43
Omdum was the sort of god that got a fast pass through the Palace of the Heavenly Emperor's security. It wasn't a perk that he used often but when he actually had a reason to be there, he was very grateful to have such privileges.
It certainly beat having to kick his front door open.
You could usually find Drulvenus either in the throne room, in his council chambers meeting with various important deities or drinking wine down in one of his many ornamental gardens. Despite asking several of the attendants, Omdum was none the wiser as to where the object of his current annoyance was right now.
He walked all the way down through ostentatious corridors covered in gold leaf and crystal light fittings to the council chambers only to find them empty. Walking back up the many stairs and then traversing his way through yet more of them to get to the throne room, really wasn't how he had imagined he was going to spend the day but he was determined to have his demands met.
For the average deity, having spent this much time looking for someone would probably have dampened some of the anger that they had left their residence with (he secretly thought this was the entire purpose of the palace's layout in the first place), but when something impacted his patient's ability to recover or trampled their rights Omdum was not so easily assuaged. In fact, he was becoming increasingly annoyed.
Why the hell was this place so big in the first place?
Good thing ascended deities didn't ever need to use the toilet because you would one thousand percent piss yourself before you ever found a bathroom. If you were a human, would you really want to pray to an Emperor that constantly pissed his pants because he couldn't reliably navigate his own house?
Probably not.
The throne room's heavy wooden door was thrown open for him but Omdum found all three seats upon the dais empty. Not only were the seats empty, the entire cavernous room was void of life. Where there were normally groups of councillors chatting together, staff running messages back and forth and the occasional guard standing watch over one of the realms citizens, there were only dust motes swirling through the air.
A curtain, normally drawn over the exit to the extensive balcony, was flapping loosely in the wind. It had been pulled back slightly and not returned to it's original place. That was what had initially drawn Omdum's eye to it. The door that lay beyond had to be open.
Drulvenus very rarely spent any time on the balcony and Omdum would never have thought to look for him out there. Neither would any of Drulvenus' palace's staff.
The perfect place to hide from your work without getting found.
He slipped through the gap in the curtain, its velvet fabric brushing against his face. Drulvenus turned to him shocked at having had his hiding place found out at last. Omdum wondered just how long he had been standing out here.
Red wine in a crystal glass covered in delicate etchings stood on the balustrade that prevented you from falling several hundred feet down the side of the hill that the palace was built upon into the second level of the city below it. Very handy at parties that included the Deities of Alcohol who never seemed to be able to only have one glass.
They were very messy drunks.
Omdum's expression, or maybe just the general aura of his demeanour seemed to get the purpose of his visit across to the Emperor who quickly picked the glass back up and gestured to the Healing God to follow him.
Countless doors passed by them along a myriad of snaking corridors before Drulvenus walked into a rather small side room. On one side of the room was an impressive fish tank that reached from floor to ceiling and wall to wall. Fronds of seaweed drifted side to side, buffeted by the bubbles from the air pump and bubbler. Small brightly coloured fish peeked out from behind the seaweed, their scales shining in the light suspended over the tank.
No matter how remarkable the tank was, it could not distract Omdum from the travesty that was the rather ugly carpet that spanned the floor of the entire room.
Drulvenus saw him eyeing the carpet in disgust that he hadn't bothered to veil in politeness. Its densely packed uneven chevrons were, after all, highly distracting. When you walked across it, the carpet gave you a migraine that lasted long after leaving. He strongly believed that if it were ever placed on a staircase someone would fall to their death because they wouldn't be able to reliably judge where the edge of the stairs was.
Even looking at it right now made him feel nauseous.
"Mother's choice." The Emperor stated, casually gesturing to it with a lazy sweep of his free hand, the other still gently holding the delicate crystal wine glass. "Ugly, yes but one doesn't have the heart to rip it up."
"Can we concentrate on the matter at hand?" Omdum asked, he hadn't come for a tour of the palace's more obscure rooms or to discuss their gaudy decor. He decided to look at the fish to distract himself from the flooring.
There was a tiger skin rug on the floor that continued the oddly striped theme of this particular room and that increased his reliance on not looking downwards in order to have this conversation.
