by Demi Harper
Then I realized he was about to land on top of her.
Oh, no.
It would be like an enthusiastic Labrador attempting to curl up on the lap of a newborn baby—adorable, yes, but also potentially disastrous.
"Ket..."
"Hmm?"
"Look up."
Seven
All Hail the Spider God
Corey
There was a pause as Ket tore her eyes off the Augmentary. Then she squealed and streaked away from my gem in a trail of sparks, like a firefly shot from a blowgun.
Poor Binky's legs drooped in disappointment, and he shot me a look that said “Traitor.” Still, he kept descending. I watched apprehensively. This was a big moment for Binky. He was usually shy and came down only for food, or when I had other instructions for him, like during the battle when he and Flea the badger had bravely defended the children in the Refuge from the attacking kobolds.
As he touched down atop my shrine, the two acolytes there—who, until that point, had been very steadfastly continuing to worship as though nothing were happening—finally gave in to their fear and fled down the hill and into the shelter of the nearest gnomehome.
Binky ignored them. Focused on the new surface underneath him, his furry greenish legs danced deftly on the stone as he turned in circles. One of his hook-toed feet nudged my gem, which teetered a little but remained in place, and eventually he settled his bulk down atop it, despite clearly being far too large. Now he was simply like a Labrador trying to make itself at home in the bed of a much smaller puppy; tragic in its own way, but mostly harmless.
"And you're just going to leave him there, are you?" said Ket.
"Why not? He looks adorable."
She spluttered. "He looks like a broody hen, only a million times more terrifying."
Binky shuffled his weight a little, as though trying to get more comfortable. He did look like he was planning to hatch an egg. Broody… hmm. Perhaps it was time for me to make him a lady-spider companion...
I snorted as I imagined Ket's reaction to having two spiders in the Grotto, laying their squishy eggs in every corner to eventually hatch into hundreds more tiny spiders, which in turn would breed more spiders...
"What's so funny?" the sprite asked suspiciously, sensing my amusement.
"Trust me, you don't want to know."
From the doorway of the creche—a large circular structure surrounded by gnomehomes at the base of the hill—darted a very small figure, perhaps drawn outside by the sounds of the fleeing acolytes. After looking around for the source of the disturbance—and for any sign of an adult, no doubt—the gnome child raced up the hill toward us. She stumbled a bit on the uneven surface—the gnomes had yet to build a proper path, and I had little faith it would make the journey to the top smoother even if they did—but eventually the girl reached the summit.
She ran forward but then halted suddenly, foiled by the little ditch (which Ket generously referred to as a moat) that surrounded the pedestal of my central altar (which was really just a pile of flat stones). She reached grabby hands in Binky's direction, whining pitifully when she realized she still couldn't reach him despite him being tantalizingly close—much closer than usual.
Binky watched her impassively, unmoving. Then, at a mental prompt from me, he used his chelicerae to start cleaning his fangs, just like a cat using a paw to clean behind its ears.
The young girl clapped her hands together, letting out a delighted noise that was so high-pitched it made even Ket wince. She stayed there for several moments, transfixed by Binky's antics, until one of the older juveniles slouched over to retrieve her.
Ideally, it should have been one of the nurses who'd come to find her. However, the requirements for the creche building had specified only one nurse for every ten juveniles. This had seemed reasonable to me at the time of building. Now that I'd had plenty of opportunity to witness what a handful most of these kids were, though, that ratio seemed frankly ridiculous. It was almost as though the building’s prerequisites had been set by someone with zero experience of children.
Pfft. Gods.
The teenage gnome cast a surly glance at Binky but otherwise ignored him. After some persuasion—and a bribe involving several blueberries skewered on a stick—he and the little girl left us, hand in hand, the latter casting longing looks back over her shoulder until they were out of sight.
"You know, those denizens born in the creche are so much more comfortable around my god-born than those who were here first," I mused. "I wonder how much of it is an age thing?"
"That's an interesting point," said Ket. "Younger generations generally are more adaptable, it's true."
"And more accepting of things that are a bit different from themselves," I added pointedly.
"It isn't that I don't accept Binky! I'm trying, you know I am."
"I know. I'm teasing. I just can't comprehend how anyone could be frightened of spiders. Although," I conceded, "when the spider in question is several times larger than you, I suppose it makes sense. Still, it hasn't stopped the young ones from learning to like Binky. Perhaps the older gnomes—and you, Ket—just need longer."
"Perhaps not," she replied softly. "Look!"
The pair of acolytes who'd run away had re-emerged from their home looking rather sheepish. After much bickering, they made their way slowly back up the hill, taking it in turns to push each other ahead, presumably so the one behind would have time to escape if Binky decided to snack on the one in front.
They reached the top and stood there, cringing. Binky stared down at them. He didn't look hungry; he'd stopped cleaning his mouthparts at my command, and was now still as a statue as he regarded the two acolytes before him. They gradually relaxed.
The acolytes stood there as though waiting for instructions from my eight-legged guardian. For my own amusement, I had him wave one leg at them, as if to say "Proceed."
They glanced at each other, then back at Binky. Then they shrugged, knelt, and bowed their heads.
