Celeste made her way out of the city, feeling her cloak billow behind her as she walked.

Jasper had told her that the game was trying to make the starting zone a melting pot for every faction in the game. Apparently, this was the optimal configuration for the area, as the orks needed a place to raid, while the other factions needed some political intrigues to fight over.

However, Celeste couldn't help but feel for the people living in the area. The conflict was hurting them more than it should. She could still see their eyes resting on her, feeling their hungry looks. She shivered. It wasn't just that. She still felt partially responsible for creating the wartribe. If she hadn't let the orks flee from the first combat she had been in, maybe the orks wouldn't have invaded as hard as they did.

Whatever the case, Celeste knew that she would have to find a way to solve three problems:

1) Ensure that the people were fed and wouldn't starve.

2) Ensure that the political battle had another objective than taking over Marcusburg.

3) Ensure the orks had something other than the humans to raid.

Celeste looked over her options. She didn't have an obvious solution to the first problem, and the second problem could easily be solved by creating an artefact that she could have them fight over. However, that would require Worship, and the goddess currently had two. Essentially, she didn't have much to work with.

Lastly, there was the option of getting the orcs to raid something other than humans. She could do that without spending too many resources.

She knew she had the power to eliminate the wartribe's leader if necessary. All she needed was their name, after all, and her Death Domain would eliminate them.

As she navigated the woods, she found her steps were confident, guided by her unique control over time. It was a comforting experience, as her perception of time had been adjusted to give her much more dexterous movements.

It wasn't long before she heard movement from around her, and to her surprise, she realized just a little too late that she had found herself in an ambush. Twenty mean-looking orks surrounded her as they moved out from behind various foliage. Their glares were intense, and for a moment, Celeste thought back to her first fight in the game.

She smiled.

The goddess had grown so much since then. Back then, she had tried to bargain with them, talk things over, and gain the orks as an ally, but they had wanted to fight. She would be sure to return the favour... It was a favour three hundred years in the making, but from Celeste's perspective, it was less than four weeks ago.

To Celeste's surprise, a small goblin wearing a shiny knight helmet, one of those with the strange wide brim on their head, stepped out with a broad smile that took up most of their face.

"RIGHT! You have stepped into the area belonging to great warleader Spaf! Give us all your thingies, and we will kill you!" The goblin spoke in a commanding tone, and it spoke much better common than any of the orks that Celeste had ever met.

"Sorry, isn't it supposed to be you will not kill me if I give you my stuff?" The goddess asked, a hint of amusement in her voice. "Are you this Spaf?" She added, trying to figure out if the town had been harassed by this small number of orks.

The goblin paused, looking at Celeste, and then laughed. "No! I am not Spaf! The great warleader does not go hunting. And now you give me all the thingies you are carrying!" It said with eagerness.

Celeste's smile became a grin. It seemed like she would get to blow off some steam. After all, it wouldn't do to go out and murder the leader of the wartribe without talking. That would just give her problems down the line. But getting revenge for the awful experience she had during her first combat sounded somewhat therapeutic.

Celeste's eyes glowed with the power of time itself, while her Death Domain was pushed into action. She decided to splurge a little, dedicating one Energy for the day to gain access to a power that she hadn't picked, and in doing so, she gained access to the power that would deal damage to anyone who tried to attack her. That also meant committing one more Energy until the next loading screen, but she was sure that she could handle that.

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

She smiled as death was oozing off her cloak, and with time as a weapon, she engaged in combat.

The last time she had fought against orks, there had been twenty-five, and the pair of gods had barely scraped by. Now, however, Celeste was in complete control of the fight. The feeling highlighted to her just how powerful she had become.

She could feel someone attack her, and as they did, they collapsed. Their attacks were avoided as Celeste had already predicted where they would land and stepped away. The billowing cloak of death consumed their life for daring to attack a divine being.

Reaching out and controlling time, The goddess crushed one of the orks, trying to fire a bow at her, his entire being crumbling to dust in less than the splitsecond it took for him to release the shot. All the while, she stepped to the side, dodging a sharp blade that simply plunged into the ground. The shadows of her cloak tearing into the ork that had wielded the weapon, and he perished before Celeste actually saw him.

It wasn't as much a battle as it was a massacre, and Celeste wondered if she should have taken the power to harm anyone who tried to attack her instead of some of her other powers.

