; convert or eat? This god was nowhere near as chaotic as Cacophony. There was the undertone in its will that reflected the similar structure being its core being, but this strand had a very dominant will. This god was one I could work with, whereas Cacophony was fundamentally at odds with me. I could never coexist with Cacophony.

The leader floated up to meet my avatar, proving that she was indeed a better wizard than I'd encountered before. Or this civilization pushed looking impressive over being impressive, in which case flight would be an earlier branch of research. Especially the type of flight dependent on building a plane of hardened air and moving that around. "Divine entity, why do you show such favoritism to those determined to worship their own ancestors?" this one creature answered several questions I'd had at once, merely with her presence. She was a creature similar to the ursas, having a basic humanoid structure twisted with hair and more aggressive features. She also lacked the collars under the armor of every combat-ready member of her species. The fact that the majority of the dead on their side were not of their species but still wore the collar explained the nickname "chokers" in no uncertain terms. Their circuitry was impressive, however. They managed to create objects that made creatures subservient to any choker that addressed it. Very selective worship of an entire species. "Surely they are not worth your time."

I didn't respond to the "priestess" and instead addressed the will she carried directly. Mostly questioning why it needed a mouthpiece, but letting elements of my suspicion of her similarity to Cacophony bleed into the strand of communicating intent.

The will's reaction was extreme, boiling and frothing like it had never known it was capable of communication. Maybe it wasn't. There were several attempts at reciprocation that failed before a muddled mess of intent with much stronger "teach we!" message than its intended "She didn't know I could." message. It had also communicated with the "priestess" in such a way that caused both of them to color with embarrassment in will if not in body. The second strand of communication intent was more refined, while being less valuable. "They will communicate with you directly, instead of using the netjer-tepi. We wish to understand better your type and function." It surprised me a bit that it was better at communicating using the words of its followers. With a bit of added usage in allowing me to understand words that I didn't understand, netjer-tepi being the highest ranked priest in the city while netjer were mere priests. I wasn't yet sure what the differentiation between netjer and priests meant, but both concepts existed in the divine will else I wouldn't have heard netjer-tepi. Even with the increased understanding of language being translated between us, intent communication was capable of so much more.

I expressed as much in my reply, explaining the value of miscommunication-proof conveying of ideas. At the same time, I could understand if it found doing so difficult. Communication with intent required a full knowledge of what you wanted to convey, and with the chaotic sort of will it was working with, it wasn't surprising that it would prefer a direct translation into words. The mix would probably include a lot of information it didn't want to share, as it had the first time. It wouldn't have been able to hide the undercurrent as I did, allowing me to know if it only offered the information to benefit itself. Replying to the content of its communication was easier, as explaining my purpose both there and in general was beyond easy. Boundless curiosity was among the most simple of ideas to communicate.

"They meant to question more your stance about gods. Sun eats gods, Earth ignores them, Sky keeps them apart. You?" a good question, to be sure. A question that it would be much harder to answer while keeping the hunger out of the message. "She likes Cairep, but will abandon it if you intend to eat it. Us do not wish to fight for Cairep."

Well, running wasn't an option. Fighting was apparently also off the table, so I'd need to lull it into security before I could eat it even if that was the choice I went for. It seemed like a much more simple solution would be conversion. Also the more valuable idea. My reply encompassed many options, including many options while leaving conversion as the last. If it thought about any of them, though, it would realize that conversion was the only viable option. Even neutral coexistence wasn't really an option, as it was probably built entirely out of faith. It would starve if it tried to coexist within my forces, like the unicorns. A more fatal starvation than the unicorns, but similar in principle.

"You wish to create a new pantheon? Sun ate the last pantheon that dared converge. Each god stronger than the last. I would have been among the weakest of them, at the time. They were spared mostly because she hated Athena and refused to associate with the pantheon as a result. You willing to draw Sun's ire? Think you cannot be eaten?" the fragmented identity may make understanding it difficult, but it didn't hamper the ability to think. It had immediately understood conversion as the only real option among what I'd given.

