“Leffy. Leffy!” Treen hissed as loudly as she could without advertising her current position. He’d fallen asleep, the carefree idiot! It was a stroke of luck that God of Order wasn’t actively looking their way; she was engrossed in some brown book, flipping pages and scratching across parchment quickly with a writing implement. But that precious window of opportunity could close at any time, so they had to move.

Now.

The male elf was violently shaken awake by his sister, who was understandably rather tense - given that the planned distraction had already passed by a little over thirty minutes. Thirty whole minutes that the elves could be fortifying their defense. “How can you fall asleep in this situation?! You promised me you’d draw their attention!”

“…sorry, sorry.” Leffy yawned, rubbing his eyes roughly with his arm. How could anyone blame him? He’d spent the better part of six hours lying down on flat ground staring into the sky as it gradually changed from a hue of reddish orange to that of a murky blackness. Like the trance one got from hunting, where you tuned out every other thought and focused solely on sneaking up on an animal you’d been tracking for hours before. Call it skygazing hypnosis. “I’ll get on it right away, you go get ready where you have to. I’ll shout or something so the God gets over here.”

Treen huffed indignantly at her brother’s nonchalance, but disappeared into the shadows all the same. They were on the clock now; no time for a dressing down. Maybe after they’d repelled the godly threat.

“OOF! AWCH! AGH!” Leffy clutched his stomach as he yelled out in pain. A terrible performance, Treen groaned as she took rapid strides towards the spot of her egress. No one was going to fall for such obvious play-acting.

Least of all someone calling themselves a God.

“What? What are you feeling? Tell me where the pain is.” Ok, she stood corrected. Treen heard frantic footsteps coming from her back as Order apparently chomped onto the bait with zero hesitation. Treen had no way of knowing this, but the God had been conditioned by her previous experience with the process of divine energy infusion to pay close attention to every aspect of the alteration; just in case the valuable subject perished without giving her a chance to note down every data point that could be observed from their demise.

Good job, Treen thought, slinking into the thick overgrowth. As soon as she was sure that the vegetation obscured her figure sufficiently, she broke out into a sprint back towards the elven tribe’s home. Don’t worry, Leffy. I’ll get help soon enough.

Fifteen minutes till she returned.

======================================================

“…maybe it’s my stomach? Or… it could be my chest? OOF! OW! ARGH!” Leffy sneaked a peek through squinted eyes to gauge Order’s reaction. Yep, that was definitely a God pinching and prodding his upper body with delicate fingers. If he wasn’t supposed to be tricking her right now, Leffy felt he might have blurted out a cheesy pick-up line. Bit strange how she was so concerned with his horrendous acting, though – like unforeseen problems were likely to occur with the ritual. Expected to occur, even. Well, he certainly wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth.

“I can’t… see. At a preliminary glance it doesn’t look like there’s an adverse reaction… It’s too dark to be sure. Lie down.” Order grabbed Leffy by the shoulders and forced him down into a lying position. “No, circulation seems good – there isn’t any disruption. There shouldn’t be any pain… unless I’ve overlooked some other factor?” She muttered, stroking the tanned skin with a palm. Perhaps this was a possible occurrence as the infusion melded with the mortal’s physical form? She glanced over at Barkly, who was snoring loudly to the side. No, if this one was experiencing severe discomfort, the other subject should display a similar affliction.

With that, Order got up from her knees and wordlessly returned to her original position. “Hey, um… miss God? Ow…? It still hurts! You gotta fix me or give me something for the pain, right? ...why are you walking away?” Order didn’t respond to the elf. There was no need to attend to his sickness right this very moment. In any case, it was most likely a coincidence that he was experiencing pain. Irrelevant to the recent godly interference in his biology. Therefore, the best option would be to resume observation from a safe distance.

After all…

The expected seven hours was about to be up.

Five minutes to go.

======================================================

“Order’s missing out; this place is brilliant!” Stories gushed as he swam over to another object that caught his eye. The elves didn’t just make any old treehouse in these treetops; they constructed magnificent structures that incorporated the trees themselves into the design. Thick branches as walkways from one home to another. Sturdy wooden flooring that were grafted onto the trunks and anchored to the tree by regrowth. Improvised wooden stakes driven into the core of the redwood that could be tapped for easy sap access. “For monkeys they sure are civilised, eh Survival?”

“I do have one question though…” Stories wondered out loud.

“How do they… poop?”

“You’re looking in the wrong places, mate. Look at that…” Survival whistled as he peered closely at the carved spear an elven guard was holding. The shaft was nothing to marvel at, just a plain stripped down branch sanded down to a generic wooden pole, with elven script scraped into the wood. But the tip… now, that was a work of art. The large tooth of some beast had been jammed onto the end and secured tightly with a lashing of vine. “Beautiful,” the giant God breathed, watching the tooth sway from side to side as the guard shifted in place, trying to maintain a stoic pose. “See, this is what it’s all about – the struggle against death for life, triumphing over the weak and liberating trophies to make yourself stronger; that’s the right way to survive!”

“Ok, so what? They all have fancy pokey sticks.” Stories scoffed. He jabbed a thumb in the direction of some elves playing a game of treeball. “Pointy stabby implements are literally the least interesting thing here. I mean, just look: they’ve invented a whole sport around tossing a ball of leaves around while dangling at least three hundred feet off the ground! That’s… amazing! The sheer amount of hand-eye coordination… the confidence borne from decades of living in trees… that’s way more fascinating than oh, they killed a big thing and stuck its teeth on the ends of sticks.”

