Ixoryn was dead.

Or as close to dead as he was going to get, anyway. He was dimly aware that he was bleeding and that there was nothing he could do about it—who would've thought mortals would ever be able to do this much damage to him?

But that was the worst part of it, wasn't it? That it was mortals that had done this to him. If it had been anyone else, then at least he would be truly dead; if it had been anyone weaker, then he wouldn't have been hurt at all.

It had to be the strong ones. The mortals powerful enough to hurt him, but not strong enough to kill him permanently. Instead, they'd left him like... this.

A living corpse, functionally. Unable to move, unable to do much of anything. He could think, but even that felt slow. Sluggish. He was vaguely aware that hours passed for even a single thought to form coherently; his vision, or what few glimpses of it he had, made it look like the world around him was rapidly accelerating. Clouds flashed by, and the sun rose and set in what felt like moments yet could not be.

If nothing else, Ixoryn thought, it meant he was spared the torture of living through every second as the world passed around him.

He was forgotten. He was forgotten a little more quickly than he would've liked, even, but then he didn't know how much time had actually passed. The few mortals that worshiped him and knew of his demise eventually stopped visiting him, either because they no longer held the faith or because they were dead. Their lifespans had always seemed short to him—now they seemed like they flashed by in seconds, here one moment and gone the next.

None of them could heal him. There was an attempt or two, he thought. He sometimes felt the barest trickle of divinity enter his body only to once again leak out through the wounds. If he could speak, he would have shouted at them to remove the curse from those wounds, first. If the curse was removed, then he could heal himself. It wasn't healing he needed! It was getting rid of the damnable curse that prevented him from doing anything about his own condition.

Eventually, though, he resigned himself to his fate. Who knew how much time had passed by then?

Ixoryn entertained himself by telling himself stories—so many of them he barely remembered which ones were true and which ones were not. He almost forgot what domain he actually held, with the multitude of fictitious realities he'd created for himself to pass the time. Was he the God of Strength? War? Order? All or none of those things? He wasn't quite as certain as he thought he should've been.

So things went for quite some time, though Ixoryn would not be able to say how much time that had been.

There was a moment when things changed, and changed significantly. He noticed it because it was the only times things had changed around him in the past who-knew-how-many-years; the sun vanished, replaced by a clear sky that never changed, and the sound of rushing water filled his ears.

On the one hand, he appreciated the change, and the sound of liquid rushing nearby was a more pleasant white noise than the cycle of birds that chirped with an incessant song every time the sun rose. On the other, now he had even less to look at, visually: the sky never changed, and he couldn't move his head.

The area around him felt different. The oppressive divine domain that had surrounded him for years no longer felt like it was there; instead, the threads he was surrounded by were free, unclaimed. No god had yet lain claim to this territory. If he'd been only a little bit stronger, he might have been able to reach out and claim those threads for himself, and increase his strength that way...

...but no. All he could do was lay there, the threads staying tantalizingly out of reach. Yet another form of torture. If he could laugh, he would have: what had he even done to deserve such ire from mortals? He could no longer remember.

Hatred for those mortals came and went. He held on to that hatred for quite a while. Longer than he should have, perhaps, for a god of his stature. And then one day he was simply too tired, and he let that hatred fall away; neither hatred nor forgiveness would free him from this state of nothingness.

All he could do was wait.

And then, for the first time, he felt something change.

There was the sound of splashing in the distance—far enough away that at first, Ixoryn thought he had imagined it. Then the sounds got closer, and he heard voices. Voices! For the first time in a long, long time, he felt excitement rise in his heart before he quickly quelled it. Just because there were others here didn't mean they'd be able to help him.

But at least it was something different. At least it was something new. He strained himself to try to listen to the conversation, though the words stole by too rapidly for him to process them properly. All he was able to get was that the one speaking thought he was dead, which he supposed was a fair assumption. It wasn't like he was moving. Or breathing.

And then—to his absolute surprise—he felt the divine threads around him stir.

Whoever had arrived was a priest.

Despite himself, Ixoryn couldn't help the hope that swelled in his heart.

