28

Dax woke early in the morning, the pain in his back had woken him up. Jumping out of a window, rolling around in gravel and then climbing back in a different one had done a number on his spine. Gods weren't probably meant to suffer from lower back pain and yet here he was cursing his decision to sleep on the floor.

It was probably time to find an actual bed in this place.

Hopefully sooner than later.

He didn't actually know why he was still sleeping on the floor when there were several couches littered around the place that he had already found. Their cushioned seats would be considerably more comfortable than the floor no matter how luxurious the carpet was.

It was a very sumptuous carpet. The sort of expensive carpet that made you feel bad walking on it 

Yet for some reason sleeping on the floor under a table, whilst wrapped in blankets was more appealing to him. Dax's back might not be happy but he felt safer there. No-one had made themselves known as a threat, he was currently surrounded by guards, guards Dax trusted and he still had no idea who he should actually be able to trust.

Living as Dythos wasn't really getting any easier.

The way he was living right now, it probably looked like the act of someone who had completely lost their mind but so did everything else. The looks people gave him if they saw him eating hadn't changed, if anything they had only become stranger.

Dax knew next to nothing about living in the Heavenly Realm as a God, especially as a God with no believers but what he did know was that when said residents of the Heavenly Realm looked at you like you were a cryptid (shout out to Moth-Man) for eating a ham and cheese sandwich there was something wrong.

But, Dax took comfort in the absence of System's wrath. If it wasn't threatening to delete him from existence then he couldn't be too terribly out of character.

Maybe Dythos was known for being weird. Maybe it was very unusual to die and then not die. Who knew?

Despite having regained a lot of strength over the past few days, enough to feel like he was starting to be able to function as a person again. Picking up all the prayers that had exploded onto the floor of the corridor had certainly been considerably more strenuous than he had been anticipating.

It was only an hour or so after breakfast but Dax felt like taking a nap again.

Who was going to stop him?

-

The nap took a lot longer than he had expected it to. When he looked out of the window and into the garden outside, the sun was much higher in the sky than it had been when he had first awoken.

Dax blinked at it, slowly rubbing the sleep out of his eyes with the cuff of his sleeve.

He wasn't hungry again yet, so it couldn't be lunch time yet. So there was some time to look around the garden in the daylight. With the sheer amount of flowering bushes stuffed into every nook and cranny, they were very obviously objects that Dythos had been interested in. With that logic the flowers weren't something that neither the guards or System could complain about him looking at.

After quickly running his fingers through his hair to make it look like he had actually brushed it at some point over the past few days, Dax made a beeline for the gravel path.

Well as much of a beeline as someone easily fatigued could make at least.

Very soon, Dax was walking around the extensive gardens that flanked three sides of the palace, marvelling at the sheer number and varieties of camellia that were planted within. He'd seen some of them in his short trips to and from the main gate but this walk brought to light that Dythos' interest in the flower was more than what looked like a passing hobby.

It reminded him of a distant cousin of his father's that grew a special variety of ornamental roses that he took to flower shows and competed with. There was probably a wall somewhere covered in blue ribbons just as the bread museum was.

Before finding himself in this world, Dax had only ever seen camellia bushes with bright pink flowers. Here, there were so many different colours, shapes and sizes of them that it was almost dazzling. Petals littered the grass and the gravel paths alongside them wherever they grew.

As deep as autumnal leaves but much more upsetting to stand upon. At first Dax had tried to avoid standing on them but it proved to be bad for his balance. From seemingly nowhere a guard had appeared at the side of him, steadied his position and then disappeared into the bushes once more as if they had never been there in the first place.

It was quite disconcerting.

He thanked them anyway.

This gentle walk was both some exercise to help build his stamina for walking after the injuries and looking at the collection of flowers but it was also a covert way of exploring his new residence. The palace was huge. It was one thing to skulk along at night looking for potential ways in and another to do it in full daylight.

He hadn't gone far though, before he was stopped by the familiar face of someone who was now fussing around him for being out of the building. This was doubly annoying because literally none of the other guards assigned to babysit him were bothered in the slightest.

Olris. It was Olris. Dax wasn't happy to see the face of the Deity who had rained upon his parade the night before so soon. If they hadn't turned up when they did, he might have been able to explore deeper into the palace and found an actual god damned bed.

It might not have been fully justifiable but he glared at the back of the Deity's blue tunic as they turned to give orders to guards still unseen.

Can't a god have a little fun in his own home?

Okay so maybe it wasn't Dax's home but he was puppeting around the body of Dythos and this was HIS home.

Upon Olris' return, his mission to find more secrets was interrupted.

"Dythos. I was not aware that you had awoken." They stated in an annoyingly corporate voice.

