King Unn and the Gods

The servants in the newly-active castle never had the nerve to question the new King. They whispered after he had walked by, averted their eyes when he asked them a question, but none had ever asked why he had ordered the chapel to be redone and reopened. The Northern Werewolves had rejected Zex as their patron God many thousands of years ago, and except for a few devout cultists, all shrines and chapels across the country had been thrown to the wind, defaced even, by angry soldiers who were angry at their loss of the war.

During Unnoctus’ crowning ceremony, though, when the Goddess herself stood beside him where his mother should have been, it was clear to everyone that the Northern Werewolf King had accepted the Goddess’s influence back into his life. Many were slow to take up the practice, some outright refusing, but most were glad to be able to pray and have someone hear it again. It may not have helped the rich, who had little to pray for, but it gave hope to those in poverty, who prayed to Zex for minimal misery--hope which was also transferred to Unn for allowing it again.

Even before Zex was rejected, the royal family rarily prayed. Why should they? They live in riches and comfort, with little reason other than sickness to pray to the God of pain and misery. Unn, though, spent every morning since his coronation in that room, on his knees with his hands on the ground, praying. It worried many--was he sick or in pain? Many believed he prayed for his absent mother, after vanishing off the face of the planet two years ago.

Unn and his old adviser Cretos were the only ones who knew why he was in there. Cretos joined him, occasionally, to watch the young boy summon and speak to one of the many ‘dark’ Gods. Many days he spoke to Zex herself, although almost as often it was her estranged lover Hesliem, who spoke slowly and mostly in riddles. He drove Unnoctus insane. Occasionally, and these were Cretos’ favorite mornings, it would be Hesliem’s fairy sister, Syss. She was usually overjoyed to speak to the two of them, and Cretos almost found himself asking how the four-armed fairy was considered a ‘dark’ God before remembering the tragic story of the strife between Pheryier and Syss.

The rarest of occasions, though, the two men would confront Hollock, the Lizard-God. She would speak slowly and deliberatly, and their meetings would be the shortest. Cretos enjoyed Hollock’s company--she was someone he could get a drink with. Unn enjoyed her company too, though he wondered sometimes if her focus was really on the conversation. Sometimes he felt like she had learned more from their talk then he had, even though these summons were supposed to be about Zera’s disappearance and their aftereffects. Hollock never wasted their time, and always had someplace else to be, though she never really rushed through their talks. The men had guessed she had to care for Desar, her lost husband, but she had never told them what she does after their talks.

Never had the men talked to Desar himself, and neither of them wanted to. Desar, the God of Darkness, had lost most of his mind after the defeat and banishment of his race, the Tieflings. He had invested so much of himself into their livelihoods that their genocide truly affected him. Before, when the Tiefs walked the planet as well, Desar had been good friends with his brother Carniex, the King of Gods, but now his state seems to get worse while near him. So Zex says. Hollock has to spend much of her time keeping him from hurting himself or the living beings on the planet, especially Pheryiers Elves and Carniex’s Phoenixes, where ever they were. Seems almost fitting for the Goddess of Morality.

The men spent every morning getting updates from Acre in the little candle-lit chapel in the farthest portion of the castle, only to spend the rest of the day acting like they hadn’t. The regular people, and especially the lords of the land and those in positions of real power, were never to be trusted with the information from the Gods. Knowledge of the Tiefling existence at all would give them enough power to either make themselves rich or plunge the world back into the Dark Ages. And King Unnoctus was not ready to truly lose his mother yet.