NEYT VS NEET.

To say Neyt (god of pointless bureaucracy) was mad would be an understatement at the moment; to say he was pissed off would be closer to the truth; to say he was bloody livid would be closer to the reality of the situation, though.

When a God acts in the interests of their aspect, traditionally, it shows up in their permanent record. Nothing else should ever show up here, yet right now, the data file on Drizul was starting to corrupt. It no longer showed the name Drizul capitalised; instead, it was showing as lower case, and as any petty bureaucrat can tell you, typos are where it all starts.

With a corrupted data point, his Akashic Anchor had come completely unbound. Freeing him up from the bonds of his prior purview. Now his record was showing all sorts, unauthorised smiting (any god can smite a mortal for any reason, the only deterrent they had was a form so long and tedious as a consequence that no god wants to do it, followed by a dozen forms to explain why you had to fill in that form, and another six to get the application for the first form. When it comes to paper related deterrents, nobody does it like gods; there were even rumours that seventy per cent of the great archive was the card catalogue.) Wagon repair without even offering an unreasonable bargain in exchange. Crashing in random inns where nobodies daughter was left pregnant? They were gods for pities sake, and there’s a form to these things. Some tales always repeated; it was how the gods kept their name out there. Now it seemed he was off out there doing goodness knows what, and most worrying of all, he was actively avoiding water.

A god avoiding an element of their affinity, there was something terribly wrong about that. Gods tended to stick to their elements in the same way as a dog sticks to disgusting smells. Nobody knows why they do it; it’s just in their nature. The fact he was doing so meant he was actively making an effort and choosing to avoid every aspect of his old self. It showed he had no intention of coming home at all. This didn’t leave Neyt with much choice; things should be in their place, not rolling about loose; if this kept up, then chaos would ensue; this had to be rectified, and preferably before it was too late.

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Brother Dolphinus of the great sea shrine was halfway through his usual daily rituals when the altar started to glow. That had never happened before and was concerning. He stepped forward and began to pray when suddenly his eyes beheld a vision. (That is to say, a bloody great splitting migraine with added sound, pictures, and far more information than he knew what to do with.) He saw a god fall and abandon their place; he saw drought, famine, and disaster, he saw the divine mount fall, and the great vaults of divine documents turned to shreds. (He also saw he was going to need a lot more headache pills once this vision was over, but that was a slightly lower priority than the possible end of the world. Reaching into his robes, he pulled out a to-do list and added, locate stray god, restore Akashic anchor. Prevent the collapse of the world as we know it, prevent the crumbling of the divine mount, and buy painkillers to the list.

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That done, he pulled out a ball and rang for others of the order. Sending them to recruit priests from all across the land to aid in the search. Soon they were on their way, and the temple stood empty, save for a cleaner, who kept on like they hadn’t heard a sound. Potential world-ending information, after all, seldom paid the bills, and they wanted nothing to do with prophecies. Most of the damn things were just gods looking for a lackey in a fight that mortals had no place being involved with anyway, and those effigies weren’t going to clean themselves.

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Neyt sat down, head in his hands and pondered what he had just done; this was a delicate situation, and getting all those little cults involved was probably not the brightest idea. But this was his damned brother here, and there was no way he was going to let the golden boy throw his life away like that. (Of course, being a god, the concept of brotherhood was a tad unique, he had about twelve brothers, one of whom was a horse, one of whom had popped up from sea-foam, one who had appeared in a cabbage patch.... yes, really... there was an actual honest to gods stork involved there too, but that’s a story for another time. One of whom had appeared at the fall of an empire after being worshipped into existence by people who refused to believe he didn’t. Though why they felt the need to believe in a god of tea and crumpets that badly was definitely a mystery best left to the ages.)

But this was Drizul, he was the golden boy, Mum’s favourite, and Neyt never could stand to let their mother down. This was why he was constantly bailing him out of trouble. Had been doing so since the beginning, though they seldom admitted to their relation anywhere but family meals. Now, this was no different, his dear brother had just decided to look for a new way to rebel, and this was it. Neyt had no idea what was going through his head right now; it was like he actually wanted to be abandoned or something.

That wouldn’t do, he would turn the world upside down and find him no matter what, and in the meantime, he’d find a stand-in, so he didn’t lose his position. Then he would drag him back home and sort this damned mess out; there was no way in hell Neyt was going to allow for his brother to become a NEET.