I pulled a lock of my hair and began recalling what I remembered of the human pantheon. They had to have a god related to birds.
There were plenty of birds—dragons!—stories about which Explanatory gathered from humans and sent to me through the telepathic chain. But all of them were flying ones.
In a place kingdom, birds like dodos would've been easily turned extinct by one of the many massive predators. Only bees could not fear them, because we were tiny and painful insects!
'If I want to make humans accept Dalmanrach as a legit god, I will have to make up his legend from scratch,' I realized. 'And explain to people who the hell were dodos. Hm. Should I describe my Earth's version or this Earth's version? On Earth-Omega-0048 an ordinary dodo will be closer to feathered lizards than to dragons… I guess it wouldn't matter, as long as it stays a dodo. A big, silly birb…'
I got to work sketching the basics. After listening to literal hours of telepathic transmissions, I felt like an expert on the local religion—which was already simple to understand.
There were a bunch of gods, half of which were related to and/or married to another. Some of them looked like animals or had extra limbs or rode strange steeds. Some were probably worshiped and known about only in a region where they were made up.
Without changing his name, I declared Dalmanrach a god of wisdom that hatched from a giant sky egg when the cataclysms came to the world. He reminded me of the Ancient Egyptian god of wisdom Thoth, who also had a bird's head, so it was a natural fit.
As for the existing god of wisdom—he could share.
For his myth, I wrote a legend of the dodo. This was a terrifying dragon that was born wingless because of a curse, and because of that, was angrily wandering around and killing mortals.
But Dalmanrach met it and told it a magic word that calmed the beast's anger. Then Dalmanrach sat on the dodo and they rode into the sunset.
And that was why Dalmanrach had dodo's head. One could say that the line of events wasn't quite lining up, but this was a myth. It didn't have to have perfect sense. If anything, lacking some sense gave it extra weight.
'A new god? This will be a challenge… for someone else, because I, Agent Whisper, will deal with it perfectly, Father!' Whisper replied to me. 'The humans will believe whatever we tell them to, no matter what it takes!'
The telepathic chain didn't convey the self-assurance in her thoughts, but the text was enough.
I heard plenty about her work in coordinating Agents and soldiers in human lands. Although both Chief Agent and Commander Bloodimina considered her to be mostly an envoy, I knew that talking as much as Whisper did was hard work.
But she had a talent for it.
'Make Explanatory check this legend through for how convincing it sounds before giving it to Farini… If he finds it unconvincing, it will need to be edited,' I sent back to her. 'It's very important that he will build a temple for the new god as soon as possible, even if the temple is small. People must also worship Dalmanrach. Arrange some fake "miracles" if you need to, although I guess people who already heard voices of "guardians" won't believe so easily that they hear from a god.'
A few minutes later, I received an answer. Although a telepathic chain was an incredibly fast way to send messages, it had to be repeated dozens of times to reach its final destination by now. Even with relatively shorter messages, there was a delay in answer.
Long messages, like the full myth of Dalmanrach, took hours to be relayed. Because of this, I have arranged to increase the bandwidth of the telepathic chain by adding more telepaths to the positions.
And extra bees as support personnel. And more shifts, so nobody was stuck in these solitary positions for too long.
Despite all this, the telepathic chain was still far from instantaneous.
While I waited, I had time to read some other reports I put off because I was writing legends. This was multitasking!
'Farini will be only happy to hear that there are more divine protectors for humanity than he knew of, Father—I don't need to talk to him to know that. But I will follow your instructions—I know well enough that you know better! I will report my progress.'
Perhaps I should start introducing rules to make the messages shorter. Something to think about while Dalmanrach's quest is being completed.
Or, more realistically, until there was a problem with it I needed to solve.
'Father, Farini accepted the news as well as I expected. Those who were already devout to bees did the same, and most people in his army just believe whatever he says! Researcher Explanatory made up some prayers that they now say to Dalmanrach. But creating a temple becomes a problem,' Whisper messaged me three days later. 'Farini ordered a human builder to plan its building, but he couldn't even decide how a temple will look until I told Farini to force him to decide!'
I let out a breath, but this wasn't the end of the message yet.
'But now he can't finish planning the practical parts of the designs, claiming that it will all fall apart if he's not precise. I fear this might take too long, Father. Farini and Agents already searches for more human builders to do this—but those who can build temples are surprisingly rare, so the project will be delayed, Father. You must know this!'
The telepath who relayed the message signaled its end.
I huffed and scoffed.
Was Farini trying to build Notre Dame there?
The temple had to be *built* by human worshipers… Nobody said a thing about who had to be its architect!