Chapter 5 - Plight of the Scrotum

I shrank my head back to normal size, having gotten my bearings, one handy little scarab bauble richer.

My heroic alter ego had not found our favored people yet, and trouble was brewing on the horizon.

I was currently in the ethereal realm a ghostly overlay of the real world, I could perceive mortal dreams as multicolored globes, each representing a particular creature's dreamscape.

I could enter these dreamscapes and had chosen to appear to the Hipponians as a great cloud in Hipponian female shape. I had spoken to the tribe that I knew of their plight, their war with the vile Stygian Axlotl tribe. How I had flared with righteous lightning when mentioning the slaughter of the Mana Enriched Hipponian tribe living near the giant waterfall.

Lastly I gave them a promise, that I would send my two sons to lead them and share in their sufferings. What it would mean down the road in Hipponian religious practice and culture I had no clue, but I thought it a nice pun to pull on my corporeal aspect.

Okay I was still a bit miffed that we hadn’t chosen those parasitic insects as chosen people, but then he would have to come to terms with being the “Hippo Christ Double Bro Force” so we would be square, unless what we were about to do, would make Hipponian religion confusing in a way only a true religion can be.

I quickly altered my state of being to [Ethereal Packet] and went through the astral plumbing faster than senses could follow.

Oh the perks of being an upgraded ethereal aspect.

Sluuurm and I was at a crossover to the celestial realm.

There was a border patrol, but as an Ethereal Packet, I zoomed through the line at the border patrol, quickly declaring no goods, and then routed to the destination address.

Forming in the Celestial realm I felt weak and doodly, but still a bit smugness from my first smuggling of items between the ethereal and celestial planes.

The scarab was a minor magical bauble so it was no great offense, but I did not have the time to discuss arcane consumable regulations with a Cherubim border officer, so I had tried my best to stow it, prison style.

With the bauble still with me, I went to check in on her worshipfulness, the newest addition to the triad of our little godhood triangle.

“Oi its yer scrotum coming to see ya” I nodded at her as I floated into her little space of heaven, richly decorated as a orthodox christian patriarchal monastery. Well not richly in that it was decadent and bad taste. However it was quite a well crafted celestial scenery for such a beginner as us.

I went from a sandstone corridor to a large hall, a twin promenade of wide columns held a large vaulted ceiling. The usual altar location at the end was dominated by an oversized circular stained glass window.

In front of it, she floated in all our glory, small sparks coursing through the skin.

“Are you going to float in front of that window all day and look mysterious ?” I called out to her, laying on thick with my highlander accent.

She turned her head “Took you long enough, did you get caught trafficking magical items ?”

I shook my head.

“You have it ?” she asked.

“Indeed” I stated, idly spinning the scarab between my fingers.

“Then we must commence at once. I have searched and found a promising candidate.”

She turned back to the window, the air becoming drier and loaded with static energy.

A thin tendril of lightning shot out from the floating me and connected to the window, making all the little panes light up with a life of their own.

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“Lets fish a big dumb seabass in the Ether, that would be the right company for the hippo fellas”

Seeing her brow frown in tense concentration, I stopped my usually endless tirade of blabber. After our corporeal aspect had departed, she had quickly gathered her wits, asked the right questions, and then started practicing the celestial skill of cultivation.

We were about to harvest the fruit of that practice. While not influencing the dreams of the Hipponians near the legendary start location, I was out gathering mana on the ethereal plane and siphoning it off to her, my celestial aspect.

Now we had enough blue juice for her to cast a line into the Ether, and pull out a champion to help our cause. How good that would end up, would largely be determined by her skill, but I was as always hoping for Sweet Luck to activate.

The lightning tendril, widened with a sharp crack. Both the energy flowing through it, and the concentration on her face sharply increased.

She won't be able to support that for long, and if she fails our bid for getting some sorely needed help to our corporeal aspect, the plan would be set so far back, that it might be game over before I had gathered enough mana to try it again.

I steeled myself ready to burn my own essence to fuel her with mana.

The stained glass window was now alive with electricity, one tile in the center lit up with a bright white light.

Small smoky streamers wisped out of the tile, snaking forward into the lightning, which my fury of a celestial partner was channeling.

The smoke formed into a man shaped fog, slowly gaining substance.

