Chapter 3 D-248

Hi! Aesir here. Sometime your expectations do not go well with reality. You all know that feeling when you watch an advertisement for a product in a TV shopping program and feel that excitement. You go check it out just to find out that there was a little sentence that said “The display is for the advertisement purpose only” at the bottom of the advertisement and the product does not deliver what you expect from them. I hate myself that I still feel excited every time a new advertisement came out. Same old pit fall.

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My new work place, the “D-248”, is a medium side planet according to Amelia. If going by comparison to the knowledge in my head, I think it is roughly about 1.5 times the size of a planet called “Earth”. Looking from higher up, there are many visible large islands and continents across the globe. Just to make it easier to recognized, I group them roughly into 3 main continents groups. For convenient sake, let’s call them the Northern continent, the Middle East continent and the Southern West continent.

What? How do I point out which is call north-south-east-west? For some reason the Creator make this planet like a miniature garden of his and I absolutely got no idea what rules of nature applied here. The planet act like a large ball spinning on a tilted axis similar to “Earth” in my memories so I’ll just use the same classification and easy to understand logic. North is the top of the axis. South is the bottom. West and East is the left and right respectively. What now? It was relative to the sun orbit? Screw that! This planet seems to have 2 “Suns” and 4 “Moons”. They have weirdly orbit that somehow cross and create duration of roughly 12 “Hours” for both day and night. I don’t know how to deal with that.

Hmm? Magnetic field? I don’t even know if this planet have magnetic field! I just got here so I’ll get back to you on that. But personally I think it will work the same way … hopefully.

Anyways. To getting back on topic. This planet overall is fascinating. The Northern most part seems to be consist of snowy land and the southern most part is the equal opposite, the desert. The Middle East continent main land is the smallest of the three but it have the most islands surrounding it. Some locations even have stormy weather 24/7!

I fly closer down to the planet. The weather is quite warm in the Middle East continent. It gets colder as you go further north and hotter as you go south.

As I flew by, taking in the sceneries, I saw many different types of plants and animals. Everything seems new and exciting. There are wings long reptiles flying in the sky and rocky sponge creatures floating on the sea surface, soaking in the sun. A group of flying feather pig creatures just scoops down and attacked a flock of fish-ish looking rats in the open grass plain. It’s like a mad scientist dream garden came true.

I can feel the living things life force everywhere from top of the mountains to the bottom of the sea. The air feels nice and pure. The earth is rich and full of life. The water is clear like priceless crystals. It feels like a paradise, a utopia from the Earth’s human legends. I feel joys and wonder everywhere I go like a little kid who got a new full set of toys.

This is my new home. This is my work place. This … is my responsibility.

That realization hit me to a paused. I don’t know why but I feel like I have to protect this place. Protect from what? I don’t know. I think this is the instinct that the creator gave me as I was being created. I can do whatever I want here but at the same time I need to do everything I must to protect this from harm.

Just like the feeling that a mother get when her child was born, this place is like my own child. I want to care for it. I want it to grow, be strong and healthy. I want a bright future for this child.

It is both a curse and a blessing at the same time, a chain that binding me to this planet casted on me by my creator which I can do nothing but happily received it with open arms.

What can I do to protect it? I start to think.

The planet seems be all good and fine since before I arrived so the most likely threat is from the outside.

I need to protect it from outside threats.

I make up my mind and begin flying around the planet. My idea is to create a barrier that will shield it from all harms.

I start using my new godly power, imaging a gigantic protective membrane surrounding the whole planet inside. Everything that I deem as a threat will be kept out, not foreign energies and power, not unknown harmful species from outer planet, and not even other gods without my permission.

My head start to hurt. My arms and legs begin to fade. The whole process took a much larger toll on me than I expected. The godly power under my command is far less than the necessary amount I required. I start to understand why many gods seek more power and influence over the mortals.

Us gods created by the creator are ageless and powerful, but we are far from being immortal. I understand this fact the hard way. We do not have a true physical body because our whole being consists of pure divine godly power. We might not die in the trustiest sense but we can be harm and render powerless. If we used too much power, we probably need to go into an inactive stage where we ‘sleep’ to recharge our power to a certain level and it can take a long time to wake up on our own.

Knowing this fact, I however did not stop. My being screams in pain to stop as my low godly power are being used up but my instinct and my will keep me going. The creator’s curse is a powerful one and I cannot go against it.

Finally the whole process finish before I ran out of power. I am temporally weakened but the accomplishment fills me with pride. My power will recharge overtime so it’s not a big deal.

Let’s call this barrier, Svalinn, my very own divine domain.

