A (Male God) walking out of the endless wilderness.

The forest stretched on forever, and to walk it was to court ****.

The animals had no quarrel with, nor fear of, the pale, white-haired man who walked those sun-beamed paths. The others, who would normally have set upon any mortal who dared venture forth, instead fled.

Something deep within them knew that shadows could not survive the light.

Where he walked, flowers emerged in full bloom, heedless of the **** canopy of ancient trees overhead. They reacted to the warmth he radiated like an open flame.

Even without a voice in his head telling him where to go, he had one drive that would motivate all actions. The need to gather faith, and from that, the need to recruit believers. He had already come forth into the mind of a single human being, springing conceptually out of nothingness.

Now, he knew, he could feel it… he was headed in the right direction.

Just as they would be called by an indescribable feeling to come from wherever in the world they were, to the place of their meeting. The right person, in the right place, at the right time, to bring forth a glorious new dawn.

The trees finally began to thin out, until something was visible ahead; stone.

Tall walls, crumbling and abandoned, with vines overgrowing and nature steadily consuming the defensive works. The gates were thrown open. This place wasn’t just abandoned, it was long-abandoned.

Not that the man realized anything was out of order, for he was born yesterday.

“Fifty thousand people lived here.”

A woman’s voice whispered to him as he walked broken cobblestone streets. Buildings to either side had burned down to ashes. Others collapsed into rubble. While others stood, intact to one degree or another. Wooden and stone dwellings, the stone lasting much better through time and the elements.

“Now it is only a den of dark beasts, though they have fled with your coming.”

The city was vast, just another kind of forest. Greenery had even reclaimed it, swallowing entire sections whole. The wall didn’t separate artificial from natural. Especially with those great holes knocked in it. That didn’t come from weathering or erosion, but siege weapons.

“This is the fate of any city not under divine protection.”

The bones laid where bodies once fell, and evidence of battle was everywhere. The **** last stand of the mortal races against overwhelming odds. Those who did not flee, were cut down and consumed by the wilderness and its myriad monsters.

“This was once mine, you know. My people lived here, until they lost their faith.”

The man kept walking past the old relics and demolished structures of the marketplace, and the docks on the great river that cut through town. He just kept walking. There was nothing else to do for the restless ghosts of this place.

The song of the past came to him. Though he’d never known living people, he heard their echoes; the laughter of children playing in the market square. The bustle of activity, of the people going about their daily lives.

“No… they lost their faith, because I lost my way. And everyone died. This is truly what it means to be a god, oh wanderer. Your triumphs are life, and your failures are ****, but not for yourself. Your life is never your own.”

Tears came to his eyes, though he didn’t understand why.

“Not to worry. **** and life are two sides of the same coin. Just as I have faded, you have come. Just as people live, they will die. That’s mortality. Yet there are still countless people in this world, and countless more to come.

You have the power to give them long, happy lives. A world of peace. I’ve seen it. You can do what none of us have accomplished, and herald the coming of the new age.

So, hurry along. The temple, and your first follower, awaits.”

The temple was the heart of the city, atop a hill. Visible from all quarters, overlooking the decay. Compared to the forest, where paths were not always apparent, even ruined and blocked-off streets were not difficult to traverse.

It was a work of stone, marble, and white granite, older than the rest of the city, the first thing built here. Yet it stood, three spires pointing to heaven. While it was clearly abandoned, and the vines hung from every opening as with the rest of town, the feeling was different. Nature hadn’t taken this place, merely taken up residency.

It could again be expelled, with work, and with followers.

The great river had been channeled upwards with aqueducts and gates, the fruit of mortal brains and brawn. Many of those works had long broken, and provided an avenue only for sloshing, mist-producing waterfalls. Still, canals surrounded the temple, and water ran inside and out through many paths.

It gave the place a sense of circulation, of life; the water wasn’t just sitting there, it was surging back and forth with tides and currents.

The tall wooden doors of the entrance parted effortlessly at his touch, old hinges creaking as the atrium unfolded before curious blue eyes. Multiple stories, with running aqueducts and pipes overhead and below, and faded murals and artistic renderings of a goddess of water and wine.

All surrounding a central space around a great fireplace.

A beautiful young woman was there, with long, silky back hair, wearing red and white robes and bearing a longbow and half-empty quiver of arrows slung over her shoulder. She was kneeling over the hearth, trying to rekindle dying embers.

Until she noted his arrival. She looked up at the man, eyes wide in astonishment.

“She’s had dreams,” the voice whispered. “She was sworn to another god since birth. Yet when the time came, she could not do it. She knew you were the one for her, and that there could be no other. She fled her distant homeland, and now, to see you in the flesh… I imagine she is quite startled.”

Especially as there was plenty of flesh to see; the man was tall, muscular, pale, and wearing not one scrap of clothing.

He didn’t even know what clothing was.

The voice sighed. “You have so far to walk, my dear lunk-headed replacement.”