As I kept my gaze fixed on the golden figure, my mind raced with questions. How is it possible that a Persian god of victory is here? Am I still in New Mexico? Did the crazy hunter guy shanghai me to Persia? I knew I needed to calm down and get answers, so I turned to Verethragna and asked,

"Where are we?" Verethragna replied,

"Not a terrible question, little warrior. We are in my essence right now. I brought your consciousness here when you touched my vessel."

I asked,

"So my body is still in that cave?"

"Yes," Verethragna said, "the cave where both of our vessels reside." I pressed on,

"Do you know where our vessels are located?" Verethragna's expression shifted to one of uncertainty, which I hadn't seen before. He replied,

"I do not know where the cave is that we are located in, but I believe we are somewhere on the Inthcaden continent. I have been in this cave for many years." He gave me a quizzical look. "Little warrior, how do you not know where we are? You were the one who walked into the chamber, shouldn't you know where we are better than me?"

I explained,

"Well, when I woke up, I was in this cave. You're a Persian god, so are we somewhere in Persia?" Verethragna shook his head.

“No, we are not in this Persia you speak of, in fact I can’t say that I’ve ever heard of such a place. That being said… P-er-sh-a… while I’m certain I’ve never heard of this place… it's like that word is… nostalgic” He runs his eyes up and down Pax’s body “You, little warrior, also give me this nostalgic feeling… could it be possible, little warrior are you from The Before?”

My mind was overwhelmed with questions, like how a Persian deity didn't know where Persia was, and how any of this was even possible. I knew I needed to keep a clear head and maintain a good impression with Verethragna, so I replied, "I'm not sure what you mean by asking if I'm from before, but I have a hunch that whatever you mean by that might be correct."

Ideas do battle in my head each wanting to express themselves before the others. Things like how a Persian deity didn’t know where Persia was, and still how any of this was even possible. I am determined to stay sane and keep the good impression that Verethragna has of me alive, thus I respond by saying.

“I am not sure what you mean by asking if I’m from before, though I have a hunch that whatever you mean by that might be correct”.

“Ah, a hunch, listen to those little warrior, logic is the best strategy most of the time, but it is the feeling in your gut that will save your life one day… but I digress. Anyways, The Before, if you're really from there, I can guess that you know nothing about this world”. After a nod from yours truly, Verethragna continues. “While giving history lessons isn’t exactly in my sphere, many of my peers would say that knowledge is power and with power being essential to victory… I will make an exception and tell you about this world.”

“Back in The Before, the universe where you are from, myself and the other gods and goddesses ruled the sentient races of those worlds for eons. What we divine beings truly are is a question for a philosopher. The best theory I’ve heard is that at the creation of your universe the various concepts and ideas that formed that creation, took on a life of its own.” Right before my eyes the world began to shift. As the god spoke the golden world itself began to change to correspond to his words. In an instant I was taken to what seemed to be the big bang as the explosion died down, there little sparks stayed lit as the various stars and planetary bodies began to form. As this happened before me, Verethragna continues to speak.

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“As life began to learn the concepts themselves also began to learn as well. After some time as life reached what we gods referred to as sentience, they gave form to the various different concepts which created the first gods.” The scene before me again was constantly changing through Verethragna’s monolog and I see numerous planets with all kinds of different life on them steadily becoming civilized with the sparks which were once unformed taking visages of different glowing deities, some of which look quite familiar. Verethragna continues.

“Over the eons on many worlds, gods rose and fell all being shaped by their worshipers and gaining and losing immense power from their support. That was until the Devourer came.” Yet again the scene plays out before me. The mortals on the various worlds pray to the gods and build temples, the gods intern fight each other, band together, and even have children with one another. All seems to follow a sort of rhythm, that is until a dark figure appears at the edge of my vision. Verethragna then resumes his story.

“The Devourer seemed to be an interdimensional being that could permanently kill gods by devouring our essence. He was completely immune to all forms of attack and trickery the various gods of the universe could employ and was steadily devouring all of us. To confront this, a council of all gods was called, even the primitive beast gods with little intelligence were allowed. The council, after much debate and more than a little bit of fighting, eventually came to the decision that a new universe separate from our home would have to be made to prevent the Devourer from destroying us.” Now the vision showed the dark figure, who was obviously the devourer attacking many of the various gods, they seemed to fight valiantly for a time, but all who stood against him eventually were eaten. After the futility of fighting this being became apparent the remaining gods got together and began arguing. Some left, others killed each other, but eventually some sort of consciousness was reached. Verethragna again continued.

“We could do this by combining the various pieces of creation that we all embodied and hoping for the best. It should be noted that our new creation which is called Ragnaris isn’t a perfect copy of the old one due to the fact that some of the concepts had been either devoured by the Devourer or refused to join our efforts. While many of us were sad to leave our mortals, the Devourer seemed to leave them alone for the most part. Thus, we came together and created this new universe.” Now the vision had the council of various gods holding hands while they slowly transformed into the amorphous sparks they had previously been. They all had different expressions while the process was happening, some sad, so determined, others happy. As the individual sparks came together they formed a ball reticent of the one that had preceded the big bang and then much like that first ball, it exploded. Then the vision collapsed in on the explosion, leaving things distorted. Verethragna then spoke yet again.

“We lost most of our old identities and memories. In fact, the only reason I can talk about all of this is that this is instinctual information built into the fabric of this world. This universe is quite small; it is limited to this single world and three moons. Most of the deities are asleep at the core of this world, but as the creatures of this world reached sentience we began to wake again. But it was not like before. We used to stride through the world confidently alone with our own bodies, but now in this world we must cooperate with a mortal and recall our true selves to ultimately ascend to the afterlife where we can fully regain our old splendor.” The vision then became clear once again, but unlike before were what seemed like a whole universe's worth of celestial bodies and stars existed there now just remained a single star, and lone planet and three moons. That said, unlike other planets, this planet glowed with the sparks of the gods in its core. As before life slowly began to advance until one of the morals of this new world fell into the core of the world. When he returned to the surface he held a sword and glowed with a bit of the luster that the gods had. The figure then went around the world doing many deeds and others built structures to honor him. With each of these structures, the figure began to glow brighter and brighter, until he finally achieved the same glow as the gods once had. Once that happened he took a place in the heavens. The vision quickly flashed and showed many other deities doing similar deeds and the heavens being filled with new gods and goddesses. Then the vision faded with the visage of Verethragna appearing right where it had been and then he said, “I myself am just a step away from ascending, so now I ask you, little warrior, will you help me reach the last step to ascension?”