A Solitary God In A Dark Multiverse

Rather than answer the question posed to me by a stranger whose identity I didn't know, I opted to try a different route. I looked Troik in the face and asked him and the entity controlling him a simple question.

"I've already introduced myself. Why don't you introduce yourself? And maybe after that, we'll discuss my act of kindness." I told the stranger, curious to learn his identity.

The goblin laughed. I had heard the goblin laugh before and this was peal of laughter was nothing like its initial outbursts. This laugh was deep and quiet. There was a bit of malice and sadism in it as if the goblin wanted to see blood. Not like the childlike sounds Troik had made earlier.

I quietly grabbed my staff and placed the thing across my legs. I wanted to be ready in case the thing using the goblin tried to attack me. The goblin laughed a moment longer, and then abruptly stopped. He looked at me and began to speak once more.

"I am no one of importance. Just a voice within this forest." The thing told me. I had a suspicion that it was lying, and I couldn't help but have a physical reaction to such a skepticism inducing statement. My eyes narrowed almost subconsciously at the thing, and my physical reaction its lies drew another peal of laughter from the thing.

I wasn't about to give up on extracting the truth from the thing. I steeled myself for whatever may come next and began to speak once more.

"I'd rather not explain my motivations to a stranger. If you are not honest enough to reveal your identity to me, why should I explain my actions to you?" I asked, steel audible in my voice. There was a flash of angry fire in the goblin's mutated eyes, but that fire was quickly put out and replaced with otherworldly calmness.

"That's... fair I suppose." The goblin grumbled. I grinned at the thing, happy to have annoyed it.

"That aside, I will not tolerate any interference. I have a good thing going here and I won't let you get in the way of that, especially if you won't even tell me why you helped a strange goblin you had never met before. I won't let a random good samaritan interfere with my schemes." The goblin told me.

He took his gaze away from me for a second and suddenly turned to look deeper into the woods. A second eerie howling could be heard coming from the direction the goblin looked in.

"Althos, you'll pay for meddling in things you don't understand. If you survive this then know not to stick around. If I see you again you'll pay for it." The goblin told me, before quickly leaping to his feet and hurling himself backward in the direction of the howling. The goblin ran away from me, even as the howling steadily got louder and closer.

The version of my tremorsense powered minimap that was visible even when my eyes were open began to change. It began to vibrate, and I noticed three big red squares began to approach me from a distance. Curiously I sent a mental message to the system, as I quickly stood up and held my staff out in front of me, defensively.

"I don't want to close my eyes and see that big version of the minimap. Can you or the voice of tremorsense just tell me what's going on?" I asked my first constant companion.

While doing this I debated what to do about Troik fleeing, probably unwillingly, in the direction of his peers. A part of me contemplated chasing after the goblin, but I quickly quashed that idea. I knew better than to rush forward recklessly and tempered my desire to rescue my companion. This was made easier for me to do since I believed that I could heal him remotely if it came down to it.

As I told myself I'd be able to help my friend if I needed too I received a handy update from tremorsense.

[Tremorsense update:

Three coyotes have been charmed and magically compelled to attack you by a mysterious figure with a respectable degree of control over two formidable schools of magic: necromancy and illusion. The figure itself doesn't appear to be physically present within the tremorsense range.

Coyotes are vermin, and thus magic you use on them is empowered by the influence you have over the vermin subdomain. You can magically free them from magical manipulation with spells you already have unlocked.]

I smiled after I read that update, an instant before it vanished from my mind's eye. The coyotes had just dashed past Troik according to the minimap and were edging closer to me.

It took the coyotes a few more moments to reach me, as the things had been somewhat closeby when they were magically commanded to become my temporary foes. Even without the benefits bestowed upon me by tremorsense, I would have been able to detect the canine vermin in three distinct ways.

The first way was the first way they made themselves known to anyone: they emitted loud, intimidating howls. The sounds they made traveled fast and far, giving me advance notice of their relative closeness.

The second way was their movement. I was in a part of the forest where straight ahead of me, the direction that Troik had fled in, quickly became shrouded in dense undergrowth. Their movement disturbed this undergrowth and before I could see them I could see how the forest reacted to them.

The third way was their smell. There was a gentle breeze coming at me from their direction and on it, the scent of dirty fur mixed with carrion was delivered to my nose. The pungent scent was something I was sure to not forget anytime soon.

When the coyotes came close enough that I could see them, it took me but a single glance to feel pity for these things. The creatures were a trio of lean, white-furred canines who moved in dispassionate unison. Their eyes were white and milky like the things had somehow been robbed of their sight.

