A Solitary God In A Dark Multiverse

As I lowered myself to the ground, I did my best to discover what I could about what lived in this city. It took me just about a minute to reach the surface, and during that time I was able to discover a fair deal about the non-humanoid inhabitants of Aronms.

One of the first things I noticed was that the sorts of animals the people of the city kept as pets or had evidently domesticated were different from the sorts of animals humans kept as pets or domesticated. I wasn"t surprised by this, but the sorts of animals that were domesticated underground were incredibly different from the ones that were domesticated on the surface.

"Tremorsense" allowed me to detect a number of animals throughout Aronms, but another useful tool in my a.r.s.enal was my eyes. I could detect animals with multiple usages, like worms, and see a handful of animals with one main usage, like bats.

"Tremorsense" informed me of what appeared to be farms of worms, where the little things were raised in staggering numbers. But small, ma.s.s-raised worms weren"t the only worms in the city.

I could also detect a few hundred worms that were considerably larger, larger than the dark elves who comprised the primary inhabitants of the city. Many of these larger worms tunneled underneath the city, perhaps expanding the city or preparing to move it somehow. Some of them though were ridden by dark-elven riders and patrolled the city which implied that the dark-elves had a way to tame and control these creatures.

Other creatures seemed to serve singular purposes. As I looked out and visually explored the city I could see and even hear tremendous bats. The bats I could see were being ridden by various dark-elves, and often went into or came from other tunnels that led in and out of the city. There were hundreds of them, and they all seemed to serve a single duty: high-speed, high-mobility transportation.

I studied them and studied the worm-farms that were the stomping grounds of low-skilled dark-elven laborers, aided by creatures of various species clad in chains and other shackles. Those creatures had dour, helpless looks on their faces. When I first noticed them a single word flashed into my mind, in big bold letters. "Slaves".

It was a word I didn"t like. A word that made me feel a flash of anger, more powerful than any I had felt before. At that moment a familiar voice crept into my mind.

[The reason you don"t like the word "slave" is that that word symbolizes the ultimate loss of freedom. Slavery is the practice of owning another person. It is a system that is one of the cruelest aspects of dark, law-abiding societies. You are a chaotic G.o.d, you embody the power of freedom and of choice, which is anathema to slavery.] The domain explained, informing me about slavery and providing a target for me to aim my anger at.

I took a deep breath and narrowed my anger. I managed to get it under control, after a few seconds of feeling it well up within me. It was difficult though, and I felt a strong part of me want to rail against slavery and those who owned slaves. I only managed to restrain myself because I gave it serious thought.

I took a few seconds to consider a.s.saulting a city that I didn"t know, had no allies in, and at the moment didn"t have the resources or the personal power to control. It didn"t take me long to realize that that was a dumb plan. That didn"t mean I couldn"t do anything though, indeed as a G.o.d there was much I still had the power to do.

I again closed my eyes. When my familiar map showed itself to me, I quickly went to work on the filters, searching for a way to target all of the enslaved people in the city. It took me a few moments, but I was pleased to find a way to select creatures based on what the system called their "occupation". I wasn"t pleased to find that the system apparently considered being a slave an occupation, but for the time being I focused on the positive.

I instantly targeted each of the creatures that the system hadn"t filtered out, and was somewhat distressed and also unsurprised to see that the practice of slavery wasn"t limited to Aronms. This only served to anger me more, but I effortlessly targeted the several thousand enslaved people I was able to identify, here and in other settlements throughout the land beneath Puerto Rico.

I did two things at once. I activated my "Healing burst" power, and I also began to transmit a mental message to the enslaved inhabitants of the city and of the settlements throughout the subterranean land I found myself in.

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Throughout the region underneath the surface of the island of Puerto Rico there were several settlements. These settlements were populated by a number of creatures, many of which were incredibly hostile to life from the surface. Dark-elves and reptilefolk were among the most aggressively hostile towards surface life, and had captured or otherwise acquired the most slaves.

Both of these civilizations had large settlements that were built primarily on slave-labor. In both cases, the settlements they maintained ran largely on such actively immoral labor-conditions. This was something Althos was ignorant of.

That said, the young G.o.d wasn"t ignorant of the powerful feelings that surged into him when he activated his potent restorative power and pumped thousands of enslaved individuals with magnificently powerful healing energy.

Althos shivered as the sensations of those he healed, especially those who had lost limbs or were suffering from previously incurable diseases reached him and seeped into him. This happened while the curious deity was just landing on the surface of the city of Aronms.

