A Divine Interlude

On a divine recliner, laughing merrily at the tragedy of it all, Dennis was eating popcorn as he took in the sweet horror of the events. He pressed a button on his Divine Vision Recorder remote, saving the scene for later playback.

This was too entertaining not to remember and a golden opportunity. This family had such promise. The Milligans could be a tale for more useless mortals to remember, to get the fear rumor-mongering going.

Dennis’s laughter slowed as he turned contemplative. Among thoughts that would cause most mortals to stare blankly in incomprehension at the scope of the idea or be driven mad was a more straightforward complexity he mused upon. The rules of existence.

As the god of menace and for most of the divinities in existence, reputation helped maintain his faith base. Without belief, positive or negative, as the mortals viewed things in their limited way, he couldn’t accrue any divine favor to be spent on affecting the world. A lot of nascents got that confused. A rookie would try to make changes in the world so they could accrue more favor and make more significant changes to make more favor. The noob only paid attention to the short game.

The beings who understood the game of creation knew staying power was far more critical. What did it matter if you had a victory today when you wouldn’t last even a scant few eons?

He wanted every living thing capable of understanding to suffer with the potential that it really might be that bad. He wanted paranoia because he wanted them to believe he was out to get them. The name of his approach hadn’t been nailed down in the proper context by mortals yet. They were so limited it was pitiable, but Dennis called it “branding.”

It wasn’t just a favored pastime of his but a real plan to keep his name out there. He delighted in the little cruelties that haunted the mind and kept a mortal awake at night with mild worry over an uncertain future. The big flashes that stood out were more of his brother’s bailiwick. The god of chaos made even him nervous. After all, who wanted no order to the universe at all?

A decent-sized genocide could get a flash that lasted for a century or two. Go big enough, and you could squeak out a single millennium of remembrance. It was good to be feared at that level, sometimes.

Over a long enough period, the fear could even be turned into awe or admiration. What was that mortal a few centuries ago? Alexander-the-not-so-great-a-guy, that was it. The mortals had shortened it in admiration of him murdering his way across the known world at the time.

No, Dennis’s divine mandate was the fear of reprisal. Fear of something terrible happening. Fear of the potential consequences. Little stories of tragedy may not spread as fast or far, but a mortal was constantly exposed to them. He needed them to believe that he was the cause.

To keep his power spreading, he contradictorily needed hope. If mortals had it bad all the time, there would be no spice to the potential of loss. Without pairing off against another divinity, things would have no upside.

Existence had been correct to set the rules down. This greatly benefited several hundred deities more related to general concepts rather than specific tasks or events. Hence, what mortals would have mistakenly called the game was created.

The older, more direct deities had lobbied for the then traditionally aggressive and direct confrontational setup, where they would shine brightest. The universe had stated less flashy shows of power would maintain reality better. Each balancing of power would be done through proxies.

Grumbling was heard throughout the cosmos, but a few eradications of the grumblers followed by a lengthy recovery period for them quieted the most vocal protesters.

The covenant was enacted to avoid messy but necessary quests by the mortals to right the fabric of reality. When divinity fought hard enough to lick the spoon, then cracked the bowl, that same level of strength attempting to mend it would shatter the damn thing, and then you’d have pudding everywhere. Existence pudding, what a mess.

Dennis shuddered over that debacle with the blue and red reality stones a few eons back. That fiasco had resulted in a portion of destroyed reality being filled back in with the losing mortal used as the putty. That was a nasty way to go, even for a mortal.

Proxies allowed for different forces to be applied in less stressful ways to the universe at large anyway. The most adept at maintaining the contrast against their opponent of the moment while growing their power could have more freedom to get what they wanted.

Dennis had learned early on that if that contrast wasn’t there, if everything were always horrible for them, the mortals would adapt to the horror. Mainly, they would become numb for a while before adjusting to the new normal. Dennis needed the fear of it all going wrong.

The god of menace could cause a gibbering madness through fear of potential loss that sheltered a mind from horrors it couldn’t understand but preferred the uncertain steps that advanced shakily toward an unknown fate. That brave adventurer who feared and kept moving forward while throwing a sign to ward him off was one of his favorite mortals, among many favorites that changed from moment to moment.

Mortals didn’t understand him and gave him the staying power to keep playing the game of creation. Most mother’s gasps of shock or fear were followed by a whispered prayer he would stay his hand. All the bullies worked on his behalf to instill just a bit more fear so their problems didn’t seem so bad. Every tiny moment of uncertainty reminded the mortals he was there. They should be aware of the fall.

Dennis liked to think that his name being used for the other side of things also benefited his influence growth. A criminal passes on a target due to fear of the law. A marriage goes untested due to the interloper fearing reprisal. That one fucked up kid not abusing the dog because he knew his father would beat his ass while his mother tried to find him somebody to help his mental health be more balanced before he was thrown in prison.

Many of his family disagreed especially the in-laws, who didn’t want to be here in the first place. But Dennis found it hard to care when results had him in the top runnings of the pantheon.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

A knock came upon the barrier he had erected to keep out other existences from intruding on his “me time.” Dennis stopped his divine mental masturbation at his own glory before it could reach completion and snagged up a mace sitting next to the recliner on his way to the barrier. He sighed and checked the peephole he had put in place to see who was intruding on this most sacred of spaces.

He tossed the mace into a void that opened over his shoulder as he waved a hand, and the barrier dropped.

“Hello there, Dennis. I thought you could use a snack.”

