Shini again wakes in pitch black. There's a mug sitting front of her. Murtisia sits next to her, cross-legged, sipping her tea and watching Shini over her mug.
"What is it this time?" Shini asks as she reaches for the mug. It scoots away slightly out of her reach. Murtisia doesn't look up from her tea, continuing to stir. "Okay," Shini sits back, resting her arms and body deeply. The chair she felt under her is removed, "Hey!" Murtisia takes a sip, and side-eyes Shini on the ground. She puts her mug down, and bounces her leg as she looks up and away from Shini. "Okay, I'm sorry for being rude to you. I didn't mean to hurt your feelings."
Murtisia swirls her finger in her tea, "It's not that you hurt my feelings," she stops there, but her tone suggests that she's continuing.
Shini waits for a moment, expectantly. "Then what did I do?" She asks after a shockingly long amount of time.
Murtisia puts her mug down, and places her hands in her lap, "Okay, you did hurt my feelings, that was it."
"Really?" Murtisia nods. Somehow she frowns, "Are you sure?"
"You disregarded me when I asked you kindly to help. It really," she clenched her fists, "OOGH. It really ticked me off." Shini looked down in shame, but was slightly confused by the god's antics. She was a god, so why did she bother being so.. weak? "I can read your mind, and you're still hurting my feelings." Blast, Shini thought, "Blast." Murtisia said in a mocking tone. Shini looked away, "Yeah, hurts doesn't it."
"Yeah, but you're a god."
"So?"
Shini turns back to her, sitting up, "So don't you have the power to like," Shini shrugs, "silence me, or whatever?"
"Well why would I do that?"
Shini tilts her head in confusion, "Why wouldn't you?"
"You first. Why would I?"
Shini scratches her head, "Because it feels bad to have your feelings hurt."
"And making you disappear wouldn't erase that."
"Yeah, but it might feel better."
"Why?" Shini shrugs, "Schadenfreude?"
"Bless you."
"Thank you," Shini nods and smiles, "I mean the pleasure you feel when someone else feels misfortune."
"Oh, yeah. That'd be it I guess."
"Look, I'll give a you look behind the curtain here on the god stuff," she readjusts in her invisible chair so she can use her hands to talk, "I'm at the point in my life where I feel nothing towards this suffering, or many of the other stereotypical god behaviors."
"Like what?"
"I just want to do my job, that's all." Shini couldn't tell if she was being ignored, or if Murtisia thought that was an answer to her question, "If I were to explain to you what god behaviors were, would that sate you?"
"A little." Shini was curious.
"People want things that god's have, more or less, and the same goes the other way. For a long period of our lives we indulge ourselves in saccharine desires in order to feel things like feelings." Shini wasn't sure if that's how you were supposed to use the word saccharine, "I don't care, cornball!"
"So do you mean that gods don't feel emotions?"
"Not really," she sips her tea, "the best way to describe it is that the way we feel emotions and what we feel is much different from you."
"Huh, that sounds like too much for me."
"I would agree."
"So if you're past that, what are you trying to do now?"
"I've been calling it a job, but collecting souls is my one and only purpose. We gods have one purpose that were designated and required to do until the end of time."
"Sounds horrible."
"That's where we differ. Like I said, we aren't human."
"Then what about the gods that don't want to do their jobs?"
"Iunno," she shrugs, "Can't do it forever, even if we want to. It's like procrastinating," Shini blinks in her direction, "Does that make sense?"
"No. I mean- sure, I think so," Murtusia nods, "why do you need my help?"
"Because I can't do my job without the other gods here. Or at least some of them."
"Why not?"
Murtisia throws her hands up, gesturing generally to the void surrounding them, "It's hard to tell, but this place is infinitely large. I can travel to certain points in here, but that's meaningless if I don't have my guys stationed there." Shini was still confused, but pretended that she understood, "Here's the deal; you can die from anything."
"Not true."
"Play along, please," Shini squints, trying her best to be understanding, "there is a god responsible for each of these ways to die down here, and they are stationed at these points that I can travel to. Basically, they corral everyone who dies from, say, vending machines-"
"There's a god of vending machines?"
"They manage other things as well. Machrim is the god of man-made devices. Many gods are primordial, but many also arise along with the concepts they govern over," Shini nods along, "Without the gods down here to keep the dead organized, the souls just kinda go willy-nilly. Gods are like magnets for their respective souls, and repulse others. All souls are naturally repulsed by me, so it's impossible for me to track them down. Right now, I'm sat directly over the soul spout for disease, to hopefully maximize how many souls I can cull."