I pointed my staff at them and immediately cast "Cure Condition" on all three of them in the blink of an eye. The spells didn't manifest externally in any noticeable way but thankfully that didn't mean they didn't work.

The spells struck the canines and immediately freed them from the magical conditioning they were under. Color returned to their eyes, and in a second all three of the creatures looked at each other and then myself in confusion.

"You were... influenced, by a bad and dangerous creature to attack me. You are free now." I told the things, sensing a shift in the pronunciation of my words that wasn't intentional but was almost certainly due to the influence of omniglot on me. The canines looked at me and then their body language shifted.

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Before my very eyes, something in the trio of coyotes changed. Their body languages shifted from ones of confusion and fear, to hope and confidence in the span of a few heartbeats. The creatures stood up fearlessly and joyfully and as I looked at each of them their eyes displayed a level of intelligence beyond what my instincts told me coyotes should have been able to.

"Curious..." I muttered as I looked at them. They were also very calm in my presence, and I wondered if the cause for their calmness was because they felt safe next to me or if my influence over the vermin subdomain was subtly affecting them. I walked closer to them, taking a few steps to close the distance and they didn't seem to react negatively. Instead, they just kept staring at me.

I decided to be brave and walk over to the trio. When I did they reacted, but not with fear. The trio began to make noises aimed at me, their bright and colorful eyes locked on my approaching form as they made the strange and energetic noises that escaped their muzzles.

The best way I could describe the sounds they made is as a group they were yipping at me. It was an energetic flurry of noises that I could instinctually tell meant the trio was welcoming me as a friend. When I was actually beside one of them, something which took me a few seconds of walking, I placed one of my hands on its head, patting the soft fur of the creature's head.

All three creatures bounded up to me once I was close enough to reach out and pet one of them. I sighed and smiled at the things.

For a moment I considered using one of the legendary spells I had, beast bond, to try and converse with the creatures I had just freed from some sort of magical control but didn't quite feel comfortable doing that to them because I wasn't sure how similar that'd be to the sort of magic that I had just liberated the trio from. Instead I decided to just talk to the coyotes.

"Hey can you guys understand me?" I asked, curious as to if the things knew what I was saying. To me my words sounded relatively normal but I suspected that that might have been the system faciliating my mind's understanding of my words to match their intention. I was unsurprised when the creatures nodded at me.

I considered what to do next for a second. And then I knew I should go and retrieve Troik. I didn't want the little goblin to get hurt, and now that I was out of danger and that these creatures were out of danger, it was time I went and secured the safety of the little goblin. I nodded and began to speak to the coyotes once more.

"Alright, good. Do you want me to help me free someone from magical control, like how I freed you?" I asked the trio of creatures. They looked at each other and made a number of sounds. And it was at this point that the strange effects of omnilingualism began to truly kick in. A few seconds after they began to speak I began to understand them, even without using magic.

"Do we want to help?" One of them asked. He was right in front of me, and he was the one coyote I wasn't petting. As I spoke to them I began to scratch the head of the other coyote. There was one coyote on each side of me and the one that had just spoken who was in front of me. They looked similar enough that I suspected they might have been siblings.

One of the ones who was being gently petted by me spoke up. "Of course we do! If it wasn't for this kindly... what did the thing say he was again?" The coyote said, supporting my decision to go and help my friend before its mind began to wander and it began to try and recall what I was.

I was confused for a second as I never told them my name. "Well the person never said what he was, but the message in our heads said the 'god of vermin'. It said he was our god!" One of the coyotes whispered, my mind translating its message by speaking those words into my mind quietly rather than loudly.

This was both illuminating and confusing. It explained why the coyotes reacted to me so well and so energetically, but it left me with a number of questions. Fortunately, at that moment the system itself interrupted my slow descent into confusion with some context that made things a bit clearer.

[We can see that you are confused. That makes sense because we didn't think that this was how your first day was going to go. All living things in this universe have access to a system of their own. Or rather... they can get alerts and notifications from us like you can but theirs are less frequent and they have less noticeable abilities than you do. There are no beings like you left in existence.

Althos, since you were liberating creatures who were classified as members of one of your domains or subdomains the coyote's own system informed them of your true identity. This, coupled with your decision to immediately free them from the "charmed" condition has made them view you highly favorably.] The system told me, explaining much of what I was confused about.

"We should help! Didn't we want help when we were... charmed? If it was happening to us, we'd want help. I wanted help. Now I have a chance to help another person." The other coyote I was petting said, eager to go and help.

This argument made the initially hesitant coyote pause. He stopped and considered the remarks. And then he nodded, which even though I had seen them nod before still looked oddly humanlike for a canine creature.

