Demeterra, the Rootmother, had not thought about Grid North-7 in four months.
She had been busy. The war with Vyreth — the Scorchling, the fire god who'd burned three hundred kilometers of her southern farmland — had ended in dissolution. Vyreth was gone. His territory absorbed, his believers converted, his domain fragments distributed among her divine architecture like nutrients fed to roots. It had cost her sixty percent of her FP reserves and a military campaign that had consumed two full seasons.
She was recovering. Ahead of schedule, because Demeterra was always ahead of schedule. The Rootmother did not leave things to chance. She planned in decades and executed in seasons and reviewed in hours. Her territory — now the largest continuous domain in the southern region — stretched across four grids. Twelve thousand believers. Six vassal deities, all submissive, all productive, all contributing FP to an economy that made smaller gods look like candleflames beside a bonfire.
