In The Frozen Wastes

I allowed the blizzard to rage, as I extended an ethereal tendril of mental power. This was similar to how I used telekinesis, extending out tendrils of my consciousness to grab and hold things beyond the reach of my hands, but I didn't use it to grab items. Instead, I allowed my tendrils to penetrate the skulls of the frost giants who surrounded me. They audibly groaned, and my impossibly sharp hearing allowed me to hear the sounds even over the roaring blizzard.

I could have opted to simply tether our minds together without this particular form of doing so but I didn't feel like doing that. I felt like taking time and having fun. The giants that surrounded me continued to struggle to their feet and the nosiness of their motions mildly annoyed me and so I decided to have my own fun with it. I quietly heaped on my powers related to exhaustion to my aura and as a consequence, the area around me began to greedily sap the energies of the giants.

The air almost visibly seemed to thicken around me as a result of my power. It took on a sickly yellow tint, and I both heard and felt the giants struggle to adapt to it. I heard their hearts begin to beat faster, as each and every action they took was suddenly far harder for them to do. I also heard them fall to their hands again, only barely able to keep from unintentionally prostrating themselves before me. Their pride was enough to power them through this new obstacle, but only barely.

"There there... You don't need to stand. After all you're in the presence of the one you called out too." I muttered cryptically, both audibly speaking and mentally transmitting my words into their minds. I didn't feel like allowing them to stand before me. This would further cement the reality of my powers in their minds.

"Ugh..." One of them groaned, still trying to stand in my presence. I chuckled, physically, at the act. It wasn't an act of defiance or anything, but even a shallow reading of the giant's mind told me that the giant in front of me wanted to prove his power to his peers and to me.

He was filled with determination to not let my powers control him. It wasn't at all a bad attitude to have, even though it wasn't particularly appealing to me. I allowed him to struggle for a minute longer, before utilizing one of my newer abilities on him.

I targeted him by shifting my focus from nothing in particular to him specifically and then launched a single "Mind-blast". I felt the psychic pulse explode out of my mind and lance towards the giant. Almost the same instant I launched it, the invisible wave of energy seared into his mind, and I heard a single, agonized, and muffled shout over the roaring winds that surrounded me. An instant later I heard a soft thud echo across the icy glacier.

It was at this point that I turned my attention to the giants fully. I did this and then immediately proceeded to aid the giants by slowly dulling the blizzard's intensity just enough so that the giants could see through the ice and snow that swirled around me and peer at my ethereal form. It took them a moment to search for the cause of their discomfort, but they found me after scanning the area I was in for a few moments. I heard a few of them utter shocked gasps when they finally saw me. I didn't blame them for being surprised.

"Althos..." One of them muttered, struggling to speak due to the exhaustion I had struck her with. I could hear her struggle to get the words out. They couldn't see me as a physical being, instead only being able to see me as a shimmering being made of mental light, but I had a smile on my face as I watched their discomfort and felt their exhaustion. I once again found myself admiring the potent powers of the sin of sloth.

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In the hours that had passed since I gained power over sloth I had given it a lot of thought. It was, in all honesty, one of my favorite additions to my incredible treasure-trove of powers.

Sloth gave me a considerable array of powers. With it, I could sap people of energy, put them to bed, or even make them begin to abandon their responsibilities. And it connected to my other powers brilliantly.

If I wanted to use it I could cause cities to begin to fall apart, or turn sleepy hamlets into sleeping hamlets. If I wanted to mix this with my other powers I could use this to cause disease to run rampant by targeting those tasked with combatting diseases or otherwise ensure widespread calamity by preventing people from growing crops needed to survive a coming winter. Inversely I could use this power beneficially to ease acts of heroism by making villains easier to identify and subdue or even stop evil-doers from doing evil in the first place. I just needed to be creative in how I used it.

There was a part of me, a malicious and hateful part that was defined by my enjoyment of violence, pain, and evil, that wanted to target entire cities with the powers this granted me, but I knew better than to do that unless I was going after enemies or had a real reason to do so. I needed to work on controlling my darker impulses and not mindlessly or maliciously acting evilly. At least not on Torus.

If I wanted to do that freely I knew I should have selected a world wherein I would be defined and remembered as a god of evil and terror. Like Salifinos. By changing how I acted on different worlds I could more easily allow for the creation of differently behaving cults and thus more efficiently gather the followers I needed to acquire a vaster array of powers.

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"Althos... Please, tell us, your humble worshippers..." Another giant began, also struggling to speak as a result of the extreme potency of my powers related to exhaustion. I knew what he wanted to say, thanks to my ability to perform shallow mind-readings. He wanted to know why I was here, and what, if anything I wanted.

I quietly eased the potency of my auric power, slowing down the rate at which it sapped energy. And then a second later I transmitted some energy into the giants, using my powers over healing energy as well as the mental connection I had established with each of them. This allowed the giants to relax a little bit, and though it took some of them longer than others, a few moments after I performed this small act of mercy they all breathed a bit easier. And that only made my smile grow wider. For them to struggle to breathe as a result of my power was a sign of how incredibly potent it was.