"Yes. You're right, we should help." The coyote said, its mind seemingly changed when its friend indirectly spoke of sympathy and compassion. The trio turned to me and looked ready to go. I smiled at them and then closed my eyes so that I could gain a bead on Troik's location and the distance he had gained between us while I was freeing and then interacting with the coyotes.

A few moments later I was armed with the knowledge I needed and leading the coyotes as we took off towards Troik. The little goblin was venturing deeper and deeper into the forest, in the general direction of what I assumed were his fellow tribespeople.

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The coyotes and I were dashing through the woods. We were stomping through the undergrowth and past countless rows of eerie trees. Our surroundings were also getting darker, even though the sun should now have been approaching its peak in the sky past the forest's canopy. The trees were packed closer and closer together as if they themselves were afraid of what lurked and lived this deeply in the forest.

The sound of my footsteps was dwarfed by the noise the coyotes created as they followed me. The trio was communicating in barks, yips, and growls as we dove deeper and deeper into the woods.

It wasn't challenging for us to navigate this place as I was learning more and more about tremorsense the longer I had it which helped me, and the coyotes were natives of the woods and had spent their childhoods here. They weren't challenged by the litany of tiny obstacles on the forest floor at all.

I relied on a mixture of sure footing and tremorsense to navigate the forest floor successfully. At one point early on in the rush, I had gotten a notification from tremorsense which revealed a lot of what I hadn't known about the map to me.

[Alert:

To help you better understand the minimap you've been provided with here's a key detailing some of the shapes you may see on it.

Circles: If a symbol on the map is represented by a circle that means that the creature it represents is a humanoid.

Triangle: A triangle is used to mark you.

Squares: Squares mark beasts.

Pentagons: Pentagons are used to identify extraplanars.

Crescents: Crescents mark spirits that aren't undead and that are native to this dimension as well as fey.

Hexagons: Hexagons mark insects.

Octagons: Octagons mark plants.

Star shapes: Star shapes mark birds, in the rare moments they are detected by tremorsense.

In time, as you come across other types of creatures, we'll expand this list. But for now, in this forest, that's all you really need.]

When I idly checked my minimap I noticed examples of every kind of shape that was just listed aside from pentagons. It stoked my curiosity, but I kept that wandering part of me under control for now. I was a man on a mission.

And thankfully, while I was contemplating the sorts of creatures that were detected by the minimap Troik came into view. The goblin was dashing through the forest just ahead of us, but he was far slower than even the slowest of us and it had taken us only a minute of running to catch up with him.

Troik was just ahead of myself and my newfound friends. Upon seeing him I grinned and sped forward, even faster than before, and tackled the little creature. I was far larger than he was and his fragile body was nowhere near strong enough to withstand being tackled by someone almost twice his height and width. In tackling him I caused us both to sail through the air.

The goblin and I were in the air for a moment, my arms wrapped tightly around him before we crashed onto the grassy forest floor. We hit the ground hard and I had moved my weight around so that he took the brunt of the impact and not myself. I recovered almost instantly from this bit of aerial acrobatics. Troik? Well, he took a bit longer to recover.

The goblin in my arms was stunned, and while he was I snatched up the knife in his hand and flicked it away. I quickly sent the system a message, one that was impatient and communicated my concerns.

"I've got Troik. How do I free him from the influence of whatever's controlling him?" I asked, directly and impatiently. I was basically shouting into my own mind and directing that annoyance at the system.

[Hold on, hold on. We'll scan him.

Scanning... Scanning...

Oh. Oh! He's suffering from demonic infection. That's the name of a seriously nasty magical disease. Treating it mundanely is possible, but hard. And treating it through domain powers will require at least a second tier of influence over the domain of healing. Which you don't have.

One of the symptoms of it is that the cause of it, the demon behind whatever particular strand has infected a victim, can possess that victim. Troik is currently possessed.

If you want to cure it of your own power, you won't be able too immediately even once the tutorial is over. But you can already repress the worst symptoms, including possession. Just use 'Abate Sickness' on him. It'll render him immune to possession, or at least this sort of possession, for a day.]

The system's revelation frustrated me but at least I was able to aid my friend. I also now had a specific goal: to increase my influence over the domain of healing and gain the power to cure this sickness outright. It felt nice to have a goal beyond completing quests because I now had something to focus my mind on.

I immediately targeted the little goblin with the spell. A few seconds passed before the goblin began to recover from the impact of being tackled by me and then manhandled so that he hit the ground hard.

The little creature's head began to shake slowly, as he came to his senses. And when he did he hugged close to me. "Oh, Althos! I was... I was scared!" He said, shortly before he began to wail his big eyes out.

