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They were not supposed to die.

And yet … the South was just gone.

The God of the West was not one to ask questions. He was all-knowing. A god had no use for a question.

But one now trembled on the tip of his tongue.

How had this happened?

And that question was followed by another, and another, until he was plagued by the unknowable.

What did it all mean? How did they miss it?

And the worst one: What was the point?

He bellied himself up to a random tavern bar and asked the keeper for her most popular drink.

The woman, Nadine, was sturdy like an oak with raven hair that hung in curls and a laugh that could pierce the gloom.

He liked her instantly.

She poured him a mug of pumpkin ale. It was warm and spicy on his thick, clumsy tongue. He asked for her best dish and she gave him roasted turkey, cornbread, and a small bowl of stewed vegetables dredged in brown gravy.

He ate alone and in silence while the tavern carried on around him.

They didn’t know yet that the balance between north and south, east and west, was now teetering on the brink of collapse.

More questions.

What were the consequences?

How would the world turn?

He dragged his spoon through the last bits of stew and a cube of potato, a slice of carrot, came up. He took the bite and then added a crumb of cornbread. It was better when it was combined into one single mouthful.

How had he not indulged in mortal food before this moment? He had found some mortal pleasure, mostly of flesh. But food, it turned out, was possibly even better.

Food was comfort and pleasure without all the mess.

What a waste to spend all these years ignoring something so delectable.

For centuries, he had spent his days toiling in the mountains, the blood that dripped from his divine veins turning to precious metal in the earth. Gold and silver and bronze and emeralium.

And then he would watch over and protect the miners who carved out the gifts he left behind.

But four gods had turned to three and he no longer had the desire to fill the miners’ buckets and their coffers.

If they wanted to mine his metals, they would have to dig deeper, and deeper, risk more and more, and eventually they would bleed him dry.

So he stopped caring, and giving, and instead took to indulging aimlessly in the mundane rituals of mortals.

He stayed in the north for years. The people of the Jolly Emerald Tavern came to know him as Blue, short for True Blue, because he appeared every day without fail, his gold coins never-ending.

He stayed and he drank and he ate and his roots sank deeper.

And he might have stayed like that for another hundred years, another hundred years after that.

Until one day … when a house fell from the sky.