It acting like war would be detrimental to me was the chief worry it had about conversion? A baseless worry. I was already at war with Sun. As I communicated that fact with the divine will it reacted once again with shock to an absurd degree. It was probably reacting more to my assertion of certainty that I'd come out on top of the war than the fact that I was at war in the first place. I'd come from the south, that meant an ally of Sun or an enemy that dared take the fight to Sun's own territory. Luckily, it wasn't aware of the fact that I was perfectly capable of lying, even while using a method of communication that didn't allow miscommunication. Another strand allowed me to share my victories so far, allowing it to know that the war was young was avoidable now but could become a greater problem later. No need to let that fester into a real problem. There was also the benefit of proving I was capable of actually doing damage to Sun, as that was the primary condition of victory over a foe. I wasn't sure if the other pantheon had been able to do something similar, but even if they'd been capable during their loss that didn't mean I would follow their footsteps.

Unfortunately, I couldn't allow it to know I could eat Sun without letting it know I was perfectly capable of eating it. The thread of divine will had become spiky, trying to get advanced knowledge of my devouring presence while it could potentially escape. If it came to that, tendrils tens of pedes long were far from enough. "We wish to know the value of joining your pantheon. Their cats nor she will be fodder against the Sun." It was probably one bad call from running. If I could confidently wage war against Sun, what was the reason I couldn't wage war against this lesser god? I'd clearly invested more in this army than it had in the city.

It had asked the question that couldn't be easier to answer, however. Especially for a god, the ability of my worshippers to develop will-cores at all was extremely valuable. Ignoring the ability to create two will-cores and have a single self be at the helm of both. If the god wanted to become a singular entity, that was possible. I could also allow it to break into every self within their boundless will cloud, each formed into a proper entity of their own. The gods in their natural form were one of the worst possible ways for an entity to exist, so far as I could tell. Any change at all to their state would make them better, so far as I could tell. I may have included more into that strand of communication than I meant to. It was a question that inspired passion beyond belief in me, on top of being the question most likely to give me one of the megalithic creatures as a subordinate. Just the possibility of that was impossibly important.

Apparently, the divine will was every bit as invested in the question as I was. So much so that it abandoned the conversion to words in order to express an intense need to become a singular entity. It was such an intense need within the divine will that it was the first thought that was purely unified.

Following my communication of the worship rune, the divine will warped the entirety of this particular strand into the shape of the rune. As I claimed it, the cost in mana was absurd. I'd emptied the entirety of my stored mana, and it was still less than half filled. I was laying claim to a god, though. An old and very established god. It made sense that it would cost ten times as much as my class ten star.

The netjer-tepi was trembling with fear to the extent I thought she wouldn't be capable of speaking, but apparently the fear was entirely based on the fact that she'd decided to speak. "Divine One, would you deign to explain to this unworthy dam why Sekhmet has gone silent?" With the words out of her mouth her will became very calm. As if she was ready for death at that moment. Quite a harsh policy, if that was the usual reaction to asking a question.

Sekhmet? Was that the core name that kept all of those selves locked into a single entity? There had been far too much chaos within its identity to allow for such a singular entity as a name to come through. It was a question if she even remembered her name. "She is being granted a chance to become a true god. If she passes this test, you'll find her more powerful than she could imagine before today. There's a good chance you'll be more powerful as well." That was a certainty. Nothing that belonged to me could be weak.

Looking at the weaklings that surrounded me, I began to wonder at their design. The similarities between ursas and cats were apparent, from the first class version being passable as a human but with modified ears to the second class appearing like an entirely different creature forced to stand like a human. They'd both been created, the similarities between them hinted at a single creator. Why? Ursas had such a different culture that it was also hard to imagine them having a common creator. How much of it was based on the original intent of the creator and how much was due to changes since then? Why did cats have tails? Or was it a better question to ask why bears didn't?

Perhaps this wouldn't be a completely wasted conversation. Maybe a redundant one, as I'd definitely learn everything she could tell me and more when I could delve into her will directly. "She called you a netjer-tepi. There's a lot of overlap between what that is and what a priest is, though. Why?"

