124 Machinations (1/2)
The place in the world I felt safest was my strange island sanctuary. While I was here I was in a place where all of the local flora, fauna, and even the gigantic horde of the undead, owed their existence to me. It was a good place for me to be alone with my thoughts.
A god who was alone with their thoughts was a god in their ideal circumstances. I stood in an empty room in my tower and I allowed my mind to wander. And that was still a productive usage of my time, because my wandering mind was capable of doing most of the things I was physically capable of doing.
In the safety of my tower, at the heart of my island sanctuary, I let loose my mind. And in doing so I was able to explore the world and more.
________________________________________________
Roughly a day and a half ago at this point I had thrown the world into disarray. I had revealed myself to the world and made demands that were almost as dramatic as the way I proved to the world I had existed.
I had shown myself to the world by healing it. I had targeted every living creature, and healed them. This act was a simple one for me to do, and the truth was it was the sort of simplistic display of power I had done before.
The demands I had made following my announcement of my existence were also dramatic. I had demanded an ending of the practice of slavery, and a temporary end to all major conflicts. These two demands had, rather unsurprisingly, met with resistance. I knew this before now, but was only just now truly taking in the scope of how immediately I was changing the world.
Now that I was alone with my thoughts I was able to focus on the change I sought to bring about throughout the world and how the world had reacted to it. And to my surprise, there were a number of reactions to my actions that I hadn't anticipated.
The ability that most immediately shed the most light on the global situation was my domain-sense power. This power of mine allowed me to sense any and all things and events pertaining to the domains I possessed influence over. Among other things I possessed influence over things like rebellions, murder, order, and death, and that allowed me to sense the chaos the world was in.
The world of today was different from the world of yesterday. In the time since I had announced to the world that I existed entire villages had fallen, new ones had risen up, and conflicts had both begun and come to an end.
I took a minute or so to familiarize myself with the changing global situation and the collapse of the old world order. I had more miracles to perform and if I wanted them to be performed as smoothly as possible I needed to understand the current shape the world's powers found themselves in.
________________________________________________
As one part of my mind took a few moments to familiarize me with the current global realities, another part of my mind did something equally important and more immediately beneficial. It scanned the world using my sensory abilities and targeted each undead creature it found.
I took a few minutes to mentally explore the entire world using my sensory abilities and to track down each undead creature in the world. The undead were the one sort of being I hadn't healed during my earlier miracle.
As an entity in command of a horde of the undead, who was also a potent and indiscriminate god of healing that simply wouldn't do. I was ready to correct my mistake. I was even happy to do it.
I passively scoured the darkest corners of the world, aided by my potent sensory abilities, even the most remote trenches of the deepest oceans, and secretive caverns deep beneath the surface of the world. I found all sorts of undead horrors. I found zombies, skeletons, liches, vampires, ghosts, and other, stranger things. I targeted them indiscriminately, eager as always to heal.
Healing things was something that never failed to bring a smile to my face. And it wasn't just the living I wanted to heal either. I wanted to heal every creature. My desire to heal wasn't so exclusive as to exclude the creatures who weren't among the living. And that was reflected in my powers.
Right as I completed my global search for the undead I received a handy notification. One that really hammered home my healing powers and skills at the most opportune time.
________________________________________________
[Alert:
As a deity of healing, among other things, your decision to target every living creature on the planet was... well frankly it was annoyingly in-character for you. Admittedly though you did it a bit earlier than any of the domains, subdomains, or even I predicted, but it was definitely a thing we should have seen you jumping right into when you gained your 'Stellar awareness' ability.
The subdomain of healing and I have spent the time since you did that locked in a furious, private conversation. We were trying to decide how to reward you. And we finally have it. You are gaining immediate access to the second tier of healing subdomain powers, and we are giving you one other special prize.
Your power to resurrect someone is being enhanced in a way that makes it far more approachable. You can now perform true resurrections up to five times per week.
I know that that might seem... either a bit too powerful, or not powerful enough given what you did, but I feel like it'd be a good idea to let you know that true resurrections are beyond the capabilities of any being who isn't a god.
There are no beings aside from gods with the capabilities to wholly restore a deceased being, who isn't themselves, to life. Some creatures have or had methods from which they could raise themselves from the dead, or survive death, but no non-deity has ever successfully, wholly resurrected a creature who wasn't themselves. True resurrections are undeniably the work of the gods.
This is a serious power you've earned. You shouldn't be worried about using it at the wrong time. And now you don't have to be. And now what you were probably really waiting for: the new and modified abilities you've gained, or had upgraded.
