148 Elemental Wrath

[Alert: The Wrath of the Forgotten

In the ancient past, the universe was filled with gods and other beings like them. Races worshiped entire pantheons of the beings and they ruled the universe. Half a million years ago a catastrophe occurred and the gods and their kin of that mythic era were slain in a single battle of unimaginable proportions and universe-changing consequences.

Althos coming to life is but one event of the modern era that serves as a callback to the forgotten past. One almost forgotten member of the ancient past was Morehammer the deceiver.

Morehammer was a demon lord and an evil monarch who deceived the dwarves into worshipping him as their creator. He ruled over them and tyrannically controlled their destinies, violently exterminating anyone who dared oppose his rules or attempted to encourage dwarves to worship gods of kindness and goodness.

Now the last dredges of his power have manifested, in response to Althos' glorious offers of freedom and desire to liberate the peoples of the world. His final shade manifested and confronted Althos in battle, deep underground, and the deceitful demon-lord was strong enough to deal a powerful, lingering blow to the god of freedom.

The demon-lord then fled and is now using his greater experience and a wider range of powers than the god has to cowardly hide from the god of freedom. That said, he had one more trick up his sleeve.

The devious and spiteful demon-lord of dwarves and blacksmithing was, like the dwarves themselves, a creature of mountains and fire. In his wrathful hatred of Althos, he opted to use his powers to kill Althonians all over the world. He is activating one of his more devastating abilities and setting off volcanos all over the world. At the moment Althos is recovering from the blow the coward dealt him and is unable to provide much aid to his followers as doing so would distract him from his recovery.

If you wish to help your god and to help yourselves, offer your prayers to the god of freedom and choice. Grant him the power to wrest control of volcanos from the deceitful demon-lord.

Stop the followers of the deceiver of the dwarves. Weaken his connection to those he falsely claims are "his children". Survive and turn your wills towards the sky. Beg for help from above. Pray for the power to endure this.]

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This message was transmitted to every non-dwarf in the world. It was a terrifying message that in many cases alerted people of the coming catastrophe before they would have noticed the effects of the volcanic eruptions themselves.

It infuriated many of the people of the world. And some people, most notably those with belligerent attitudes and whose neighbors included dwarves, swiftly assembled their militias or their militaries. More than a few of them were even able to issue proclamations of war against their nearby dwarven settlements and strongholds.

The most common group of species that did this were giants, with several tribes of several different types of giants doing this, followed closely by orcs. Orcs and giants were infamous for their bellicose natures and they often enjoyed waging war on their neighbors so none of this was surprising.

This was a wrath-based decision, which had an unintended side-effect. These conflicts would enable Althos to gain the second tier of influence over the corruption subdomain, something he had yet to do with his other schemes. That said, there were complications that prevented him from successfully completing the quest. Namely that the forces in question didn't actually physically clash. At least not immediately.

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A rather curious thing happened as the god wrote the devious global notification that he was preparing to send out. He began to transform.

The emotions he felt deep within himself were too much for his deceptive "natural" form. They burned within him and unconsciously caused him to take on a more terrifying and elemental visage. One that radiated pure elemental power.

The unconscious, unasked for changes couldn't completely change his body. They couldn't grant him new appendages or destroy existing ones. His unconscious mind didn't yet have that power. But they could begin to hint at his true power by tearing past the mortal and false appearance he commonly wore.

His flesh burned away from the inside and took on a look that was both natural and supernatural. It was natural in that it involved the four classical elements, but supernatural in how it did so.

To begin with, his hair transformed from its normal dark-color into a small field of flames. It was a strange transformation. And the area just underneath his hair transformed into something that managed to be even stranger.

One half of the area directly underneath his hair was engulfed in lava-like flames. The other half became stoney and even more solid than it had been prior to this. One of his eyes became a blood-red orb of intense flames and the other seemed to almost dissolve entirely into a colorless sphere of water.

The halves of the bottom of his head transformed in other ways. One half, the half below the part of his face that transformed into lava-like flames became airy and immaterial. The final fourth of his face transformed into clear-blue ocean-water. His neck took on a windlike aspect and became ethereal, causing his head to look detached from the rest of his body.

The god's body below the neck took on a new appearance as well. Each of the classical elements got a limb to themselves. His right arm became a powerful and rocky thing made up of parched earth. His left arm became a chaotic and shifting tendril of controlled air that undulated like a snake in motion.

One of his legs became a pillar of flames that left burning footsteps in its wake and the other became a vaporous thing that from a distance didn't even seem to exist at all. However, the abrupt changes he was undergoing weren't completely done.

Even as the god was attempting to take in the details of his new form, he shimmered and began to change once more. This time he took on mostly solid traits.

