I smiled as the humans continued to study each other, in the midst of the complex illusion I had created. They weren't being deceived by me or anything, I was merely creating a complex illusion to facilitate communication between "my" faction of Terrans, and Spartina, the leader of the descendants of the Lost Voyage.

I was supported by Leon, who was the single most influential leader of the colonists, and Spartina needed no support. Any decisions she made were decisions she had the right to make, as she was the supreme leader of her particular group of Terrans. She was a proud human and frankly, she had good reason to be proud. She had successfully led her people and thanks to her skillful leadership her people had survived and thrived in what could honestly be considered enemy territory.

Spartina was, unsurprisingly, the one who recovered and spoke first. My illusion showed the other humans present in the conversation the warrior woman clearing her throat and then beginning to speak. As she began to speak I infused her with the knowledge of what mainstream Terrans believed and knew about the Lost Voyage.

"Fellow Terrans... It is a great honor for me to see you. I would like to begin by extending my condolences to those of you who have lost loved ones in your struggles against the Atlani." She began, and her words were met with respectful nods by the Terrans who were physically beside me. Spartina was able to see them nod and smiled, sadly.

"I know first hand how it feels to lose loved ones to their metal spears. My mother was killed not long after I was born, to an attack by Atlani bastards just a few decades after the events that made my father's voyage be known as 'the lost voyage'." Spartina revealed before a storm of emotions flashed across her face. The first emotion was grief, the second was rage, and the third was a long-accepted sort of sorrow, the kind that hurts even after one had unpacked and processed it.

Spartina was quiet for a moment, and as she was silent I watched her consider where to go next with her statements. She closed her eyes and then she began to radiate her immense power, the sort of power that was only available to a mortal when they had lived a life that allowed them to accumulate immense power, often the sort of lives that warriors could only live if they were perpetually at war. As I studied her, I realized something.

She was the first human I had ever seen that I wanted to allow to transcend. Spartina was that powerful, she was an existence on par with one of the generals of Agustino, a mythically powerful being. I knew why this was, of course.

She had lived her entire life fighting against a single foe: the Atlani. And she was older than Leon. Her incredible hatred for her foes had driven her to be a frontline fighter who met Atlani warriors every time any of them attempted to raid her home, and she never failed to either kill them or force them to retreat.

"As for your generous request... I care for my people's safety and security more than anything else. Even if you have the power of a deity on your side, I need to understand what that power is. And how you, how he, plans to use it before I can make any definitive decisions." Spartina declared, turning to face me. I chuckled and began to reply not even a second after she finished speaking.

"Spartina... I plan to protect the Terrans, all of you, from Atlani depravity. I plan to defeat the Atlani and bring an end to the threat they pose to everyone in this region." I declared, speaking so that everyone could hear me and see the smirk on my face. There was a spark of confidence in my gaze, and I felt Spartina's mind begin to concoct a scheme. I could sense the "gears" in her mind beginning to crank out a neat test for me to take. One I wondered if she'd be brave enough to attempt to enact.

"You want to defeat them? And just how do you plan to do that?" She asked, and I sensed her eyes begin to watch me intently. For a moment I considered giving her an opportunity to enact her scheme.

She wanted me to invade a strange temple near her home, one tied to the dark history of the Lost Voyage. If I gave her a chance to mention it, I knew she'd act on the opportunity and ask me to do something neither her nor her father could do: avenge those who lost their lives at the hands of the Atlani, over a century ago.

"I plan to strengthen you all, the Terrans, and force the Atlani into a real conflict. Not this quiet state of soft clashes where they know they can flee and not be pursued by us." I revealed, hinting at my plans to launch a full-scale war against the Atlani. This caused those on my side to begin to mutter uncertainly, even Leon himself. I then looked directly into Spartina's eyes and spoke some more.

"I also plan to avenge those who died at the hands of the Atlani a century ago. I can see into your heart, into your soul. I know it cries out for vengeance. I feel your desire for justice, Spartina. A long time ago... I couldn't give someone dear to me the justice she sought. The vengeance she sought. I failed her. But I won't fail again." I declared, thinking for a moment of Ava, who I thought about occasionally.

For a moment I frowned. I remembered the sting of her loss. Of her death at the hands of Morehammer. And of the payback that I owed him for what he did to her, to me, and to the deities he slew during his life to prevent someone from becoming the god of dark dwarves.

Spartina gazed at me. As she did I sensed her calmly try to gauge my power. It was funny for a mortal to stare so coldly, so boldly, at a god. It made me laugh, internally, that a human was trying to size up a god. It was like a rabbit trying to determine whether or not to bite an ancient dragon.

After a few moments of silence, I calmly utilized my powers over fear, extremely powerful abilities that I liked to keep hidden, to disrupt Spartina's attempts to study me. I used them subtly, after all, I wasn't trying to actually scare her, I just wanted her to be unable to focus on studying me. I began to nip at the edges of her consciousness with anxiety, and after a moment I watched her eyes cloud over as her mind became distracted. When she became distracted she frowned and sighed.