"One was merely attempting to make polite small talk." The Heavenly Emperor said reproachfully as he brushed invisible dust from the seat of a gaudy mauve velvet chair covered in embroidered peonies before sitting down. He gestured for the God of Healing to also take a seat beside him but he remained standing.
He was stubborn like that.
Plus it didn't look any more comfortable than standing.
Polite small talk wasn't why he had come to speak to him and the delay was further annoying when he had already spent so much time away from his patients. He wondered whether Dythos had woken up yet and what condition he was in. Hopefully the guards that he had set would enable the god to actually be able to rest properly for once.
"I don't have all day." The God of Healing said trying to speed things up a little.
"Conversely, do you think I am made of spare time?" Said Drulvenus who was now somehow sipping on a gin and tonic instead of the wine he had brought with him.
Omdum huffed, "Look, the thing you're doing with Dythos is making him ill."
"He fainted again?"
"Yes again, after draining all of his energy, completely."
"This is precisely why he needs watching." Drulvenus insisted, rolling his glass lazily in his hand causing the chunks of ice floating in it to clink against the glass.
"It's making things worse."
"You and I both know that there is something wrong."
"This has literally never happened before. How are we supposed to know if something is wrong?" Omdum said. What was happening to Dythos wasn't so out of the realm of possibility that Omdum would go around saying that it was something wrong. Healing takes time and the wounds he had been given were extensive. His powers as a god were almost nonexistent. He had no followers among the human's in the Mortal Realm. It was going to take time for Dythos to be fully back to some semblance of normal.
"He's not just been eating regularly but experiencing actual hunger. Olris told me that he's sleeping for upwards of six hours a night." Drulvenus said, his eyebrows were raised in a way that said 'You should be more concerned about this'.
"In the old times we all did." Omdum sighed. If someone suddenly started eating out of nowhere then that would be concerning but when his god powers were so low, acting more like a mortal wasn't making him more concerned than he already was. Dythos going around as normal whilst this badly hurt and his prayer base so damaged would have truly been more concerning to him as a healer.
"Because that's how humans envisaged deities back then. No-one goes round thinking that we cant fulfil their wishes because it's lunchtime or we're sleeping!" Said the Emperor no longer sitting quite so casually in the ugly chair as he had been at the start of their conversation. The padding in its cushion squeaked as he pulled himself more upright.
"He might very well need watching over but preventing him from seeing the God of War is neither working nor helping. You, not being able to see that, is also entirely childish."
"I had hoped to introduce them formally in a controlled environment when Dythos had regained his memories."
"Well..." said Omdum, sarcasm practically dripping off of every letter. 'It certainly had neither been formal nor controlled during the crowd crush' he thought. And they had met multiple times before that. Keeping them apart obviously hadn't been as easy as the Emperor had thought it would be.
Omdum didn't know which he was more annoyed by, that he had tried to keep them apart or that he hadn't tried harder to actually do so. It seemed like Drulvenus had only put in place the minimum amount of effort to achieve this thing he seemed to consider so important.
"There's no need to say that so sarcastically but I get your point." The Emperor said before knocking back the rest of his drink.
"What are you going to do?" Omdum asked. This whole conversation was starting to feel like pulling teeth. Getting information out of this junior was next to impossible even, it seemed when that information was something vital to you actually being able to carry out your job effectively.
"Well," Drulvenus said with the exact same intonation and facial expression. "I was thinking of just making a certain War God do it."
'What. Does. That. Even. Mean????' The God of Healing thought. This whole conversation was making him increasingly more irked the longer it continued.
"Don't think that I don't know your guards were doing the bare minimum and not conveying Dythos' physical state to me."
"Why didn't you go see him yourself?"
Mini Theatre
Omdum: This decor is really something else.
Drulvenus: I'm glad you like it so much.
Omdum: It's one thing to be rich, it's another to have no taste.
Drulvenus: Says the god who lives in a white tiled box with no furniture.
Omdum: It's called minimalism, someone like you wouldn't understand.
Drulvenus: You're right I don't. It looks like someone stole everything you own but a table and an ugly potted plant.
Author: Maybe they did. Maybe they did.