The world reels around me and the next time I open my eyes, I’m in a boring, plain white room. Hm. I wonder what he was trying to sa—

The God of Pain hugs me.

When I come back out of it, Pain is right in front of me, flapping his hands in excitement and almost hopping from foot to foot. “Ohh, I’m so happy! Have I told you you’re My favorite challenger in the whole wide tutorial? Which is really impressive because Me have a lot of active challengers now! It’s great. But no one else is doing as well as you are. All the others trying the hell difficulty failed, but you still… But that’s beside the point! Oh, I’m so glad you decided to stay! If you’d left, this whole gig would’ve been so dull. Now, now, take a seat—let’s talk turkey.”

Still reeling, still tingling in every limb, I take a seat. Did I make a mistake hugging Him earlier? Is He going to keep hugging me from now on, under the false belief that I’m fine with it?

I turn to look at His face. His widely smiling moon-face.

...Alright. Fine. If the man needs a hug every now and again, who am I to refuse Him? It’s only momentary pain, anyways.

“Nice to see you, too,” I mutter. “But I’m not sure we have a lot to discuss. Harvest should have gotten You up to speed on how I want to do Purgatory, and I’ve gotten all the advice I need for my new situation from Hunter, so… Do we really need to talk all that much?”

Hands folded atop His desk, He gives me a deadpan expression. “Ah. Uh. I… suppose you’re right! Besides, it hasn’t been too long since we last met. Sorry, we really don’t have to…”

Ah. Uh… Oh. I see how it is. I smile to myself, and let my body relax. “No, no, I’ve… I changed my mind. I thought about it a little, and…” Smiling sheepishly, I lean in. “I think we do have things to talk about. Don’t we?”

He blinks at me. And in a matter of moments, His usual, standard-mode grin spreads across His moon-face—somehow even wider than usual. “Yeah! Exactly, that’s what I was—hang on, give Me a second to…” Leaning back, He pulls down a whiteboard out of nowhere, standing up to take a place beside it, whiteboard pen in hand. “Right. So! Since you’re newly ascended, even if only partially, I thought I might give you a little run-through of what ascending was like for Me, back in the day! For a bit of background, I ascended a couple dozen millennia ago. I can’t really remember exactly how many, but I’m sure I’ve said it sometime before. Anyhow, I was one of the first Gods chosen by the God of Curiosity to rule Purgatory. Let’s see here, before Me, I think, there was the God of Hunting and the God of Harvest, and the Goddess of Fire, and the God of Mountains, and… Was that it? I think that might have been it. I’m not sure. It was a long while ago, really.”

As He speaks, He writes down names and doodles little icons for the things He’s explaining. Since visual learning is key to my style of memorization, I nod gratefully and try to take mental notes.

“Right. Anyhow. So, first of all, the God of Curiosity vetted Me a bit. Like, He came down in the form of a herald… I think He chose a cat to do it? I was really surprised by it, anyways. He thought I’d make a good fit for a God since I’d been through a bit of stuff and was currently living as a vagabond. You know, standard life. I went around, trading wares, singing little songs and dancing jigs… Life was good! But He thought I’d make a great God, so I went, ‘Yeah, sure, sounds neat!’ First, to test Me, He made Me into His apostle. And then I did good enough to become a God. And by that point, I was thinking, ‘Hey, this divine business is kind of sweet! Three meals a day, plenty of exercise, and I get to travel everywhere? This is the life! Being a God is going to be awesome!’ Heh. Yeah, in your business, that’s what they call foreshadowing.

“So I became a God. Great stuff! And you know, back then, the whole domain thing… That was all manual. It wasn’t nice and automated like it is today, not at all. No, instead of having some handy-dandy system created by the God of Convenience or whoever it is to grant you your divinely ordained identity, one of the lesser-upper Gods showed up. Yeah, for realsies! I’d never seen one before, and I still haven’t since then. I think they must have realized how crappy that system was by the twenty-fifth God the God of Curiosity made. Honestly, going by the way they interacted at the time, I think the God of Curiosity might have been an upper God too at some point? No clue. Either way, falling from grace seems to be His M.O., so I’m not too surprised.” He hums briefly, looking at the mess of colorful lines He’s made on the whiteboard. “Where was I? Oh, yeah!

“So, I got my domain. The lesser-upper God… I think that was the God of All Things Past? Not sure. But He showed up, watched Me for a day, checked through My entire life, and after a few years of deliberation, I got made the God of Pain. How? What? Why? No idea! My life’s been swell. Really, it has! But nobody ever gets a domain they’re happy with. That’s for sure.

“Even worse, the God of Curiosity was upset. See, and I only know this because Hunting once blurted it out while We were fishing, but apparently the God of Curiosity was trying to make a wholly positive pantheon—or at least neutral. He failed with me, though, and then he went on to fail with a bunch of others, too. Now that I’m a bit more mature, and especially with you as proof, I’m starting to think that domains don’t really matter. Even the seemingly negative ones are usually just neutral if you give them a proper look. I mean, God of Spite? Close friend of mine! Goddess of Aging? We play sloopball all the time. Heck, even the God of Cruelty, arguably the most in-character of Us all, is totally deluding Himself, trying to fool all His followers into believing that being kind is actually cruel because… Some stupid reason.”

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I give Him a long look. He smirks at me.

“Oh, I know what you’re thinking. Since I’m the God of Pain, another supposedly negative trait, Me hanging out with all these negative Gods is simply because drakes of a feather stick together, right? Well, you’re wrong! I have plenty of positive divine friends, like the God of Hunting, and, and…” He thumbs his chin for a moment. “That’s weird, I could have sworn that…”

I hold up my hand. After a moment of confusion, He points to me, allowing me to speak. I smile warmly. “You have me, don’t you?”

