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Lean, with only a small amount of muscle beneath his clothing, he didn’t look formidable, despite being quite a powerful deity. Weldir, after sifting through human memories, would say he looked like a tall, slightly muscular bookkeeper.

“There you are, Weldir,” Rokul stated in Nyl’kira, the Elven language, with a stiff smile curling his darker lavender lips. “I was beginning to think you wouldn’t come.”

His eyes flipped open to reveal their ethereal depths.

His irises glowed multicoloured, with a singular silver disc that rotated around each of his circular black pupils to let him see magic and forces that no other could.

They often sat on the top outer edges between his pupil and iris border, which could be disconcerting to the mortal Elvish who had been gifted with his presence.

Currently, the silver discs circled his pupils in order to perceive Weldir floating before him, despite his usual invisibility.

Rokul then unfolded his legs, drew his knees to his chest while leaning back, and kicked his feet forward to acrobatically stand.

Dark-grey pants were revealed through the flap of his midnight robe, but they were quickly hidden away once more when the outer garment settled.

Occasionally they peeked through when the wind gusted around him.

“Why wouldn’t I come?” Weldir asked in Nyl’kira, the language instilled into the very fibre of his being.

With his head straightening and his shoulders rolling back, Weldir’s floating form held no animosity or dislike. He felt nothing towards Rokul. He was just another being – one who couldn’t touch him. He couldn’t hurt Weldir, couldn’t control him, and they’d never had any contact ever before.

What he knew of this male was through the shared memories he’d been given by his mother.

Rokul’s gaze trailed down Weldir’s horns, his brow-length hair, down his face, and then his naked torso.

Their bodies were similar in their leanly muscular builds, but Weldir appeared taller in his current state – he could change that at will, though.

His gaze then trailed down his naked legs, before dipping down to his toes pointed towards the ground.

“No clothes, huh?” Rokul asked while wagging his brows at him.

Weldir looked down and forced his mist to collect around his legs to hide them. “No. I’m not used to needing them, and it is a waste of mana for me to create them.”

Rokul gave a small laugh, cheerful just like how he was in the memories of his mother, and placed his hands on his narrow hips. His white teeth flashed behind his lips, the canines of them a little longer than most humanoids.

“Figures as much, despite how much strength you have obtained in just under two years.” Two Elven years, he meant.

Weldir tsked. “What I have is barely enough to support what I must maintain on Earth.” Not that Rokul, nor the other deities, knew of Lindiwe and how she drained him. He also wouldn’t inform them of such a change; it was a secret for him alone to hold onto. “Why have you come here?”

The purple male lifted his arms outwards. “Can I not visit my only living nephew?”

“I am barely alive,” Weldir stated, rubbing a hand down his torso. “But that’s not what you meant. Your coyness in evading my question, which you will surely answer eventually, confuses me.”

A dark glint filled his humour-glazed, multicoloured eyes. “Perhaps I finally wanted to meet you.”

“You’ve had ample time to speak with me – over a hundred years, in fact.

” Weldir turned his head to the side to gaze over the border of the Veil and see how far it reached into the distance.

“I have felt a shift here. I assume you have come to inform me as to why.” He brought his face back to Rokul. “You want something from me.”

“When Leyfr told me you were rather perceptive, he wasn’t exaggerating.”

Leyfr, the Evergreen Servant, was the only person Weldir had been granted a back-and-forth conversation with before coming to Earth.

He was also the one who had shared with Weldir his required tasks once he arrived here, having taken it upon himself to acknowledge the responsibility cast onto him as a parental figure.

“What is it you seek? I have been doing all I can here, but it has taken building my strength to maintain it.”

Rokul’s bottom lip pouted forward as he placed his hands on his hips once more. “Aww, you are no fun. I wanted to play with you a little, but you’re just as serious as him. Perhaps he really is your sire.”

Weldir didn’t particularly care if Leyfr was his father or not. In the custom of his people, he had many fathers and many mothers. Even Rokul was to be part of his shared guardianship as his uncle, as was the way with all young gods and their education.