“We are not going to make it” she stated while gritting her teeth.

Our mana reserves were dropping too rapidly. If they were drained before the soul had manifested it would all be for naught.

Which was a problem because deity manapools don’t regenerate at the same rate as mortals, especially when we had no followers providing us with mana yet.

Having no mana and no followers would mean mana starvation, a slow and painful death, but dying from it would take longer than the remaining days of the quest our corporeal aspect had, so it was the lesser of two evils.

“Hold tight, we planned for this, make it count for something. [Immortal Essence]”

I had activated a recently gained talent, which allowed me to burn myself up and function as an unstable mana reactor going critical, and most importantly reform again, the time to reform would increase as my level increased.

I literally poured myself into my other self. Lightning started to arc across the church.

Knowing, or at least hoping that the talent would work as advertised,

I tried to keep calm while I was mentally stripped down, one little bit at a time.

The soul was now solid, an old withered man, who was slowly growing younger as more vitality was poured into him through a lightning umbilical.

As he became younger, I was slowly drained away, mostly on the floor like spilled cereal.

“Hope this darn gamble won’t set us all back” I thought, and activated the scarab I had bought earlier, which immediately crumbled to dust, .

[For the next 10 minutes all debilitating effects have a greatly reduced duration]

Celestial Aspect Point of View :

“Use me last scraps, and give the champion a kiss from me, aghh guuh blaarh” The scrotum uttered, until growing so insubstantial he apparently could no longer speak, and then drifted apart settling as a fine dust on the otherwise clean hall.

The raw power of our ethereal aspect going critical was punishingly hard to refocus into the soul, it also had to be done in a way that didn’t split the soul in pieces.

The mana wrecked through my essence, making it quiver and threatening to also make me go critical.

I screamed while channeling the power into form. It only took a few seconds then the energy influx from the scrotum core rapidly started to drop sown, and the pain grew to more manageable levels.

I had tried to channel all the power of the runaway scrotum mana reactor, but much of it had gone over our maximum overcapacity and instantly formed lightning bolts around the great hall.

With the scrotum now gone, my reserves were painfully overfull, and I was slowly dialling down the surge of power into manifesting the soul into a champion, now seeking to refine and gain quality over quantity.

We had made it.

Me and that weird little scot who insisted on calling himself a scrotum.

The further plan would depend on the scotsmans gamble, if the scarab worked against draining yourself with a talent and having death or dissolution count as a debilitating effect, and thus reduced the respawn time for the talent.

Having our ethereal aspect into play was important, our sponsors had powerleveled him into level 5, and he had not been idle these past 2 days. While having a powerful champion fielded so soon was a gamechanger, other gods would also have aces up their sleeves.

So while not liking the leap of faith I crossed my divine fingers, and hoped the insufferable scrotum would be back soon.

He would also gain experience from the summoning of a champion.

Our Deity Tier would progress when all 3 aspects all had level 5 and again at 10, at 15 and so on. However, if any one aspect could come far enough ahead, he could drag the whole deity up a notch, in other words if the divine scrotum could hit level 10, we would all gain the benefits of being a Tier II deity, while still being in the early levels.

Now however it would be up to our corporeal aspect, to secure the favoured people, win the battle of the Legendary starting location and secure the region.

I had agreed wholeheartedly with the ethereal aspect that we didn’t need to put further stress on our corporeal aspect. If we told him that in less than 10 months, all gods in the Glenhallan tournament would turn to stone, and the world would be accelerated forward in time by at least 50 years. That would put too much pressure on him right now.

The favoured people would have to make their own decisions, and fight their own battles, but the clergy, and in their particular case shaman and lightning wizard caste would of course still have access to prayers and magic.

There were truly many things to worry about. Not the least being that something had gone awry when the corporeal aspect was formed, I had felt it, a sudden feeling of being desynchronised, for a few painful moments completely out of sync with the divine pulse of the universe, and then going back to a steady rhythm, albeit now with some weird ups and downs, but still a steady rhythm. Maybe a bit like the sound of a old rickety cartoon tractor.

And the ethereal aspect had also felt it, but he was sure the corporeal aspect had not noticed, and told her not to worry. But worry she did, what if their own aspect could not be trusted ? And all because of that clumsy Cthulhu-esque monster who had made the split between celestial and corporeal aspects.