I looked him in the face and saw that his eyes were back to normal. I pulled the small thing close to me and held him close while he was cried and babbled about how afraid he was. I began to pet his head, hoping that he'd find it comforting. The coyotes caught up to me and gathered around the two of us, protectively. I smiled at the trio of lean creatures.

It was at that moment that I looked ahead of myself and saw a peculiar looking fruit at the base of a tree nearby: it keenly resembled an apple, but it was a strange shade of blue. I chuckled and spent a few minutes checking my minimap, to find the plants I had come here looking for. There was a healthy distance between myself and the rest of the closest plants I needed to find.

I looked over at one of the coyotes and showed the thing the quest sheet for the protus plant. It looked at me in confusion and I chuckled.

"Can you go and put this piece of paper against fruits that look like that?" I asked. It studied me for a second as if questioning if I was being serious. I sighed and repeated what I said. It considered what I said and then got confused. I sighed and got up, Troik's saddened form rising with me. The goblin sadly clung to me, like an exhausted toddler. I was lucky that he wasn't very heavy.

I walked over to the plant and placed the paper that I was loosely holding against the plant. I held it there for a few seconds, and then the paper flashed and pulled the object into itself, sucking it up easily. "Whoa..." I said, as I suddenly had to act to keep my balance, which I was able to do with some fancy footwork.

The coyotes, Troik, and I would pass the next few hours uneventfully going from point of the forest to point of the forest retrieving the plants. Thanks to my abilities we were able to avoid any encounters with hostile creatures and secured the plants rather efficiently all things considered.

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As the sun began to gradually descend I looked at what bits of the sky I could see through the dense and packed treetops that surrounded me and my unlikely allies. I looked at the creatures and began to speak.

"It's about time that I head back to the community I am from. Are you all going to be okay here?" I asked. My concern wasn't thoughtless or condescending. I was keenly aware that these creatures were natives too or at least likely long-time residents of this place.

My concern stemmed from the fact that some nameless foe had possessed Troik and was ultimately still lurking within him. And this same entity had charmed the coyotes that were now my friends.

My allies, including the goblin, paused and thought about my question. The coyotes didn't need long though. One of them, the one who was initially hesitant about helping me free spoke decisively.

"We'll be fine! This is our home. Are you planning on coming back?" He asked, his canine voice quiet in the gradually encroaching gloom of dusk. I smiled at him and nodded, which placated the creature. The canine's eyes were on me quite happy as I turned to face the goblin once again.

The goblin was quiet, his mind running a mile a minute as darkness was inching towards us. I looked at him and realized that he had never told me why he had been out and was a good distance away from his tribe. He finally spoke right before I would have asked him something.

"I'll be fine. My tribe is surely waiting for me." He told me. I nodded at him, but I was aware that there was a tone of disappointment in his voice. No edge of fear, just disappointment. I looked at him and asked what I had wanted to ask him before.

"Troik, why were you out here? We haven't come across any other goblins, so it seems like you're far from home." I asked my friend, automatically switching to the language of goblin-kind so that he felt comfortable responding. The goblin looked up at me, and considered how to answer my question.

I could see a lot of thoughts and emotions flowing through his mind. He had had a long day and I had been involved in a lot of it. I freed him from a seemingly random metal bear-trap but then when he has possessed the creature who possessed him suggested that Troik was playing a role in something bigger and darker than the activities of a tribe of goblins.

The goblin sighed before it began to tell me what it was up too. "I only remember leaving my home. I was going to go and look for food over in our distant traps. When I left my home... I don't know. The next thing I remember was the pain of the trap biting into my leg." The goblin told me.

I looked at him seriously for a second and debating what to do in this situation, especially since I could see an opportunity here. "Troik, do goblins eat fruits and vegetables?" I asked, studying the goblin for a second.

His eyes lit up when I mentioned different types of food. When he didn't immediately respond and just licked his lips I took this chance to ask the system for some help.

"I need some help. I have the power to help the goblins and to spread some tendrils of influence into this forest subtly. I don't want to tell him or anyone that I'm a deity. I don't have the knowledge to successfully lie in this situation, and I won't let them starve. Can you give me a believable enough backstory to trick some goblins and their orc boss into eating the food I magically create?" I asked, appealing directly to the system for aid.

There was silence on its end for a few seconds before a textbox materialized in my mind's eye.

[Just say that you are a druidic follower of a spirit of abundance. And that that spirit compels you to aid the starving however you can.] The textbook gave me an interesting backstory that I knew would be something I'd be able to use in the future whenever I wanted to start to influence more creatures.

