Michael
``Quiet. Grey.``

 The last things he'd seen before the grey and quiet place he was in. A serpent in a crystal. An orb of black and white. A smirking twit who thought himself king. A madman who thought himself heroic. A sad state of affairs embodied in physical form. An impure gem. Inconsequential. Redundant, most of them, at least on the own. Their intermingling had caused such devastation in such a short period of time. It could not happen again.

``Quiet. Grey.``

He felt himself floating upwards. To what? He couldn't tell. Pureman wondered if it was the afterlife he'd heard certain mortals speak about while gazing upon their realms. No, that couldn't be it. Gods didn't *Get* An afterlife. They got everything else. Just... Not that. He decided not to dwell on it. The desire for that which was unattainable would only drive those who pursued it mad.

``Quiet. Grey``

Moments later, Pureman's body breached the surface. A deep pool of his own godly blood had formed in the hole drilled into Gaia's branch. It no longer overflowed with his silvery ichor, but it was still full enough to act as a body of liquid. The wounded god dragged himself out of the pool with his charred hands, each movement sending waves of cold, throbbing pain through his body. His clothing was shredded. His back even moreso. He could feel the absence of his carved flesh as he writhed and pulled himself onto the branch. Gone was his silver cloak, his chainmail coif. Innumerable, crisscrossing scars covered the backside of his body. His neck, shoulders, legs and arms as well. His helmet was dented, evidently from... Some kind of ``fall.``

He flinched as the horrid memory bubbled up from his weakened haze. They had lost. Edon had escaped. Yet most of the fruit had survived. Scarred and not unharmed, but survived. He sighed. Not a sigh of relief, nor exasperation. He was simply... Accepting of the situation.

He laid there, half in the pool and half out until he felt the salty sea breeze sting his open wounds. His punctured feet, filled with splinters of the world tree ached. His crisscrossing lacerations across his back burned. He could not feel his hands, for there were barely enough of them left to be called such. Each one was a clump of blackened flesh, bone and charcoal. His vision swam as he tried to focus on the situation.

As he struggled to regain awareness he felt two small hands touch his back. Under any normal circumstance he would've immediately turned to look at the source of the contact. Unfortunately his spine had been shredded in his defence of Edon. Not that it could really be called that, since he was preventing him from escaping via dying immediately. Unfortunately for Pureman, he was one of the very few gods who felt nothing at all from her presence. No relief, no comfort. No lightening of the burden. He felt new flesh grow to replace that which had been severed from his form. He felt a warmth in his hands as the charcoal cracked away to reveal regrown digits.

He felt the splinters worm their way out of his feet, the holes they left quickly being filled in with new tissue. Though healed, Pureman was still exhausted.

Then, he felt it. One of the very few things to effect Pureman by its very presence alone. An ancient uncleanliness. Something he was hardwired to oppose, something he could not oppose in his current state. As he stumbled, staggering to his feet as he hauled himself up off of the ground, he watched Maranthe attempt to *Hug* The thing.

Expending a chunk of the little Divinity he had remaining, Pureman formed his broom right in front of Maranthe's neck horizontally, a bar that would pull her back over to him if he was quick enough. Though he was quickly exhausting what little strength he had left, he used some more to speak simply.

``"Not that one."``
Richard
Xanthous had no reason to remain. 

The disgust he felt for the Unending was huge, so much so he decided not to stick around any longer.

With no regard for the new arrival or anyone else, Xanthous dropped to the branch in one movement, taking another broken branch of Gaia in his hand. He would keep this branch, keep it as to remember this fight... The God looked up, watching as a star twinkled, his star. The God smirked again, mood changing quickly as he looked a Maranthe. "Ah, well, I guess I must get going. It wasn't nice knowing you all- Well, except for TSU." The God saluted Pureman, still smiling. "You, my friend, just created an enemy of me. And you," Xanthous said, turning to The Unending. "Chew them up good yeah?" With those parting words, Xanthous fell off the branch, falling over backward towards the east side of his *Mother*.

On his way down, Xanthous stared at the branch. Eyes narrowed, he would be sure to kill Edon. Soon. Yes, he would bide his time and make Edon eat those words he said earlier... With another smile, Xanthous twisted midair, now falling facefirst. Wind bellowed around his hair and clothes, including his golden blood that still dripped from his wound. Xanthous still wasn't quite sure how there could be wind up here, but he didn't care. 

This world would be ruled under his fist, sooner... **Or later.**
Robert
*Wrongness. Disgust. Anger.*

A shiver rippled through Aphot's collective consciousness, causing the preoccupied god to halt everything. An image flashed through his mind, consuming all other thought, blotting out *Everything*: a prenatal fruit. Serpentine jaws. An unforgivable sin.