She was pulled out of her thoughts by the goblin trying to run away, its body scurrying through the ferns that made up much of the undergrowth. It didn't take much to finish off the last couple of orks that had been pulled into a frenzy. Once they had crumbled, she relinquished the hold of her death aura and used her Journeying Domain to follow the goblin.

To Celeste's surprise, walking through the forest and following the goblin was quite a nice walk. She knew that the little creature was probably running for its life, but she couldn't help but take in the trees and the feeling of comfort that wrapped around her as she walked.

The forest didn't feel like it had been the home of an invasion, but it was like there was something she was missing. None of the trees had been scorched, and she didn't hear the thunder of warmachines.

Celeste assumed that the orks weren't high in the techtree, but she would still have expected them to be present and milling around the forest, instead of just setting up various ambushes.

It took her about half an hour of relaxed walking until she started to hear yelling and screaming. It was barely audible, but the sound carried quite a bit as she got closer. The voices screaming were almost identical, making them hard to distinguish. With a slightly high pitch, it indicated that the speakers weren't orks, even though their language skills would suggest otherwise.

"GIVE ME HAT! I NEED HAT! I AM LEADER!" One voice said, and the sound of tugging and struggling could be heard following the voice.

"NO! ME BE LEADER! ONLY THING SPAF LEAD IS SPLAT SOUND WHEN HIT WALL!" The other voice said, and the sound of laughter could be heard from what Celeste was sure was the Orkish camp.

"HAH! ME NOT BE SPAF! ME BE SPIF!" The first voice retorted as if it had made some clever counterargument.

"NUHUH! ME BE SPIF! YOU BE SPAF!" The second voice retorted.

Celeste was starting to understand why the orkish horde had not killed the entire village. Apparently, even the orks were suffering from management issues.

The goddess wasn't trying to be stealthy, but thanks to her enhanced time perception and her natural abilities, she still managed to get into the ork camp undetected. It wasn't really hard since there weren't any guards, and the orks around the camp were focused on the fight between the two would-be leaders.

The ork camp wasn't really what Celeste had expected either. Between a quartet of hills, the orks had been digging and sculpting a massive amphitheatre bordering on a sunken stadium. Orks were sitting around the edge, eating, drinking and laughing while watching the fight in the centre of the pit. Dark caves had been hollowed out along the walls, making it look more like a permanent base of operations rather than a simple war camp.

Down in the pit, two goblins were fighting. They looked identical, and based on their confused looks even they couldn't tell each other apart, as the screaming had been replaced with an actual discussion about which one of them was Spif and which one was Spaf.

"No no no! Spaf got scar down left leg, while Spif got scar on right." One of them said, and in unison, they both looked down.

"But we both have scar on left leg!" The other said, and Celeste rubbed the bridge of her nose. Since the goblins were facing each other they were experiencing the mirror effect.

"Huh... But both can't be Spif." The first goblin said, reasonably certain in its case, that one of them had to be Spaf.

"Dum dum! Spif got scar on right leg, not left leg!"

"That is what me said! Spif got scar on left leg, and Spaf got scar on right."

Celeste could already hear that they had mixed up their method of remembering who was who, and she understood why the two goblins had become the leaders of a wartribe. While they were useless at ordinary army delegation, she was sure that anything they could agree on would be carried out with a dogmatic dedication.

The goddess could deduce what had happened from there. The wartribe had invaded Akastin and crashed against Marcusburg. While the city had taken a beating, it withstood the initial wave, and Celeste assumed that the city might have used her resources to reconstruct what they had lost.

Celeste had been suspicious when Selma, the mayor of Marcusburg, had mentioned that they had lost the stores to a raid. The goddess was fairly certain that she wouldn't be able to call down calamities onto the city, unless they had broken the oath in some way, and they weren't forced to protect the building.

However, when the orks had discovered that they couldn't get into Marcusburg their wartribe had fallen apart, leaving them to infighting and ambushing caravans that made it to the city.

Celeste would have to convince them to ease up on the locals, but how to do that seemed to be a little more complicated than she had first assumed.

She saw the small goblin that had escaped her, making its way into the centre of the pit, where Spif and Spaf were standing.

Celeste would have to introduce herself before she was called out.