Now this planet is truly my domain. I will have advantage over any gods and being that will try to invade. Any other gods that want to visit my home will have to knock and wait for permission, even if that god is stronger than me.

Good things aside, it is risky to stay weaken for a long period of time. I need followers and their worships.

This planet currently only has me as a sole god residing here. I can monopolize all the possible followers as much as I want. I will become stronger and fill my role better. I start looking for civilization of any kind.

I flew and flew around the planet, looking for what I seek. The green grass plain, the colorful forest, the light bending grand waterfall, the underwater rift, everything is truly fascinating. But I may or may not have a slight serious problem here.

There is no sentient being here who fit to be my followers …

It’s not like I am that kind of god who discriminated against species. No. In my current stage where I would probably drop dead with just a single poke from a fellow god, I wouldn’t even mind if my first follower or my apostle is a 2 meter tall muscular bipedal cockroach.

Alright, to be honest, I do mind a little but I would not reject it.

Don’t look at me like that! Even as a god, there are things we still mentally scared. You know, like those ghost monster under the bed stories, there are mostly no such a thing under there yet you can’t help but still tuck yourself fully under the protection of your trusty blanket to protect yourself.

Why did I say mostly? You don’t want to know.

Back to the topic, what I mean is that we gods obtain power from gratitude and believes of people. When a mass of being believe in the same thing, sometime they become real. Those power of believes are what fuels our divine power.

My original plan is to find a group of sentient being on this planet perform a few easy miracles for them like making food out of thin air or something and, BOOM!, instance emergency worshipers. The cavemen probably are not a picky eater, right?

Now what will happen when the planet is so new, the creature living in it is not evolve enough to understand the concept of gods or gratitude?

Answer, no worshipers.

Hey Amelia, Ooga! Why didn’t you guys warn me about this? Well, she did said that it’s a new place but isn’t this too new? Even when you buying a new house, those scammer at the real estate agency would at least inform you that there is an actual building there that can be call a house and not an empty plot of land!

Huh? It was my fault for not asking? I’ll play be baby card here and said I was just born! Would you have taken advantage of someone when he was just a baby? And I AM a baby … technically speaking.

Off to the side track again.

Anyway, no worshiper means I can’t easily restore or increase my divinity. Therefore my only option is to either, lay low to charge up and hope for the best or just go straight into slumber for a faster recovery.

Not a fan of both. Not to mention I wouldn’t be able to stay active for long in my current condition.

No, I can’t give up. There has to be something that can be my follower and help me recover.

I use my few remain power together with Savalinn to search the whole planet.

Concentrated, Aesir! Nope. Not here. Not over here. Not there either. No… huh? There is something underneath? A sentient being?

My Deus Ex Machina, here I come!

Looking back to this moment from the future, why didn’t I notice something like this sooner back then? I mean, she was huge. True, I was young and in a desperate situation. A god’s slumber is similar to a mortal’s death since it might take you millenniums for some lowly god to wake up naturally, by then you would have been forgotten and would have to start anew in the world that you are bounded by the creator curse which may have become the domain of a random main god while you were slumbering.

Didn’t I mention that? A god is bound to the world that they have been assign to when they first land on that planet unless he/she have high enough divinity to overcome that bond. He/she then may move on to reside in their second world if they wish. That’s cannon. Remember that. They can still visit other place though, just can’t influence the place much.

Where was I? Oh right. I was young and desperate. I drove down toward the first sign of my possible last straw. I used too much power so my head wasn’t clear. I didn’t notice that even if it was an underground creature, it wouldn’t be living this deep.

I keep going down and down, straight to the target. I didn’t care how many kilometers or how deep it was. The final place I found myself in was that planet’s ‘core’.

That was where I found her, the sole being which was my last hope.

She looked like a small humanoid baby girl, a green flaming baby girl. She was floating there, alone, in the middle of this planet empty core chamber.

Her big round eyes filled with glowing blue light look at me straight. Her small lips curve into a charming smile.

If I have to describe her in comparison for you guys easy understanding, she was similar to a green flaming spirit that you guys imaged in your novel and picture books.

There was no one else and I got no time. I was too tired to communicate probably. All I could back then was reach out for her. Luckily she responded and holds my fading hands with her own tiny palm.

I told her through telepathy, who I was, what I did, and why I’m here. It was the last thing I could do before my consciousness shutdown. I fall into an endless slumber. The last thing I felt was her gratefulness and warm embrace.

Sometime in the future, against my better judgment, I later named her Nazanin.

She is someone I have to protect no matter what. Someone I will care for unconditionally.

She is the personification of this planet itself.

This planet itself is a living being.