The Nature of Gods: first pages

        Arguing voices boomed through the walls of the Tower of the Octagon Table.  Triea, daughter of The Great Time-Jumping Bootlegger of Lewistre, kept her head bowed, hoping to slip past the Doors of Then unnoticed.  She had only been in the room of the Octagon Table once, and she had no intentions of returning anytime soon.  The debate room of the eight great gods of the universe could never agree on anything, and spent most of their time throwing large objects at each other while trying to determine which god was the greatest.  Escaping with her life last time had been a matter of luck mixed with her father’s skill at brewing ale.  His fantastic brew won him a floor in the tower, a permanent home to raise his daughter in without the danger of the road.  If she’d been older when her father decided on this place to settle, Triea would have argued against it.  There is no more dangerous place to raise a child than under the noses of half mad gods.  

Two octagonal guards were arguing quietly with one another.  She was almost around the corner.  Five more steps.

“Oi, girl!  You come here.”

Triea froze.

“Come on, lass.  I know you can hear me,” said a slick and soothing voice.

Recognizing the voice, Triea turned.  “My Lord Beign.”  She curtsied, keeping her head bowed.

“Come here.  I need you to do something.”

Beign was not one to argue with.  Normally, her father’s name was enough to keep her safe from being ordered around, but she knew that Beign was an exception.  A beating would come if she disobeyed.  She scurried over to the door.  “Yes, milord?”

“Go in and see if the gods need anything.”

Triea took a step backward, and Beign grabbed her, bringing her within an inch of his face.  She gulped.  “And the chances of death today?”

“High, and I’m not losing another one of my men today to roaring, bumbling gods who never get anything done.”  He could see the desire to flee in her eyes.  “You do this, or I’ll make sure you regret being alive.  I don’t care who your father is.”

She saw the fury in his eyes, and nodded.  “I’ll go.”

Beign cracked open the door for Triea just in time for a plate to come flying through it and shatter against the far wall, followed by several more.  She got on her hands and knees, crawled through the door, and looked back just in time to see Beign smile wickedly and close the door.  Triea moved just in time for a smashed vase to take her place.  There’s nothing for it, she thought.  I’m heading for the table.  Clambering through the wreckage of a room the size of a mansion was hardly the way she wanted to spend her morning.  She slipped under the table.  Now I can sit and wait, and hopefully they’ll stop arguing.  Why do they argue, anyway?  Nothing can be decided by people who all think they’re the best.

“Stop!” Suez yelled, and the room went silent.  “There’s something on my foot.”

Triea looked down, and moaned.  Well, at least they’ve stopped arguing.

Suez, the burliest god of the lot, bent down, picked her up, and set her on the table.  She had never got a close look at the god before.  There was a reason women worshipped him; he was beautiful.  Flowing auburn hair and yellow eyes, a soft face, and a toned body.  Suez kept the women enthralled.

“What were you doing down there?”

“Uh, seeing if the gods needed anything?”

A stick of a woman that could only have been Areha stepped forward to look at Triea.  The goddess, the on and off mistress of Suez, was a beautiful waif.  Her thin lips pursed before she spoke.  “We need a solution to this problem.”

“Oh.”  Think Triea.  Think.  Once the gods asked her for something, if she couldn’t fulfill the order, she was a dead woman.  This order would take all the knowledge she possessed.  She may have kept her head down in the tower for the most part, but she spent plenty of time in the extensive library.  She stumbled upon it when she was eight, and lost herself in it for days before her father found her.  Since then, Triea had read enough books to educate herself in the complexities of the universe.  Now she wondered why she’d never seen a god around that library, but then, she’d assumed that they were born with the knowledge she had to read about.  Obviously not.  She was beginning to think that the gods were an awful waste of space, and a waste of time to worship.

“Why doesn’t Chaos, the Father of All, solve it for you?”

Anger flared in the god Ollopias’ black eyes.  “We do not ask the old weak one to solve this problem.  He cannot supply a sufficient answer.”

“You’ve tried that already, then?”

“That information does not concern you, Jumper.”

“Uh, I’m not actually a. . .”

“Give us a solution young one, or face obliteration.”  Areha steamed.

Areha’s impatience is going to be the death of me.  I need something, something simple.   “Had you ever considered asking the people?”  Triea asked, hoping that the suggestion would be acceptable.

Suez looked stunned.  “The people?  What people?”

“Your worshippers.  You know, the people who praise you night and day and send you gifts?  Just have a poll, and ask them.”

Semitrius the Fair cocked an eyebrow.  “Such is an option we have not considered.  A poll will not work, though.  Gods could sway polls.”

“She is right,” declared Suez, “But who can come up with a better answer?”

Triea turned her head to look at the remaining four gods: Sermeha, Anethia, Lometria, and Brantus.  They all spoke at once.  “Let Triea decide.”

All eyes turned to her.  Great, I’m never going to get out of this one.  I knew there was a reason I didn’t like these gods.  She mulled things over for what seemed like days, when she caught hold of the book on employment, writing, and censorship she had just finished reading.  When Beign grabbed her, she was on her way to return it to the library.  The book was still in her satchel.  She looked down.  The thing was still hooked to her side, looking beaten from being hauled through the mess of the room, but not ripped.  She opened the satchel, took out the book, and flipped to the chapter about economic system setups.  After reading a bit to refresh her memory, Triea shut the book.  Now to explain complex economics and politics to toddlers.

“You can set up a work system to figure it out.  Each god can set up a tower of employment for people to write books about their particular god.  Then, a censorship tower can be set up by an uninterested third party to make sure that no god tampers with the books written.  After all the books detailing the lives of the gods have been written and censored, the gods can read them and decide which god is the greatest in the eyes of the people.  All you’ll need is to choose the location, build it all, and to let a non-god entity keep an eye on things while they’re running.”  And then, if this works, I’ll work out all the details later.