The encounter went about as Aen had expected it to go. Zantis had become so corrupted over the past few centuries in the flesh. Aen had seen him slowly slip into madness. However, for a god, madness looked strikingly similar to ambition and greed in a mere mortal. He had all the power, worship, and knowledge of a god in the etherium. But he had lost sight of that here. He wanted to be physically worshipped, with men and women scraping and gravelling at his feet. He wanted people to love him by making them undying. In the etherium, humans had worshipped and respected him as the Gatekeeper and Death himself. He remembers only the fear they had, cursing his name, and making gestures that religious superstition said would keep Him at bay. He wanted them to love him as he refused their death, but only those who worshipped him as divine. He wanted them to fear him for his power also. He could wave his hand and entire armies would fall dead at his feet. He wanted them to raise him up as an emperor over all, a king of kings, and a sovereign over all creation. He was delusional enough that being one of the gods was no longer enough. He wanted to be paramount in the minds of men, to be loved and feared over all of the gods.

Aen sat in her garden pondering her brother and what she could do about the situation. She had made her home near one of the oldest rivers, in the shadow of one of the oldest trees, nearly on the far side of the small continent her brother had chosen to rule. He had wanted to be in the city, surrounded by humans, with ample opportunity to awe them. She had wanted to be in a quiet place where she could relax. She was a god after all and could easily use the worldways to transport her flesh body to a from all of the human habitations. She had placed a very special gate near her home. It was one of the most complex gates for the worldways. No one knew the proper combination to come or go through it. Unsurprisingly, Aen had created it with her divinity in mind. Only a divine could use it directly and if a human tried to use it, they would have to have a key she constructed for it. She was a little surprised that the old gods had not created the other gates with keys.

After several days of contemplation, Aen decided she needed to speak out her ideas to others. She may be a god, but human brains didn’t function efficiently enough for her taste. They were prone to overlook many things while only following a single thread of thought. Even if that thread was the most important for a specific reason, it was only proper for a god to review the entire cloth of threads that all related and intertwined.

“Myrwen, may I trouble you?” Aen’s human mind struggled as she focused, but she slowly changed the way she saw the world around her. Gradually, all of the living things around her showed with writhing, tangled, strings of light at their cores. Each glowed in a slightly different color, each a unique hue, tint, or shade. Her own spirit glimmered a pure white, just as her brother’s did.

The ancient tree, older than even Aen’s human form, groaned and leaves rustled as if a strong breeze had tried to wake her from sleep. Aen watched at the sprit lines wriggled more furiously and brightened as if they needed waking too. Myrwen was too old to anything quickly, including respond to her god. Aen waited patiently.

“It is never any trouble to speak with you, my child” Myrwen’s voice existed solely in Aen’s mind, and sounded like a raspy old woman.

Aen chuckled before she responded, “I created you Myrwen. It doesn’t seem proper for you to call me ‘child’.”

“You may have created me when you were a Goddess, but I saw you made flesh when I was already growing old. In this plane, I am elder. So time and again you tell me not to call you child, yet time and again I find it appropriate to do so. You do come to me for advice as if I were your elder. Or have I misjudged the tone in your voice this day, child?”

“I tried to talk to Zantis about returning to the Etherium. He has lost his ability to see as a God should. I have also, but I know that I have and try to mitigate the errors it creates in my thinking. He embraces the human side of his flesh. He is beyond reason. I believe he has gone mad, Myrwen.”

“And you feel it is best for both of you to return to the Etherium and be the Gods you once were.”

“Yes, but he will not go. He wants to remain flesh and rule as a tyrnat Emperor over all men of this realm.”

“But he is a God. He can do that from the other plane just as easily, no… more easily than he can do so in this plane.”

“No. On the other side, he would no longer be limited by a human mind. He would be able to see the fabric of this world in its entirty. He would regain his sight as a god. He would understand balance again. He would not be able to rule as such from the other side. He would not find it easier on the other side. He would find it impossible. A part of him knows that. Therefore, he refuses to return.”

“He would return to the Etherium upon his death, would he not?”

“In a manner of sorts. He would not return entirely to the etherium because I would have to let him be reborn in the flesh. He made me undying. As a God, I do not age. Before today, however, I could die and return fully to the etherium if I wanted. Now that he has made my tether unseverable, I can only partially return to the etherium. A small piece of me remains in this realm so long as he is here and I must be reborn in the flesh. Even without his rebirth, so long as I cannot return to the etherium, neither can he.”