Cerulean lines, visible only to Ket and me, flowed across the space between the acolytes' bodies and my gem. As always, my denizens' active worship provided me with mana, which was stored in my gem ready to be used when needed. A visual representation of my mana level was always visible in the right side of my Augmentary: eight translucent globes, each narrowly connected to the next by a narrow line, like a long bulbous hourglass.
Eight globes, one for each god tier I'd attained during my time as the god of gnomes. At the moment, every globe was full, pulsing slightly with the glowing blue mana they contained. Many of my God Core abilities required the use of mana; however, on this latest expedition the only one I'd made use of was Double Sight, which cost me nothing.
Just because my mana was full didn't mean the acolytes’ worship was fruitless. When the flowing blue lines reached my gem, instead of drinking them in thirstily, the purple crystal glowed almost imperceptibly, gently rejecting the excess mana and redistributing it to our surroundings. Up until the battle for the Grotto, I'd been so busy creating god-born and using my new abilities to otherwise inspire and provide for my denizens—not to mention defend them against our enemies—that a full set of mana globes had been a rare sight indeed.
Lately, though, I'd had little on which to spend my mana once I was done regrowing the shroomtree fields and replenishing my fallen god-born creatures. The excess mana provided by worshiping gnomes instead spread out to rejuvenate the nearby environment. My moss was lusher, my shroomtrees taller and stronger. Bugs and fish were more plentiful, and even the badgers became more compliant.
In turn, all of these things gave off more ambient mana than usual, a reflection of their general wellbeing which spread out further to enhance the life in an even wider radius, like a happy plague. I'd begun spotting plants and insects I'd never seen before, in the outer tunnels as well as in the caverns close to the Grotto.
The Grotto itself had never looked so green and vibrant. It was a far cry from
the state in which I'd first found it. My SOI was flourishing—as were my denizens.
The gnomes' morale was higher than ever, and they had more energy, which meant things got done faster than usual. Even my god-born creatures seemed livelier, and appeared to be growing very gradually larger and stronger without the need for my Evolution ability. Ket assured me all of this was very much the point of being a successful God Core with a flourishing Sphere of Influence; the less I needed to use my god-like abilities, the better a job I was doing. Still, I couldn't help but feel it was a bit of a waste.
If only that excess mana could somehow be converted into Faith instead. I'm so close to Tier 9!
I glanced yet again at the inverted triangle at the bottom of my vision. The bottom half of it—the smaller, pointy half—was close to being filled with shining green. A closer look at the triangle would reveal it was marked with horizontal lines. The lines divided it neatly into twenty sections, evenly spaced so that despite being the same width, the sections grew larger the further up the triangle they went—a somewhat depressing reminder that each god tier was much, much harder to attain than the ones before it.
The bottom eight segments of my triangle were full, with the ninth segment on the verge of becoming so. The number "8" was overlaid atop the entire triangle, a constant reminder of how close and yet how far I was from reaching god tier nine.
It felt like such a long time since I'd tiered up. I craved the addictive sensation of power flooding into me, the ecstasy of knowledge racing through the incorporeal veins of my consciousness...
"Corey."
I sighed. "What?"
"Can't you do something about that?"
Ket sounded as though she were physically pained by something. It took me a moment to work out that she was referring to the two praying acolytes. With Binky's fluffy form currently dwarfing my gem, it looked as though the gnomes were worshiping him rather than me.
I sniggered. "All hail the spider god!"
Ket shuddered. "Seeing gnomes praying to a spider... it's disturbing."
"Look at him, though. He loves it. Bless him."
"Don't you start too," she grumbled. "It just seems... wrong. Though I suppose to you it must feel just like home."
I knew that was meant as an insult. But the truth was, it did feel like home.
I had very few memories of my former life, and none that went beyond vague flashbacks of silent scenes and images, but some of those memories included me leaving offerings at an altar—an altar which was almost definitely dedicated to some kind of spider god, if the massive eight-legged statue carved of obsidian were anything to go by.
Even before I'd started having more flashbacks, though, I'd felt a connection to the spiders I found in my Sphere, and had always had a special bond with Binky, as well as with the late Septimus and Octavia, two brave god-born cave-wanderers who'd fallen in defense of the Heart.
Perhaps it was because of the fear and disdain with which Ket and the gnomes seemed to treat them. She'd treated me similarly when she first learned of my former life as a dark elf, as I'd somehow known she would, and there was solace in banding together with other outcast species. To me, Binky was a creature just like any other. But to Ket and many of my gnomes, he was an abomination whom they instinctively feared and hated—irrationally so, in my opinion—and who had to work hard to earn not only their trust but their permission to simply co-exist.
So no, I was not going to do anything about the current situation.
"They're not praying to Binky," I told Ket with a mental shrug. "They're praying to me. It's fine. I guess they are having to pray through Binky to get to me, but... oh well. It'll be good for them."
"You're enjoying this way too much. And so is Binky."
Apparently we'd enjoyed it for long enough. The scrabbling of claws alerted me to a new arrival at the shrine: Binky's black-and-white nemesis.