Figuring out the domain of this god was... a harder task than Sev had anticipated.

Part of it was the fact that he couldn't really sense it in the divine threads surrounding the god—the area around him was almost disturbingly empty. There was no domain for him to interact with and learn from. There was divine energy within the god's blood, but that was just raw energy, not a domain.

Then there was the matter of the curse that suffused the god's wounds. Sev struggled to even determine what type of magic it was, let alone a way to dispel it—this was one of the things he would've loved to have Vex's help for. If the lizardkin was here...

He tried not to think about it. There were too many things to focus on right now. Too many people in danger for him to hesitate.

Lacking the ability to dispel magic traditionally didn't mean he couldn't do it his own way. He'd been able to nullify the demigod in Elyra by laying claim to the divine threads around himself, and he'd been able to stop Jerome's spells by doing much the same. There was a trace of divinity on the curse itself, like another cleric had used a god's power to enhance it.

That made sense. It also gave Sev a means to counter it. If he could break that root of divinity within the curse...Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Hellooo?" Tinsel spoke, and Sev jumped. He'd almost forgotten the light fixture was even there. It had taken to sitting on the ground to wait for him to finish thinking, apparently not minding the fact that the grass was sort of splattered with ichor, and was now rocking back and forth to entertain itself. "You're staring a lot! What're you trying to figure out?"

"I'm wondering if I can break the curse on these wounds," Sev answered, a little embarrassed about forgetting Tinsel. "And what domain this god represents."

Tinsel blinked, then looked back down to the still-bleeding body.

"Leadership," it said.

"What?" Sev blinked. He stared at the god and then at Tinsel. "Where'd you get that?"

Tinsel shrugged, a motion that mostly just looked strange—like a full body shake more than an actual shrug. "The tattoos!" it explained. "It's got lots of arrows leading to a circle in the center. And smaller arrows following them. Like a leader, see?"

"I'm... not sure that makes sense," Sev said slowly.

The thing was, though, it sounded right.

He'd tried to talk to the gods. None of them seemed aware of who this god was, or if they were, they didn't seem willing to tell him about it—which was frustrating, considering the situation. The gods he was closer with all seemed to either genuinely not know or outright unable to tell him. Apparently, the political landscape between the gods was more complicated than he'd thought. They could create unbreakable contracts with one another, creating a complex web of obligations and favors that Sev decided almost immediately he didn't want to touch with a ten foot pole.

All of which meant he was back to square one in trying to figure out the god's domain by himself. But if Tinsel was right...

The tattoos on the god's body did resemble some sort of leadership dynamic, though it wouldn't have been Sev's first guess. His first guess would probably have been the God of Directions or something.

It wouldn't cost him much to test it out. If he could align his magic with the god's own domain and direct it straight at the curse, the resulting spell in theory would be strong enough to crack said curse in two. It would be a bit like boosting the god's natural healing abilities and giving it direction.

"I think it makes sense," Tinsel said. "You should try it!"

"Yeah," Sev said slowly. "I think I will."

Leadership, was it? He didn't have a connection forged with any such god. But he did have connections forged with a few gods that might help him approximate something similar.

It started as the strangest sort of tickling sensation. Ixoryn thought he was imagining things, at first. It was only when the feeling persisted that he took it more seriously, because it very quickly built up into something far more intolerable than anything he'd felt for the past... well, who knew how many centuries it had been, really. The point remained the same.

Only a few minutes ago, if he'd been asked if he'd tolerate an irritating tickling sensation, he would've said yes. Anything to break up the monotony of sight and sound. Now that he was actually experiencing it, he wasn't quite so enthusiastic.

Also, it was starting to itch, which was even worse. The itching spread to become almost unbearable, and he instinctively moved to scratch at the stupid wounds—

Wait.

He'd moved.

Ixoryn shifted, suddenly all too aware of the feeling of the grass beneath his body, the uncomfortable stickiness of his own blood soaked into the ground. He sat up, groaning at the sensation of his atrophied muscles suddenly being forced to work for the first time in ages, and then stared at what surrounded him.

