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A God did not cry. They did not fall to their knees and they did not grieve. Not for humans. Not for anything. Gods did not feel and they did not hold pain through their hearts.
And yet, it was exactly that place that XD found himself in. That situation where he ended himself heaving on the ground of a temple in the sky. Looking down to the world below and watching the nations all turning over themselves and each other. Humans at war and smoke billowing up past even the Gods.
He grieved.
Mourning the loss for a man and a nation that he’d worked so hard to be able to keep.
XD, the God of Creation.
He’d slaved himself. Working tirelessly to make himself into something that would be better and more and he found himself stuck and watching a world that abandoned the things he loved the most. Destruction and flames eating through the nation that he once fought to build. A human by his side and making him laugh more than he thought he was capable of.
He’d been a knight. Playing the game of humanity and allowing himself to feel with the King he’d crowned standing beside him. The nation standing tall and proud before and now with the wars that were tearing all of the land apart, he was watching them fail.
The nations called Compass collapsed.
Central, the Compass Heart, the home he’d made for himself centuries ago, destroyed and rotting in a pit of flames.
He was Creation, listening to prayers upon prayers that made him feel hollow through to his core and a vague bit of illness as he heard them turn on him for not saving them.
He had promised, centuries ago, that he would not save Central should they fall. He’d promised to the royal that he swore to follow. He watched and adored the family and guarded them. He saw the changes and the family line pass on and on, the same eyes showing through different people and it was all that he’d wanted. All that he’d needed.
HD would be down there now. The God of Destruction overseeing the dismantling of everything XD had once loved.
Everything he still did.
The Gods needed their element around them to survive. They had to be able to feel the worship of humans or they would lose their status and their power and it would turn into a poison against them. XD still felt the love Central’s people gave to him but he felt their hurt as well. They knew that he was real. He’d helped them before and he knew it was part of their history books now but he still felt their pain in the fact that he wasn’t there.
Nearly nine hundred years ago, XD had helped a scorn knight found a nation. He wanted to create something new and something safe and his passion had drawn him in. He’d only been a new God at the time. Not even a century old yet and the human had captured him so strongly he’d wanted nothing more than to follow him and stay with him and make him into an Angel of Creation.
They’d made Central together.
They’d made the Compass together.
Wil was the first mortal who ever touched or saw the wings that arced from his back. Wil was the one that he wanted to bring to spend eternity with him in his temple.
Wil was marked away from him. Claimed by a different entity and blocked away where XD couldn’t reach him. It had shattered his heart then. It would break him until his dying day.
Three hundred years ago, Central was attacked. The entire Compass, really, but all he’d cared about was his darling nation painted in blue from a man that adored so much in life and the world. He’d been ready to help them. Ready to fight and defend them but the Prince was made into the authority of a King and he ordered him down. He ordered him away and XD obeyed.
He’d promised Wil that he would.
That he would obey anything and everything from the Central crowns. That he would stay forever to watch the knight line he would leave behind and the royal one that Wil would one day leave.
His Prince ordered him gone. Ordered him that if Central were falling that he would leave them to handle it.
So he’d been forced to watch a war.
Grandchildren of the knight made royal that he’d helped create on both sides. He watched them fighting and dying. He was forced to stay still as they slaughtered each other and for one another. As they held each other’s hands on the battlefield and their countries burned all around them.
Bleeding and broken and damaged and this was the end of it all. This was the pain that they had to deal with. The suffering that they were wallowing in.
XD had run out of tears. His heart burning and his breaths shuddering as he tried. His wings arced up over his shoulders to act like a blanket and offer him a false amount of security.
He could have stopped this. He could have saved this. The world that Wil had created and all of it was gone. The last remaining pieces that he had of his King.
“XD?”
The foot falls behind him were more than familiar. The pattern of his rival that he knew like the back of his hand.
According to the old myths, Creation was meant to be enemies with the God of Blood. The two of them were meant to fight each time they met each other. Blood being tied so deeply to Destruction, they were meant to hate each other. To want one another dead and gone so that they could be the leader among the Gods.
It was what they’d done to each other in their previous lives but it wasn’t the life they’d found with each other now.
“Techno.”
His voice came out rough. Hurting and weak, shaking and pathetic. He couldn’t be bothered to hide it when the God standing behind him was one of the ones that had taught him what it was to be a God in the first place. He knew that Techno was good. That he would guard him and it was one of the reasons XD had granted the permission for him to be in his temple whenever he would like it.
He never came here.
Seldom would he go to the temple that was named for him among the Gods. It was too empty without his Angel and he’d never taken anyone else to fill it. He’d refused. Instead, if he wanted the company or a home to land himself in he would choose his family. Stories, Blood, Death.
His family.
“The Compass is gone.”
He heard the hum behind him. The movement that told him the other was coming up and then Techno was settling down beside him and looking down at the world. His eyes soft and the glow of the voices fading out. He knew with the war down there that his friend had to be suffering but he wasn’t showing him any of it. Not right now.
When he had found Wil, Techno had found one of the others. Central and West, two nations founded with Gods standing by their sides. All of the Compass, really, but he was only close with one.
“Our Kings have been dead for centuries.”
His heart ached for the thought of it.
He could remember the feel of Wil’s coffin. The weight of it and the guilt he’d felt when he’d buried his King into the ground. How he had grieved and felt for him and how he had slipped away in the night. Watching over his lines as he promised but doing it from a distance. Listening to Wil’s son pray to him and ask him to create something nice for his dad in the afterlife and he’d known he was powerless.
A God made powerless.
“You love them too much.”
He nodded. The nations that all of them were. The greatness that came with them and brought them pushing brighter and louder and stronger. It had caused so much fighting. The lines in the world and the different lands people hailed themselves from. It wasn’t fair and it didn’t make sense and he’d trusted it for this long.
“The world is killing itself.”
XD knew his voice sounded dull. He knew by the way his friend went stiff that he was making him nervous.
“Are you feeling alright?”
He nodded. His tears would dry to his face. If he was going to grieve the Compass then he would grieve Wil a final time and he would not wipe those tears.
“I’ll need to create something new in its place when this ends.”
Techno watched him. Worry in his eyes but he wasn’t stepping in to stop him. He was still at the ready to listen.
“And that would be?”
“A new world. One without nations. One that will just be a home. A family.”
He’d never made a temple. He would make the world his temple. He would refind all the people he’d loved before and he’d try again.
“I’ll make us a home.”