When that first textbox disappeared from view another phased into existence with more informative text.

[Give the spirit a fake name, but since this is the route you're taking, you need to be consistent with it. We'll unlock your faith-based divine ability to hear prayers and filter it so that it is only for prayers that are specific to this fake being. There are definitely domains and subdomains that will love that these are decisions you've made. It's... an odd choice.] The system confessed sounding rather frustrated at this development, which made me laugh internally.

"Goblins love fruits and vegetables! Are there any nearby?" He asked, excitedly. His eyes let me know that he was distracted by the thought of food so much that that was why he was quiet. I also realized that this likely meant that the items I had collected were probably not considered edible since he hadn't spoken about them.

"I haven't had food in a while." The goblin told me very excitedly, all while suggesting that hunger was affecting at least him, if not others in his tribe. This cemented my decision to do what I was about to do since I wouldn't be hurting the creature even though I was deceiving it.

I laughed at his excitement, my eyes and face light as laughter overtook them. And then I spoke.

"Listen, I'm a follower of Cosecha, a relatively newborn spirit of healing, the harvest and abundance. Cosecha answers prayers... when mortals ask spirits for help, related to hunger and the need for food. It saved me once, and I'm sure it'll help you if you need it." I began, telling the goblin a name I made up on the spot.

"If you pray to it and humbly ask for vegetables or fruits it will use some of its power to give you food to eat," I told the little creature. Troik's mouth opened wide at this false revelation, and I could tell that he believed me but I wanted to cement it in his mind.

I looked at him and began to speak confidently. "Do what I do, okay?" I asked him, ready to give him an example. He nodded at me.

I fell to my knees, following some more of the oddly sourced knowledge that was stored in my mind. I clasped my hands together and then began to speak. "Cosecha, spirit of abundance and of the harvest I humbly beseech you... Please give me an apple so that I may not starve!" I said, raising my voice at the end to stress what the action would look like if it were to be believed.

At the last second I cast one of my legendary spells and made a golden apple appear right in front of me. It caught a dimming ray of sunlight and shone bright enough to be noticed by my goblin friend. I chuckled internally and took a bite out of the juicy fruit. Troik gasped in delight at the display, clapping his hands together to physically express his delight. And then he fell to his knees.

The goblin speedily did what I had just done, and my mind's eye was bombarded by a notification.

[Alert: The goblin named Troik has uttered a prayer to your persona, the spirit Cosecha. He has asked for an apple. Would you like to respond to his prayer affirmatively?]

The alert flashed unusually big and wide in my mind's eye. I grinned and focused on telling the system "yes" until the notification vanished from view. At the same time, I went ahead and cured the goblin of tetanus, the spell washing over him as he piously performed the prayer.

[We'll just say that "Cosecha" cured Troik of Tetanus as a reward for deciding to pray to it. And to cement in his mind that this absolutely made-up spirit is a real being.] The system told me, quietly whispering in my mind like we were part of a shared criminal conspiracy and not just spreading a new religion.

The goblin gasped when a golden apple like the one he had eaten before appeared on the ground in front of him. He snatched it up and began to excitedly thank Cosecha for its kindness. And then he turned to me and smiled.

"Thank you, Althos! Would you like me to tell my friends about this, or do you want it to be our secret?" He asked, curiously. There was a glint in his eyes when he suggested we keep "Cosecha's blessing" our secret. I chuckled and shook my head.

"Cosecha is a social spirit who enjoys feeding people. It wants people to pray to it, and for their piety and devotion to be rewarded with food and with other rewards. Tell your friends, and get them to pray with you. Who knows... Cosecha might even visit your dreams one day." I told the goblin, opting to set the stage for more miraculous happenings in the days to come. I wasn't about to let this opportunity pass without milking it.

The little creature began an eager dance at the thought of this kindly entity spending time with it. I grinned and watched as the goblin began to dance as it walked into the forest, towards its home. The coyotes followed after it after giving me three happy glances. I was about to turn and head back to Comillas when I heard an excited goblinoid voice shout a happy farewell to me.

I chuckled and finally turned around to head back to Comillas.

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My trip back was equally uneventful, which gave me time to be introspective and to reflect on the experiences I had gained throughout my first day of life. I thought about the strange enemy I had made and deprieved of a potentially potent tool. I thought about my powers and magic. And I thought about the domains I was hoping to one day master, namely the domain of healing.

Before long I was back in front of the Silver Xana, woke-root and protus plant in hand. I smiled as I began to open the door into the small hotel to turn in my quests.

Behind me, the sun was almost done setting. Night was about to fall over Comillas.