Chapter Text
There is that… problem, with gods.
They grant miracles.
And, well, before you stand up and lecture anyone about this hardly being a problem, let’s think about the rules of the world. They aren’t meant to be broken. They are, frankly, meant to keep things together, like a bowl is meant to hold shit only for those who really wants to dinner it and not to sprinkle over everyone else’s food. Those kinds of laws of the world. Laws that keep everything together.
But there we have gods.
Benders of the bowls, sprinklers of the shit, basically making everyone’s lives harder for little, to no reason. It didn’t make any difference that Lambert was now in the equation. Honestly, they felt kind of offended by this whole situation. It wasn’t their fault that previous gods just couldn’t resist the temptation of bending the rules and bringing more and more problems. Maybe it was because they were the last of them, and that kind of made them responsible for fixing the things that seemed to be broken or bended beyond repair. Maybe it was because they were yet to make their own miracles. This way or another, the Lamb despised miracles.
Narinder probably shared their way of thinking now. Or would have, if this mess were cleaned.
Lambert took a deep, deep breath and held it, closing their eyes. Heket croaked quietly next to them, but she could just as well curse. Leshy openly laughed before he left the hut, while Shamura sipped from their cup, seemingly not bothered at all. Kallamar whistled quietly, putting a bottle back on a table, and folded his arms.
“I can make the antidote, but it might take a while,” he decided. “It was the real deal. No expiry date, no wearing off. Permanent, solid stuff, not the knock-offs we sometimes saw in the domains, but it might have a changed effect due to his immortality.”
Lambert finally let out a breath and looked at Kallamar. Anything, only to not look at Narinder.
“What changed effect? The romance novel ‘wearing off without anyone knowing changed effect’, or the ‘I loved you all this time, but the potion amplified it, kind of effect? Exactly.”
Kallamar cleared his throat.
“Nothing of… No. Nothing of the sort, but we never used it on another god, mind you. It might wear off, I think, but it shouldn’t be connected to our fading might. I was thinking about the awareness. Usually the, um, the recipients of love potions-”
“Victims,” Lambert interrupted him. “The victims of love potions. Continue.”
Kallamar blinked twice before losing countenance.
“Ah, yes. The… Victims, yes,” he continued, now ashamed. “The victims had their… Minds, well, rewritten by it. It’s permanent not because of the long-lasting effect, but because of a single outburst of devotion burning the spiritual veins. Literally rewriting it. I think there are still a few people practicing it, but the techniques we saw were rather gentle, like a push in the god’s direction or the change in the heart of a mortal, but not like this. You met Helob, right?”
Lambert’s eyes mindlessly slipped to the black shape lying on the floor. Narinder’s face wasn’t visible from this angle, thankfully, but the Lamb still twitched, watching him breathe. On one hand, Lambert hoped the bruise on Narinder’s jaw wouldn’t be too visible under the fur, while on the other, they sincerely hoped it might never fade. Their hand still throbbed in pain from the hit.
“I have,” Lambert nodded, forcing themselves to look away. “So how might it be different with him?”
Kallamar looked at Narinder’s still body and grimaced.
“I hardly doubt his mind could be rewritten this way.”
Heket croaked again. Lambert looked at her, then at Kallamar, and then, finally, at Narinder again, still knocked out on the floor, squeezing the red fleece even if he was unconscious. Everyone paused.
Lambert understood less and less.
“Then why was he acting this way?!” Lambert gestured at the cat, now enraged.. “He almost assaulted me!”
Kallamar raised all four of his hands.
“His body will still have all those impulses amplified like every other mortal. It’s no different than a heavy heat that has been paused… gods. For a millennium, probably. Was he in heat since he joined the village?”
Lambert looked at the squid like he had gone insane. Kallamar cleared his throat again.
“Maybe that would explain it,” he tried. “I would say he’s kind of trapped. The mind is probably healthy, but the body will remain heated. Permanently, unless I make an antidote. Which is possible.”
“And if the mind was affected?” Lambert pressed. “What about then?”
“Then he will remain lovesick until the time his body will fully rebuild in a regenerated sense,” Shamura looked at the rest of them from above their cup. “The spiritual veins are getting rebuilt as well. I suppose we saw this effect of wearing off in some of our Gold Skulls.”
The remaining bishops fell silent. These days, Lambert saw them like this quite often, simply existing next to each other and the village. Deep in their thoughts, waiting for something that would once again put them on duty. Only Heket didn't quite match the equation, more often than not accompanying Leshy in whatever weird idea he had, but that day, the former bishop of famine remained even more silent than usual. Perhaps it was related to her participation in the creation of the problem. Lambert didn't want to think about it too deeply.
Kallamar sighed.
“We could kill him,” he paused, looking at his brother again.
We must stop for a moment here.
Not because everyone stopped, thinking about the idea with different kinds of weird fascination, but because we need to know something about the situation we found ourselves in. For now, the image is clear: we have three former bishops, one promised liberator turning god, and a single former Chained changed to a former god of death, changed to a villager, perhaps a future corpse, unconscious on the floor. Besides this, we had a miserably empty bottle on the table, one that was very pink, very hearty-shaped, and also reeking so badly of old devotion that it was almost disgustingly sweet.
It is telling us something about the culprit and the victim.
Namely, Narinder was a moron.