The fragment on Yggdrasil hissed and clutched his skull, his overwhelming intuition screeching with an incoherent indignation, an inconsolable rage. *Defiler!*

Snarling with a primordial fury, Aphot ripped himself from his earthly domains and manifested in full at the tree in an instant, the thin specter there rapidly regenerating itself into the god's true form in its eldritch entirety. Six eyes zeroed in on the perpetrator, knowing instinctively where the sin was committed, who committed it.

Every thread of astral shadow woven in Aphots being urged him to act. To rip this worthless defect down to the fabric of its profane existence and milk its suffering. But he was quick to rein in that self control, sharply reminding himself he was no mere creature of instinct. No, he would wait. He would watch.

As more gods flooded in wreathed in righteous wrath, streaming straight for the interloper, Aphot draped himself in his aura of obscurity, becoming hardly distinguishable from his surroundings. A mere shadow of a shadow, his presence simmered in silence as a muted feature of the background, looking in on this ongoing fiasco with an inscrutable detachment.

Even as Edon was driven away, as his siblings exchanged their impassioned speeches, and as lines were drawn, Aphot made not a move. A mere bystander of little import; until a new, blindsiding premonition washed over him, scalding, relentless.

*Dread. Death. Despair.*

Aphot cringed again, as if struck from within. *That* Was far worse than Edon's aura, but it was one Aphot vaguely recognized. The previous target of all the gods' collective ire, what he managed to avoid last time it appeared.

He turned eyes on the Unending just as it manifested in all its wretched glory. Watched as those who remained regarded the thing, waiting for the surely inevitable strike. Waiting to see Maranthe pay the price of a surely costly folly. A grim, wry smile of ominous irony curved the raven-wraith god's lips. *Plot twist?*
Aaron
Melancholia's sobs were loud and corrupt, driving everyone away from her. As tears continued to torrentially fall from her broken face, the Mother Tree around her turned black with her influential depression. The only thing that soothed her was the presence of the Unending; with it around, feelings of suffering were experienced by all. Everything was gone, and they all knew it. It was all hopeless.

 But was it?

 The goddess pondered over the thought, letting her cries slow to an unnatural stop. Eventually, a disgusting laughter emerged from her face. It rang out in the air. A coldness passed through the tree's trunk and its branches, amplifying the feeling that the Unending gave everybody. She looked around. In spite of the fact that the only thing Melancholia ever truly felt was sadness, she was still able to empathize and very slyly read other emotions. There were two goddesses who seemed to be... Weakened, uncertain... Slipping deeper into the depths of despair than seemingly anyone else here.
 A colorful sea-colored woman with long, flowing hair and a kind look on her face would be Melancholia's first unfortunate victim. After all, blue was her favorite color. The goddess radiated some sort of slowness, a quietness, a soft indecisiveness that could've easily been missed if the goddess of sadness had not been paying attention. Warm, welcoming humidity and the attractive stench of the water seemed to surround her, masking the feelings that were subtly plastered on the woman's face. A frigid, white hand suddenly made its way onto her shoulder. Melancholia grimly smiled. Contrasting the (assumedly) ocean goddess's atmosphere, there was a weighted gloom around Melancholia. Her hand, while cold enough to make one flinch, was comforting, especially after the goddess she held onto was virtually sacrificing her life to a creature she could barely even see.

"Why can you not find comfort within yourself, dear sister?" She asked sincerely, following the woman's gaze to where the Unending's presence seemed to be strongest.
 The blue smog was encapsulating, resting on their shoulders. It added a peculiar sense of heaviness to her words. Before the other goddess could respond, Melancholia embraced her. There was always comfort in sadness; in melancholia. And although a raging indigo fire had begun burning in her sullen heart, it was hard to tell when she seemed so... Empty and tranquilizing.
Robert
Everything dies. The powerful exploit the weak. Most of you will farm until you die. Should you be among the more fortunate, perhaps slave away in a more dynamic profession until you die. To live is to suffer, to be controlled. To live is to have your dreams shattered, wilted, and returned to the earth. Nobody had ever bothered to ask where those lost dreams went. All those broken hopes and ideals fed into the roots of the trees and injected themselves directly into one of its many fruits. This one was massive, even by the world tree's standards. Dark enough to suck in any light, and harder than diamond. It looked more like a cancerous volcanic mass than an actual fruit. Yet, it grew.

It grew whenever someone found all hope to be lost, whenever the downtrodden were left to rot in the dirt, whenever a mortal thought themselves upon a pedestal above their fellow man.