Uh-oh.
Eight
Cold Feet
Corey
Flea the badger crested the summit with his usual graceless waddle, his big round butt waggling from side to side, his wet nose snuffling curiously at the air.
All eight of Binky's legs tensed at the sight of him, and for good reason. The instant the badger laid eyes on him, it let out a sound somewhere between a bark and a snort, and charged forward triumphantly. I didn’t need to issue any commands; Binky was already zipping back up the thread connecting him to the ceiling. Smart spider, always making sure he had a quick escape.
Flea huffed and halted his charge, his whole body slumping in a crestfallen sort of way. Another couple of yards and he would have gone charging straight into my precarious altar, probably knocking the two oblivious acolytes aside and sending my gem rolling unceremoniously down the hill to get stuck in the wet clay on the banks of the stream. Or worse, into the water itself, to be carried away by the current and away from my denizens, and me powerless to stop it.
"Ket."
"Hmm?"
"Should we have the gnomes build a fence or something around my gem? I feel like it's a bit too... accessible."
Foiled by his target's quick reactions (though to be fair, Binky did have the advantage when it came to perception, what with having eight eyes and all), Flea trudged back down the hill and headed for the shroomtree farms instead, no doubt looking for some tasty crunchable whip-spiders to comfort-eat.
"Yes, I agree. As it is, anyone and anything can come charging in and knock you over as they please—or sit on you," she added pointedly. "Oh, look—Gneil's awake!"
Rather than being wholly diurnal or nocturnal, the gnomes instead took shifts depending on what best suited them. Though most of them did choose to work during the day and sleep at night, there were more than a few who preferred the opposite, and others still who tended to alternate depending on their mood. It meant there was always at least a handful of denizens active—either working or playing—at any given time.
Gneil - the Grotto's high priest, and my first ever worshiper - was one of the night-owls. Yawning and stretching, he stepped aside to let a pair of farmers exit the shared gnomehome in his wake. The farmers headed toward the northern shroomery, in which they'd recently been experimenting with cross-breeding a new type of mushroom. Gneil watched them go, smiling sleepily, then turned to begin the short climb to my shrine.
He hadn't gone far when one of the warriors—Hoppit, I’d named her, now on her way into the house after her day-shift—jogged over to greet him. Gneil's eyes lit up in her presence—an interesting development, and not the first time I'd noticed it.
She spoke a few words to him, and his eyebrows raised all the way up into his hair. He nodded, thanked her, then watched Hoppit disappear inside the gnomehome before he headed toward the bridge crossing the stream.
"Where's he going?"
Gneil made a beeline for the barracks. "Ahh, he's going to visit Shanky! That's so sweet!" cooed Ket, clearly touched by what she saw as Gneil's concern for his fellow gnome. I knew better.
I waited. Sure enough, when Gneil entered the barracks infirmary and saw Longshank lying amid red-stained blankets, he did not rush anxiously over to him. For a few moments he just stood in the doorway, taking in the sight of the half-conscious scout's sprawled form and missing leg. Then he shrugged and walked away with a noticeable new spring in his step.
Ket made a noise somewhere between shock and outrage. I just snickered. Clearly, she hadn't been paying enough attention to the manner in which her precious Shanky usually returned from his scouting expeditions. I decided to fill her in.
Blood-smeared, sweaty and with a swagger in his step more suited to a dashing pirate captain than an egotistical potato with teeth, the long-legged scout leader always made a point of swinging by my shrine after a hunt, where he would lean casually on his spear while regaling my adoring acolytes with tales I had no doubt were exaggerated if not blatantly made up. I couldn't speak Gnomish, but the language of Bullshit was universal. (Though, having seen L
ongshank’s performance during our most recent out-of-Sphere combat, perhaps my uncharitable thoughts had been a little unfair.)
For whatever reason, his presence always seemed to irritate Gneil, who usually busied himself in aggressively polishing the altar stones, rolling his eyes and occasionally throwing sidelong glances at Longshank’s wrinkly outfit before eventually growing enraged enough to clap his hands and urge his simpering underlings back to their worshiping.
Inevitably, before he could then tell the scout exactly where to go—as far away from the shrine as possible, presumably—Longshank would always say something jovial, clapping Gneil on the shoulder with enough force to bruise and then swaggering back down the hillock to his gnomehome as though the decision to leave had been his all along. Gneil would watch him go, scowling and rubbing his shoulder, and throw himself into worship alongside the acolytes. The latter's emissions would always be slightly stronger and more vibrant than usual after these exchanges, as they were presumably inspired by the stories of Longshank’s gnomish prowess.
Gneil, on the other hand... Sure, he looked as devoted as ever. But as someone who not only saw, but also absorbed and tasted the mana and Faith he produced, I could tell it was always especially bitter after such an encounter.
I’d pondered why this might be, of course. The most likely explanation was that Gneil was jealous of Longshank. Why? Well, that was anyone’s guess. There were many ways in which Longshank could be perceived as a superior individual to Gneil—physical stature and confidence foremost among them—but I suspected it was more than just skin-deep.
Specifically, it was blesmol-skin deep.