“Quite the situation then. So he will not return on his own with you. He cannot accidentally die in a manner to return unless you can get both of yourselves dead at the same time. Is there any way to force him back?”

“As a last resort there is one option. But it is only a last resort. I would like to get him to return on his own. I think I may have a plan that might work. Otherwise, I’ll have to figure out how to commit divine fratricide and suicide simultaneously.”

“Well, that doesn’t sound the least bit daunting at all. How do you intend to bring him around to reason?”

“My magic. You may remember that the world once held magic and it was free flowing. Humans wielded it a millennia ago as easily as you sway in the breeze.”

“I was a sapling when magic dwindled and faded away. Humanity was lost. They almost died away learning to live without magic. I remember the two centuries of adjustment and suffering as if they were yesterday. But free magic was in the days of my seed-bearer, not my life.”

“That was when my brother and I decided to walk the earth. We needed the magic to make our existence possible. It facilitates our primary purposes without tearing our flesh to bits and it holds the world together while we cannot. Whenever I die, I will give bits of my magic back to the world. People will begin to wield its power again. I will be reborn of course, but I will be less of a god in the flesh than I am now. I’ll have to teach them how to use it again. If I can get enough people to harness the power of my magic, my brother will have to take me seriously. He would beat me in a physical or magical fight. He can throw me back into the etherium infinitely more easily than I can him. I would have the upper hand there, but he has the advantage here. But with hundreds, or thousands, standing against him in a magical assault, his flesh and blood body could not withstand the onslaught. The magic within him and I keep us from aging and keep us from dying the normal deaths of mortals. As the God of death, we had to be particular about how he came to this world. He cannot make himself undying. I had to do that before we came to this plane. We couldn’t risk a death for him that would accidentally sever everyone’s lifelines. But I can teach them to tug on the lifelines with magic. They won’t sever them; just pull them taught. He will have to make them tangible to maintain his control. I’ll have to die first. I’ll need to take away his undying in that moment while the lifelines are protected. With his undying gone and the magic users holding the lifelines taught, he can be killed without risking all of humanity. We will both be in the ether and I can reorient the lifelines to his grip in the etherium as he orients himself back into his proper place. It will take generations. Giving out magic takes time and I won’t be ethereal for long before my rebirth. And it will take many rotations before I am old enough to teach the mortals how to wield their magic. Then I will have to die again and give away more of my magic. But the original recipients will reproduce, and their offspring will be able to wield. He will know I am giving up my magic. He will know I am returning to the etherium and being reborn time and again. But in his narrow human mind, he should be unable to understand the scope of this. It will take centuries. Oh my, I am babbling like a rain-filled brook.”

“You surely are, child. Have you realized that your plan will not work yet?”

“What? Why not?”

“I know you think you are still a God, but your mind no longer works like one no matter how hard you try for it to. Let me tell you something. Before magic was lost, there were still droughts across the land. However, back then a wielder of magic would kneel upon the ground and spread their palms in the soil. They would pull water from deep in the belly of the land up to the surface to water crops, fill streams, and make temporary lakes until the weather righted itself. When magic dwindled, the wielder would go to a small brook and pull at the flesh of the land to stop the water from running. It created a backup of the water and the people could come with buckets and barrels and fill them to use during the drought. When magic left the grasp of the people, the people lamented at their misfortune. They travelled to the far reaches of the realm and transported water at great expense to the areas without water. The water would become the most expensive item in the markets every day. Brigands roamed the roads travelled by the water merchants. They would rape the women, kill everyone, then steal or destroy the water wagons. This caused water to be even more precious. And ultimately the economy and mortality rates were impacted even more than they would have been by the drought alone. Do you see my point yet?”

“Perhaps the merchants should have hired better guards or taken different routes?”

“The first magic user pulled the water from the bosom of our mother herself. The second took a small bit of local water and multiplied it. They both used water that was already there. Why couldn’t the people use local water without magic?”

“Because it was outside their reach. They no longer had magic with which to retrieve it.”

“They did not have magic, but water was still obtainable. Why not dig wells deep into the land to the water deep below? Why not build a dam in the local rivers, streams, and small brooks? Everything that can be done with magic can be done without magic, if one knows how.”