His head was the first to transform this time. It became an oval of fire, entirely composed of lava-like, scarlet-colored flames. His neck was also firey. His chest, arms, and legs were entirely different from before though. They became a single, joined earthen mass riddled with cracks.

The cracks were themselves as fascinating as the earthen core his new, second-form possessed. They were filled with one of the elements. The cracks were filled with water which almost flowed down his body like a river or a waterfall.

Both of his hands were surrounded by three mini tornadoes which perpetually cycled his digits. Each of the cyclones was a different color, and they were responsive to his mental commands, twisting in the direction he commanded and even vanishing at his command.

This new form was even more fascinating to him and he took a moment to study it.

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"This is so... amazing." I muttered as I took in my two new forms. Both of them were strange, almost naturalistic looking things and I felt awed by either form.

Both forms were strange, inhuman things. And that was part of what I liked about them. It fascinated me to apparently naturally acquire a pair of new forms, something that had never happened before. That said, thanks to the time I took to study my powers I knew what this was: it was an environmental mutation of something that already existed. Or in this case a pair of mutations.

"Judging from the nature of this... If I had to guess I'd assume this was a natural mutation of my shapeshifting?" I asked myself, speaking aloud within an empty chamber in my tower. I waited for a second and then heard a response.

"Well... Not natural per se." Muttered the shifty voice of the domain of chaos. I grinned when I heard this voice, not quite having expected it but not being caught completely off-guard either. I knew it was someone, I just didn't know who.

"Your elemental overlord abilities are becoming more and more powerful Althos." The chaos domain told me, confidence seeping into its voice.

"When you make use of your powers as an elemental overlord they will begin to evolve on their own. Right now your powers are rising in power. Because of your usage of your volcanic abilities. As an elemental overlord, all of your elemental powers are tied to the same... wellspring of experience. Experience which you acquire from the usage of your powers and by how many people your powers affect." The domain explained, causing my eyes to widen in shock.

That would explain the sudden and abrupt mutation. Currently, all over the world volcanoes were erupting or at least beginning to erupt and these eruptions were affecting billions of people at once. They were violently coming to life and I was receiving dozens of domain-sense type notifications every second purely related to the volcanoes and their fiery payloads.

I closed my eyes and allowed myself to feel the pure power at my fingertips. Every volcano in Torus and Salifinos for that matter was under my control, thousands of volcanos, many of which were presently erupting. And the power they offered me, though small in the grand scheme of things, was still considerable. And as they did, I begin to become more sensitive to the power I was receiving curtesy of the devastating power I was unleashing on the world.

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Althos' wrathful fury first manifested itself in the activation of one of the first elemental overlord abilities he had gained: his mastery over volcanoes. And at first, this power was slow to activate.

The first volcanoes to erupt were almost universally underwater ones. They were located throughout the seas that dotted the largely blue planet. Their eruptions were strange affairs that went unnoticed by some, but not all of the world's inhabitants.

Underwater civilizations felt the impact of the submarine volcanoes erupting. They felt temperatures for ranges of up to a few dozen kilometers away rise up abruptly, thanks to the divinely empowered eruptions having greater potency than natural ones, and settlements near submarine volcanoes were instantly boiled. That said, Althos' warning reached everyone at the same time. This warning came right before the earliest eruptions and allowed some creatures living near the volcanoes to swiftly flee.

That's not to say that no one died, thousands of lifeforms were abruptly boiled to death, but Althos' foreshadowing his elemental fury saved thousands of creatures from unpleasant deaths. That said, not every underwater volcano was known to living creatures outside of the seas. And underwater volcanoes had one especially bizarre effect on the oceans that was relevant for populations of creatures living on the surface, near them.

Submarine volcanoes still released volcanic gasses. Volcanic gasses often escaped from submarine volcanoes in the form of bubbles that lowered the density of water near the volcanoes, and these gases were released far more often and far more violently during eruptions.

These gasses created sinking zones that caused many of the victims of submarine volcanoes to be surface-dwelling air-breathers whose ships abruptly sank beneath the waves and who themselves drowned or were crushed by water. These sinking ships themselves killed a small handful of sea-creatures who were near the sinking zones. Some of the victims of the ships were individuals who managed to escape the immediate vicinity of an underwater eruption.

The most powerful of the submarine eruptions were actually capable of breaching the surface. These eruptions, only caused by a few hundred of the several thousands of volcanoes located under the sea, sent steam and debris into the air in oceans all over the world. Pillars of steam erupted from the surface of the seas all over the planet, and this was before the volcanoes that jutted out from the surface of the world added their own ashes and gases to the mix.

The world began to change abruptly as the god's rage manifested. Though some volcanoes erupted effusively, their lava steadily flowing out and onto the ground, many erupted explosively.

