Eighty years had passed since I first came to this world. I was now a hundred years old, but I looked twenty still. I had become a true god, an icon to now over a million mortal souls. My wife, Ilyia, was now on her deathbed, dying of old age. I was with her in her last moments, holding her hand while she smiled, as she shut her eyes for the last time.
"My love... Will I see you again in the heavenly realm?"
Those were her last words that staked my heart. I had forgotten, for a moment, the lie that I had told the mortals, and to have learned that in her last moments, that her smile was because she believed that lie, it formed a crack in my psyche.
Our son and daughters, as well as our granddaughter, were all by her side in her time of death. I saw that they were smiling too, even as she died.
"Don't worry, father. We may see her again, in the heavenly realm." My daughter, Aqua, told that to my face with a believing grin.
I shuddered.
'Because of me... Because of the lie that I told, they are not mourning the death of their mother. They are happy that she died... Because of the lie that I told. Their own mother.'
Even though I possessed so much power, I had not the ability nor knowledge to extend the lives of the mortals. As she was my wife for decades, I had come to love her truly, and because of that, I was unable to let her go.
Her body had died, but in that moment when she perished, I could still feel her presence. I had at first, believed it was just an illusion because of the guilt that I felt, but I refused to let go. I clung to that feeling of comfort, as if she was behind me, wrapping her arms loving around me.
I would isolate myself in the mountains to grieve alone with nothing but the clothes on my back and a casket of wine that did nothing to relieve my mind. Still, I drank, and it was during my drinking that I felt this feeling of surprise in the back of my neck. I turned my head as if looking to see who was behind me, but there was no one. Still, I felt something calling to me, a feeling that urged me in that direction.
I focused on it, and as I did, I could feel my power slipping. It was as if my knew, and it told me.
'My worshippers... They are dead.'
I darted off into the sky, a trail of thunder in my wake that I used to accelerate my movement. On my mountain, the sun had just set, but in mere minutes, I had skipped to a part of the world where the sun was still setting, and when I got there, I found a city in flames.
In all my time on this world, I had yet to meet another god like me; to meet another of the humans I had seen in that white room.
I had been far and wide, yet never had I seen even the slightest sign of another god, which made me believe that the world was just that vast. As fast as I could move in such a short amount of time, I had thought if there were any other gods anywhere near where I was, I would have come across them. It was not as if I ever went looking for them, and while I had gone far, I never went far enough to cross into another continent.
This would be my first encounter with another god.
From a mile away, I caught wind of the attackers. It was not just one, it was a number of them, each one showing inhuman abilities that could only be explained by divine power. A smarter man would have waited and investigated before acting, but a stoic man, would act before waiting, and I refused to wait, knowing my own were dying.
The skies above crackled with flashes of lightning before the booming of thunder followed suit. They managed to grab the attention of the attackers, who looked up at the sky in confusion.
I shrouded myself in cloud and lightning as I fell to the earth. One of them managed to spot me as I got closer, but it was too late.
"What is that?"
I crashed onto the ground, the momentum of my landing forming a crater that collapsed the nearby buildings. In that instance, I managed to grab hold of the perpetrator, my hand covering their face in suffocation as I held them on the ground.
They grabbed hold of my wrist in struggle to break my grip. They were strong, strong enough that I could feel their strength was enough to twist iron, but compared to me, they were too weak.
More of them would show themselves, surrounding me in hesitation.
"It's a god! Just like father."
"Brother, what do we do?"
"Focus on saving our brother, test his strength. If he proves to be too much, we will flee."
They spoke as if I were not even there, but it was most likely they believed I couldn't understand them; which I both could and could not. The tongue they spoke was not my own, it was something else, and yet, I could understand them clearly. It was as if my mind translated everything they said. I would refrain from revealing that fact.
They attacked, charging me head-on with their axes and swords, forcing me to let go of their comrade in order to make distance. From my training, I knew that iron would do nothing against me, at most being able to pierce the thinnest layer of skin if sharp enough, but otherwise breaking or bending against my flesh, but I was not sure whether their weapons were of a harder metal or enchanted by divine power.
