Fireboaserpent

Techno has a human form. He's bound to the land and he's a loner, but he can ask. So eventually he does.

It's war. They're not surprised, but Techno is.

The kingdom they're technically in has declared war on the kingdom they're technically beside. The border is this little creek near Techno's field. The one the villagers wash their clothes in and drink from. The one their children play in. They water their plants with it.

Techno lives alongside it and with it as this creek and the sky are his oldest friends. It loved them and they loved it in a way the kings never will.

They crossed it easily, all the time, and without a care. Until now.

Anyway, the people start fleeing the village in this wide-open valley.

First, it's the young men like Tommy, picking sides in this dispute Techno doesn't care about as they run off to join their respective armies. Then it's the elderly and the young families. They want the security of impenetrably high ground or walls.

Finally, it's the farmers. The stubborn, loyal farmers who don't want to leave their god and their land. So, Techno does something he's never done before.

He curses their fields to thirst. All their potatoes, their carrots, their pumpkins, wheat, and oats die overnight. Only the farms. And only the plants. In the center of the town, written on the walls of Techno's tiny shrine, is a single word painted in the red blood of the only think Techno ever killed. "RUN" drips onto the body of a piglet barely small enough to fit inside the shine and onto the alter meant for vegetables.

The farmers leave that evening, placing their hoes, shovels, pitch forks, and plows all around the shrine as a final offering to their god as the blood that won't stop running drips onto the offered steel.

Then there is silence. For days, weeks, there is nothing but Techno walking the dead, thirsty land with his creek run low in the late summer heat as the rot of the harvest dead and forsaken starts to fill the air. Techno doesn't regret saving his people. He doesn't regret sending them away from his little valley, though he wishes he could go with them.

He doesn't regret until the war comes and he loses his physical form as the first causality at the foot of his newly distroyed shrine. The valley perfect for farming becomes perfect for battle. All those iron tools are perfect for weapons. It doesn't matter that they were sacred to this minor local god. Soon nothing would be. Or, rather, they will be in a new way.

The dry, thirsty summer ground soaks up blood like it's dying. It eats up bodies like they're just fertilizer and nothing ever loved. More and more fall, and Techno feels, sees, hears, smells and tastes it all.

The war goes on in his valley. Through the summer, the fall, and the winter. Hundreds starve, more are murdered, and Techno absorbs them all. He has no choice. His own curse forces him to take and starve off the thirst from the curse he doesn't dare break now. He's hoping the dead ground might convince them to find a better battlefront.

The side his people claim they were a part of starts to lose and it doesn't make a difference to Techno. All the bodies and blood are absorbed just the same. But there is one boy, one young man that fled his village early who is still here. He'd been hiding form Techno, ashamed of what he helped turn his home and his old god into.

He goes to the bloody, desecrated alter since that's all that's left of the modest shrine. He goes and he begs, just once more, for his god to hear him. He pleads for safety and protect. He asks for life to come again.

Or failing that, he asks for the life still there to stay. He prays for something no god of fertility and growth can usually do. But at the point, Techno is barely that. His home, ground, and alter have not been used for what he once was.

When Tommy prays for protection, Techno finds a loophole in his curse and the nature he was forced to forsake.

Plants grow again. Food stops rotting in the soldier's mouths. But as soon as a new bright red flower is picked, it screams. Human blood leaks from the stem, and the plants around it turn to thorns, tangling up the unfortunate and dragging him into the roots slowly for how fast the war moves, but quickly for how plants shouldn't.

Soon these black vines are encroaching on tents with their blood red flowers. Both sides are consumed by the life of the fields in days. The survivors, or the cowards, bolt to their respective hills. Techno lets them go. At least they're leaving.

The valley, once full or green and gold harvests, now stands full or black thorn vines with red flowers. The creek still runs through, but it's dirty now either with blood or the rot of the curse.

The kingdoms declare peace. No one's pride is worth a war so damned. That is the valley of the blood god, and they'd do well to stay away.

(Part 2, No longer Techno's POV)

Tommy stays, refusing to leave his god and valley again. The plants start growing, crawling over his dirty bedroll.

Tommy runs to the center of valley, where a village once stood and where a small stone alters sands undisturbed by the vines around it. On the center of this little alter is a light pink bunny with blood red eyes and black streaking around it's paws like stains. It sits with pig bones below it and human bones at its feet.

Those wheren't there before. Tommy knows becasue he buried both those bodies.

Tommy kneels.

The rabbit is silent.

Tommy confesses wrong about war and honor. He was wrong to begrudge the quiet life of a farmer.