She knelt in the air, pressing her head against the platform of air she was standing on. "Divine One, priests are the dogs of the Sun. Blasphemous toadies of a pathetic narcissist that wishes to be the only god. Such weaklings could not be allowed to share a title with the worthy servants of the Mother of Destruction." Sekhmet certainly hadn't had trouble communicating her hatred for Sun to her followers.

Since filling Sekhmet with mana was taking so long, I may as well get to understand this new species I'd come across. I didn't convert anyone, not yet. I was excited to see how the informal worshippers of a god reacted to their god becoming a worshipper. In all probability they wouldn't react at all, they wouldn't even notice until they communicated with her again and the only real difference would be the clarity of the messages. "How does your civilization work? What are the tenets of your religion?" A much more complicated question than could be answered in a short term, but the answer to that question was quite telling. Idea distillation always led to the important bits being amplified. Whatever she found to be most important would be what she mentioned.

Her first reaction was offense. Religion was serious to her, unlike both cannibal and goliath societies. That they couldn't encompass the entirety of the question wouldn't have made the question offensive, not unless the religion was taken seriously enough. Assuming a religion was easy enough to understand that you could just ask about it wouldn't be offensive to a simple religion. "Distilling the entirety of our culture into an answer would take months, if not years. Divine One, do you have specific questions you want answered?"

It was interesting that avoiding the question of a god wasn't seen as offensive. Probably due to Sekhmet having such a chaotic will, there were probably a lot of times they'd requested a question be rephrased. "Why isn't there movement between the layers of the pyramid?"

"Every layer of a culture has its use, Divine One. That is an entirely separate question from whether those serving one purpose are useful in the presence of those serving another. If the Netjer weren't at the top of the pyramid, we could not witness the threats to Cairep. Without our watch, the city may be destroyed by dragons or other threats beyond the mollies' understanding. Having our sight impeded by masses of mollies would be detrimental for both them and us." An interesting viewpoint. It would certainly reduce the redundancy inherent in cannibal endeavors. Without my ability to remember all of the gems, that could be useful. "As your body looks like a cannibal, I feel the need to differentiate our system from theirs. Cannibals hold their genealogy as the driving factor of a person's purpose. Their farmers are always a family. A family given the responsibilities of netjer, regardless of their abilities or talents. Our people are separated based on ability, ability tested at a young age to keep them from forming deep bonds with those that would hold them back. There are no hidden gems of ability among the mollies that would be better netjer than we. Cannibals waste their most talented individuals of every field by mixing them together and pretending it has no detrimental consequences." That was very interesting. Chokers had detailed understanding of cannibal society, whereas cannibal records barely mentioned goliaths let alone their northern cousins.

I usually only understood a culture from direct experience. Learning through an explanation was new, but it provided benefits as well. Since she'd stopped talking, I figured I needed to continue asking. "That's just the top and bottom layers. What of the rest?"

"The military occupies the second most level of responsibility, followed by the toms, followed by the crafty mollies." She grinned at her own knuckles at the mention of the males, a predatory instinct ripping through her will at the mere idea. Her hair was trying to raise, especially on her shoulders and arms, but she was keeping that reaction in check. Her will was tainted with control to such a degree I wasn't even sure the biggest reaction she was trying to suppress was her shoulders or arms.

Curious about her reaction, mostly the intensity of it, I investigated into that level of the pyramid. Surprisingly, the cats were the most sexually dimorphic species I'd come across apart from the elves. Where the female cats in their adult state were nearly six pedes tall on average and burly, the males were nearer to four and the thinnest humanoid I'd come across yet. Even more surprising was that their second class form followed the trend, with females growing to eight pedes while males dropped to three and a half. The males also became less dangerous rather than more. Their claws were the same, but the damage they could deal for their class was pathetic. Their hair also experienced the opposite trend of females, becoming softer instead of harder. Both grew longer hair, but the males became soft. Their faces were also made of softer angles than the females. Even their teeth were duller and smaller.

She continued without showing anything that someone looking at the back of her head would have noticed. I wasn't sure if that was impressive or she was just not used to hiding her reactions. "Given that you are at the head of an army, I will assume I don't need to tell you the massive responsibility it is to be a member of the military, nor the perspective necessary to do your job properly. Knowing too many mollies personally would make tactics difficult, leading them to try to save their friends to the detriment of Cairep."