“—And I have the God of Hope! Man, I’m good. Hm. I can’t seem to remember where I was in my story…”

“Something about the God of Curiosity, maybe?”

“Oh, yeah! I’m actually not sure what happened to Him. He gave out all his divinity, piece by piece, until He could no longer be considered a proper God. And then He just… disappeared. I’m sure someone in this pantheon knows what happened, but… It’s not like it matters, right? He did what He wanted to do, and then He went out the way He wanted to. Not many Gods can claim the same.

“Since then… We’ve been doing our best. It’s really not easy ruling a planet alongside ninety-nine other people… The annual meetings tend to get pretty crowded, and any larger decisions can take centuries to be put in place. Also, originally… Before the God of Curiosity adopted this planet, and before He gave out any of His divinity… This planet was rather ordinary. Same as Earth. Divinity was reserved for the ruling God, and the ordinary sapients and animals were, well… Ordinary. This shift towards divinity being shared with the normal mortals… It was pretty gradual. When I was around, it had already started at least in part. The earlier forms were probably the result of the God of Curiosity either doing His experiments or trying and failing to raise an apostle into a God. The process really isn’t as easy as it sounds, you know?

“The last God who ascended here—not counting you, of course—was the Goddess of… Children, I think? I’m not sure. I haven’t really been keeping track. She only ascended a few hundred years ago, though, so I think that tracks. However, your presence here…” Leaning in, He lets me really get a good look at His oddly-shaped face, at His strange mode of dress, and the dangling ruffle at the end of His nightcap. “It’s very interesting! You’re the first God on this planet who hasn’t ascended through the divinity left by the God of Curiosity. And since you were able to purify the God of Kings’ divinity before absorbing it, I reckon your divinity is of an entirely new sort. Which, of course, is the standard. But still entirely new for this particular planet.” His eyes travel down to look at my chest—not exposed for once. “Hmm. You haven’t checked it yet, have you?”

“Checked what?”

“The color!” He beams. “It’s the most important aspect! Really, I’d say the color of your divinity is more important than the amount of it. It shows your affiliations, your domain, your personality… That’s where it’s all at. Of course, for Us—the God of Multitudes—Our color is black. That’s what happens when you mix all of Our potential divinities together, after all. Personally, I really hate it. It looks like tar. No fun at all! But yours… Oh, now I’m really excited! Maybe it’ll be a shade of red, since you’re from Earth, where the God of Love rules? Oh! Or it might be purple-adjacent, since you stole it from the God of Kings! Great move, by the way. Ohohoho, I’m trembling! Let’s take a peek before I explode, shall we?”

He reaches into my chest. It doesn’t hurt at all, and I don’t mind it as much as I did the first time.

He pulls out my heart. My white, white heart.

His mirthful expression falls slightly. “Hm? Where is…?” He turns my heart over a few times, checking all the angles. “That’s strange, where is…” After a moment, he turns to me, and without asking for either permission or consent, he reaches into my eyeball and grabs Simon.

“Hey!”

{::o::}!

“There you are! Let’s see here…” Pressing Simon against my heart, he begins humming. And before I can demand that he return my precious child, the heart in my hand starts glowing, albeit faintly. Still white, though. If I listen closely, I think I can hear Simon humming as well, to the same melody as Pain—with the heart’s glow amplifying as they hum louder. After only a few seconds, Pain stops humming, and my heart stops glowing. Sighing, He puts Simon back into my eye.

~{§§~§§}~

What the heck did He do to my…?

The look on His face keeps me from voicing my complaints. He looks absolutely crestfallen. Sighing again, He takes a seat on the desk in front of me, trying and failing to feign interest. “So, um…” He begins, absolutely not crushing any hope I might have had, “either your color hasn’t set in yet, or your color is white.”

“...White?”

“Yep. White. Duller-than-black, less-than-nothing white. Then again… It might just be for now. Maybe you’ll grow into a nicer color later? I don’t know. But, for now, you share color with the God of Apathy, the God of Nothingness, the God of Boredom and the God of Entropy. There might be more, but they were too boring for me to remember the names of. I’m sorry. If there’s ever a meeting of divinely white Gods, I recommend you skip out. They’ll probably serve you plain potato salad with mayonnaise and a side of tap water.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad,” I mutter.

His expression of sheer disgust silences me faster than a strangle-hold. “Right. Yeah. I don’t know what to tell you. Try to do interesting things, live a life that aligns with your domain… Maybe there is hope yet. Your little angel shines in other colors, too, so there might still be a possibility. Maybe.”

I don’t have the heart to tell Him that I honestly don’t really care what the color of my divinity is. Sure, white is the worst color, but it fits well with other colors, right? I don’t think there’s a single color-combination containing white that doesn’t look good. It’s like black, in that sense. And, to be completely honest, I prefer having my own color over simply having the color of the divinity I stole. Makes me feel like more of an individual, I guess.

“Yeah, alright,” I say. “We’ll just have to wait and see, right?”

After a moment or so, He smiles back. “Yeah. And I’ll be most excited to see where you head, my friend.” We share a look, both equally ready for what’s to come. “—Right!” He finally says, jumping back off the desk. “Lots to do! You’ve got seven whole P’s to get branded, and seven skills to recover. You’ll be spending a lot of time in Purgatory, so I really hope you’ll make the most of it. But let’s not beat around the bush anymore.” He steps closer, and licks His right thumb, which instantly starts glowing and emitting some real heat. Putting one hand on the back of my chair, He leans in towards me, aiming His smoking thumb at my forehead. “Just sit still, and this shouldn’t take more than a few minutes…”

He presses His thumb against my forehead.

Once more, I remember why He is called the God of Pain.