To say the fruit exploded would be an understatement. That would imply there were at least some sad chunks of it left. The sheer force of passion simply revoked the cradle's privilege of solid form. It was vaporized. Every plea, every last shattered hope that created the fledgling god finally coagulated into a shapeable mass. Its thoughts overlapped chaotically. These wishes willed the god into existence, but just what did they need them for? The dreams of hope, dreams of a *Hero* Burned into his soul. That's what the people needed: a *Hero*. A hero always wins. A hero saves the innocent. A hero defeats the villain. A hero has conviction. A hero has tenets. Seventy-two of them, apparently. The dreams were synthesized into everything necessary in less than a second. Perhaps the process was automatic, or this was merely the ability of a god learning of their purpose.

A figure stood where the fruit once sat. A figure with conviction and purpose. What were they to look like?
__

Muscles. How can a hero win every fight without the strength to destroy any enemy that dares darken the world with their horrid presence? No, that wasn't quite right. A hero needed physical *Perfection* To inspire those who stood behind him. Him... Masculine figures tended to have broader shoulders. Sure, that's as good a reason as any. A hero can move mountains. Perhaps arms like mountains would help. Stonelike, firm and stalwart, capable of stopping any blow. His face was princely and noble. Fair skin, pale blonde hair, and ocean blue eyes.

No, that wasn't quite right. That was the face of the enemy. In that moment did this god learn of his contempt for the nobility. While he should certainly be beautiful, something was off about this face. His own soul stared at him and judged those calm blue eyes to be inadequate. His eyes should be fiery and determined. Eyes brilliant enough to inspire allies and fierce enough to inspire fear in his foes. Without question, the god plunged his hands into his face and tore his eyes out, tossing both of them past his shoulders.

Replacing them would be their perfect opposite. Bright red and gold, not a dot of black at the center, just the tiny flames exhausting from the fire in his heart. Did it look like he had cataracts? Maybe. He didn't really care.
_

What business would this hero be doing? Well, obviously he should ride the countryside on a brilliant steed, cutting down the wicked and bringing salvation to the downtrodden. Monarchs and cruel lords who took slaves or serfs: they would fall before him. He would kill them. Across his body was the wind-breaking cloak of someone who has great experience traveling on horseback. Beneath it lay chain and plate. Black and red. The color palette seemed like an obvious pick. After all, all the spilled blood was bound to get on the warrior, and his presence might be mistaken for one to be feared should he clearly be covered in the gore of his enemies. Black and red would hide the brutality of his noble deeds well. 

"And of course, what kind of warrior would be complete without his..." Xerenacht, the god of heroism, liberation, and regicide, extended his arm outwards, letting golden flecks of dust crystalize into a brilliantly shining "Blade!"

"Know this, world! I am Xerenacht, the hero to which heroes shall aspire to be, champion of the righteous and destroyer of the vile, he who shall save all from desolation and sorrow!" With a passionate smile on his face, the child raised his blade to the sky, staring out at the uncaring, quiet vastness of the universe. Seems that step one was always bound to be the hardest.
Jessi
The Great Tipota stepped foot out of his galaxies for the first time in a long time... 
He encountered many unusual sights... But ended up finding his goal THE MIND TREEs well you see... Since Tipota feeds off of thoughts the mind trees with their high amount of neural pathways tastes like a desert... So Tipota was happy...
Nu
Iona watched as Mara entered the scene. Another goddess that she had no idea about. This one though... Well, they seemed nice at least. Perhaps even too nice. They were giving pity to Pureman despite him practically siding with the enemy at one point. Perhaps she just didn't know?

Then again, Pureman did look rather pitiable at the moment. About as pitiable as she was starting to—

**No. She was fine.**

As she continued to watch however it became apparent - Mara wouldn't care either way. She even thought the grotesque new arrival was something to be "Saved". Iona couldn't help but feel disgust as she watched the goddess move to embrace the creature, and suppressed a shiver. Was she just blind to what was around her? Perhaps something was clouding her judgement.

"Do you all just want to die?" Iona called out as she watched Melancholia approach Mara, thus getting even closer to the unending. Was everyone but her just insane? Or maybe she was just a cowa—

**No. Her choices were logical.**

Who was putting these intrusive thoughts in her head anyways? She let out a growl of frustration, feeling especially worried due to the new arrivals. She had used up much of her divinity in the recent fight, and there were far too many unknown elements. She needed to run like the loser she wa—

**No. This was not her loss.**

Without another thought she swiped a hand through the air, opening up a golden portal to fly through back to her realm. She let out a sigh of relief as she immediately felt the intrusive thoughts lessen. Was the cause the disgusting beast? Or one of the other gods? She'd have to find out later when she regained strength.