“Maiden, could you give me some more information about the gods and, more importantly, the limits they operate under?” I quietly asked, trying to avoid interrupting the continuing conversation between Luna and the Grandmother.

  “I’m asking because I’d like to know what I have to be cautious of, if there are any loopholes that might allow them to smite me in particular. Because I’ve got no delusions about my chances if a god decides to interfere directly. If that happens, I’ve got a serious problem, and I’m not sure if there’s anything I can do to change that,” I added, just to clarify what sort of information I was looking for.

  Hopefully, this would be something she was willing to share. Other things I would have loved to ask but had a strong feeling she wouldn’t share were related to the process of apotheosis. Unless I missed my guess, she wasn’t willing to avoid contaminating the process I was undergoing myself; it might very well be a case of ignorance being an advantage. Without preconceived notions, I couldn’t try to follow a path that might not work for me; I had to forge the path all on my own. Or it might be that each apotheosis was as unique as the god they produced, with no relevant overlap. Regardless, I was pretty sure that one reason why Lady Hecate was giving me as much help as she did was that she wanted to observe and study the apotheosis I was undergoing. For that, securing my cooperation with a bit of assistance was a sensible idea.

  “That’s…” she began speaking, her voice projected directly at me, making me wonder if the others could even hear her. Then, just as she had begun, she paused, and I could feel her gaze measure me. It wasn’t just coming from the aura around Luna, but it was coming from below, from her shrine. Maybe because it wasn’t just the Maiden who studied me, but the entirety of Hecate, with Mother and Crone taking a look, too.

  “That’s complicated, especially in your case,” she continued after a few seconds of scrutiny. “You see, usually, a god can only strike at mortals in very specific circumstances, unless they are willing to suffer massively for their conduct. As an example, destroying a shrine can get you in serious trouble, or desecrating a sacred animal, especially if the god in question gives a warning.”

  “That’s the kind of thing gods can, and will, take personally, as it effectively is a personal insult. And gods can be just as petty as mortals, maybe even more so,” I could feel the grin on her face, even though she was only present as a faint aura.

  “They generally had more time to train their pettiness, so I’d guess they are worse,” I returned the grin and felt the Maiden’s aura bubble with amusement.

  “Probably,” she agreed, “But that’s not really what you had in mind, did you? You want to know about the rules for conflict between two deities, and at which point you are too divine to interact with mortals and when another god might decide that you are one, too, and are meddling with their followers.”

  “Exactly,” I nodded again, hoping that there’d be some comprehensive rule to follow, even if I had a feeling that the answer would be complicated.

  “Would you be surprised that it’s not a terribly common situation?” she asked in return, “Not unique, I think the library has a few descriptions of gods that came about in a somewhat similar fashion, but it’s as rare as one would expect. Maybe even rarer.”

  “So?” I prodded, “What do those descriptions and reports say?”

  A part of me wanted to ask about the library the Maiden had mentioned, but I had a feeling that I’d either get no answer or a useless one. Lady Hecate, in general, and her Maiden-aspect in particular, could be quite vexing, enjoying the exasperation she caused. She could be, as one would have said on the Internet, a complete and utter troll.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  “No real consensus,” the Maiden shrugged, “There’s no clear pattern, though whether that is because these nascent gods didn’t annoy other gods at the start, because any gods they annoyed weren’t willing to risk it, or due to some other reason, I’m uncertain. But hey, it might also be that I only know about emerging gods that didn’t get smote because those who did were simply relegated to the graveyard of history, alongside the countless other people who never fulfilled their potential.”

  For a moment, I was tempted to sigh, though I knew the Maiden couldn’t change anything about a lack of information. Those just happened, and when it came to obscure details, it happened far too often for comfort. And this was certainly obscure, to have a person start emerging as two distinct deities on two different worlds without ever dying, or becoming part of a larger organisation while alive? That couldn’t be a common occurrence, unless the multiverse, or cosmos or whatever one wanted to call it, was a lot bigger than I could imagine.

  “So, it boils down to ‘act mortal and hope for the best’?” I asked, and now that sigh did manage to escape.

  “More or less, yes,” I could feel the Maiden nod, without her body being present, which was a peculiar sensation, making me wonder just how this all worked. And realising that I’d probably be unable to understand, simply because I lacked relevant information and details.

  “As long as you don’t stumble across actual divine magic, powered by your own nascent divinity, and put that to use against mortals who follow another god, you should be good. Blessings are generally unproblematic, but divine curses can be a hazard. Rule of thumb: don’t use anything that another mortal with similar abilities wouldn’t be able to use. Maybe staying away from Soul Magic would be wise, too, souls can be touchy business because…” she petered off, an odd sensation filling the room.

  It was strange enough to cause Luna and the Grandmother to stop talking and look over at us, frowns on their faces and confusion in their eyes.

  “Well, I guess you are too mortal to hear about that part,” the Maiden continued suddenly, the sensation fading away. “Even today, I don’t think I can talk about that.”

  “Too mortal?” I couldn’t help but ask, and now, the whole room was clearly listening.

  “Yes,” the Maiden nodded again, “You have yet to die, so you can’t fully know what comes after. Just how that aspect of the world works.”

  “Fascinating,” I couldn’t help but mutter, wondering if there was a way to interrogate some soul that had already died. Maybe I could find out during the experiments to draw back Sigmir’s soul. I’d probably need to try numerous things to see what might work, and I would never target Sigmir’s without confidence in the methods employed.

  “Always interesting to see the system impose limits,” the Grandmother muttered, her eyes staring at the aura around Luna, “It happens rarely, and nobody wants to experiment with the triggers, just in case the system pokes back.”

  “That’s always a risk when exploring the unknown. You never know when the darkness hides something that might bite any nose that dares poking into it,” Lia nodded, a grin on her face.

  “True, but if you don’t push the boundaries of what is known, nothing but stagnation awaits. There is so much we don’t know about the universe, we can’t even define the boundaries of our ignorance,” the Maiden grumbled, her words driving home why she was pushing so hard to make Luna, the Grandmother and me step into our respective divine domains.

  All three of us were willing to explore the unknown and push boundaries. The Grandmother was the most conservative of us, willing to remain in her little village and wait for a chance, but even she had been pushing things on Mundus.

  The Barrow Den, the dungeon she had created, was the best example of that. Just minutes earlier, the Maiden had been silenced by the system for talking about something regarding souls that had moved on, and the Grandmother had set up a dungeon to hold souls within the world until they were ground down.

  For a moment, it was as if a switch had flicked in my mind and I realised that this would likely be something I wanted to know more about. While I didn’t think that she had pulled back souls from the beyond, she had captured the souls of others and put them to work.

  That was, undoubtedly, Soul Magic, which was probably the subject I needed to learn most about, where I had the furthest to go on my path to resurrecting Sigmir.

  And now, the Grandmother was sitting at the dinner table, her conversation with Luna temporarily interrupted. Hopefully, I’d be able to learn some of her tricks before dessert.