"I... If you can attain the sort of vengeance that neither I nor my father could attain then you would prove yourself to be someone worth following. If you can enter the damned temple where it happened and can figure out how to destroy it, then I would happily join you." Spartina told me, though her contextless words were confusing to the Terrans who were with me. They stared at her in confusion, but she kept her gaze firmly locked on me, and knew, somehow, that I understood what she was asking.

After making the more definitive, contextless comment, Spartina closed her eyes and then sighed. A second later she began to explain what she meant to my less knowledgeable companions. While she did that, I began to advance another part of my scheme by allowing a portion of my mind to retreat into the divine realm once controlled by Technos, the long-dead metropolis.

---

My mind appeared in the depths of the city, and I immediately began to use necroscience again, a power that I had experimented with even while working on restoring order to Gehenna. The immensely powerful ability filled my head with a precise and impressively detailed chart that listed out all of the deaths in the universe, stretching all the way back to its very beginning.

I looked at the list and chuckled. One day I'd use the list to its true maximum potential, and resurrect higher beings, and in doing so gain immeasurably powerful servants. But that day was off in the distant future. For now, I had other plans that needed necroscience, actionable ones that I could pursue right away.

I opened my mind and used my powers over knowledge to begin to absorb the memories of even the long-dead, using the power in such a way that I could absorb memories from creatures whose souls had become extraplanar beings. I felt my mind surge in power as all manner of knowledge seeped into my brain, revealing to me ancient secrets from long-dead civilizations, and the memories of those deaths that had taken place so long ago they remembered the ancient gods.

In experimenting with necroscience I had gained a mastery over it that allowed me to do all manner of things which was something that I planned to take advantage of today. A number of things I previously wouldn't have been able to do were now things I could do easily, and that gave me a number of powerful tools with which to concoct and enact schemes.

I studied the list and began to filter it. At first, I filtered the list down to the planet I was on, and then I began to further filter it. I started off by looking at the list of Terrans who had died, looking through past emperors and smiling as I did so. They would be useful, in time.

I then looked for the members of the Lost Voyage who had lost their lives and noticed that about a quarter of them perished in the temple that Spartina wanted me to visit. It was through the quarter of them that perished in the temple that I learned the true nature of the terror that lurked within the now confined temple. And the true enemy that was responsible for the deaths of the friends, an enemy whose defeat at my hands would result in me earning a powerful upgrade to my abilities. 

The rest eventually perished in the micro-state created by Spartina's father, the leader of the survivors of the Lost Voyage, and when the last of them perished Spartina became the leader of their children.

I continued to filter the list, now searching for dead Atlani. I effortlessly found various Atlani, some of which I myself had slain, that would be perfect for me to use for the scheme I had in mind. They were the easiest sorts of Atlani to resurrect too, they still had their souls. I resurrected their bodies, with but a thought.

Various Atlani warriors appeared in front of me, in the depths of the forsaken city. They were powerful looking and fully naked, but they were also soulless at the moment. I planned to craft new souls, ones loyal to me, and have them inhabit the bodies of the warriors. This was one of the ways that I had improved upon this power. I had given myself an upgrade to it that let me resurrect bodies even if souls had been destroyed, moved on, and became extraplanars, or were otherwise out of reach.

With this iteration of the power, I could theoretically resurrect Ava, and then create a soul exactly like hers to put into her body. I might even do that one day, either in the days before or right after I defeated Morehammer.

I studied the technically living Atlani warriors who stood still before me, their muscular bodies fully on display. Their eyes were open but there was no thought in them, no true consciousness. Without a soul in their bodies even if they were living creatures they weren't meaningfully alive, even while awake.

I continued to study the list of beings who had died on Ta Hendo, and I began to widen the list again. I smiled as I did so, and as I gained a clearer understanding of the broad history of the planet, thanks to my powers over memories.

The vast list that filled my mind was in its own way quite illuminating, particularly the parts that involved the temple Spartina wanted me to invade. A temple that I already knew at least part of quite intimately, thanks to my frightening powers over memories.

As a portion of the fragment of my mind that rested in this divine realm worked on studying necroscience's potent list another portion of the fragment finally realized how to best use this strange city. I needed to redesign it. It wasn't very useful for me as a city, and despite that, this place had been useful. It gave me a place to conduct my experiments with the dead in peace.

---

A deity's divine realm, or in the cases of some gods, such as Althos and Morehammer, their divine realms, are where they are at their strongest. A divine realm is a god's truest home, and divine realms themselves are some of the only dimensions that lack any sort of consciousness unless the god who created the realm gives it a consciousness.

The strange city that Althos resided in was not a divine realm that had been given a sort of consciousness by Technos, its original creator and ruler. And when Althos sought to redesign it, it immediately began to obey him, unable to resist the will of its lord.

The large buildings that surrounded Althos, and even the false sky that existed in the air above the city, all faded from view. The divine realm was forcibly returned to nothing, a blank white canvass for Althos to modify as he wished.

For a brief moment, the god quietly contemplated how to enact his will upon the place. And then he closed his eyes and imagined the divine realm's new shape taking root in the heart of the realm and spreading outward. And so it did.