"I can almost admire your tenacity. I suppose I should acknowledge you." I declared, once again both speaking and transmitting my words into their mind. I did this because it was fun, but I also knew that it added an otherworldly effect to my actions, which was perfect for conveying to them the true and godly nature of my prowess. I quietly activated my typical religious abilities, and shrouded myself in my awe-inspiring mist.

They were quickly surrounded by the mist, and as they began to breathe it in I began to feel their surprise and confusion become something else. I felt their confusion and shock slowly begin to transform into awe and fascination. I watched as their faces slacked and their minds became a bit hazier. It wasn't a bad look for the band of giants.

"I am indeed he who you called. I am here and I am also elsewhere repairing the damages caused by Morehammer." I explained to them. This was only sort of a lie. I chose this moment to begin to move my powers throughout the rest of the pole, and its sister pole, and use my world-changing powers over ice and snow to repair the damage caused by the momentarily global warming that accompanied the volcanic eruptions I had caused earlier.

I targeted wide swaths of other glaciers, and other solid bodies of ice, and began to heal them. Seconds passed as the giants absorbed my words, and as they began to feel reverent awe and utter humility as they began to understand just how truly and maddeningly wide my scope of powers were. They had only known me as a god of freedom and healing, and now they were learning that I possessed the power to heal even environments.

"Althos..." One of them whispered, saying my name with the awe someone might say the name of a fabled hero from an epic myth. He was one of the taller giants, but far from the tallest in the group. He was, unsurprisingly, the son of the chief. Though he couldn't tell I was looking at him, studying him for a moment.

He was on his knees. He wore an enormous outfit made from tanned walrus skin and on the floor beside him there was a simple axe made of ice. It was a lovely weapon, both despite and partially because of its simplicity. I studied him for a second, curiously memorizing every detail of his face before I returned my attention to the ice sculpture I was making.

I reached out and mentally touched the strange object with a mental tendril. I touched it and envisioned the ice taking on a more definite shape, one that was inspired by the giant I had momentarily studied. The ice itself bent itself to my will, cracking and shattering in some places and reshaping itself altogether in others to mimic the edges of the face of the giant.

I casually watched the ice as it did this and smiled, ethereally, as it did so. I also further dulled the blizzard and heard the giants begin to slowly work to rise to their feet, feeling some of their eyes on me and the tiny object in front of me.

I kept my eyes glued to the sculpture and willed two depressions in the ice to come into existence to mimic eyesockets. The ice crashed in on itself where I wanted to create the illusion of eyes, and I chuckled at this. I then turned my attention to the limbs of the piece of art and audibly sighed. I would have done more to transform the sculpture, but it was at this point that my detection-based powers allowed me to notice something unusual: a strange figure approaching the giants and therefore my ethereal form.

On the planet of Torus, and on the other planets in this solar system, my mini and not-so-mini-maps were potent powers that allowed me to perpetually detect the locations of all manner of living and undead beings. One figure of considerable power, at least relative to the frost giants in front of me, had just taken off from another, relatively closeby, glacier and was heading in the direction of the frost giants. A powerful adult ice-dragon named Glacial. The creature wasn't on Ygaynth's level, but as an adult dragon it was still an incredible force of nature.

It was flying in my direction at an impressive speed and I could detect, thanks to a few of my other abilities, that it hated frost giants. At this rate it would arrive in less than five minutes, even across this beautiful and frozen tundra-like land and ocean scape. It would fly over the open and freezing ocean on its way to where these giants were physically located.

Off in the incredible distance I could hear the beating of its enormous wings, and I could smell the scent of its skin, covered in old blood and fur from messily devoured meals of seals.

"Hmm... How curious." I muttered, audibly. I could sense its intent. It intended to eat the giants located here, ignorantly opting to act during a time when it believed that the giants would be panicked and weakened by what it thought would be the extremely imminent vanishing of their home. The fact that they wouldn't be would cause it to be surprised. Internally I wondered what to do.

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"Would this be a good time to acquire a new draconic worshiper?" I mused internally. I heard an excited voice within my mind reply to me.

"Of course! There is never a bad time to acquire draconic worshipers." Huffed the voice. It was the voice of the draconic domain, which led to me being rather unsurprised that that was its opinion. The draconic domain was the only lifeform based domain that was a domain, and it concerned all matters related to dragons and their lesser relatives and descendants. A moment after the draconic domain spoke another domain, this time a subdomain, spoke up.

"Dragons are excellent... For transformation into undead monstrosities." The voice said, before beginning to giggle. This was the voice of the subdomain of necromancy and her words made me wonder, not for the first time, about how absurdly powerful an undead dragon would likely be.

"Ice dragons are... They are truly brutal creatures. If you make this one a worshiper of yours that'd go a long way towards cementing your influence as a god of ice and as a god of this part of the world." The faith domain told me, almost whispering in my ear a plot to further my regional influence. Dragons as a whole were resistant to my worship, and I only had a few draconic worshipers of any sort. I wasn't too proud to admit that that frustrated me.

"Ice dragons represent the closest a mortal being can ever get to becoming one with nature. They have the most primal connection to the elements and to the savagery of my... well my nature. Gaining ice dragon worshipers might indeed enable you to further your influence over me and other domains and subdomains." The domain of nature explained, causing my interest to spike up considerably. Those were the words that gave me my newest little goal: gain the worship of Glacial. As he approached I felt my excitement spike up. I was ready to make him mine.