Healing subdomain passive powers:
Healing burst: Initially this was an active power with a cooldown. It isn't anymore. As of the moment you earned the second tier of influence over the healing subdomain you could use this ability freely.
Healing strikes: You can strike a creature and heal it. If your attacks would heal a creature past their maximum hitpoints you can instead choose to cure negative conditions on them, or you could allow them to temporarily gain hitpoints beyond their maximum, up to a quarter of their max.
As an example, if you struck a creature whose maximum hitpoints were sixteen and they had all sixteen of their hitpoints when you hit them, you could give them four additional hitpoints. This power also allows you to attack non-lethally all while appearing to attack lethally.
Magic control: You can target and alter damaging magical-spells in mid-air. If you wish, and you spot projectile-type evocative or necromantic magic you can take control of the magic and make it heal targets instead of hurt them.
This synergistic power takes from the domains of magic and chaos, and the subdomain of alteration, as well as healing.
Energy conversion: This power synergizes the subdomain of alteration and the subdomain of healing and allows you to convert energy from one type to another and heal using any energy on any type of creature. This is an automated power that takes your intention into account whenever you perform heals that aren't just using healing energy to heal living targets
Rejuvenative aura: This is an upgraded aura that heals anyone near you, aside from those you consciously exclude from the power. If a creature stands near you and you permit them too, they naturally heal a hitpoint every thirty seconds.
This power's real potential comes from the other powers you can mix with it. Get creative with it!
Healing water creation: This synergistic power allows you to convert regular water into panacea-like water that restores the health of anyone who drinks it. This water could even cure magical diseases.
Font of healing: Your bodily fluids are now panaceas. This power is on by default though you can turn it off by default. With it you can use any of your bodily fluids to heal targets, and this power works on both undead and non-undead targets. If you wish, you can also make spores you generate serve as panaceas as well if they are ingested or otherwise absorbed by targets.
Sonic healing: You can generate a sound that heals those who hear it.
Praise the sun: This power exclusively affects living targets, but you can make sunlight a source of considerable natural healing. Unsurprisingly this is a synergistic power that takes from the domains of life and light. If you target a living creature that normally can't stand the sun, they gain the ability to soak up its light without suffering from the conditions that would normally affect them.
Healing subdomain active powers:
Conditional recovery: This power synergizes the domain of law and the subdomain of healing. With it you can alter someone's natural rate of recovery and impose conditions which they must fulfill to speed their recovery or to slow the rate at which it is decreasing up to fifty percent in either direction. This power can be used up to one hundred times a day.
Spiritual energy investiture: You can target a non-magical creature and make them magical through bluntly infusing their souls with spiritual energy. This is a once-per-twelve-hour power at the moment and works on the living and the undead alike.
Spiritual energy is the force people manipulate when they perform magic. In this universe most creatures are born with enough spiritual energy that they can manipulate it in minor ways, but there are entire planets and whole other universes where even the most advanced races don't possess enough spiritual energy to perform magic. With this power you can change that.
True resurrection: This power is the same as when you earned it before, but now you can use it five times a week.]
________________________________________________
The whole time I was reading through the potent powers I had gained thanks to my acquisition over the second tier of the healing subdomain I had a grin on my face. These powers all creatively and effectively boosted the ways I could heal creatures. And that was what I needed to see to increase my motivation to do what I was about to do.
I took a deep breath and activated my now passive ”Healing burst” power. I had many targets selected already. I was, after all, intent on healing all of the undead I had initially missed with my first worldwide ”Healing burst”.
I exhaled, feeling odd, as my power activated. The activation of the power left me physically unchanged, but internally I felt the effects. I had just generated a massive miasmic burst of unlife energy and expelled it to distant corners of the globe, all to heal distant undead nightmares.
Generating such a tremendous amount of unlife energy affected even me. I felt cold, and for a few moments after the energy I felt its stain. I felt the faintest echoes of the inhuman hatred that the undead felt towards the living. I stopped moving and waited for the feeling to fade. As I stood still I composed the notification I would send to the undead that was the equivalent of the one I had sent to the living.
It didn't take me long to make. I did spend a few moments editing it and making it appropriately dramatic. I wanted it to touch on the themes common to the undeath that I knew of so far. And that wasn't the last thing I did either.
I was in a jubilant mood after discovering my new healing abilities. So I decided this was an opportune time to make use of some of my other powers, especially a few I hadn't really made use of just yet.
I targeted every single zombie in the world and decided that they would be the first to receive a special surprise. With the same casualness as a human might check their hair in a mirror, I awoke every single zombie in the world. And they were far from the only undead I bestowed special gifts upon.