Upon stepping through the portal back into Htrae I found myself in Glendale. With my new powers, I could do a lot at least as long as my targets were mortals. If my targets were mortals I had so many ways to play with them and I was determined to make use of my fun powers. 

I had appeared in the middle of Glendale, but it was quite late at night. The small town was nearly silent and only a few places had anything remotely resembling a lively number of people. The local motel had a few people in it at the moment, the town's few bars had some people, and the town's assorted neighborhoods had plenty of people in them. 

I was in the middle of the street. I spent a moment contemplating where to go and then quietly settled on paying a family a visit as a means to test one of my new powers. I didn't bother teleporting there, though I could have. Instead, I merely willed myself into the air and began to fly towards the family I was going to pay a visit too. 

I was, unsurprisingly, physically spotted by a few people. That said in a demonstration of my powers over memories I merely destroyed their memories of seeing me the second I was out of their line of sight. It was an effortless demonstration of the potent power I possessed and one that I didn't mind doing in the slightest. 

At this point, with my powers over memories, I was essentially able to say that for any creature I could capture reality was whatever I said it was. That was one of the fun parts of being a god with my level of strength, a level of strength that was paltry in comparison to the powers I could attain, one day. 

I flew through the middle of the town, acting boldly and without any shred of fear for my actions coming back to haunt me. I knew that no one in the town would move against me. Mostly because I'd work to ensure that no one could. I permitted no one to have an awareness of my current activities within the town itself so no one would be able to try and do anything to me as a result of my actions tonight. 

It took me a few minutes of easy flying, propelled by a powerful current of air underneath me, to reach the front door of a large house. Upon reaching the front door I let myself in, phasing through the thick oak door with ease. I made myself incorporeal for the second it took to phase through the door and then reverted to my physical form the instant I was through the door. 

The door led to a nice looking foyer. Once I was inside of it I chuckled and began to walk towards the guest room. I was, after all, a guest.

---

The house that the god had invaded and was using as a testing ground was owned by a fairly well-off couple. The couple, a man and a woman, were fast asleep a room above the room the god was heading towards. His sensory abilities allowed him to navigate the house effortlessly and without any sort of aid. 

While he was wandering towards the room he would await his hosts in, his mind was hard at work. He began his period of experimentation by quietly blasting the minds of the couple who rocketed up out of their sleeping states quite abruptly. 

The actual sensations one felt while experiencing a mind blast were always abrupt and sharply painful. They differed based on Althos' mood, and today they felt like incredibly painful but also instantaneous electric shooks. They came and went over the course of a single heartbeat and by the time the couple was catching their breath the god was already in the midst of enacting the next part of their scheme. 

Anderson, the man of the couple and the house, looked at his wife, Mary, and he spoke gently. The truth was that at the moment his mind wasn't his own, and his words weren't either. He was a puppet of a creature who was using him and Mary to have fun. 

"Mary, we have a guest. One we mustn't keep waiting any longer." The man said, his voice hollow and emotionless. His wife nodded at him, but there was something robotic and stiff about her body language. Nevertheless, the pair quickly got up and left their bedroom. They took the shortest path down to the guest room, located on the second floor of their multistory home. 

It took them about four minutes to get up from their bed, get ready, and join Althos in the guest room. The quiet god was awaiting them and smiled when they appeared, even though he wasn't looking at them. Instead, he was using telekinesis to play with things throughout the room and causing them to float and fly around. 

The second they stepped into the room their minds were drained by the god who had called them there. He stole every single memory, thought, and secret, from their minds and in an instant knew both of them better than they knew each other.

He knew every lie they told each other, every secret they kept from each other, and all of their darkest thoughts. He also knew every scrap of happiness they had experienced, every joyful moment they shared, and of every time they fell into a comfortable sleep next to each other. 

The god quietly created copies of their memories but modified them slightly. He filled their memories with lies, all of which pertained to his existence. In these modified memories the god himself was a quiet but known figure to them, someone they remembered in their dreams. He was the figure who matchmade them and who helped them throughout their lives, causing them to experience awe and gratitude towards him as if he were actually their friend. Without a single word, he infused them with their false memories right as they sat down in front of him.

---

"Anderson, Mary, it's been too long." I greeted them, speaking warmly. There was a confident smile on my face as I spoke. I had utilized a number of powers to get them here. I began with a single pair of mental blasts, continued by utilizing brainwashing, a power I had just gained, I had to get them here, and then parasitically drained their memories before editing them and finally returning the edited memories back to them. After they sat down in front of me I had no need to continue to control their minds and released them from that power. 

