CHAPTER SEVEN
GODS UNITE!
ONE might be asking, where are the rest of the gods at this moment in time? While Elias is busy burning people, and Andy and Menka are slowly making their way to Elias’ volcano, what are the rest of the gods doing? Shouldn’t they be banding together to stop Elias together, saving themselves from potential embarrassment if someone – say, two rogue-gods and a human – stopped the crisis before they could? That’s what, in all logical sense, they should be doing. So why weren’t they? What was stopping them?
The Holy God of Gods slammed his hands on his elevated table, as he glared across the large hall at all of its loud, argumentative and highly-opinionated occupants. “ALL OF YOU! BE QUIET!”
Organization was the real enemy here. Meetings, debates, juries, councils, trials, too. But organization – mostly organization.
None of the gods listened to his plea for silence. Expressly not the Major Gods, seated around their circular table in the middle of the hall; they were too busy yelling at each other and throwing things to listen. But the Minor Gods didn’t give a damn, either: screaming over top of each other in an effort to be heard amongst the chaos and so as to not be part of the minority.
The Holy God of Gods moaned and covered his forehead with his palm. It was supposed to be a council, a meeting for all of the gods (at least the semi-important ones) to get together and discuss issues. Keywords: discuss issues. Not: fight and create more issues. Right now it was looking less like a meeting and more like an apocalypse sealed in a large hall.
The topic of the meeting was Elias. But that wasn’t a surprise. Elias had been the subject of every single council for the last three years. If the other gods actually knew how to cooperate and get along, Elias would be locked up in the Magical God Prisons (MGP, for short) by now and this whole crisis would be over before any of the humans would even notice there was a drought. Instead, they had been having the same argument for three years. Three years.
Once upon a time – mind you, this was when there were a lot less gods – they didn’t need councils or meetings to decide how and when to do things. If a god had an issue with another god, they found a nice abandoned patch of dirt and sorted it out, without any need for arguing about the ‘how’, ‘when’ and ‘why’.
If Elias had flipped-out and decided that he was going to destroy the world back then, all it would have taken was for the interested gods – i.e., the ones who would prefer that the world didn’t melt and bubble over with lava to group together, find him and lock him up; or, as they did it back in those days, cursed him a few times and left a nasty red-mark on his behind.
These weren't the old days, though.
First, they had to have a meeting to determine whether or not Elias should be stopped, and then get a majority vote. That one managed to pass – but only just. There were a few Major – and even more Minor – Gods that simply didn’t give a hoot whether the world boiled-over or not, as they said ‘it wouldn’t affect them anyway’.
For example, the God of Rocks was carefully carving a small granite figurine, only stopping to tell the other gods to stop throwing things, as it was distracting him. Then there were the more destructive gods who either supported Elias in his quest or thought he – and the idea of burning the world – was hilarious, so they supported him anyway. The God of the Sun was leaning back in his seat and repeating the phrase ‘laugh out loud’, while throwing a few miniature-suns at some of the supreme anti-Elias activists and claiming that not only did he come up with this phrase (laugh out loud), but that one day – and ‘mark his words’ – all the mortals would be using it.
Then, after the vote was passed, they had to decide on the ‘how’ and ‘when’. For those who didn’t support Elias, their biggest fights were about how exactly to punish him – tie him to a rock and chuck him in the sea? Lock him in the MGP? And when to do this punishing – now or later, after we’ve finished meditating. This was the biggest opportunity for the gods who voted 'no' to wreak havoc and slow down the rest of the gods' decision-making progress... and they definitely didn’t squander it.
“AH!” the Holy God of Gods roared at them all to shut it. He was the leader, as per his name, but thanks to the invention of – ughhhhh – freedom of speech, he didn’t get much say in anything anymore. “Can we have some respect and peace and quiet, please? Speak one at a time?” No response. “Don’t make me use my god-voice!”
They were still paying him no attention, expressly the Goddess of Nature – who had just jumped across the table and tackled the God of the Sun, trying to make vines grow through him and effectively impale him.