He begs then, not for protection, safety, life, a good harvest, or any other boon. He asks for peace. He asks for the curse to be broken.

But Techno cannot.

The rabbit says something to the effect of "I am not a war god, for this curse of famine and drought would have been null and my vengeance much swifter. I am not a god of fertility and harvest for while the soil is rich, the land is cursed. I did not become a god of blood willingly. I cannot willingly return to my former life. If you will be my servant and champion, then bring me death."

Tommy refuses. The rabbit sits unaffected by his threats, shouting and tears. Despite it all, Tommy stays, daring Techno to kill him too. If he wants death, finish off the last solider in that bloody war.

Techno refuses, because Tommy is the only one left in the valley and the only one who knows the truth of who is and what he was. Besides, he will not kill his champion.

Tommy walks unharmed and unhindered through the briar valley, delaying. The ground yields food and tools all to him, but they are rusted or just shy of being spoiled. He builds a home in the thorns and lives there like an evil cursed monster, content in the prickly safety.

(Part 3: POV gets wacky here, either Phil or Tommy)

Phil has heard about this war and was on his way anyway when he encountered the soldier's feeling back home with horror stories of man-eating plants that scream and bleed. he interviews them all, building up the full story and the proper mythos. He finds others too, from that valley. Farmers who claim they were sent away and saved by the nature spirit near their town.

He learns the warning was written out in blood after a curse was placed on their crops.

The Angel of Death knows the rare signs of a god in agony, revered for what they are not and mutilated by false worship. It's his job to not reap souls, but to reap gods. To put them down when the situation calls for it.

Phil meets Tommy at what has become a gate into the briar valley, a pink bunny clinging to Tommy's shoulder as the wild looking but still very mortal human raises a sword.

The briar stops them before they can fight.

At a loss, Tommy brings Phil into the valley and gives him his tale. Phil promises he's there to help.

The rabbit blinks at them and says nothing.

At least, Techno says nothing until Tommy is fast asleep. Then he hops away from Tommy's makeshift home and back to the alter.

Phil follows.

He catches up the pink rabbit sitting on the alter just as Tommy found him, black stains on his paws and legs, ears erect and eyes unblinking.

Phil is at a lost. He's never met a corrupted god that didn't fight. But then he's never seen a nature god get corrupted in the first place. Usually, they just grow back.

Phil starts to explore the area. Since Techno won't answer him but seemed to lead him to this alter for a reason. Phil explores the blackened ground and finds the curse. It's centered on a small pile of still fresh pig blood in a basin between the altar's little stone legs.

It's a nasty thing, but strong. Almost stronger than Phil can break without Kristin's direct help. Techno must have really meant for people to either leave the valley alone during war or to leave it because of war doesn't fully matter. Either way the curse was so disrespected and constantly feed by bloodshed that it easily overpowered Techno's nature like weeds in a garden.

Tommy really was the only thing keeping him docile as the only one who stayed and remembered who Techno was. Unfortunately, Tommy wasn't enough.

Phil kills Bunnyblade on the alter. He overflows that little basin and destroy the alter afterwards. The rabbit, barely Techno at all, doesn't fight and doesn't react. It doesn't even blink during its death.

In moments, the briars are dead and dust. The ground loosens under their feet becoming less compact and unworkable. The smell of iron dissipates.

Tommy is, of course, unconsolable. Betrayed, he challenges the Angel right there. Phil wins.

He says he has a plan, swears it on his goddess even, but Tommy doesn't believe him when Phil refuses to say what it is. He only urges Tommy to move on and find another god, another home, and another farm.

Tommy refuses.

He swears to build his new home right there in the center of an empty dirt valley with a clear little creek and starts a new farm. Phil leaves him too it, promising to check in. Tommy makes it clear where Phil can stick it.

A year passes; farming is a struggle without a god to help. It's just nature doing its damn best to reclaim a piece for the godless wilds. Tommy persists. He doesn't manage a full farm, but he does manage a garden with enough for him, a cow and some hens as grasses start to creep back into the valley.

That spring, a family, one of the ones what left during the war, returns, asking to build up another farm nearby. Tommy doesn't care.

When Phil returns an autumn later, there is a start of a village reforming. The valley itself is back to mostly farmlands. Tommy is not happy to see him, but Phil is happy to see Tommy kept his word. He's happy the village is back.

This time, Phil is done being cagey. He leads Tommy to an unclaimed field near the creek that borders two kingdoms who are best friends (really, they swear, please Angel, move the sword-) and introduces Tommy to a piglet sleeping in the grasses. Well, it's a piglet at first. Then it's a pink, unstained bunny. Then it's a person. A young man with pink hair.