59. Orphans and Horticulture

  Toorah was in trouble.

  A lot of trouble, actually.

  His offhand comment about the paternity of one of the chief supporters of his religion had been overheard, and the rumors had gotten out of hand.

  While the wife had eventually confessed to infidelity, and the lord had withdrawn his attempts to challenge the young priest to a duel, divorcing his wife despite the cost to his social standing, the scandal had revealed one key aspect of Matla’s power that hadn’t been widely known before.

  She was a divine paternity test, in addition to being a divine pregnancy test.

  While Atla had wanted to simply roll this ability in to his statues by having the eyes flash a color when a father touched the stone with their child at the same time, Toorah had convinced him otherwise. Thankfully, or else all of the statues would be constantly being defaced.

  Instead it was part of the ‘counseling’ services that their priesthood would offer. While Toorah remained the head priest, Atla was slowly finding more individuals who could hear his voice. Regardless, only those who could definitively hear the voice of the world-god were certified as being able to identify the paternity of a child with absolute certainty.

  Which meant that there was a long waiting list, and that it was taking up an increasingly large percentage of Toorah’s time. Atla kept offering to have the statues do it, but while the main emotion invoked when the a father heard that the child he’d been raising truly was his was relief or happiness, there were a few instances where the opposite was true.

  There were men who had denied that they were the father of a particular child, and were so confident in the matter as to have the priesthood confirm it. If they were wrong, they sometimes got violent.

  Or tried to. Toorah still remembered his experience in preparing for the tournament, after all, and he was capable of defending himself. But he still began going about with guards.

  And then there were instances where innocent men had been cuckolded, and it was Toorah’s sad duty to inform as much. While he was able to put aside the memories of those who responded angrily or irrationally, he was more troubled by the quiet ones. Some of them looked like their entire worlds had been upended, and he didn’t know what to tell them.

  He was only revealing the truth, but he sometimes questioned whether it would be better to ignore Atla’s whispering of “Oh yeah, you shouldn’t even need me to tell this one. Look at their noses! Completely different! And look, the parents are both blond, but the baby is black haired. That’s not how that works! Why don’t you people know that’s not how it works?”

  “Um, because we’re not a god who can see the inner workings of the universe?” he asked.

  “Well, yeah, but you’re smart animals who can work powerful magics. Why can’t you draw a punnett square?”

  “I can draw a square just fine,” Toorah said.

  “Whatever. Oh my look at this next one. Oh, wait, you can’t see it, but yeah, there’s a hereditary thing that the boy clearly got from his father hidden by his clothes. There is no way those two are related.”

  Toorah sighed and informed the cuckold of the news. The man simply nodded and said “Yeah, I thought as much,” and walked off, leaving the child behind.

  Which put Toorah in an awkward situation, as the child was only eight years old and hadn’t come forward with his mother. After a short questioning of the child, Toorah learned that the boy’s mother was dead, and that his father had threatened to leave him if the priest confirmed that they weren’t related.

