128 Worlds Away (1/2)
One of the reasons why gods as a species were so powerful was that they weren't burdened by range limits on their abilities. This was something that the young god named Althos was taking advantage of in the wake of his decision to expand the size of his religion.
Even a god as young as Althos, one less than a month old, could easily create an intergalactic faith. And that was what he was in the process of doing.
The god may have physically been in the presence of his angelic host, but that wasn't where he really was. The truth was that at that moment it would have been easier to say where the god wasn't, than where he was.
Althos had momentarily hidden in the hearts of every living or undead creature in each of the seven planets that orbited the sun he had visited earlier this week. And he intended to seize those hearts. Now that he had an objective in mind, he was capable of incredibly fast and life-changing movement. Which he demonstrated in a single flex of his newly upgraded healing powers.
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The entire solar system felt the eerie and wonderful healing powers Althos possessed at the same moment. Each target felt a lifechanging amount of life or unlife energy seep into their bones, into their very cells. Their wounds were healed up and closed, their sicknesses were defeated and even amputated limbs regenerated.
It mattered not if they were living or undead they felt the terrifying and equally wonderful power Althos could easily use, it mysteriously healed them. It touched and altered their souls, burning away pain and discomfort with positively divine ease.
They weren't done receiving proof of Althos' touch. Seconds after the healing power changed their lives or unlives they saw physical proof of the god's merciful intervention: every organism that was targeted by his power, living and undead alike, was abruptly illuminated in a radiant silver glow. The silvery glow clung to their bodies and gave them a strange, harmless, aura that would persist for hours, though they didn't know that it would eventually fade away.
For a single moment, the first moment in which Althos' power blossomed across the solar system, entire worlds held their breath in confusion. Battles came to a halt. Hope crept into people's hearts. Lives that had been torn apart by tragic news hours ago were suddenly and impossibly mended.
Creatures, be they extraplanars, abominations, undead, or mortals, or fey, were confused as to the source of the healing. They didn't just experience the pleasant obliteration of the pain and aches of life, or unlife, they also received various notifications. They were all simple but annoyingly long things that all contained the same basic structure.
”Althos has healed you,” The notifications would begin, and then they'd proceed to list all of the things that Althos' powers had cured, fixed, or healed.
Many creatures who read the notification were surprised at what all Althos had healed. They weren't sure, but they suspected that whoever this ”Althos” was had just healed them of every single condition they were suffering from, and in many cases that included conditions they hadn't even known were affecting them.
Creatures across the solar system began to weep and silently thank their mysterious savior. This included people suffering from what had once been thought to be terminal conditions and illnesses, and people who had been left to die from wounds in battle or assassinations. And they weren't the only people who had been eager to praise the saintly figure who quietly healed the solar system.
A consequence of healing the entire planet of Torus was that Althos had gained influence over the majority of lifeform-based subdomains. And with those subdomains came powers that instantly awoke animals and plants that received his miraculous healing. That caused the number of sapient beings found throughout the solar system to multiply exponentially as all sorts of lifeforms felt the power of a god who was fast becoming a god of life.
All manner of lifeforms spontaneously became sapient in the wake of Althos' merciful touch. And those creatures who received sapience as a result of the gentle hand of their healer immediately became the newest althonians in the solar system. They numbered in the quintillions.
Undead creatures existed in five of the six planets that had just felt Althos' touch. And they were not excluded from the god's potent powers. The ghoulish god of the grave touched and restored them as easily as he touched and restored the living. His power indiscriminately repaired their bodies and their minds, as well as boosted their terrifying powers.
The undead who had been touched by his powers almost immediately knew they were healed by a god. This was because Althos introduced himself to them as a god, moments after healing them. He sent them the same notification he sent Torunian undead, unedited and unchanged because he quite liked it.
This caused the second set of new creatures to worship him in the wake of his extraplanetary mischief to be an unimaginably vast horde of the undead, including undead who had been reanimated by necromancers. The hearts and minds of the undead legions of the solar system now belonged to a single entity: the phantasmal god of the grave.
Their hate infused and strengthened their new god. They didn't know it, but in his palatial tower Althos shivered as he felt the incredible hatred and loathing the undead felt towards all of the entities they defined as ”alive”. Their passionate urges to inflict violence on the living seeped into their master, and he had to struggle to resist it, for now.
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The violent misanthropy that plagued the undead wasn't exclusive to them. Demons, devils, and pain-bringers were some of the creatures that had generally misanthropic hearts, as well as serial killers, and tyrants. And the powerful extraplanars that stealthy hid and worked to cause evil in each of the planets in the solar system were the next group to be contacted by Althos.
It mattered not how well-hidden the extraplanar in question was. Their type didn't matter, nor did their goals. Althos reached out across the cosmos, across hundreds of billions of kilometers, and spoke directly to them.
When they received the notification, they heard it in his voice, a first for the strange god who was undergoing the single biggest explosion of power that he had ever undergone. His powers would only continue to grow over the next few minutes.
More than that though, the dark god used the newest set of upgrades to his powers that he had received to cause the creatures to experience the pain that would come if they clung to their pride.
He made them experience a single instant of searing pain brought on by slamming them with invisible holy energy. This infuriated and terrified the demons and devils, but was seen by the pain-bringers as a sign of the divine variety of power Althos could wield, even as it inflicted pain on them. That he could do that at all was a sign of his terrifying power, something they recognized immediately.
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[Alert: The Emperor Of Evil
The time has come to rededicate yourself to evil. And to give yourself to evil's last emperor: the god of darkness, Althos.