Shini ponders for a moment, "Can't you make a net or something?"
"Thanks."
"Okay-"
"No, I can't."
"Yeah, I know," Shini looks down in shame.
"So that's why I need your help. Killing the gods would bring them back here."
"Would they want to do their jobs?"
"As long as they're here, yes. It's just that as soon as they enter your plane of existence, they do not."
"That's why you can't go?" Murtisia nods, "Got it." Shini taps her hand on her thigh, "So what's making them go to my plane?"
"It's not that there's something actively doing this, it's just that we have a lifespan here, and," she readjusts, "well, I've been procrastinating a little as well."
"What do you mean?"
"I haven't been able to find anyone to help in a few centuries."
"Centuries." Shini repeats.
Murtisia continues, "Meaning that all of them are all down on the mortal plane of existence."
"So you've been without gods for?"
"Well, the god of anger was the latest and last to get sucked down, that was about a year ago. Gods have been dying here for the past 6," she hesitates, "8 thousand years."
"And you've just been-"
"Well don't say it like that."
"I didn't-"
Murtisia's face gets all droopy, and she speaks in a mocking tone, "And you've just been sitting here," Shini frowns, "I! can! read! your! mind!"
"Doesn't mean you have to be mean," Shini mumbles, "I've just been confused this whole time about why I'm the first person you sought out."
"You're not. Void, I've wanted to," Shini notes Murtisia's use of 'void' as a transitory phrase, even though she is in hell, "that's not important here!" Shini shrugs, "Like I was saying, I've wanted to seek you out for a long time."
"Then why just now?"
Murtisia crosses her legs and leans back in her invisible seat, "The last time we talked was the first time in, well, a very long time that you've dreamed," Shini is a little shocked, "At least, dreamed in a manner that was cogent enough to speak to you in."
"What do you mean?" Shini had dreamed before, pretty recently before too. Even if they were-
"Nightmares. A dream and a nightmare are different."
"Wouldn't nightmares make more sense for you to talk through? Death is scary and stuff."
"Sure, but not everyone should be scared," Shini couldn't argue with that, "hell isn't really what it's cracked up to be, at least when everyone's here. If you're 'bad'," she uses finger quotes, "then you spend eternity alone in here. But now, some souls end up here, and some get stolen by the more 'traditional' hells."
"Like fire and stuff?"
"Yes, like fire and stuff."
"Is this really worse than, I don't know, torture? The whole fire and brimstone and whatnot?"
"Yes." Shini would have to take her word on that, "Yes, you will."
"Okay," Shini shifts in her chair, a little uncomfortable about the presented facts. And when did she get back in her chair?
"I put it back under you a little bit ago."
"Oh, thanks," Murtisia smiles, "What happened with these other people you contacted?"
"They all died. Usually during their first god," Murtisia throws her head back, "that's why you're so qualified."
Shini tilts her head down, looking up at Murtisia, "Why is that?"
"Darling, I hate to be all annoying, but I know everything about you."
"So you do know about that then."
"Yes, darling, we had that whole interaction about it," Shini gives her a puzzled look, "I said, 'you've done it before,'" even as Murtisia quotes herself, she uses a mocking voice, "and you were all shy, like, 'nooo,'" Murtisia pulls her hands into her chest and rocks side to side, "'oh my god stooop, no I didn't,' and then you admitted it."
Shini didn't remember being found out for THAT. She tried to think back to the conversation. Murtisia sighs, and is about to speak when Shini remembers, "Oh, I thought you had noticed that I burned my mouth on the hot chocolate."
Murtisia looks at her for a moment, mouth open. One of her eye cavities squints and the other widens, the skeleton equivalent of raising an eyebrow, "What?"
"Yeah," Shini laughs. What a big misunderstanding, "I burned my mouth on the hot chocolate multiple times, and when you said, 'You've done it before, I thought you were talking about that."
"Well I knew about that too," Shini frowns, "but I wasn't talking about that. It might've been a little embarrassing," A little? Shini thought to herself. "It wasn't that bad, dear," Murtisia reassures her.
"Then what were you talking about," Shini asks, feeling nervous. She prays that she's not about to hear what she does.
Murtisia smacks her thigh bones, "Well, Shini, you've killed a god, and I need you to do it again."