The Nines (The Seventh)

The Seventh can observe the world through the senses of any living creature, experiencing the sights and sensations of the world as they do, though the actual thoughts and feelings of a creature’s consciousness are opaque to gods. Through its power, the Seventh has the potential to witness anything presently occurring in the mortal realm right down to the birth and death of the smallest insect. It occupies the third tier in power level, which it shares with the Sixth and Eighth.

Relationship to Mortals

As a great lover of stories, the Seventh is rarely still. It spends its days travelling the world and experiencing it through the eyes of mortals, seeking to collect knowledge in every facet available to it. It was the deity who would walk among mortals the most often, second only to the Fifth who practically lived on the Earth’s surface. Of the Eight, the Seventh was the one to spirit mortals away most often to keep them as companions. It often ended up as a mediator for conflicts between mortals, or would simply spend days on end allowing them to worship its presence.

It was happy to have an audience to share its grand stories which would play out in their mortal minds through the Seventh’s blessings of knowledge and visions, allowing them to witness the sights for themselves. When the mortal realm split from the realm of the gods, the Seventh’s gifts of knowledge would occasionally appear passed down through the lineage of creatures it had touched, giving them access to pieces of the Seventh’s arcane knowledge. For a modern mortal to be blessed as a prophet is to carry the blessing of the Seventh, and is seen as a great boon in the mortal realm.

Conflict with the Fifth

The Seventh’s interest in mortals differed from the Fifth’s in that it never had any inclination to live as they did or attempt to adapt to their lifestyles or cultures beyond surface-level participation. While it adored the mortals and could at times be surprised by the depths of their intelligence, it still believed their level of sentience was unremarkable in comparison to the enormity of a god’s. The Seventh enjoyed witnessing aspects of mortal life and culture for the purpose of cataloguing their development over the eons, but always remained detached as an observer.

Despite the Seventh and Fifth sharing a common interest in mortal life, they held clashing philosophies surrounding the worth of mortal souls. Unlike some of its fellow Eight deities, the Seventh acknowledged that mortals had gone on to develop complex and fascinating lives outside their gods’ influence, but it found the Fifth’s idea of mortal souls holding more commonality with the gods than any of the Eight realized to be insulting. Worse was the Fifth’s insistence that the souls contained some sort of “spark” that gods simply did not. The Seventh believed the creatures the Eight had created would never have the capability to meet their gods as equals, let alone surpass them in any regard.

The Seventh could never understand why the Fifth would wish to conceal its higher nature to walk among mortals as a perceived equal, seeing it as some sort of bizarre escapism, something akin to an intelligent creature wishing to disguise itself and live among insects. Barring the indignity, divinity lay in the Eight’s very essence; it would be futile to think it could ever be truly hidden away unless it was given up altogether.

The Seventh’s Regret

When the two realms were separated, the Seventh was devastated to lose its connection to the mortals. Worse was the realization of just how much the Fifth had felt isolated among its own divine brethren. The Seventh had not recognized the depths of the Fifth’s loneliness and despair, believing gods to not be weighed down by such emotions. Overwhelmed by the revelation of such a simple truth it had entirely missed, a fragment of the Fifth’s existential grief found a new home in the Seventh. For the first time, the Seventh saw a reflection of the mortals within itself rather than the other way around. It finally understood why the Fifth so desperately tried to understand and seek companionship among them, believing them to have knowledge and experiences exceeding that of even their gods. It recognized the feeling as something it had witnessed in mortals time and again without ever having understood it; empathy.

When the Sixth took up the mantle to bring spring to end the great winter, the Seventh followed suit by bringing summer, a great bounty to the flora and fauna of the Earth and repentance for how the Seventh underestimated the strength and worth of life.