4: How it ended

I imagine some people may be wondering why only champions are involved, and no avatars have made a move. The simplest answer is that Avatars are generally only used when things are truly dire. Many gods have a lot of pride, and for an avatar to become directly involved is like admitting defeat… plus, my avatar is an immobile tree, and the god of orgies once chose to make a painting they really liked into their avatar. That painting sits in some noble house doing little more than inspiring people to have sex more. Neither of us are in any position to wield avatar power in this conflict, even if we wanted to.

Generally speaking, each god with a powerful avatar, has that avatar guarding a location they consider important, and if the avatar leaves, there’s a high risk of that location coming under attack by the forces of some other god.

As for champions… honestly, a lot of gods use them like fire and forget weapons. The ‘cost’ of a champion only applies as long as they live. When they die, there’s no cost to the transfer of power to a new champion. So, many gods just pick someone destined to go down fast in a really flashy way as a method of spreading the faith. 

One thing I find rather striking though, is no one has made Alicia a champion. Yet her influence in this series of events is very high. In fact, many credit her for saving the world from Wolfe. After all, the way she saved the world was not something a god deliberately setup. It was not some guidance she was given. It was an accident.

Alicia’s efforts to out-plot Wolfe, led her to the conclusion that he must be seeking to become a god. Which led to her trying to figure out how he might do so, and inadvertently providing him (through the spies he had watching her) with knowledge of how it might be done.

The idea Alicia came up with, involved draining power from the world tree; my avatar. Due to the fact that Wolfe began pursuing the very tools and ingredients needed to accomplish this, Alicia believed she was right, and began developing countermeasures.

Chasing Wolfe across several continents and seas, the hero party ‘defeated’ Wolfe’s plans many times, thwarting every one of his attempts to take over a city or country or church. Only Alicia and Wolfe knew, that he was losing on purpose in exchange for gifts from Alicia. Gifts that were steadily getting lewder. Even Alicia, despite her painfully bad social awareness could tell that his demands/requests were becoming mere indulgences, rather than anything Wolfe actually needed. So, when he offered to give up on stealing the world tree’s power in exchange for marriage, Alicia was willing to believe him. He had never lied to her before, and clearly displayed interest in her. I suspect the silly stories she’d read in her youth about pretty young ladies convincing bad men to change their ways for love may have given her an unrealistic belief in the possibility of doing something similar with Wolfe.

Unfortunately for Alicia, this was the one time Wolfe lied to her. After consumating the marriage with a ceremony that bound their souls, Wolfe slipped away while she slept, and by the time Alicia realized what had happened, it was too late. My avatar was dead, my link to the world was gone, and the world was quite doomed. I imagine the other gods might’ve worked harder to prevent this from happening, if not for knowing what Alicia would do next. Alicia employed all her research, study, and resources to become the next world tree. She needed a lot of power and sacrificed all her magic items and any she could quickly buy. Nothing was held back, and she even unified her mind and soul properly to ensure the transformation was as complete as possible. Thus, I gained a new avatar, powerful enough that the world was not doomed at all.

The reason my avatar is so important, is that my power leaks into the world through my avatar. In fact, all gods leak power into the world through their avatars. The avatars are their link to the world, and how they channel power through. It just so happens that all life on the world is based upon my own early creations. All I did was make a tree, and let my power flow, yet my power became the basis of life spawning a great many plants and animals, and everyone else chose to copy what I’d done rather than make their own. They just picked an animal they liked and modified it until it was a species they wanted to use as their personal worshipers.

Thus as all life energy flows from me, if I disconnect from the world, then no new life can be born. I am one of the foundational pillars of the world… actually, there’s a few gods who think my disappearance would be a good thing, because they didn’t use my life force in their worshipers. Elementals have their own system of life separate from that of normal living things here, and the undead aren’t really alive at all.

Now, Alicia becoming a new world tree wasn’t really why the gods consider her a savior. No, it was due to a different detail. When Wolfe chose to drain the world tree, he didn’t trust Alicia’s ability to save the world. So he developed plans to leave, and studied spells to do so. The reason the gods see Alicia as having saved the world from Wolfe, is because she convinced him (by accident) to leave the world for another.

So, now I have an avatar with far more capability than an ordinary tree, because it is in truth, a great mage who’s merely sleeping because of the great strain she was under casting such a crazy spell to link me to her, and grow enough to restore the flow of life energy fully. Meanwhile, the story of the hero saving the world and Alicia sacrificing herself in the process spreads, and the hero, in a move that became widely copied and created a new religion, used a spell to enter Alicia’s dreams. Alicia, seeing the man she loves in her dreams, is an easy target for him. She’s ashamed by what she did with Wolfe, and wishes she could’ve married the hero instead. So when he offers forgiveness for the ‘sins’ she confesses to, and proclaims a love for her, she happily indulges in pleasures of the flesh with him. This detail is important for a very simple reason: It doesn’t stop there. 

Overtime, the hero persuades her to have sex with many people. In fact, by the time the hero dies of old age, the god of orgies has managed to create a new religion, worshipping Alicia. They worship by having sex. Sex in her dreams with her, and around her. Sex in reality, rubbing against her trunk and roots, and with each other. For Alicia, this is what the man she loves wished for. While I question the wisdom of loving that man, I have no reason to interfere with her love life, and choices.

The god of orgies finally found a place safe from the other god’s pushy churches: Under my leaves and branches, where other gods dare not tread. It’s actually kinda funny how they all assume I’d react to an intruding church like they do. They think I am collaborating with the orgy god, since my avatar is the center of the new religion. Except, in truth, it’s just that I don’t care. 

This whole thing has been an amusing and profitable event. In fact, I really gained a lot. Due to the marriage with Wolfe, when Alicia became my avatar, I was able to steal Wolfe away from the god of time. He’s now my champion and I can observe the world he’s gone to through him. He’s really not a nice person, but due to the soul link, the power he gains as he obtains worshipers of his own, is shared with me. 

Wolfe believed he was forging the link with Alicia as a way to ensure that after she became a world tree, he’d be able to leech even more power. The link goes both ways though, and I am now one of the most powerful gods in the world because of it. 

Someday (probably a few hundred more years at least), Alicia will wake up, and I have a few plans for that. In the meantime though, I’m just going to laugh as all the other gods try to figure out what to do about the ever growing crowd of fools fornicating beneath my branches. I’m pretty sure they are busy trying to figure out what my plan is. Except, I don’t have one! I’ve become one of this world’s strongest gods, and I use all that power to just sit here watching. It’s hilarious how nervous it makes them all.

***Author Note***

The world tree doesn’t know this, but Wolfe actually does love Alicia in his own twisted way. He forged the marriage contract as a way to ensure Alicia survived. He didn’t think she’d be able to succeed at becoming the world tree on her own, and knew the link would let her obtain enough power from him (since he’d stolen all the original world tree’s power) to become one if she didn’t have enough power herself. Alicia was able to obtain enough power though, to not need help from Wolfe, and didn’t know it was possible to draw power through the link.

Also: One of the reasons Wolfe left for another world, was because he knew Alicia would never love him. Retaining her affections required not doing all the things he wanted to do. So he believed that leaving for good, was the best gift he could give her (and the soul bond would let him think of her as “his” for eternity, regardless of the complete lack of any actual interaction.) Essentially: It was the best compromise he could think of.