In the middle of a grassy field, a ball of floating light appeared, slowly contorting itself, internals shifting, to try and secure its place in reality.
If one were to see the mana in the area near where it was, it was a light show, sparkling tendrils instantaneously lighting on and off at short and random intervals.
It felt the existence of other things. Physical consciousness was practically established.
First order of business was to try to consolidate its identity. Fejil was the name that the deity was associated with.
Accessing a part of its spiritual realm reserved for memories, it gained knowledge to use as comparison, thus seeing the state it was in more clearly.
Presumably years of disuse and inactivity, its constructs, structures for automatic execution of magic, seemed not as good as it used to.
Its method of perceiving things within itself was by the circulation of mana. When the inspecting mana passed through the constructs, it was as if some bits here and there crumbled. Things it thought existed were not there, while some seemed untouched, still in decent condition.
The deity didn’t feel confident with how much time was available to freely spend, so it quickly went to exerting influence on the ambient mana, something that should ideally be controlled with a more solid brain unlike the abstract consciousness it had as a soul or spirit.
When the ambient mana, omnipresent as it was throughout reality, carried out the deity’s intention to find iron, it found the matching materials but the deity had to stop when the ambient mana couldn’t lift it from the ground. It was an effect of not having a physical mind in the physical plane where the kind of energy being manipulated resided.
So, the deity switched to the usage of its personal mana, mana generated and controlled by the individual themself.
Calling forth the iron hidden beneath the ground, such took to the ball of light, molding itself in its shape, the mana around the sphere then being made to calm down.
“(A brain.)” The most fundamental element in maintaining coherent thoughts, and efficient and effective control over mana, and a thing to act as an anchor for the soul to secure its connection into the world, a mind of any sort.
The deity had scanned the look of organic brains many times before, but even then, it had been quite a while.
The deity knew everything necessary, but had neither the tools, nor the development to make it easy. Everything was being done manually, clinging onto consciousness, keeping sight of what it was working on, and working on it.
Minutes, and then hours passed. Eventually, it was satisfactory enough considering how much time was used.
The spherical brain was built with only a sense for photons (regular eyesight), auditory senses, and simplistic commands to the ambient mana like push and pull, to supply a magic, or to convey what something somewhere was.
Thus, there was a physical residence for the deity’s soul, it no longer needed to pay with a lot of awareness for its existence.
It was rather nostalgic for the deity, not the part about having a physical form again, but the part about lacking senses.
“Testing. I can speak. All okay?”
With having solved the first concerns, there was less to think about, and as such, there was less of a burden sensed.
Then was made a humanoid body. The soil sufficed as material, and for movement, the same as before, the usage of magical energy.
Lastly for the firsts, to know where the deity was at.
Mana activated, and radiated outwards, picking up on the texture and presence of matter, then transmitting it back to the deity.
With just eyesight, the area was a great grassy plain that stretched on quite a bit.
A little inconveniencing though, in the distance, there were creatures present. Many on land, and several in the sky.
When the sensing mana reached them, they weren’t the friendly or neutral kind of creature according to their build, and they were heading in the direction of the deity.
The deity experienced its own fight-or-flight response. The first choice to think about was flight: the deity went looking for a space-related construct within itself. When the deity found it, the intent to use it was picked up, the construct automatically activating.
Alarmed at how the ground was being warped, despite not having a set destination, the deity was quick to cut off the provision of mana for the construct.
The deity reflected for a moment on how it couldn’t hold that back from just activating. Getting to a safer place seemed like it’ll take some time.
“What to do…”
The deity was troubled. One way to escape was by moving into the spiritual plane, but it was a difficult aspect as it was counter-productive since the deity had recently just been from there.
From surface-level conjecture, the spiritual plane, or some void of sorts, was the place where souls without connection to reality would be.
The concept of time and space was hardly perceivable, if at all, if such even existed, in the spiritual plane. If one stayed there too long, the soul would corrode or decay into some original form, some process of abstraction that the deity found strenuous to resist against.
The demon lord didn’t hold back in booting off the deity either, having had the exact intention to target directly the deity’s soul, and had damaged it somehow.
According to the deity’s memories, there was one hero who had the construct for control over reincarnation, which circumvented entry into the spiritual plane, and thus also the process of abstraction.
Although the deity was knowledgeable in the field of the spirit, or soul, and the concept of constructs, it couldn’t apply much of that to itself. The reason being that it saw itself as being already rather complete.
Like being told to build a building in a city, it would be difficult to find an available spot without expanding the city. Actively enlarging a soul wasn’t so much of an easy concept for Fejil to dabble in, even for millennia of experience.
Destruction was the tool for making space, but Fejil never found it worth the trouble, as destruction was more resisted than creation. Although, the abstraction of the spiritual plane did help the deity in this, giving the deity the opportunity to optimize for certain things.
But still, summarily, for the deity, there wasn’t a safe way to just quickly move away from the place. It didn’t seem like the deity could outrun these creatures either considering the speed they were moving at, and it seemed like they were coordinating with flying creatures.
The physical mind the diety had, the spherical ball it had just recently created, wasn’t so strong at commanding the level and type of energies it had been used to just yet, so flight was the first of the two responses given some thought.
Propelling its self away with ambient mana was unfeasible.
“Fight.” The deity chose. It was a good option to exercise how much power it had.