When Weldir didn’t respond, patient for the answers he sought, Rokul grumbled incoherently. His eyes closed as he dipped his head to the side, which made his thin braids sway.

“Fine. Be a spoilsport then. You’re correct that you have felt a shift in Nyl’theria.

The last Elven city has been struggling to maintain its magical dome.

I have granted the mana stone some of my own, but my mana does not mix well with Almethrandra’s.

I had to stop before I destroyed it and left them without protection.

We may be two of triplets, but our powers do not mix well. ”

Almethrandra, the Gilded Maiden, was Weldir’s mother. She currently slumbered, near powerless and devitalised due to Weldir and the sickness his birthing brought forth. Of course, it was also due to her foolish hand in it.

She was the pinnacle goddess in their home.

It answered why Rokul had granted some of his own magic to the stone to power it.

His mother had been asleep for almost a hundred Elven years, which was just under a millennium and a half for humans.

Which just so happened to be how long Weldir had been alive. .. and trapped.

Only the Gilded Maiden could offer such power willingly and efficiently to the mortal Elysian Elves, and she, his mother, continued to slumber.

Rokul lifted his left hand and brushed it to the side.

“Leyfr and I have decided upon a different course of action to assist. I have created many portals, each of them touching a different continent in this vast realm. Leyfr has layered a message in the rustling winds of Nyl’theria, telling the Daekura to enter them for salvation – hoping it will seep into their minds subconsciously. ”

“If you really want to help, why not just destroy the Daekura?” Weldir asked, seeing this to be the most efficient way of protecting their mortal people.

The smile on Rokul’s face twitched before breaking. His blue eyebrows furrowed in deep concern.

“That you would suggest such a thing shows you are so wildly different from us. The Daekura sludge still lives within you. It’s altered your very spiritual essence and is why we believe you never obtained a true form.”

Weldir’s mist collected tighter around his body in disappointment that such words were uttered to him. He knew himself to be different, but to hear it was another thing. He never realised his callous thoughts could be skewed and strange, even to them.

But... I do know that taking mortal life is not the way of our people. They may destroy one or two, but that was usually because that person provoked the gods in an unholy way – like touching gilded ore.

Although the Daekura – Demons – were a violent and horrible scourge, they were still mortal beings.

They could form bonds, fall in love, and have offspring.

It showed they had hearts and souls that deserved protecting, even if their diets were frightful and cruel.

To achieve such humanity to be able to do and feel those things, they had to eat many intelligent beings. ..

Thus, it created the conundrum of being incapable of destroying them because their lives were valuable but having to watch them decimate the lives of others to stabilise themselves. It left all but Weldir unsure of how to proceed with the problem.

His solution would be to destroy, before their people were decimated. To him it was simple.

“So, you and Leyfr are the reason there has been a sudden influx of Daekura,” Weldir pressed on, avoiding what the fully formed god had just said, and how offensive it was. “I have noticed this, but I didn’t notice you tampered with other parts of this realm.”

Rokul swayed his head side to side. “I wouldn’t say tampered. We have just opened more doors for the Daekura, but it is solely up to them whether they cross over. Although... you could say Leyfr’s whispers might be considered coercion.”

“But they will if they believe they can achieve a better life here. You are dooming the humans just to save the Elysians. How is that any better?”

The friendliness in Rokul’s features was swallowed up by a stiff hardness.

“We have no other option. There are billions of humans, and only a few million Elysians left. They are facing extinction, and I don’t really want to be the god of nobody.

” This time, he pouted in a childish way, like he found himself cute, and ran his fingertips down his left braid.

“I’m too... pretty to not be worshipped. ”

I think he’s an idiot. His idea to preserve the Elysians was actually quite remarkable, but his mannerisms were vexing to someone who didn’t share in his games.

“There are other Elven realms to garner worship,” Weldir countered.

“But these are my people.” Rokul ran his fingers through the short hair on top of his head. “Perhaps you have no attachment to them, but we do. They are yours to protect as well.”

“I can do much more protecting if I lay my mist in Nyl’theria and incinerate all the souls of the Daekura from within their physical bodies. I feel your plight, but I don’t agree with your method of salvation.”