Jeph was standing before him with his usual apron covered in flour and a stupid-looking floppy white hat that Dennis uncharitably thought of as a flaccid, penis-shaped mushroom. The divine baker was also holding a small ramekin in some oven mitts he was wearing. The container was…a soufflé?

“What’s this, Jeph? We can’t be poisoned in the traditional sense. My play has already gone through. Robby has been exchanged quite deliciously, and we’ve already made our moves for the rest of this portion of the game.”

“You can’t think giving me a “snack” will help the mortals change those fates. And who calls a soufflé a snack? Honestly, that is a dessert.”

Jeph entered the space and made an awkward upward gesture with one foot. A quaint and skirted table rose from what could be called the floor. He placed the soufflé upon it and removed his oven mitts before replying.

“Dennis, God of Menace. I, Jeph, God of Baking, do at this moment, with a clear and present mind, state that this soufflé, at this moment, is a snack for you. It is given with wholesome intent and through no duplicity in its creation, existence, or the completion of its task in making you a less cranky bitch by absolving you of some of your hunger.”

Dennis glowered at the God before him with suspicion. Then he withdrew a spoon from his belt pouch of white fur that glittered with some red gemstones encrusted upon it. The spoon was longer than should have been able to fit inside the pouch at his belt.

The god representing the fear of the unknown occurring and ruining everything cautiously poked the divine soufflé with his mighty and incomprehensibly powerful eating utensil. When nothing happened, he casually picked it up, ignoring the paltry heat of the ramekin, and dug in.

Godly snorfling and slurping could be heard throughout the corner of the universe the two gods occupied at the time. A chef in a widely renowned restaurant heard the noise, and a scowl grew on his face. He smelled what he thought might have been one of his prize desserts being poached by one of the new staff. He grabbed a cleaver from the knife rack and started to hunt.

Jeph flicked a finger, and a senior staff member rushed to the man and calmed him down before a random newbie could be served as a main course in someone’s meal. Dennis snorted as he continued the snack and winked at the god of baking a moment later.

The same chef had gathered all the waiting staff and let forth a divinely inspired tirade that left most of those present shaking in their little white kitchen booties. It would be remembered for years as a warning for staff not to nibble on this particular chef’s creations.

Jeph sighed, removed his chef hat, and scratched his balding pate. After the tirade, in a mercurial shifting of mood, the chef took a junior kitchen aid under his wing and showed the boy how to properly twist and cut the bread to make the designed loafs the restaurant was famous for.

The acts of kindness and malice continued for some time as the two gods used the chef as an outlet to play out a microcosm of their grander game. A simple gesture from either god sent the man down a path of seemingly capricious acts of kindness and intimidation. This went on for an indeterminate length of time before a third god stuck her head into that corner of the universe.

She was as beautiful as a god should be, with long flowing red hair and artfully done make-up that you couldn’t even tell was there if you weren’t a direct attendant to the gods. Her beauty was marred by the fact that the last half inch of her nose had been bitten off by something with fangs. Her expected dulcet voice was misplaced by a harsh bark at the two warring gods.

“Oi! Knock it off! Pierre has a divine message to deliver in his forties, and if you end up driving him mad with your stupid antics, I am taking it out of both your hides! Jeph, it’s your message, and you should know better than this.”

“Dennis! Where the hells is my Cheese of the Millenia club package?! It was supposed to be here ten years ago!”

Jeph hung his head in shame at the childish display he had let get out of hand and said,

“Yes, Melissa. Sorry.”

Melissa harumphed at him and turned her gaze back to Dennis, who was gently moving his pouch behind him on his belt.

“I think it got delivered to me by mistake, yes. A simple wrong address on the label, I believe.”

The god of menace had done what he thought of as “doing a sneaky” and withdrew a fated sharpie from within the pouch, hiding the movement behind his back from Melissa.

Jeph saw the movement and rolled his eyes but said nothing. Melissa narrowed her gaze on the God of Menace.

“I’ll bet, and I just needed to remind you of it, I’m sure. Well? Go get it!”

Dennis nodded in what he thought was a sly I-just-got-away-with-it manner, then sank into the bottom of the space, disappearing from sight of the two remaining gods. Melissa turned her disembodied head to her brother, her red tresses floating around her like an affectionate bunch of red seaweed that wanted to get frisky, and said,

“You had better know what you’re doing. I can work with that bit of a beastie running the messages that were supposed to go through Robby. By the way, Milo is unhappy with having to do that to the poor boy. You’ll need to square that with him later, but Winnie is a different story. Get her back in the game, Jeph. I need her for my own play.”

Jeph waved both hands at his sister in a calming manner.

“The bread is rising, Melissa. Give it time to get ready.”

“Don’t give me bad baking puns. Give me a reason not to interfere beyond divine consequences for interrupting a sanctioned match.”

“We all saw how Dennis played and how badly he broke some of your pieces. Show me that I didn’t make a mistake in trusting you could turn it around in the post-match results, or I will bake your balls with a side of cocktail and horseradish sauce.”

“Aren’t mountain oysters usually pounded flat and fried?”

Melissa came fully into the space, warming to the subject and her tone becoming less combative as she continued threatening her brother with gruesome disfigurement.

“You can broil them as well, which I might do as a nod to your bailiwick.”

“Broiling…Is…Not…baking.” Jeph was more affronted by this than the threat of becoming a eunuch god.

The two sibling divinities argued about the merits of baking vs. frying or broiling and moved away from this space to do godly things elsewhere.