  Then the boy burst into tears, and that was how the church of Matla began taking in orphans and abandoned children.

  ~~~~~~

  “What did you expect to happen?” I asked Atla. He had manifested abruptly in my office to discuss this latest crisis, which had taken some time for him to explain since it was still unfolding in another city.

  “Well I didn’t expect the guy to just walk out of there,” Atla commented. “Anyway it wasn’t really me who was there at the time. I mean it was, but it wasn’t my eidolon self. It’s kind of like saying that your hindbrain said something rude that made it to your conscious mind and you laughed. Except that it’s my hindbrain that’s working miracles and talking to Toorah now. Actually that part of me is getting strong. Do you think eventually I’ll be able to manifest a second Eidolon?”

  “I think you will,” I said with certainty. “But let’s go back. So the father abandoned the boy. What did you do?”

  “I dunno. Babies get abandoned all of the time in the wild, so I didn’t really do anything about it,” Atla admitted. “But Toorah felt bad and insisted that the boy could join my clergy if he wanted, and somehow now people think it’s okay to abandon children at my temples.”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  “Do you know what I think you should do?” I asked.

  “Yes! What should I do?” he asked, growing excited.

  “I think you should explore how you feel about this and act in accordance with your feelings,” I informed him. “If what you decide to do is evil I’ll let you know, but otherwise, you’re old enough to make this decision on your own.”

  He frowned at me. “That’s not an answer.”

  “That’s not the answer you were hoping for,” I corrected.

  He pouted, but then he got the expression on his face to show he was thinking with his whole self. “I think it’s sad that babies are abandoned. Not just human babies, but all babies. I’m much happier when someone finds them and takes care of them until they’re old enough to fend for themselves.”

  “Okay,” I said. I nodded at him. “So I don’t know about birds and wild animals. But people are literally bringing you abandoned children. Do you owe them anything?”

  “No,” Atla said. “But that doesn’t mean that I want them to die. And the church has a lot of money now. I think … Yeah, we can set up a … something.”

  “The word you’re looking for is orphanage,” I supplied. “You can set up orphanages.”

  “And I can also curse the ones who have children and abandon them,” he said. “Yeah, okay, good talk dad.”

  “Atla, wait,” I said, but Atla poofed out. I sighed. “Atla, come back here.”

  He poofed back and looked defensive. “Why can’t I curse them?”

  “I didn’t say you couldn’t, but I do think you should take matters into more consideration. What if the parents are desperate? What if they’re worried about feeding the child, or they already have too many children, or they have other concerns which you aren’t able to understand? You and I both know that there are a lot of things about being human you don’t understand that well. They might be turning the child over to your church because they believe that is what’s best for them.”

  He frowned. “Okay...but I’m still going to say that if they abandon their children at my church I’m going to make them infertile.”

  I sighed. “Well, as long as that’s the extent of your curse, I suppose it’s not so bad. But clarify that if they come back for the child later then you’ll heal them?”

  “Yeah, okaaay,” the god-child said, dragging the response out. “I’ll talk to Toorah about it too. He has some good ideas. I’m glad that I screwed up his duel and made him my priest.”

  The door suddenly opened and Atla vanished. Lilayla stepped inside, looking around.

  “I thought I heard two voices,” she said.

  “I was talking to myself.”

  “One of them sounded like a young boy,” she clarified.

  “An aspect of myself I keep around to remind me of my youth,” I said.

  “Oh,” she said. Then she stepped into the room. “I must congratulate on raising this world so well. It has been less than a year, but I would estimate that it’s already a stage seventeen or eighteen world. I am guessing that Matla is it’s eidolon?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s curious that she has taken such an active role in her people, but it makes sense. Being worshiped doesn’t make an eidolon stronger, but interacting with her people will. The priesthood she has set up will empower her even without your direct oversight. But are you not worried about the priesthood driving a wedge between you and the world?”

  “No, I’m not,” I said. “How was the training exercise?”

  “Your forces were unable to break my shield, and simultaneously their own shield crumpled when I assaulted it,” she said simply. “Although your second division elites and your platinum ranked fighter in the first division are mighty, the lesser forces are sorely lacking.”

  “I know,” I said. I considered for a moment what I wanted her to know. “I intend to create a worldwide defensive array. I need you and Mioji to find out the elites of my army and guide them to advancement. Are you willing?”

  “This is a losing strategy,” she predicted. “While a defensive array might hold back the assault for some time, if you do not have a way of counter attacking the enemy, then they will simply besiege you until their siege-breakers arrive. What will you do then?”

  “I assure you that if it comes to that, you will be free to abandon the sinking ship,” I said, smiling grimly at her. “But once you have identified my elites, I will send the rest of the army to begin constructing the arrays I have envisioned. It should be easier this time, since I don’t need to do it all by myself.”

  She nodded. “You know that although it is mighty, the Emerald Court has only a fraction of the strength of the Empire, do you not? While we rush to the defense of our own, the fact remains that we will likely lose.”

  “I believe that the Emerald Court will extract a price from the empire for every step they take towards conquering Atla,” I said. “And I vow that all efforts to defend the world of my birth will be repaid.”

  She nodded. “Oh, by the way. Prince Yema wished for me to ask advice on how to raise peach trees. I gave her the second peach that you gave me on the last visit, and she saw fit to plant it.”

  I grinned, and we began exchanging horticulture tips.

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