The strange white void that was the realm was replaced by something altogether odder. Instead of a featureless void, mere moments after Althos sought to redesign the realm, it immediately became an unspeakably vast mausoleum. Althos found himself in the middle of it, smiling as he stared at walls that were filled with coffins suitable for creatures of all sorts of sizes.

The floor beneath him was made of white marble, and though when the "eternal mausoleum" began to exist Althos had been floating in the middle of one particularly large chamber, he quickly willed himself down to the floor and gently touched down on it. He looked around at his newly transformed divine realm and began to smile to himself.

The Atlani men he had resurrected appeared in front of him, just as mindless as before. They appeared no worse for wear, and stared at nothing, their faces utterly still. They wore traditional Atlani battle armor, which covered their genitals, their knees, and their heart, and left everything else uncovered. They held iron spears in one of their hands.

---

I was in one of the larger chambers of a place I was going to call "The Eternal Mausoleum", a place of silence, death, contemplation, and the resting dead. I studied my surroundings and turned to examine what was behind me.

When I turned I saw that I was in the exact middle of a symmetrical, wide chamber where the walls were filled with a seemingly endless array of coffins. The coffins here were for beings of roughly human size, but I already knew that other chambers existed that were designed for creatures of larger sizes and that there were also chambers for creatures of smaller sizes.

The chamber I was in was large enough that there were hundreds of coffins in the walls around me. And as I looked around my smile began to become wider and wider. This divine realm was perfect for me in my capacity as a god of death, and what's more, is that I could use this place to house the bodies of all sorts of servants. 

My personal divine realm was falsely perceived as finite in size, but over here I didn't need to feign anything. This divine realm was infinite, and if I wanted too I could resurrect the bodies of every single creature that had died, or at least that I could resurrect at the moment and place them here, to use whenever I saw fit, but I didn't even need to do that. 

The entire purpose of this place was for me to use it as a place to behave like a god of death and schemes. I silently walked over to a wall and used telekinesis to pull out and open a number of coffins. I raised a hand and began to fill the coffins with a number of servants I planned to use in the future, servants of Ta Hendo origin, primarily but not entirely humans from the world, but also elves and a number of spirits and angels. 

The smile on my face as I did this was quite sinister since I didn't resurrect the souls of the creatures whose bodies I had resurrected. I held their memories within me, which was enough for now. I didn't need to try and perform true resurrections, or at least not completely true resurrections, not at this point in my schemes. 

As I did this, my mind momentarily turned to Aringoth, the primal elf general I had resurrected and returned to the Wildlands, where he was currently hard at work conquering tribes of fey and uniting them under my banner. It was worth bringing him back from the dead and empowering him. He was perpetually battling deadly foes and conquering them in my name, which empowered me in various ways. 

His mission at the moment was to help me become the head of an Unseelie court, which would greatly diversify my fey powers. He was also quite dutiful and so I trusted him, for now at least. Though if he ever thought up any treasonous thoughts, I'd know and be able to punish him immediately for it, which made me grateful to some key subdomains such as the power for pain, and the domain of emotion's powers over fear. 

I quietly refocused on the scene in front of me and smiled. Inside of some of the coffins in front of me were the members of the Lost Voyage. I studied their peaceful, still presently deceased, faces and chuckled. They would be incredibly useful to me, in time, and so for now I allowed them to rest here in the Eternal Mausoleum. 

Some other Atlani humans who I could see if I studied the coffins lining the wall were people like former Terran emperors, and Atlani shaman who I would use in the days to come. WIth my powers on display like this I felt proud of myself, of the powers I had acquired, and the steps I had taken to arrive where I was. And so I closed my eyes and willed myself, this fragment of my mind, back to my body. Which was in a new location. A critical location.

---

I found myself inside of a whirling barrier of powerful, destructive magic. If I turned around all I'd see was a whirling wall of potent magic that would have destroyed any mortal who made contact with it. And ahead of me loomed an ominous temple made from some strange, local, black stone. If I looked up all I saw was a ceiling made of gray stone, as I was currently underground and not even particularly far from where Spartina lived. 

I was inside of a barrier created by Spartina to contain the terrors of the Atlani temple and to prevent them from ravaging the Terrans. The temple in front of me was where the Lost Voyage met its end. The temple was a vast thing, not as outwardly large as the Final Factory, but equally impressive in its ambition and in the true terror it housed deep within itself.

I began to walk towards it. I was not afraid of what lurked within in, indeed the part of me that constantly craved more power, which was what had driven me to Ta Hendo in the first place, was excited to encounter the nightmares that called this temple home.

As I walked towards it I began to hear them, the creatures this placed housed, stir in their sleep. It had been a long time since anyone had come here. And in that time they had begun to hibernate, which was a reasonable move. 

It took me only a few minutes to make it to the front of the temple. And when I did I walked right up to one of its walls and touched it. When I did a notification filled my mind. I smiled as I read it and I immediately stepped to the side and then into the temple, confidence oozing off of me as I ventured into a place responsible for an unthinkable amount of heartache, suffering, and pain.