One of the results of this was that he instantly gained mastery over numerous virulent diseases and some that were troubling but not-so-virulent. He felt power over these illnesses infuse him, and make him grateful for the fact that he now possessed powers over diseases. This marked the first moment that the young G.o.d actually felt grateful for his ability to infect people with diseases.

His mind was elsewhere, even as he received notification after notification about his powers over disease. He was still crafting a message by which he could introduce himself to the people he had just healed.

It didn"t take him long to craft something he wound up liking, and it was even something that incorporated his new powers over disease. The message he ended up transmitting was a simple one.

"h.e.l.lo. My name is Althos, and I am a G.o.d. I have come to liberate you and to change the subterranean land in which you dwell. Even now I am working to secure your liberation. Until I complete the work set before me, please stay safe, and stay healthy." He told them, his mental voice filled with power. His message wasn"t over yet.

"I shall do what I can to make the remainder of your enslavement less painful. The moment of restoration I gave you all was just the beginning of that. I can heal, and I can sicken just as well. Your masters shall suffer for what they have done to you, and you shall see their suffering with your own eyes." The deity told them, and in doing so gained the admiration of many hundreds of the people he had just potently healed.

As Althos felt their feelings surge into himself, he smiled. He sensed the hope that his undeniable power had rekindled in some, and lit for the first time in others. And this served to again enrage the G.o.d. It served to give him additional reasons to lash out against the enslavers who profited off of this cruel system of dehumanization and abuse.

For one of the first times in his life, the young G.o.d felt a cold hatred that was both righteous and hate-filled. He felt it well up deep within himself and threaten to spill over and cause him to act recklessly. The G.o.d sighed, willed away his physical form, and began to explore the city on foot while doing his best to soothe the hate he felt in his heart, a simmering hate that tempted him to behave viciously and cruelly.

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"Master, couldn"t you destroy this city?" Asked Sombra, the praereptor demon who inhabited my shadow and was now traveling beside me incorporeally. I chuckled at the demon.

"Honestly? Probably. Actually..." I replied to Sombra less than certainly at first. But I changed my tune when I considered the powers I already had. I could easily use my dominion over stone, soil, and dirt crush this city if I wanted too. So I revised my response to Sombra.

"I could destroy this city. I could bring the cavern"s ceiling down on the cavern itself and crush every living thing here." I said, almost tempted by the idea before I cooly reminded myself that that meant crushing both non-slave-owning individuals and those who were themselves, enslaved. Sombra laughed delightedly at what I said.

"Master, you should do it!" The demon said, egging me on. I could hear the little monster"s delight at the idea of watching every corporeal creature in this part of the land underneath Puerto Rico perishing in an instant.

For a second I considered the demon"s words. The more I thought about crushing this place, the more I thought about how it"d feel being crushed underneath tons of rocks and dirt. It struck me as a particularly brutal way to die. It took a second of concentrating, but eventually, I shook off the thoughts that tried to fill up my mind about how that sort of death would operate.

"No. I won"t. It won"t help me achieve my goals." I told the demon, annoyed at it. I found myself ethereally exploring the streets of this city, and mostly ignoring the largely pedestrian happenings of the city"s dark-elven inhabitants.

The area I found myself in was a single long road that stretched on for several hundred meters. It was populated by dark elves who hadn"t been paying attention to the wall I had stealthily slid down on my way to the city"s surface.

They were going about their own business, chatting with each other about an a.s.sortment of topics. As I invisibly traveled closer and closer to the Morthonian mansion, I heard gossip about a number of different things. Things like the goings-on at the arena, the existence of something called an "Asylum" and other bits of gossip I stored away in my mind.

After a few moments of listening to them, I opted to come up with a real plan. I did so by starting off with a strategy that had worked so far: asking my friends for help. "So what happens if I decide to abolish slavery in this city?" I asked them, knowing that their considerable intellect would give me an answer. And it did.

"With no plan in place to ensure that there is a labor force in this city? Panic. And at best a splintering of the city. At worst... civil war between factions who listen to you and factions who don"t. And that"s a.s.suming you do this correctly and establish alliances with major dark elven factions throughout the city." Explained the system, quickly replying to me. It wasn"t the only one to reply either.

"Althos, it"s good that you recognize the injustice of this but you can"t try to change it on a purely emotional level without inviting chaos. You need to come up with a plan to ensure that not only are slaves freed, but also that the city can survive once slavery is abolished. And you have the power to do that. There"s an obvious solution to a labor shortage. Just think about it." The domain of knowledge told me, lecturing me briefly and encouraging me to think about my powers.

It didn"t take much more than a second to realize what the domain was suggesting. Necromancy. And that realization brought a smile to my face.