For a moment, I was torn between my curiosity and a faint sense of responsibility, one pushing me to go report to the chief and get his buy-in to attack the central structure, while the other was tugging me towards the newly established shrine and the idols carved in my image. I wanted to know if those idols were depicting me or if it was merely a case of Lady Hecate using my image, as She was wont to do, though I was still ignorant of Her reasons for that usage. She had Her own face, I had seen it a few times, and there were a few instances in which the shrines we set up used said face, so it was possible for Her to use it. She just didn’t want to, for some reason or another. Or She might just want to mess with me, push me in an unexpected direction or the reason might be something entirely unrelated to me, as weird as that might be.

I could just imagine Lady Hecate gambling alongside a few others, maybe with some divinely strong drinks involved, and a bet being made involving the use of a different face. After all, I doubted that deities had an exchangeable currency, unless it involved the faith of mortals, something that couldn’t be changed on a whim. Though they might have some sort of territorial agreement, so it was only a single deity, or maybe an entire Pantheon, controlling a specific area, essentially giving that Pantheon a monopoly on mortal worship. Such monopolies could then be traded for some time or gambled away.

Shaking my head, I forced my head back into the game, pushing away the amusing theories about divine commerce and the trading of franchise areas. If such agreements existed, I was confident that no mortal would ever be included in the discussion. So, these theories were utterly useless and would remain so for a long time. Hel, they might even be dangerous. I could easily imagine that divine marketing and franchise agreements were protected by some fairly vigorous protections from the various deities, just as everything about their actual divine operations would be. Divine worship needed a layer of mystery and disconnect between the worshipper and the worshipped, or things could easily come apart.

“Lia, could you go and report to the Chief?” I asked my daughter, deciding that delegating the responsibility of explaining dungeons and the local problem to the chief would work, allowing me to investigate the idols in their shrine.

“Sure, Mother, I can do that,” Lia nodded, her expression quite serious, “What do you want me to focus on? The local circumstances and the theories you shared regarding the burned land, its inception and possible methods to contain it or would you want me to focus on dungeons in general and try to make their exploration sound as palatable as possible?”

“The former,” I decided after a moment of consideration, “Otherwise, there’s always the risk that the locals decide having a dungeon of such potential in their backyard is worth the trouble. I doubt it’s going to happen, not with the destruction caused by this dungeon, but it’s possible. Humans have done a lot of foolish things in the past. It would be troublesome if this becomes the latest example of that trait.”

“Certainly,” Lia nodded once again, now an amused grin on her face, “I’ll make sure to include some of our experiences in the scorched lands, even if those were a lot less troublesome than the burned lands here are,” she paused for a moment, the amusement on her face turning wry and somewhat contemplative, “What’s with all that fire anyway? Scorched land, burned land, why not candy land or idyllic land?”

“Would we even notice the ‘idyllic land’?” Luna asked, putting her own two cents into the discussion, “We might have walked past the idyllic land and never realised that it’s there because part of the idyll is to be sheltered from outsiders or something like that.”

“And fires are generally easy to see and perceive,” I nodded in agreement, even if I thought a majority of places like this were aligned to fire due to the element’s volatility. While Water and Wind could be quite energetic and volatile, Fire was one of the most explosive elements, with only Lightning coming close amongst those I could control. Though Fire could sustain itself, despite its explosive nature, while Lightning was a singular flash before it was gone, so I doubted areas drowned in Lightning would create such elementally devastated lands, at least nothing that could sustain itself.

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“Remember that area of giant plants we encountered a while back? It might have been something similar, only that instead of a dungeon, the core of that area was the World Tree or maybe something beneath the tree,” Luna paused, glancing at me, “You said there was something weird beneath the tree, right?”

“Yes, a Darkness, for lack of a better word,” I nodded in agreement, remembering the odd sensations I had felt near the tree, the strange hunger and desire, “It would be interesting to explore once our current objective is met, there might be other areas like these out there.”

“You want to see if there are other beings out there we can talk to, right? Finding the Sasquatch was interesting, but they need quite a bit more time to form an actual culture. The proto-elves near the World Tree have already become something other than human, so you want to investigate if there are more, right?” Lia asked, her voice somewhat quiet as she tried working out my mental processes.

A small noise from Catherine caused our discussion to pause. Glancing over to her, mainly due to the interruption, made me realise she had an odd expression on her face. Given our discussion, there were quite a few possible reasons for said expression, and I wasn’t about to try interrogating her. Most likely, it was due to the casual nature and the comparisons we had made regarding the burned land, though it might be due to another reason, too.

“Catherine, could you guide Luna and me to the shrine?” I asked, knowing that Lia could find her own way, even if the bit of sunlight that managed to make its way through the thick clouds was enough to weaken her a little.

Nods were exchanged all around, and soon, Luna and I followed after Catherine while Lia was off to report.

“Can you tell me how you made those idols?” I asked, my focus now completely on Catherine and the shrine here.

“Certainly,” Catherine nodded, glancing at Luna as she did, “Miss Luna taught us a technique to commune with a deity to receive their guidance, though usually it only works if you already know what deity you are interested in,” she explained.

“Here, we only had a vague idea of whom we would want to pray to, who could give us the protection and guidance we wanted, so it was suggested we should simply give our prayers to an unknown God. Lacy, who had the idea, told us that in ancient times, the Greeks had a shrine to the unknown God, allowing them to do essentially that. If you didn’t know which deity your prayer was supposed to reach, you could pray there and it would be akin to a prayer addressed ‘to whom it may concern’.”

Now, neither Luna nor I could keep from snickering at the idea; it was just a little too funny. Interesting, too, though I wasn’t sure I would ever want to make use of the idea. Who knew how exactly the technique would work, especially if the user was somebody like me, with multiple deities already interested in them?

“What happened then? You can hardly start to commune with a God if you don’t know which God you are communing with.” Luna prodded, getting another nod in return

“True, it didn’t work like you explained, but we had expected that,” she paused, “Instead of communing with the deity, we tried to focus the sensations, that longing, into some clay we had prepared, trying to shape our desire into the correct form.”

“And you ended up with a figurine in my shape?” I asked to clarify and, again, I received a nod in response.

“Fascinating,” I admitted, wondering once more if Lady Hecate had intervened, using the fact that Luna had taught these people the specific technique to contact the divine.

Soon, we reached the shrine and Catherine easily opened the door. It wasn’t a monument or anything imposing, it was just a simple building, both inside and out, made of wood, clay and some stone.

After entering, we could see a few Idols sitting on small shelves, and on one of them, the majority of Idols had my face, while others were of Luna or the Grandmother.

Deciding to start with the simplest test, I used the Identify skill on one of the individual Idols, only to stare at the message in disbelief. I had not expected that.