I would find that it would be irrelevant anyway, as they would come to unleash an onslaught of attacks, both strong and fast, with good teamwork among the many of them, however, they were slow, slow to the point that I felt as if I they were moving in slow motion. Even my eyes could keep up with their every movement.
'Perhaps all of that training paid off, or perhaps they did nothing but laze around in all of these years. No... These can not possibly be gods like I. They are siblings, which explains why gods would be working together. They must be the offspring of one of the gods like me, one of the true gods. That would explain why they are so slow. I wonder... How powerful are they truly?'
Call it an arrogant and foolish thought, but in that flurry of attacks, all of which I was able to and easily did avoid, I decided to test my limits, stopping to receive the punch of one of them who struck me hard in the chin. I would barely tilt my neck in response, but their knuckle would end up swollen and their thumb popped from the impact.
As they screamed out in pain, I grabbed hold of their arm. "Has no one taught you to make a fist?"
Their face was pulled between pain and shock.
"He can understand us!"
"I can. Tell me. Why did you burn down my city?"
In an attempt to save their comrade, the one with a chain and sickle tried to strangle me from behind, but as the chain fell before my face, like a mad dog, I grabbed hold of it with my teeth and broke it with my bite alone.
That shocking spectacle would serve as a warning to them all, prompting them to back away at the thought of fleeing, but I would not allow them. I extended my arm and called and beckoned to the mountain range.
"You will not escape. You will tell me what I want, or you will die without a burial."
One of them began to break down laughing, yet he approached me with his head held high.
"Leave!" He told his brothers and sisters. "I shall hold him off alone."
I couldn't help but grin slightly at the jest. "You alone? How can you do that when you are already dead?"
My words held truth, as, in the next moment, my weapon had arrived where the man stood, leaving nothing but a crater of blood and guts in his stead. My spear, Ironpierce, rose from the man's corpse and hovered to my grasp. The blood and flesh that coated it, it shed itself of, cleansed itself of, with a violent crackling of electricity that burned away the remnants.
The rest either screamed in horror, unable to take the sight of their loved one being killed so brutally, fled for their lives like cowards, or attacked me in a blind rage. Those who fled, I let my weapon chase down, which would hunt them until it pierced their hearts. For those who thought to attack me head-on, I had no mercy towards. Their weapon instantly broke against my flesh, only managing to tear my robe and break the thinnest layer of my flesh. When their weapon was lost, they resorted to fire, which coated their hands and ignited me whole when they placed their hands against me. The fire burned away the the top half of my robe, but did nothing to harm me, not even singeing my hair.
"Pathetic." I held down their body by their shoulder, and with a single slap, their neck turned with a snap, before hanging lifelessly as I let go. Their body fell to the ground. The rest who remained began to flee as well, three in total. The farthest would be struck by a bolt of lightning, leaving nothing but a charred skeleton. The second, I would kill by clapping directly into their ear, blowing out their brains as they fell lifeless to the ground.
My spear would come to me, and I would throw it into the final god, fleeing for her life. Ironpierce would shatter her leg, preventing her from running any further. Still, she clung to life, crawling away as I slowly walked up to her.
She groaned and grunted agonizingly, tearing up and slowly coming to a stop as my footsteps grew louder behind her.
"You may yet live if you tell me what I want to know. Why did you kill these mortals?"
"...B-Because... Our father... My father. It was to offer sacrifice to him."
"Sacrifice? Explain that to me."
"...It's... It's to empower him. When a mortal dies in the name of a god, they serve as a sacrifice to empower them... It is suited for the mortals, who refuse to worship him."
"I see."
You'll... You'll let me go now, right?"
"What is his name?"
"His name? My father's? Graith, God of the New World."
Without another word, I split open her skull with my spear as I burned the name she gave into my mind.