Explosive volcanic eruptions were the main source of a lot of chaos and death in the first few minutes after the final volcano began to erupt. These eruptions sent up a toxic miasma that blocked out the light of the sun and within the hour following the commencement of the final volcanoes eruption a dark, ashen shroud covered the sky.

Within a quarter of an hour after the eruptions began the temperature of the planet, in areas far from the volcanic eruptions, began to cool down. Even the totality of the volcanic activity couldn't touch the entire planet at once, so some areas went almost unaffected by the continent-changing bursts of volcanic power. Some areas became so hot that they incinerated entire settlements and thousands of people perished in the immediate aftermath of the initiation of Althos' fiery fury.

But Althos himself was quite busy. He was answering prayers left and right.

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Unsurprisingly, initiating what had the potential to be a global apocalypse made lots of people very religious. As a god that was to my benefit. I received millions of prayers immediately and they continued to flow in even minutes after the beginning of the newest age in Torunian history.

Many of them were prayers for protection. These prayers were easy for me to answer. On those I felt like aiding I bestowed an immunity to fire and heat damage, and sometimes even immortality. At this point using such powers were child's play for me, even remotely. Creatures in every continent received my protection, as did at least some members of every single royal family in the world. That said, I ignored many, many such prayers.

Some prayers were not prayers for protection. They were prayers for aid in exacting revenge on the dwarves who, according to my lie-filled notification, served Morehammer.

These prayers were predominantly by fire-giants and by orcs, two especially pious races who historically were known for serving gods of war, destruction, and conquest. They asked for omens, and in some cases for the power needed to endure the environmental hazards they'd need to face to be able to attack my enemies and send a message to Morehammer in my name. There was a smirk on my face as I answered those prayers.

"War..." I said, to no one in particular. There was a bright grin on my face, as I began to utilize the dreadful powers I possessed over and related to war itself. This was the first time I was making direct usage of those abilities, and I began to feel excitement creep into my heart as I did so.

Some of my powers were naturally easy to use in broad strokes and over a group of people as opposed to being naturally focused on singular targets. My war-domain powers were a perfect example of this. I started off by targeting the men and women who prayed to me, seeking vengeance against my foes, and I blessed them.

The war-domain's blessing was an indirect and subtle one that increased the talent one has with commanding troops and improved their abilities related to strategizing. I applied it exclusively to the leaders of the communities that were excited to go to war. Other powers though, I made much more liberal use of.

I effortlessly manipulated their emotions, stoking the existing hatred and anger they felt until almost all they could think about were a number of ways to slay and flay dwarves. It was at that point that I activated "death empowerment", which gave them the ability to feed off of the deaths they would inflict on their foes. Over the course of a few moments, I had empowered thousands of brutal warriors all over the world and I still had one more gift to give them.

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One of the simplest ways a god can manipulate a soul is to grant them a class. Classes alter the very composition of one's immortal essence, the thing that is most commonly called a soul.

Over the course of my life, I had gained the power to grant people a number of classes. But right now what I needed was simple. I just needed simple worshipers who enjoyed war and warfare. Which I had. But came the part where I needed to strengthen them. Several of them already had the warrior class under their belt so I needed something else. Fortunately, I had just the right ability.

I targeted the followers of the people who sought to go to war with dwarves all over the world. And in an instant I granted them the templar class, enhancing their considerable strength even further. In return for my gifts, I felt something pleasant: a warm emotion flowed out of them and into me. I was feeling their love and admiration for me, and for my power, grow. Which in turn served to amplify my powers, even if it was just a little bit.

That said, what wasn't small was the bloodlust these warriors felt. They were eager for conflict. I closed my eyes and prepared another notification even as I opened up portals into where dwarves were living, to speed up the bloodshed.

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[Alert: Stopping the servants of Morehammer

Althos is proud of every warrior who bravely stands up in defense of his, her, or their home. He is proud of those who are willing to take up arms to fight back against the darkness that has hidden away in the earth. He has blessed those who opt to stand against the coming darkness.

Take up your swords and cleave through the followers of this devious lord of darkness. Stand up for your home. Stand up against the doom this creature would unleash on your world and a thousand others.]

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I chuckled as my incredibly powerful sensory abilities alerted me that my followers were indeed dashing off to confront their enemies. And with that, I received a notification I had long waited for: the one alerting me that at last, I had acquired the second tier of influence over the potent subdomain of corruption.

As I read through it, I smiled wider than I ever had. I was on the precipice of acquiring significant power, at a time when I needed such power. That elevated my mood even further than my acquisition of new worshipers had.

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[Corruption subdomain alert:

You have successfully incited conflict between two or more communities on the basis of one of the seven deadly sins. The sin that was utilized was the sin of wrath. As a result of that, you now get to choose one of the six remaining sins you do not have influence over. Which will you pick? When you make your choice you'll gain power over that sin, and greater power over the sin you can already influence: lust.]