It was a very tense silence, Darius, the witch, Mattius and Thal sat in the same room.

Unaware of the situation, Emily brought everyone some tea, casually, Thal drank some.

“Mm, you make really good tea,” Thal remarked looking over to the innkeeper with a polite smile.

“Thank you! It’s a bit of a speciality of mine!” she exclaimed looking very smug.

“Let’s cut to the chase… are you actually going to help us?” Mattius asked.

Thal placed a hand over his heart.

“Of course, I promise,” he smiled.

Mattius was extremely nervous, it was like telling a teacher you’ve been building a weapon specifically designed to annihilate her.

“You may speak freely, I’ve actually trapped us in an illusion a few seconds ago so nothing you say can actually be heard by the gods,” Thal explained.

Mattius breathed a sigh as he finally built up enough courage to explained his project.

“World-and-soul magic, eh?” Thal asked, for the first time he looked surprised.

“Interesting…”

“Well, I can assure you the gods aren’t immune to being trapped…” Thal explained.

“If you could bring them down here in a human form, you could trap them in the dirt itself, not that I’d recommend it,” Thal shrugged.

Darius spoke up.

“And how do we get them down here?” asked Darius.

Thal smiled smugly, “Don’t worry about it, I have a plan!” he explained.

Twenty minutes later…

Darius, the witch and Mattius looked at Thal, dumbstruck.

“Thal… what the fuck is that?” asked the witch seeing the contraption built by Thal, the literal god of despair.

“Well, there is no one-for-all solution, so we’ll take each god down one-by-one!” Thal explained.

“Alright… but… will this seriously work?” asked the witch.

It was a large wooden box, propped up with a stick, tied at the bottom with a string, inside lay a large kebab.

“Shh, I’ve made you invisible, but they can still hear us!” Thal said placing a finger over his lips.

A few seconds later he appeared, the god responsible for the flow of souls in and out of the world, Nekraxx.

“Got him!” Thal thought.

He sniffed around the air as he walked towards the kebab, as soon as he was inside, Thal pulled on the string, causing the box to trap him.

“Quick, do it now!” Thal exclaimed creating an illusion over their whereabouts to hide the magic from the gods.

Mattius extended his hand forward as the demon king unknowingly at his kebab.

Before he even realised the demon king was trapped in a ring, a ring worn around Mattius’ finger.

It changed shape, becoming pointier and distinctly skull-shaped.

“One down!” Thal exclaimed.

“Woah…” Darius looked at the sky seeing the gods minding their own business.

“I'm severely let down by the god of death…” the witch sighed.

“Well, he wasn’t exactly in top shape,” Thal explained.

Thal breathed a sigh.

“Alright, next one will be a bit more difficult…” Thal admitted.

Walked over to the half-eaten kebab and dispelled the illusion on what was actually a pile of dirt.

“Next, we’ll take down Tynihart, she’s in charge of making all the items and objects for the world… her powers should come in handy later…” Thal explained.

He created an illusion of Nekraxx laying on the ground next to a handful of booze bottles and placed it under the trap again.

“We’re using the trap again?!” demanded the witch.

“Well, with any luck we’ll be able to turn a nine-on-four into an eight-on-four…” Thal explained.

“Nine? Since you’re on our side and Nekraxx is trapped, that would ten, right?”

Thal shook his head, “Magnus said he’s staying out of the fight too,” Thal explained.

From the sky flew down the god, Tynihart, she was clad in robes over which she wore leather armour over which she wore regular armour, no less than ten different hats were atop her had at once.

She wore a pair of green crocks.

“Tch, looks at yourself, man… you’re meant to be a god!” she sighed marching up to the fake-Nekraxx as Thal pulled the string causing her to be trapped in the box once more.

“Alright, do it now!” exclaimed Thal seeing Mattius already casting the spell.

In a flash, one of the god’s hats became her prison as it flew down to the ground.

It was a red witch’s hat.

Darius and Mattius looked at the witch.

“…what?”

“Aren’t you going to put it on?” asked Darius.

“Why the fuck would I!? It’s a trapped god!”

“…”

“…”

“It would look cool though,” Darius explained.

“…”

“…”

“You convinced me,” the witch replied walking over and taking the hat, placing it on her head.

Thal sighed, “I think that’s all for the non-combat gods…” Thal sighed.

“Non-combat gods?” asked the witch.

“Mm, not all of us are suited to combat, if Nekraxx was… well… well again, he would have been a major threat, and Tynihart is a glorified item dispenser…” Thal explained.

Mattius reluctantly moved everyone including Thal to his hidden lab and removed the ring from his hand.

“What now?” asked Darius.

“Now, if you want to stand a chance at fighting the others, even with my help, you’ll need to extract the two god’s abilities from those items,” Thal explained.

“Nekraxx should be capable of more than just letting souls in and out, with any luck he should be able to create weapons for you to use,” Thal continued.

“Why weapons?” asked Mattius.

Thal sighed.

“It was his ability before all of this, not stop asking stupid questions and let’s get to work!” Thal exclaimed.

“What do you mean by ‘before all of this’?” asked Mattius.

“What part of ‘enough stupid questions’ didn’t you get?” Thal demanded, crossing his arms.

Mattius removed his ring.

“I think I’ll be better suited to an artefact with the god of magic,” he explained, tossing Darius the ring.

Darius put the ring on.

“In order to place the soul of a god in an item, you are compressing it and making parts of it impossible to access, so for better or for worse, the gods we trapped are extremely weak,“ Thal explained.

“And so, they should be a lot easier to manipulate,” he continued.

From the hat worn by the witch came a desperate complaint.

“THAL! YOU TRAITOR!” cried Tynihart.

The mortals took some amount of comfort in the anger held by the god, like a reminder that Thal was actually on their side, except for Mattius who still doubted Thal.

“YOU BETRAYED YOUR OWN KIND!”

Thal pretended not to hear the complaints.

“WHAT ABOUT OUR WORLD!? DOES IT MEAN NOTHING TO YOU!?”

“Alright! Let’s get to work everyone!” Thal exclaimed.