The rich couple in front of me was a pretty pair. Anderson was a tall, decently muscular man with blonde hair that was tightly cut, and right now all he was wearing was a pair of casual, loose-fitting sleeping pants. Mary was a pretty, petite brunette, who was wearing a perfectly fitting grey negligee. They smiled at me as I studied them, a warm, curious gaze visible in my eyes. Their smiles were genuine. After all, I was the most important figure in their lives. I was, according to their reworked memories, responsible for their wealth and their marriage. 

The changes I made to their memories were simple. As far as they understood the world I played a direct role in countless good things that happened to them. I was responsible for more than just their wealth and their marriage, those two things were just some of the better things I was responsible for. Bad things that happened to them I attributed to other things, so that they only associated me with pleasant events. 

I didn't speak anymore, I just motioned for the two to get on their knees in front of me. They didn't hesitate to obey me. I smiled softly at them and rose a hand in front of the meek and submissive pair. For a moment I returned to my roots as a god of lust and transmitted pleasurable sensations straight into their minds. It was at that point that I spoke again.

"Serving me is pleasurable. It brings you joy and ecstasy." I told the pair, my lips tugged upwards in a smug smirk. My very voice was enough to cause the pair to shiver in delight. I felt like playing with the pair of humans for a bit.

---

The creature who sat down in front of the pair of humans was someone the pair, according to their falsified memories anyway, owed everything too. He was also, in their minds, a god of supreme power who usually but not always kept his visits confined to their dreams. 

The god was a lascivious entity, and he gave the two of them memories of having sexual encounters with him. In both cases, their memories were of submitting to an adventurous, skilled, and thoroughly inhuman entity whose very presence was enough to stimulate and arouse lesser creatures. Their falsified memories included feats he was actually capable of such as inducing orgasms with but a flirty glance and causing people to acquire new fetishes with but a thought. 

The pair of rich humans blushed beneath the gaze of the creature they believed they owed so much too. Althos, unbeknownst to them, activated a number of auras and divine presence effects that increased their sensitivity to his presence and heightened the pleasure his presence caused them. He also began to assail their senses, particularly their senses of smell. He smelled of natural things. 

The air around the god began to smell of a man's heady musk. The smell had a similar effect to the potent intoxication one felt after taking a few sips of alcohol. The married couple began to feel light-headed in the presence of their god, and this was just him being unusually playful. He wasn't seriously trying to do anything to the humans, he was just enjoying the powers he now wielded. 

Anderson let out a breathy sigh as he felt the power of the sinful deity's presence increase. Mary bit her lips and tried to silence a sigh. She didn't quite succeed, and though he wasn't facing her Althos smiled. Mary knew she was the cause of the smile. She felt it. He allowed her to feel it. 

The god himself turned his gaze to Anderson first. The man shivered as his body warmed due to the psychic powers of the god and his newfound mastery over even mental elements such as psychic flames. The god at the moment had scarlet eyes, and they stared at Anderson's lightly dressed form. There was a genuine warmth to the gaze, perhaps a lust hidden behind them, but the god stayed silent. He was gazing, respectfully, but mischievously. 

After a few moments, the god's gaze turned towards Mary. His gaze retained its warmth, and Mary's body reacted to his attention. Her breath hitched, and she felt an outbreak of goosebumps on her skin. She gazed at the deity's currently rather human form and imagined the things he could do with his powers.

She recalled the false memories he had implanted in her, and was fooled by them since her mortal mind was nothing compared to his divine one, and felt the desires they stirred within her. She felt parts of her body harden in response to the god's proximity and his attention. He began to chuckle, the deep sound further stirring something deep inside of her. Something primal, biological, animalistic. 

Althos enjoyed this. He was quite a tease, and for him to let loose and have fun wasn't especially common. Althos lightly touched the heads of his newest worshipers, running long, slender fingers through their hair. Both of them relaxed at this action. The god read their minds and felt their emotions and knew that to the two of them the gesture felt both intimate and playful. They enjoyed the power they felt their divine lord, the deity they now fervently worshipped, had over them, and the sometimes rough ways in which he showed them his power.

---

There was something nice about feeling the two humans give themselves so willingly to me. I sensed their reactions to the first of my touches, and I knew that they'd do anything I said. I knew that they would submit to me in any desire I so chose. 