“Come on!” he yelled and stood up, preparing to separate them with whatever divine-force necessary – but Mikey, the God of Romance, beat him to it: choosing to impale them both with his Spear of Soulmates. They stopped fighting as soon as he pulled the spear out – instead looking at each other in a new light, a shimmer in their eyes.
However, where one fight ended, another began – the Goddess of Water and the Goddess of Lightning were merely throwing insults and small-objects at each other. But now it had escalated to a real fight, as the Goddess of Water summoned a massive wave from nowhere and tried to drown her in it.
“SHUT UP!!” Finally, that got their attention. It also made most of the less-powerful Minor Gods’ ears bleed, but who gives – some sacrifices have to be made. Plus, they would heal. “Okay, all of you. Quiet. I plan on actually getting somewhere with the 'Elias-crisis', today. We will all talk with resp--”
“Laugh out loud,” proclaimed the God of the Sun, who now had the Goddess of Nature snuggling in his arms. “Like that’s ever gonna happen.” The goddess in his arms nodded along, more interested in examining the muscles on his chest than anything else.
“Tell her--” The Goddess of Lightning pointed at the Goddess of Water, putting one hand on her hip. “--To stop trying to water me, and I might listen.”
“You just need to cool down!” the Goddess of Water shot back, while summoning orbs of water to float above her hands.
“You are the one who needs to be enlightened to my way of thinking!” Lightning started to surge into her hands, electrical discharge flying everywhere.
“I’ve got a headache,” declared Mikey, the God of Romance. “So if you two don’t quit it, I’ll use my spear on you two, next.”
That was enough to make the two goddesses unsummon their water and lightning and sit down.
“Thank you, Mikey. Now, any other complaints?” One of the Minor Gods – the Holy God of Gods thought it might have been the God of Hydrophobia – raised his hand. However, a spear wave from Mikey was all it took to lower it. “No, let him speak," he said. "What is your name again? Jay? Joel?”
“Joel is that guy.” The God of Hydrophobia pointed to another Minor God beside him. “I’m Jon.”
“Well, Jon, what were you gonna say?”
“Why don’t we just capture Elias and have the argument on what to do with him once we have him?”
“Because, idiot,” said the Goddess of Lightning, “we haven’t decided how to catch him.” She stood up and pointed to herself. “I’m in favour of sneaking up on him and blasting him with so much lightning that he passes out.”
“Drown him!” exclaimed the Goddess of Water.
“Why does the world even matter to us in the first place? Laugh out loud. It’s not like we will die.” The God of the Sun gently stroked the Goddess of Nature’s green hair. “Say, how is Elias getting enough power to overheat the world anyway?”
“He has one of the swords,” said the God of Rocks, adding his input for the first time this session. He didn’t look up as he spoke, however, but simply continued to make his figurine.
“Which swords?” asked the God of the Sun, “I mean, laugh out loud, there are a lot of magical and powerful swords in existence. What are their names?”
“They don’t have names. They are just called ‘the swords’ – not to be foreboding, but just because no one has bothered to name them. They are both called ‘the sword’ and when you want to be specific, you specify which sword is the one that you aren’t talking about.”
“So he has ‘the sword’. Laugh out loud.”
“Correct.”
“Laugh out loud. And which one is that?”
“The one that isn’t rusted and doesn’t talk.”
“Ah, that sword. Laugh out loud, that would amp-up his god-powers. Cool.” He looked up at the Holy God of Gods, who frowned at him. “Can I place dibs on having the sword next, after Elias destroys the world?”
“No, that sword needs to be destroyed.”
“Chuck it in the ocean!” the Goddess of Water hooted.
The Goddess of Lightning snorted at her. “Fry it to pieces!”
“DROWN!”
“FRY!”
And the Holy God of Gods watched, huffing an annoyed sigh, as the two goddesses started fighting and throwing things again. And the God of Romance had to, yet again, get out his spear.
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