In front of him was a human priest. That much was expected—someone had healed him, and it made sense that that someone was a priest.

There was also a thin, rectangular thing, standing there on legs of glowing light. Ixoryn had no idea what to make of it. It looked vaguely like what a light elemental might look like, except all the light elementals he'd met before hadn't looked nearly this,... manufactured.

The third thing that caught his attention was what they were surrounded by. Ixoryn blanched—that had not been the sound of rushing water that he'd heard. It was the sound of his own blood splashing around and flowing down what looked like a cliff. Had someone made a waterfall out of his blood? That was disgusting. And offensive.

"Sorry about the itching," the priest offered. "Tends to happen with healing."

"That is... far from my biggest concern at the moment," Ixoryn said. He stared at the now-shrinking pool of his blood, then at the priest. "Thank you for healing me. You have no idea what that's been like."

"I can only imagine," the priest said. "I'm Sev. Priest of Onyx, the God of Sculptures."

"I don't remember anyone by that name." Ixoryn frowned. "I am Ixoryn. God of Navigation."

"Oh." Sev blinked a few times. "Guess we were both right, Tinsel. This is Tinsel, by the way."

"Hi!" Tinsel said. It seemed entirely unimpressed with being in the presence of a god. So did Sev, for that matter. It turned to Sev and asked, curiously, "what did you think he was the god of?"

"Directions," Sev admitted.

...Ixoryn didn't know if he should feel offended. "And what did the little one think I represented?"

"Leadership!" Tinsel said cheerfully.

Well... they were both right. "To navigate is to use aspects of both," Ixoryn said with a sigh. "But I digress. I thank you for freeing me from that... prison. Though I find I am now trapped in a rather unfavorable position."

"And what position is that?" Sev asked.

"I am a god," Ixoryn said plainly. "But I stand in the material world. This is not a natural state of things. Normally, the cost of transporting myself here would be exorbitant, and remaining here even more so—but it seems being nearly dead has allowed me to remain here.

"I don't know how long it's going to be before the costs reassert themselves, or if they ever will. I don't know if the divinity I have access to is going to remain stable. And even if both those things fall in my favor, the mere presence of a god in this plane will erode at the very seams of reality."

"Oh," Sev said. "Well, you don't have to worry about that last bit."

"...Excuse me?"

"Yeah, we're kinda long past the whole reality-falling-apart thing." Sev shrugged. "Welcome to the end of the world. And for what it's worth, I'm sorry."

Ixoryn paused, processing what Sev had just told him. And then he waited some more, mostly hoping the cleric would start laughing and claim that it was a joke.

He did not.

"I think you'd better catch me up on everything," he said eventually.

"Sure," Sev said. "But while I do that, do you mind walking with me? I'm just realizing where I'm supposed to get the tickets to the next station, and it's not really pleasant."

Half of those words went over Ixoryn's head, but as he watched, the priest got up from where he'd knelt in the grass and then walked into the now-exposed mud that had once held an entire reservoir of his ichor. Ixoryn's lips curled in disgust—but the priest eiher didn't mind or had gotten used to it. He did wince every once in a while as he stepped through the mud, but for the most part, he seemed more interested in picking out strange, shimmering pieces of paper that were embedded in the ground.

"I will help," Ixoryn decided. Strange mannerisms aside, something about Sev's countenance told him the situation was serious. He had no idea how picking up these strange items from the ground would help, but clearly Sev knew more than he did at the moment.

...Stepping around in the remnants of his own blood was still really gross, though.

With a sigh, Ixoryn got to picking—and at the same time, Sev got to explaining.

What Ixoryn heard would have made his blood run cold, if he hadn't lost so much of it already.

Halfway through the explanation, Sev stopped, glancing into the air as though he was reading something. Ixoryn stared curiously at him, and Sev said nothing for a moment, mouthing a few words to himself.

Then the priest turned to him, his gaze strangely intense. "Ixoryn," he said. "Do you have enough power to give out Blessings?"

"Uh... yes?" Ixoryn said, thrown off by the question. "Yes. I do."

"Okay." Sev nodded to himself. "I'm going to need to ask you for a favor."