Perhaps he wasn’t a complete idiot when he found the potion. Relics like this bottle were classically treated as containers of great power, and if we think about it deeper, the biggest hunger of the former god of death was everything about might. We can almost imagine how he opened the doors of his sister’s hut, finding the of-so-tempting relic left there in the open and unguarded. How he closed the doors, frowning, quickly adding facts about Heket’s recent mission to Anura and how the bottle wasn’t passed to the Lamb right away. How valuable this relic could be, and, only sensing the aura around it, how much could it help restore his lost power. There would be something deeper in there, too. A calling. Weird, whispering calling of his soul to open what was closed. To reach for something forbidden. Narinder wouldn't understand it at that moment, but those whispers, those promises, almost guided his hands.
A single clawed finger would open the bottle with a smooth movement, releasing a slightly pink mist and a distant smell of sweet mushrooms. Narinder would feel something that slightly reminded him of danger: he might not have met the primodal gods like Shamura did, but he knew enough to imagine the effects of smells born in Spore Grotto. Would you judge him for grimacing, clenching his teeth, then looking back at the doors as if he expected someone to enter, only to rip it relic from his hands? To miss the single opportunity he had? What was the risk anyway? He experienced being chained for so long that he forgot the sun, of all things. He lost every muscle, every gram of meat on his hands during that time. What would that potion do that he hasn’t experienced yet?
Then we go to the obvious problem. Would he really focus on the heart shape of the bottle if he knew that the symbol of love was an arrow? The bottle was deeply pink, almost red, so obviously, the color of power. Was the mixture obnoxiously sweet? Yes. He endured it. He wanted to puke, obviously, he almost did, feeling his body warming up to the point when he collapsed, but, well! It was a good sign! It surely meant a rapid change in his now almost dry veins, and, gods above, he felt the power claim a place in his body. Burning him alive, turning his useless mortal parts into ash, rebuilding it anew. He would probably smile even if his teeth weren’t clenched in pain, forehead resting on the floor, and sweating. He would cry, begging his body to withstand, to not let go of a single drop of the mixture. To hold on.
Only then, in the burn, Narinder would feel something else. The whispers of his soul relieved. Chains of a different kind, broken. He would frown, only for the tiniest moment, thinking about some kind of remnants of his Imprisonment, only to cry from pain not long after, losing himself in the agony.
“Do you… despise… him?” Heket asked, nodding at the floor.
Lambert blinked, still a little caught up by the thoughts of murder.
“Excuse me?” they asked.
“I believe Heket asks if those feelings you have for our brother stayed, or if you perhaps found another thrill in your life.” Shamura put the cup on the table, now fully focused on the cat. “The antidote will take only a week to be made. If Kallamar gets all the resources he needs, perhaps in three days. You could use this time to enjoy yourself, really.”
“This is… wrong, on so many levels,” Lambert looked between the former bishops, trying to figure out if they were joking or not. “You can’t possibly propose something like this.”
“We can’t knock him out every time he wakes up,” Kallamar gestured at the cat. “Giving him mushrooms in this state might worsen the effects and won’t do anything about the sexual attraction. The only other option we have is simply killing him and resurrecting after the antidote is done, and, if I know him at all, I suppose that would be the best option we have.”
“He would probably be grateful for your mercy,” Shamura nodded.
“I… I can’t… kill him?” the Lamb opposed weakly.
They were the ones who found him on the floor after all. Narinder was burning up, weak, and crying from pain. None of the camellias they gave him worked; to be honest, Lambert wasn’t sure if they didn’t make it worse, somehow turning the usually deeply red eyes into dark magenta. Their touch, finally, calmed him, and when Narinder opened his eyes again, it was obvious something shifted.
Lambert almost didn’t feel the first kiss Narinder had stolen from them; this is how shocked they were. They surely felt the second, though. This one was full of tongue, and their hands were kind of… full of Narinder, in general.
“So… much… for mercy,” Heket croaked, now getting closer to the body and crouching close. “What about… punishment?”
“I will not punish him for being ignorant of things that changed during his imprisonment,” the Lamb sighed. “Can I talk him out of acting on those desires?”
“Not really,” Kallamar rested against the table. “I think he might be sentient or even aware to some degree, but that would be torture. I’m not sure if I ever saw him holding hands with anyone. Imagine being basically trapped in a body that’s acting on its own towards a person you despise. This is what we talk about here.”
“And you did such things to innocent people?” Lambert frowned at Kallamar.
The squid remained quiet.
It was Shamura who spoke out.
“We weren’t always able to control who was infiltrating our temples, little Lamb. Political spouses happened whether we wanted it or not, and the mixture our brother so recklessly consumed was meant as a safety guarantee for both the spouse and us. We never expected anyone to be able to oppose the mind-rewriting effects.”
“And it was not like we never made mistakes, hence the antidote,” Kallamar shrugged. “It would be more dangerous to leave it be in Anura than to bring it here, and you can’t argue with it.”
Lambert grimaced, once again looking at the main culprit of the invention. Heket ignored her older sibling, simply watching her unconscious brother, but something in her posture made the Lamb think of pity.
“What do you think I should do?” Lambert asked her.
“Soothe… him,” Heket stood up, leaving the body where it was. “Wear him… off, indulge him… or kill him.”
“For three days,” Kallamar added. “I mean, what can happen during three days?”