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Survival was just about to launch into a whole dissertation refuting the dismissal of how important it was that mortals challenged themselves once in a while to face creatures stronger than themselves and that no, they weren’t just pointy sticks, they were very cool and Stories should feel dumb and stupid for not seeing that… when all of a sudden, a commotion broke out in the central area of the elven tribe’s home.

“Oop, there’s drama.” Stories tore himself away from a particularly intricate self-portrait carving and floated over to Survival’s side. “Wanna go check it out? Could be something fun, like a fight breaking out. I bet you’d love that, wouldn’t ya, big guy? Race you there!”

Survival grumbled as he followed in the other lesser God’s wake. The pointy spears were cool, and he’d prove it to that ignorant moron. The sudden disturbance took priority, though. If it was a fight like Stories suggested, maybe he’d finally get to see some blood.

“FIGHT! SOMEONE GET ME ELDER ROOT! WE NEED TO GET READY TO FIGHT! WE’VE ALL BEEN TRICKED!” Treen was hollering at the top of her lungs as she leapt from branch to branch, broadcasting a frantic cry of mobilisation. A couple of elves left their homes to see what was going on, but so far, the only ones really paying attention to her were the guards on duty. It was the middle of the night, after all; most elves were already fully in a dead slumber.

“Ah, crap. That’s one of the elves Order’s working on, right?” Survival nodded in response, half-listening as his eyes greedily followed the female elf nimbly jumping about. Why hadn’t he noticed before? Yes… the grace… the athleticism… she’d be a wonderful addition to his kingdom…

“Stay with me, big guy. No time for ogling the local fauna. We gotta go tell Order about this.” Stories took one last nervous look at the shouting elvish female before turning to propel himself towards the holding area in the Breezy Plains. It felt like a repeat of the time with Renewal – like things were about to spiral out of control. He mumbled a quick prayer that that wouldn’t be the case. Surely this was part of Order’s plan… right?

Two minutes till the infusion takes effect.

======================================================

Ok, Leffy thought. So that didn’t work. There’s maybe another five or so minutes before Treen returns. If she’s not buying the act, I probably can do something else to get her attention.

“Hey, uh, miss God, how about we talk about what the blessing is going to entail? Are we going to get wings or claws or fangs or something? Enlighten me.”

Order arched an eyebrow. “Aren’t you supposed to be in unimaginable pain? Oh.” She raised a palm to her forehead and sighed. “Of course. You were faking. No doubt like your friend over there - you’re bored.”

Ooh. He could work with that!

“Yeah, I’m bored! Are you hiding any uh, magical God games under that robe of yours that I can play while waiting?” Leffy said, inching closer to the God step by step. She hadn’t noticed Treen was missing just yet, so if he could focus her attention on him until his sister returned…

“That’s close enough, boy.” Order stopped the elf in his tracks with a frosty sentence. “Stay right there.”

The time was, so to speak, up.

It all happened in an instant.

One moment Leffy was bewilderedly staring at the sudden change in demeanor of the God of Order and Knowledge, still considering what his next move could be to buy his sister a little more time, and the next moment his vision was tinged a dark maroon.

He couldn’t see it from his perspective – it’s a little hard to observe your own eyeballs using those very same eyes, after all – but every capillary in both ocular organs had simultaneously burst, bleeding red liquid into the membrane surrounding them, and blinding him completely.

“Huu,” It was an involuntary gasp as Leffy clutched at his chest. This time he wasn’t faking; his whole body was seizing up, muscles contracting sharply as the elf was thrown into a primal fight or flight mode. Every neuron in his brain was firing constantly, screaming in a symphony of agony. His skin was on fire – like there were red-hot spikes of iron being inserted lengthwise into his flesh.

He couldn’t speak; he couldn’t think; he couldn’t… he couldn’t…

The pain… The pain…

Painpainpainpainpain.

He had to make the pain stop. He had to rip it out. He had to tear it out. He needed to break something – to hurt someone. To make others feel what he felt. And if they couldn’t endure the pain that he now felt every single second of his new existence?

They didn’t deserve to survive.

The creature that was once an elf called Leffy crouched low to the ground, sniffing roughly. It couldn’t see out of its eyes, but that was fine. The godly infusion had done its work: the creature’s sense of smell was in overdrive. It noted a pleasant floral scent to its front – something it could rip to shreds. But just as it was about to pounce onto the fragrant object, it paused. The elven beast had detected another scent to his side. A familiar musk, someone that the creature instinctively understood was superior to it. It snarled, a guttural growl of rage. This person thought they were better than it?

Then they needed to be taught the lesson of pain.

Barkly never knew what happened. He was sound asleep, sprawled out lazily as he dreamed of the new lands he’d visit with the wings that the blessing would bestow onto him. The execution took place within the blink of an eye. His throat was wrenched from his body with great force, blood spurting out in geysers. A powerful fist punched through his chest, rendering his ribcage into fragments of bone. His heart soon followed, popping like a balloon pumped with too much air.

At this point, Barkly was no longer alive. But the beast didn’t stop. It continued to scratch at the bloodied skin of the elf corpse with sharp claws of keratin, flinging medium-sized chunks of flesh behind itself as it dug over and over into the meat.

Order watched on emotionlessly, her pen gliding across the pages of her leather notebook in quick strokes. Then, confirming that she’d recorded every relevant detail of the incident, she snapped the book shut.

Now… what to do?

She pursed her lips as she watched the elf-turned-animal hack away at the unrecognisable hunk of meat. At times like this, wouldn’t it be appropriate to say something? To summarise the situation in a neat sentence, so that you could better organise your thoughts. She pondered for a few moments, finding the words to describe how she was feeling. Then she spoke.

“What a mess.”