Gneil - the Grotto's high priest, and my first ever worshiper - was one of the night-owls. Yawning and stretching, he stepped aside to let a pair of farmers exit the shared gnomehome in his wake. The farmers headed toward the northern shroomery, in which they'd recently been experimenting with cross-breeding a new type of mushroom. Gneil watched them go, smiling sleepily, then turned to begin the short climb to my shrine.
He hadn't gone far when one of the warriors—Hoppit, I’d named her, now on her way into the house after her day-shift—jogged over to greet him. Gneil's eyes lit up in her presence—an interesting development, and not the first time I'd noticed it.
She spoke a few words to him, and his eyebrows raised all the way up into his hair. He nodded, thanked her, then watched Hoppit disappear inside the gnomehome before he headed toward the bridge crossing the stream.
"Where's he going?"
Gneil made a beeline for the barracks. "Ahh, he's going to visit Shanky! That's so sweet!" cooed Ket, clearly touched by what she saw as Gneil's concern for his fellow gnome. I knew better.
I waited. Sure enough, when Gneil entered the barracks infirmary and saw Longshank lying amid red-stained blankets, he did not rush anxiously over to him. For a few moments he just stood in the doorway, taking in the sight of the half-conscious scout's sprawled form and missing leg. Then he shrugged and walked away with a noticeable new spring in his step.
Ket made a noise somewhere between shock and outrage. I just snickered. Clearly, she hadn't been paying enough attention to the manner in which her precious Shanky usually returned from his scouting expeditions. I decided to fill her in.
Blood-smeared, sweaty and with a swagger in his step more suited to a dashing pirate captain than an egotistical potato with teeth, the long-legged scout leader always made a point of swinging by my shrine after a hunt, where he would lean casually on his spear while regaling my adoring acolytes with tales I had no doubt were exaggerated if not blatantly made up. I couldn't speak Gnomish, but the language of Bullshit was universal. (Though, having seen Longshank’s performance during our most recent out-of-Sphere combat, perhaps my uncharitable thoughts had been a little unfair.)
For whatever reason, his presence always seemed to irritate Gneil, who usually busied himself in aggressively polishing the altar stones, rolling his eyes and occasionally throwing sidelong glances at Longshank’s wrinkly outfit before eventually growing enraged enough to clap his hands and urge his simpering underlings back to their worshiping.
Inevitably, before he could then tell the scout exactly where to go—as far away from the shrine as possible, presumably—Longshank would always say something jovial, clapping Gneil on the shoulder with enough force to bruise and then swaggering back down the hillock to his gnomehome as though the decision to leave had been his all along. Gneil would watch him go, scowling and rubbing his shoulder, and throw himself into worship alongside the acolytes. The latter's emissions would always be slightly stronger and more vibrant than usual after these exchanges, as they were presumably inspired by the stories of Longshank’s gnomish prowess.
Gneil, on the other hand... Sure, he looked as devoted as ever. But as someone who not only saw, but also absorbed and tasted the mana and Faith he produced, I could tell it was always especially bitter after such an encounter.
I’d pondered why this might be, of course. The most likely explanation was that Gneil was jealous of Longshank. Why? Well, that was anyone’s guess. There were many ways in which Longshank could be perceived as a superior individual to Gneil—physical stature and confidence foremost among them—but I suspected it was more than just skin-deep.
Specifically, it was blesmol-skin deep.
Could it be that Gneil was unhappy in his god-given role as my high cleric?
"Maybe we should give him a house of his own, or something? Make him feel a bit more important," I suggested, mostly to myself. "A high priest probably shouldn't be slumming it with the other gnomes anyway. Ooh, maybe the next stage of the shrine's development will be a temple? Gneil should definitely have his own temple."
I realized Ket had gone quiet, and sensed something that felt dangerously like pride from her across our bond. "What?"
She trilled softly, giving off a shower of pinkish-white sparks. "You've come a long way, is all. I remember when you wanted to set him on fire."
"I never wanted to set Gneil on fire!" I told her, horrified. "Just those who were being mean to him."
"Yes, but you always used to complain about him. Now you want to build him a temple?"
"I want him to build a temple for me," I corrected. "I suppose he can live in it afterwards if he wants to."
Gneil reached the top of the hill, still with a big grin on his face, and waved up at Binky before kneeling beside the two acolytes. The instant he joined them, their mana grew brighter. Having a high priest in the tribe really did inspire the others to greater feats of worship.
"Well, that's very generous of you, Corey. And I for one am happy you've moved on from your initial dislike of the gnomes. And that you haven't once said you want to set Shanky on fire."
"Shanky has other things to worry about right now." I frowned down at a sudden flurry of activity in the barracks. "What's going on down there?"
Someone had apparently informed the on-duty farmers about Longshank's mishap. Leaving his companion to continue their delicate ministrations in the shroomeries, the other farmer had marched on over to the infirmary room in the barracks, his ever-present bucket swinging at his side.
Now he had hold of one end of Longshank's amputated leg and was trying to deposit it in his bucket. But holding on to the other end of the leg was Longshank himself. Still sprawled on the ground, face drained of color, he was clinging to his former foot as though his