The two of them were in love with each other. Or rather they were as in love with each other as they could be. They deeply loved and lusted after me, now more than they loved and lusted after each other. Both the meek but muscular man, and the lithe but dominant woman held me in extremely high esteem and weren't far from being fanatics. I learned this by scanning both their minds and through constant usage of my "Absolute empathy" ability.  

Their minds were perfectly suited for me to mess with, and their bodies were pleasant, but the truth was that I had some specific interests in mind for them. They were perfectly suited to be the first members of an altruistic, wealthy cult that worshiped me as a god of providence and fortune. If I were to be serious for a moment, that was why I had come here in the first place. 

I closed my eyes, focused on the task before me and began to speak. As I spoke, I smiled trickily. 

"Though I would like to indulge in our games, that may have to wait. For now there is important work to discuss. I have come here to instruct you to rise up and begin to spread the word of my faith." I told them, speaking softly. This shocked the two of them. 

"Althos... You're finally beginning to spread your religion?" Mary asked, her eyes flashing with joy. I chuckled at her. Anderson looked at the two of us, delight visible in his face. 

"Finally, we'll be able to tell people about you! I've always wanted to share how you changed my life." Anderson said excitedly. There was an energy within him that neither Mary nor I shared. An enthusiasm that a part of me envied.

His eagerness was cute, especially since it would have been unexpected of him given both his gender and his physical appearance. He was a male human but he was also a large, fit man. And yet he had a childlike enthusiasm for sharing the falsified narrative I had installed in his mind. I stared at the man, and began to smile softly. Without a word I created teachings and began the process of implanting them into the minds of Anderson and Mary.

When the alert and the teachings suffused the minds of the rich couple I gently put them to sleep and proceed to teleport them back into their beds. It was comically easy to do given the plethora of powers I possessed. The instant the mortals were asleep I closed my eyes and teleported into the forest where I had spent a good deal of my time after arriving in Htrae.

It just so happened that some criminals were fleeing deep into the woods, something I was alerted too through my domain-sense abilities. I intended to use the pair of them as guinea pigs. 

---

---

The pair of outlaws deftly dove deeper and deeper into the woods. Their feet silently trampled countless leaves and left deep tracks in the forest, but the pair of them were deep enough in the woods that they would have escaped mundane law enforcement. 

The two of them wordlessly and expertly ignored the countless obstacles that ought to have tripped them up. They were so skilled at this that they didn't even need to look at the forest floor. They were arrogant. That was their first mistake. 

The darkened woods were excellent for hiding things. And they were even better for hiding people, especially people who were capable of perfect invisibility. Althos positioned himself a fair distance from the pair of thieves and then waited. He wouldn't have to wait long. 

The thieves were, for all of their arrogance, quite fast. Yet their speed was of no use when they made it to a distance of about seven meters away from the quiet and dark god they had inadvertently made into their enemy. The god's strike was swift, as he allowed himself to be seen by mortal eyes and in an instant activated one of his more potent and familiar abilities: the power to turn a mortal into a stone statue with but a single, pointed glare. 

Althos selected the thief that was the fastest to turn into a target for this dreadful power. The thief, a level seven rogue, was in mid-air when he fell victim to the frightening power of the gaze. The petrification began at his feet and the rough had enough time to take a single heavy breath when he felt the weight of his feet increase considerably all at once.

He glanced down at his foot, unsure of the cause of the disturbance to his balance, and gasped when he saw that the black clothing he had worn to blend into the forest had turned a striking shade of grey, and that it had fused with his legs. It was at that point that the thief next touched the ground, heavily colliding with it even as the effects of the dark god's petrifying gaze began to snake their way up the rest of his body. If nothing else, at least his body turning to stone caused him to feel less pain when his hard body collided with the ground. 

The other thief hadn't seen the odd event, mostly due to the fact that the thieves were wearing black in a dark forest, but he heard its aftermath. He was a bit slower than his partner in crime, in part due to the fact that he was holding more of their haul. Althos' approach to him was simpler than it was for his comrade. 

The god quietly rose a single hand and did something he couldn't have done until he became a true elemental overlord. The god's elemental powers invisibly reached out of him, extending from his body like a dreadfully powerful tendril, and snaked forward until they caught the thief in their frightening grip. It was at this point that the god activated one of his newfound abilities: "Hemokinetic paralysis", a potent manipulation of the blood in someone's veins that forces them to abruptly stop moving. The god's target, the remaining thief, came to a halt in the middle of the forest for reasons he couldn't quite fathom.