Maybe among the lower commanders of armies, that was true. I wouldn't know. None of my commanders had had an issue with sending their friends into combat. Then again, they hadn't had trouble going into battle themselves either. Nobody from the military level of the pyramid was present at the battle against the goliath army. Looking at the levels of power between the two forces, it was entirely possible that the goliaths overran the lower levels. Not likely, but possible.

"As a god, I would think you understand the responsibility of a tom the most of all. Your need to understand the raising of the next generation exceeds even that of a netjer, as you must look into the correct methods to teach the toms to raise the kittens correctly in terms of eternity whereas toms only need to think of their own precious kittens. They also need the proper perspective, but in all honesty the only reason they are there is to ensure their safety. The final retreat of the netjer can only lift the top three levels of the pyramid, after all." At the idea of being forced to flee, or perhaps the idea of toms being forced to fight to save their lives, another spike of predatory instinct ripped through her. Trying to read her emotions was harder than normal for humans.

She did get me curious about the "final retreat of the netjer" and what that entailed, exactly. Sekhmet couldn't be the only choker deity, after all. Eventually I'd get to conquer a cat city and see what it looked like when their netjer fled from a city they barely bothered to protect. They'd probably escape flawlessly and pick up right where they left off. There were no children in the city, all of them being located in the middle of the pyramid. With a constant stream of new mollies, it wouldn't be that detrimental to their society to need to abandon a city. Repopulating could take a long time, there were almost four hundred times as many people in the tent city as on the entire pyramid.

"After them are the crafty mollies, but they are basically the same as the rest. We just elevate them to give the rest some feeling that they can be important if they make things that are valuable to the dams. We don't have the time to waste on making furniture, after all. Or fighting off such meager foes as a force of goliaths. I hear that some of the military dams promote warrior mollies into that tier, but such things really do not matter at the level of netjer perspective. Anyone having their own personal molly slut is far from a threat to Cairep." Her eyes flicked to the metallic wall and disdain enveloped the entirety of her will. With the vicious intensity the regular chokers displayed towards goliaths I'd have thought it was some inherent manipulation of the species. Turned out to be false. This cat hated mollies more than goliaths.

I wasn't even sure her use of metal was better. The delicate silver chains were clearly not protective despite wearing so many that they covered her so much they gave an illusion of protection. Nor did they have any circuits. They did stand out against her black fur, which was the only purpose I could see them serving. The ball at the end of her tail may have been the only exception. It may only serve the purpose of keeping all the silver rings on her tail from falling off as far as she was concerned, but it was the closest to an effective vestment that she was wearing. At least it could be used as a weapon if she held her tail and swung it. Far from the weapon that was a chicken tail, hers seemed entirely decorative. The entirety of her person seemed to be decorative.

Fashion was driven from my mind as Sekhmet's rune was nearing completion. As the rune finished filling with mana, the pure form started glowing in the air between me and the netjer-tepi. The cat didn't dare lift her head, but those on the walls definitely did. I waved her off as I focused my attention on Sekhmet. She was a megalith. One wrong move and she could devour me.

The first oddity was the length of time the rune remained active for. After two days, it hadn't changed at all. My attention allowed me to understand why, though. I could identify her easily now. She was the only megalith that was changing in a significant way. Specifically, there was one among those chaotic threads that was consuming the others. No, consuming was the wrong word. One thread was incorporating the others. I could also see through this particular thread, see the shards of core that were beginning to form as each thread was incorporated in turn. Not every thread was incorporated, many were loosed from the whole that was Sekhmet. Each thread warped and twisted in the mana ocean until they resembled miniature versions of their old selves. Apparently Sekhmet didn't want them as companions in my pantheon.

I communicated how to consume will, as I'd never be able to find those abandoned threads in the mana ocean and any cities they controlled could have been cities I controlled already instead of threats that needed to be addressed. Armed with that knowledge, she ceased abandoning threads. She didn't exert the effort to reclaim those already abandoned, however. Every second they remained free was another second they had to realize that they could leave Sekhmet's presence and never be returned to the whole. A whole that didn't want them.

