The ichor congeals as I follow its trail. It still shimmers a bit, but… well… it looks more and more similar to human blood.

The trail is also growing thicker the more I follow it and it leads me to a very injured god. The source of the ichor is a patch of their skin which looks like a bunch of stone. It looks like some type of boulder was taken out of it. Maybe the attackers carried this boulder away?

Their torso is hollowed out with a harp in it, a flute stuck to what remains of their skull, two eyes as big as my head, and four arms. One pair near the flute, the other near the harp. This particular god, they're part of the Arc. It's, well, it's an arc of dirt and rock and it's got a bunch of different gods fused into it. Some on the inside, some on the outside. They can grow sprouts of eyes and ears to see and hear around different parts of the Arc, just like any god. The gods of the Arc are… they consider themselves even godlier than any other gods. So they’re even more insufferable.

Some of the other deities are asleep, and with some you can't tell, since their faces… they're not quite faces.

The gods of the Arc aren't a chatty group, but they could definitely be communicating to others through their sprouts. They have no respect for humans, so even if the attackers were human, I doubt they'd be communicating to any human authorities to get them to track said attackers down. Which is one explanation for why I can't see anyone else here. Besides the fact that maybe someone else followed the attackers already and apprehended them (in which case, thank goodness).

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I ready my harp as I approach. "Hello," I sing and play.

"Hello. Call me Fifth-God-Of-Left-Side-Of-The-Arc-Whose-Head-Used-To-Be-Coloured-Half-Periwinkle."

I notice some of the strings on this god's harp have been snapped, so they’re vibrating the air directly to say some of the syllables.

“A respectful hello, Fifth-God-Of-Left-Side-Of-The-Arc-Whose-Head-Used-To-Be-Coloured-Half-Periwinkle,” I greet them, nicknaming them Periwinkle in my head. Not that I’d say that to their face.

Periwinkle turns one eye towards me, and the other swivels around, surveying the whole area. The landscape, the other sleeping gods. "You're here because of the–" That long word I'm translating as "witches" pops up again.

"I saw the trail of ichor."

Periwinkle laughs. “Of course you did. Too hard not to notice, isn’t it?”

“And that was your blood?”

More vibrations of the air, reverberations of the laughter. “Go away. Go after the ichor-spillers if you want. Even if you don’t…” More laughter, and some mutterings of overly complicated words which require the flute, the harp, the air itself, and maybe some rocks. “You’ll find out eventually either way.”

More rocks! It’s not just percussion-grammar, I think, since they’re definitely trying to get the rocks to hit me.

“I’ll be on my way, then,” I say, as politely as possible.