Chapter 3: Blessings

The pair warped a little ways to the North. Vast swaths of dull, brown and green fields lied before Etris’s naked toes. Scampering about the many miles of like-colored squares were tens of thousands of laborers who stopped to stare up at her slight and massive form in awe. Each such human was clad in full gray body-suits and wearing visor-helmets. Interspersed between them were gray and yellow machines on tank treads. Some sprayed salmon-shaded mist over the vegetation, while others reached out with scissor limbs and vacuum tubes to suck up the cut crops.

“What’s the importance of this spot, and what are they doing down there?” asked Etris.

Professor Utixx spoke, always excited to answer questions.

“Well, we are within this same nation as before and this is w-”

“Nation?” said Etris.

“Oh it’s a thing some mortals do. Think planet-wide team sports.” said Utixx.

“Ah.”

“Yes. Anyways, as I was saying, here they grow the nutrients they need to live. Now, most divines eat only for fun and to accumulate more power, but humans are one of the many sapient lifeforms that eat to live. Now, I brought you here to help them out. There’s been an awful drought of late. The plants they grow to eat require water, and so they’ve grown a tad dull without it.”

“Why don’t they just bring in water from elsewhere?” said Etris.

“Well they do, but it’s not enough and they’ve had to slow the harvest. For a variety of reasons this makes the civilization unhappy. Now you, as their god, could help them out somehow perhaps?...” The professor let her voice trail at the end there to leave space for an answer. She saw Etris’s eyes light up with realization, and felt a small measure of joy.

“I see! All they need is some water and their harvest will be better.”

The professor thrummed with excitement.

“I’ll just get them some water then. That’s easy enough.” continued Etris.

Etris cleared her throat. “Fear not my sweet, simple humans. I’ll give you all the water you need.”

She snapped her fingers and disappeared. A nanosecond later and she was back. Her bare feet rested over mountains far in the horizon. Her soles snuffed out dozens of settlements. She noticed, of course, but they weren’t part of this portion of the exam, and thus didn’t matter.

Storms rushed through the mid-western United States as her absolute leviathan of a form leaned down and displaced countless air currents. Her pink lips were visible through the clouds above. She spoke, thankfully having mastered the ability to not utterly destroy sapients with her voice at any height.

“There we go. Now, accept my blessing.”

Her lips pursed, and the sound of swishing fluid hung above much of the state. The orb of misty green didn’t except this, so she didn’t grow along. The professor, too, was right in the path of what was to come.

Spit.

“Pwah.” uttered Etris. She infused the noise with a heavenly ring as though it were the most splendid boon a mind could conceive.

A sea’s worth of fluid dripped down, hanging precariously from a thin band of itself trailing from the divine student’s lips. Though a solid glob in its descent at her scale, less vicious portions of the mass came down as cloying rain. Yet, even those ‘minute’ droplets were the size of swimming pools and destroyed entire acres at the time.

Then, the strand thinned to the point of snapping and the saliva fell at once.

It pooled over Professor Utixx, who hovered through the current with minimum effort. The humans beneath were not so gifted. Cloying currents washed over the entire super-farm, ripping the crops from the dirt and the dirt from the planet’s rocky crust. All the workers were crushed under the liquid’s weight, with their robot helpers along with them.

In an attempt to be ‘extra thorough’ Etris over grew herself for the task. So, once done ravaging the farm, the spittle fanned out to the surrounding super-burbian regions still within the farm-state. Waves as tall as skyscrapers engulfed settlements as the ‘blessing’ rushed into and over homes. The death toll reached the millions by the time the spit finally settled. Each poor soul was either drowned in the fluid’s bulk, crushed by its weight, or torn apart in its flowing currents.

Etris smiled down from above. A mere thought and her lips were clean again. She shrunk back down to her former height and noticed her drool blurring the surface of the Professor Utixx’s orb.

“Oh.” she giggled. “I got so caught up bestowing my blessing, that I neglected to bring you along with my growth there.”

Without asking, Etris lifted up her robe and rubbed the clear glob dry. Utixx was speechless throughout, still processing the disaster she just witnessed. A thought from Etris had her white garbs dry again.

“So did you like it? I figured what better water to give them, then one from my own body. Divine water! Pretty creative right?”

She smiled, expecting praise from the comparative plum of a professor. The globe hovered in silence for a moment. Once again, she decided it prudent not to press Etris on this.

“In the future, I feel a little bit of rain would have been far more appropriate. For now, let’s just move on to the next portion of the test. This one I have a feeling you might be good at: smiting. There’s a battlefield to the north, but let’s go there at a much smaller size if you don’t mind? I hate to give hints but, well, for the sake of the humans...”

“Alright Professor, I’ll go along with that I suppose.”

Utixx didn’t bring attention to the impudence, instead warping the two to the northern border of this nation.