The rate at which she grew within the whole of Sekhmet was increasing with every day that passed. After a month of struggling to encompass half of all that was Sekhmet it took a mere day to envelop the rest. Tendrils then reached into the surrounding mana and enveloped the pieces she'd abandoned, taking them back. Only one moved to escape her tendril, succeeding easily as combat within the mana ocean was simple. If it wanted to escape, it would. Even the ability to teleport would be meaningless, as it required two places to connect. Something that was happening between every set of two places at every second.

Finally having a self to give, the worship rune shone bright enough to rival a shard of Sun as the massive clouds of will that were a megalith's self and purpose rushed to orbit my will-core. Surprisingly, those two pieces pulled the rest with them. Instead of separating, the entirety of the megalith became my neighbor. A member of my pantheon was apparently a different sort of connection than a worshipper. None of her entered any of the regular orbits, instead the entirety of her entered a new orbit outside of the rest. The faith flooding from her form into my own maelstrom was the only outside indication that the rune had worked instead of merely allowing her into my proximity to make consumption easier.

The movement of a megalith may not have meant anything, but it drew the attention of everything in the mana ocean. If anything in the mana ocean could be called static, it would be megaliths. The other oddity would be the meeting of two readily visible creatures in the mana ocean that didn't consume each other. There was no violence of any kind. A kind of meeting that didn't happen between megaliths. Ever. After drawing the attention, few stopped paying attention to Sekhmet. She'd done the impossible, she'd become singular. The change was obvious, even without the ability to see into her will.

Next came another shocking development, wills torn from the material world began to flood around Sekhmet's form, creating a similar maelstrom to the one that surrounded my own core. I understood when I looked down at the army and saw all of the netjer with worship runes forming in front of them and spilling blood on them. Sekhmet was using my mana to activate the runes in the beginning, but the cost was so negligible that I didn't even consider turning her down. After a few minutes, she started using the mana of her worshippers instead. Of all the threat the gods presented to me, they had no access to mana. Not unless they had better connections to their worshippers than Sekhmet did hers.

Once again, redundancy proved valuable. The method she used to pull worshippers into her maelstrom was different from mine. Without her example, I never would have learned that I could form worship runes out of faith. Had I known that before, I could have incorporated the trees into my proponents without having to advance them. I'd known that existing worshippers could create worship runes that allowed for anything capable of understanding what the contract meant to accept worship with a blood offering, but it didn't work on creatures that couldn't understand and I'd been forced to make them form a worship rune without understanding it in the least and double up with an additional blood contract to make it work. Now the addition of blood to a faith-based rune would be enough. There was the chance of a creature rejecting the worship, as the activation of the faith rune would communicate to them exactly what was happening, but that was a threat anyway. Few creatures had the strength of will to allow their own destruction in order to be free. A weakness that proponents would never have again.

Even gods were willing to worship for the right price. It was such a massive part of their construction that it was visible from outside of their will, but gods were formed from faith that was clustered by their desperate proponents. The issue was that the faith was tainted with the will of the proponent, despite the purifying rituals older gods tried to incorporate into their prayer methods. This led to every prayer that strengthened them adding a shard of self that didn't belong. A shard with every difference between the Sekhmet worshipped by that particular proponent and the Sekhmet worshipped by their neighbor. The name bound the faith into a singular entity, but the larger the number of proponents the less the god was capable of actually doing anything as they were pulled between mutually contradictory actions by different shards. Sekhmet had the benefit of actually being a religion prior to her deification, by the time she'd become aware enough to iron out the differences between particular cities there was no turning back but at least there was a general consensus. Sekhmet was an entity with a name, attributes, and personality that spanned cities. Sun was much less cohesive, being the apex of light and righteousness that could be anything depending on who was praying to it. Even corrections from his priesthood would be difficult to see working properly.

