Chapter Text
At the top of a Divine tree in a land called Sumeru, where knowledge has overtaken wisdom for so long most no longer know the difference, a group of supposedly wise Sages have kept their god imprisoned for as long as said god has been alive. Whether the Sages who first made this decision acted out of grief, disappointment or malice towards their original god’s successor does not matter. These Sages have long since died, and not one of those who followed have freed the god-child kept imprisoned in the god’s supposed sanctuary, nor informed the populace of what they have done.
Indeed, every generation of Sages has grown ever more arrogant and corrupt. From keeping her imprisoned, to discouraging worship of her, to even banning celebrations and cultural traditions celebrating even tangentially involving her. Arrogance of this kind never ends well for those who indulge in it. In most worlds of this kind, the tipping point comes when the Sages attempt to replace their “Lesser Lord” with an artificial god of their own creation, an act of hubris with no thought to the possible consequences even if everything goes to plan.
In this world, the tipping point occurs a year earlier than most. It all starts with the idea of making use of the god they had been ignoring. Even if she is lacking in power and wisdom, she is still a god, is she not? Surely even a weak, useless god has a fair deal of power in them, right? Surely it is a waste to just leave all that power in the hands of Lesser Lord Kusanali. Surely they, the Sages, could make better use of that power. So they come up with a plan. Drain the energy of their “useless” god to use for their own purposes.
This plan, of course, backfires horribly. One night, long after anyone who could notice anything strange going on at the sanctuary has gone home to sleep, an explosion rocks the great tree, waking the entire city. Green beams of energy flare across the country, concentrated dendro energy that cause any plant hit to grow exponentially, and any civilian hit to be adversely affected. Simultaneously the statues of the seven, statues of the god ruler of the land placed by the heavens for unknown purposes, begin to glow gradually brighter.
Amongst all this chaos, it is perfectly understandable that no one takes notice of one specific beam of light glowing brighter than the rest. This beam of light, unnoticed by all, does not fly randomly off into the night. This beam of light, wrapped around a glowing golden chess piece, flies slightly slower than the rest, as if it had a destination in mind that it could not afford to miss. It flies to a specific house, passing intangibly through the walls to absorb itself into what is quite possibly the only person in the city who has fallen back to sleep.
This person, having a roommate who uses hammers and tools at all hours of the night, was wearing soundproof headphones to sleep. When the tree’s shaking woke him, he made a mental note to yell at his roommate, rolled over and went back to sleep. He would come to regret this. After all, if he had been awake to notice the chess piece, he would have at least had a place to start asking questions.
Instead he had no warning of the events that were to come.