"What? What... the fuck is going on with my body?" He managed to roar out, his voice disturbing the silence of the forest and echoing quite far all things considered, due to the absence of noise in the woods. It was at this point that the god responsible for the man's misery began to physically move towards his victims.

---

The forest was easy for me to navigate. And now it was even easier for me to control than it would have ever been before. I stepped out of the shadows and used the endless darkness of the forest at night to effortlessly reach the captured thieves. 

I teleported twice, utilizing my powers over darkness to bend space and to effortlessly appear behind of the thieves. As I did, I reached out to my own shadow, mentally, and commanded the thing to do one of the few things I had ever commanded it to do: devour the shadows of the thieves.

It was at that point that my shadow detached itself from my body and slinked out across the forest floor, before reaching the shadow of the petrified thief. When my shadow managed to reach the shadow of the thief, it extended two-dimensional hands made of the same darkness the rest of it was made of. 

The shadows of its claw-like hands snaked across the ground. They sunk into the shadow of the petrified thief and I could have sworn I heard the sound of knives sinking into flesh when they did. My untethered shadow began to cruelly cackle as it began to pull the shadow of the petrified thief out of the area underneath the fallen statue. I grinned as the shadow of the thief fully detached from the man's artistic new form.

My shadow greedily and powerfully began to pull the shadow towards its eerie and void-like mass. A few seconds of struggling between the two shadows followed but the conclusion was foregone. In a matter of moments my shadow, itself an eerie and vaguely intelligent lifeform, had pulled the shadow of the thief into its mass and grown a bit larger for it. I grinned at the monster I commanded, and mentally demanded that it do the same to the other thief. It gluttonously bounded across the forest floor to do the same thing to the paralyzed thief. 

Making out individual shadows in the dark was something only I and my shadow could thanks to my powers over darkness. One of the quieter and more subtle improvements that came with that domain was the ability to see effortlessly under any conditions. It was useful in moments like this where I wanted to test out powers and where I was in the dark. I stepped towards the petrified form of the thief and began to activate one of my newer powers: "Cutting". 

I chuckled as I felt my own hand sharpen in response to the power I had just activated. As I approached the defeated thief, I also wordlessly drained every memory out of his body and then descended on his new form. I did all of this wordlessly and silently even as my shadow began its assault on the other thief and his shadow. I found myself mounting the statue, but even as I did that I realized how strange my actions were. I sighed and then chuckled. 

The statue in front of me presented the perfect opportunity for me to use an old destruction domain ability I had only rarely used. I pointed a single finger at the statue and visualized the thing shattering into a million pieces. I then closed my eyes and channeled my power into my finger, before even through closed eyes I saw an eerily bright explosion as power surged out of me and crashed into the statue beneath me.  

The statue I had mounted shattered beneath me, fracturing and then exploding under my weight. I went from sitting atop it to sitting on the floor, a floor covered in the bite-sized, leftover shards of the ambitious thief. The explosion sent fragments of the man flying, none of which harmed me due to my dense skin and mastery over the earth.

The light had been bright enough that for a moment my shadow and I were exposed to the remaining thief, even as he laid on the floor barely able to move a muscle. I knew the second he saw me, but I still sighed in annoyance when he began to shout assorted and creative curse words at me.

"You mother-fucker! What did you just do? You're the one behind this aren't you?" He roared. I sighed and turned to face him, just in time to see my shadow complete its surprisingly physical extraction of his shadow. My servant then retreated from the man's still mobile body and pulled his shadow with it.

I walked over to the man, and once again used my "Drain" ability on him. I shivered as he fell into a near vegetative state of total absence of awareness, and I felt all of his memories, thoughts, and secrets surge from him into me. Even though I was shivering as I felt the entirety of his life pour into me, I had a grin on my face. Every single secret, thought, dream, nightmare, and more that this man had had was now inside of me. And I wasn't quite done with him just yet. 

I rose the hand that had "Cutting" applied to it, and I studied my own digits for a moment. They looked perfectly mundane at a glance and yet I knew that they were now destructive weapons that could in all likelihood penetrate any non-total defense. The thief continued to mutter and sometimes shout disagreeable and rude statements. He only stopped and fell silent when I struck him with my weaponized hand, and I felt the air around my fingertips aid me in cutting the asshole down. My hand effortlessly went into the man's skin, and I felt his bodily fluids soak my fingers. 

"I suppose that's one way to get you to shut up." I muttered as I glared at the man.

---