“Make ready!” Cried Decius, who had evidently postponed his cursing of the gods to fight a hopeless battle. I didn’t doubt he would return to his important work after the battle, whether as a human or as a ghost.

The messed up mortals were only about fifty cubits from us at this point. That’s not very far. Especially in Caprian cubits. In case you are reading this as an Elisian, a Caprian cubit is about as far as the tip of my fingers to my elbow. A bit shorter, actually. How long is that? Well, it’s about as long as a Caprian cubit, duh.

So, no time for a plan. It was time for Directus Interventium. Godds were never supposed to apply Directus Interventium like this. Make the mortals wait for it. Make it seem like all is already lost. Better yet, don’t do Directus Interventium at all. There are a ton of good reasons for this. I will explain later. When we are not dealing with corrupted mortals intent on eating us…or corrupting us…or removing our eyeballs with grapefruit spoons. As far as I could tell, these corrupted mortals were capable of anything.

I was going to go for the most Directus Interventionus I could thinki of. There aint much more direct than lightning bolts. Deus once took me and about seventeen of his other kids to the lightning range as a field trip. Different gods have different affinities, and you can often inherit some affinity from your parents, but you can shape, develop and perfect your natural affinity. Exposure, practice, secret knowledge, and artefacts can all impact your natural affinity. To be honest, I hadn’t really done much lightning practice since the field trip. I always thought I’d get to it someday. Now that I needed it…

Too late! Stop remembering! Lightning bolt!

Bam! I got one. It looked like it definitely hurt him! He was at least seriously inconvenienced by it! A visage of pure hate contorted his face or maybe he was just mad. I don’t know, I’m not a writer. Then our little group was going to be in hand to hand range soon. Crap! Why hadn’t I practised more? I was the son of a freaking lightning god, and this was pathetic. I’m a freaking god, for our sake!

Okay, well, as the son of a storm god, I also have a little bit of affinity for water. I don’t know if you know this, but my uncle is actually really big into water. Or really big underwater. I hadn’t done much with my eternal life up to this point. But I have played around with my powers a bit and I had an idea. Lightning bolts like to travel through some things more than others. Like if you are sitting on a cloud and you throw a lightening bolt at the ground, sometimes it will travel through a tree instead. I’m wasn't actually strong enough to hit the ground from cloud level yet, but you get the point.

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Anyway, I started calling some of the water under the ground to the surface. If you are mortal or just have no water affinity at all, you might be surprised about how many places have water underground. Surprisingly, it’s like almost everywhere. Not only that, but the ground we were defending was also already muddy. Especially lower further down the hill. It must have rained here recently.

“What are you considering, oh Josh?” asked Epictetus, his staff held ready in both hands.

“I think there is water around here, so…”

“No shit, there is water around here.” Yelled Decius, somehow overhearing us from twenty cubits away over the growls of the corrupted mortals. “You think I just chose a random hill to defend?”

“Ahem. Anyway, I’m calling up water so that all of the corrupted mortals are standing in it. Then I’m going to send my powerful lightning through the water to lightening them all at once.”

“I don’t think it works that way.” Said Epictetus.

“What? It totally works that way.” Actually, I didn’t know if it would work, but now I was committed to the position. “When you put lightening in water it wants to go get everyone in the water. That’s just science.”

Some of the corrupted ones were starting to get up the hill. I needed to hit them now. I judged that the water was at least high enough to cover most of their toes. I was at my limit for water affinity anyway.

“Okay!” I announced, “Stand back!” Not really necessary to say. But after saying that, it felt weird to just throw the lightning in silence, so I ran forward to the edge of the water made a noise like “hurrraaaa!!!”. I plunged both hands down as I sent the strongest lightning I could conjure into the water and right down into the ground without hurting any of them. Wait what?

The silence from Epictetus was deafening. “Okay, so why doesn’t it work that way?” I finally asked.

“Because you are a god. You aren’t supposed to resort to petty tricks.”

I felt like he probably knew the real reason but he wasn’t telling me. “What are you talking about? Haven’t you heard about the golden pear incident? Booby-trapped robes? Sleeping potions, sleeping spells, magical areas that make you want to fall asleep. Petty tricks are one of your main things.”

“Well yes, those were petty in terms of the emotional maturity behind them. But as a god in battle, I think you need to face this challenge head-on.”

“How am I supposed to do that? You saw my first lightning strike. It was pathetic.”

“Yes. It was pathetic because you only did it once. Hit them. Then hit them again, then keep on hitting them until you have eliminated all the problems.”

The corrupted ones were close enough now that a mortal could probably hit them with a rock. Yep, yep, one of them just hit one with a rock. There wasn’t anything to do but try Epictetus’ suggestion now. I hitched up my toga and prepared to throw lighting like I never had before, but probably should have.

V0.2.4 11/11/23