"I didn't know I had to inform you of such." Dax replied, pulling a red barely open flower from a nearby bush and twirling it between his fingers. He just wanted to try and get his bearings on the palace he was supposed to be living in and unlock enough of the map System used to help him actually find anything useful.

There had to be something in there that Dax could give him some information about Dythos. Maybe the god had kept a diary or there were pictures of people he hated in a book somewhere that could give Dax some knowledge of the wheat god's social circle.

He decided that maybe it was best to return inside and wander around in there, looking for the room filled with prayers again. If only to avoid Olris and not have to talk to them about last night. They couldn't stop him from doing his actual job now that he knew that there were prayers waiting for him to answer them.

At the very least if they tried to do so, Dax wasn't going to let them.

Those thoughts though, were thrown off kilter when Olris decided to follow him around this new home everywhere he went. Always exactly seven paces behind him. So close that Dax wondered whether if he came to a sudden stop the other would barrel into him and he'd be knocked out on the tiled floor of the room they were currently in.

This mother hen like behaviour was starting to erode his patience.

He wasn't a child and neither was Dythos.

Being treated like one was wearing away his goodwill. If Olris had been trying to support him to do what he wanted Dax wouldn't be complaining but they weren't.

They were preventing him from doing it.

They could worry about him without it being suffocating. Right now, it was suffocating.

Helping someone was more than just staring at someone as they squatted on the floor, one hand on the floor to steady themselves and the other clutching the bag of prayers and just staring at them as if you had ten thousand better things to do.

Olris kept trying to make him go back to the reception room he had made into his makeshift bedroom.

"Why don't you want me to do my work?" Dax asked, now suspicious as to their intent. In his arms, the bag of prayers he had managed to collect, from where he had left it last night, was held tightly as Olris reached over his shoulder and tried to pull it from him.

People weren't supposed to touch other people's prayers and Dax certainly didn't want Olris touching them. It was one thing to help tidy up after a letter based explosion another to yank a bag of ancient, delicate prayers out of the God of Wheat's hands in the middle of the day.

His heart started racing wildly, these prayers may have lain unanswered ever since the battle where Dythos had died but they were important. Someone had asked him for help and he was determined to give what help he could despite the years that had passed and no knowledge of how to do that.

-

Olris was worried.

Worry that extended not only to Dythos' health and whether he was actually working would be detrimental to it but also to the actual contents of the prayers themselves. Finding the loose prayer on the hallway floor had been alarming on its own but it having come from the God of War, was even more so.

The fact that he had made that prayer under his own name and not a pseudonym was alarming.

Neither were assuaged when Olris had met in the gravel of the outer courtyard Elgaldir the God of War. In fact the conversation that the two of them had, had only raised more alarm in the guard from the emperor's palace.

There was no way that there was only one prayer from Elgaldir.

He'd definitely prayed more than once.

Who knew what response Dythos would have to the words of those prayers? The shadows of the past were drawing longer and shining a light on events that were better off forgotten.

Olris had been tasked with guarding the God of wheat from the memories of that night by the emperor of Heaven himself. That they hoped would continue to be their task for a while longer yet.

Olris thought of the sheer mountain of prayers that they had seen stuffed into the Prayer Office of Dythos and panicked. There was no way they could quickly sift through and lift the offending ones out of the mess before Dythos saw them.

"We're very concerned about your memory loss." A half truth that quickly slipped past the guard's lips, meant to placate and appease. It didn't work.

A small, angry and visibly bristling god stood before them. Dythos had his back arched like an angry cat ready to pounce.

Dax shook the bag of prayers gently. Within it, the paper they were written on rustled ominously almost judgmentally. "I'm a God! Aren't people's prayers important?" He asked.

Olris sighed, this was true and Dythos' insistence to work on his prayers was somewhat refreshing. Usually deities complained about how much work answering their prayers was and tried to delegate it to literally anyone they could. It was nice to see someone not jaded by their own popularity among the mortals yet.

The look on Dythos' face melted Olris' resolve to ensure they followed their instructions to the letter. The guard's will caved. "Okay... but one at a time. Don't overtax yourself."

If Dythos was looking at them one at a time, that gave Olris the time to think up a better plan for dealing with Elgaldir's prayers.

There was no way that the Emperor of Heaven was going to keep everything from Dythos forever. Olris decided that they were willing to risk this. They walked calmly out of the palace to not shock him and then ran like the ancient demon Bor'ath was after them.

Leaving behind a very confused Dax in their wake.

Mini Theatre

Dax: Just let me do my job.

Emperor: No.

Dax: Please.

Emperor: No.

Dax: I'm going to do it anyway.

Author: He is just going to do it anyway.