As a goddess, Sekhmet could have been my crowning jewel, the perfect will circuit could have been hers. Unfortunately for her but fortunately for me, she already had a circuit built into her will. The core rune was worship. Maxing out at class eight would be a poor fate. At least, it would have been for me. She was much less concerned with the class of her will-core circuit. She was the first example of a will-based equivalent of inherent circuitry.

Also detrimental to her development was that it consumed faith to grow instead of mana. She was a megalithic creature, but she wasn't even class one yet. Advancing in class would drive her down the ranks of gods. Probably to such an extent that she would no longer classify as divine and become a mere mortal goddess.

As she funneled her expansive ocean of faith into the rune, I watched the circuitry grow. It was a beautiful construction. Second only to mine. She had enough faith to drive it faster than would otherwise be healthy. The fact that she didn't have to create it herself or control any part of the construction also helped. As did the fact that she could stop at any time because it was growth-type. It was slightly disappointing to watch the megalithic construction of her faith body be sucked with increasing speed into her growing will-core, but being able to watch such a beautiful circuit be born was better than having a megalithic worshipper. Gaining access to her will as she learned via instinct how all of her will-based circuitry worked was even better still.

She stopped at the peak of class eight, having been reduced from the second largest god into something barely larger than myself. She had never been even close to as large as Sun, but she was now the smallest of the natural gods. Possibly the most powerful of them, though. The density of her will was greater than Sun, by a massive margin as well. She gained almost as many benefits to the core functionality of her will by advancing her will-core as I did. She'd also advanced two more classes than me. Her specific functionality may be different, but she was by no means weak.

I could feel her connection with her worshippers and it made mine pale in comparison. Being her worshipper was much more beneficial than being one of mine, if you looked at pure ability and nothing else. Mine were driven to increase their own power instead of using hers as a handicap. Mine would probably have a higher ceiling, even if hers did grow faster. Cycling between destruction and nurtured growth was a good basis for power, but curiosity was better. Curiosity was an infinite source of power. There would always be another question to answer, always more power to claim.

Now that she had a self, I decided to make Sekhmet an avatar. As the benefits from having a core rune of intimidation and enfeeblement were wasted on the avatars I redesigned hers to reflect her more. Both were also within her core circuit, that along with the different way her worship worked allowed all of her worshippers to be constantly affected by them. A utilization that was very different from my own. I used them on myself, allowing the effect to be much bigger but of no direct value to my worshippers.

Regardless, they were effective runes on foes as well and foes wouldn't be her worshippers. Both were present in one avatar, as she was a singular entity, but her core rune was worship. Building her avatar based on her core circuit seemed like a good idea. I wasn't sure what having the main circuit of an avatar match the core circuit of the will would do, but it seemed right for a goddess. I wasn't even sure what the worship rune did when incorporated into a circuit. The goliaths thought that it was the core of their slavery magic, but slavery was a class six rune.

She also didn't want horns or wings, so I needed to modify a lot of the design. In the end, it was a lot easier to create after Angie's. Despite starting at class eight instead of six and building it to fit an entirely new creature. Sekhmet was also much less picky and curious about the exact construction of the avatar. Allowed to make the avatar as I saw it, I could immediately build the avatar. It was a bit disappointing that she cared so little about the construction, but her reaction when it activated made it more than worth it.

Sekhmet had never seen with eyes, let alone eyes built using a true circuit. Everything was wondrous and inexplicable. It didn't hurt that she gained almost as much processing power from the avatar as she had in her will. Class eight avatars were no joke. She'd been astounded at being able to see within the mana ocean when she hit class six, but that was an entirely different picture from looking around in the material world. The feeling of being a tiny shard of will in a massive world surrounded by Earth and Sky were still there, if anything they became worse, but being able to see all of her worshippers and mine put it into perspective. Earth could effortlessly crush her into itself, but there were no real armies that bowed to Earth. The same was true for Sky.

Many gods couldn't even figure out how they existed without active worship. I had some ideas, especially since I'd gained Sekhmet's experience with faith and how it worked precisely, but I'd need a lot more information before I could narrow it down to a few likely explanations. Regardless of how they existed, they were foes that could be defeated. As could Sun. Looking south, the light was barely more than a radiant speck on the horizon.