Om elbowed aside a minor Goddess of Plenty.
There were dice floating just above the world, and a mess of little clay figures and gaming counters. You didn't need to be even slightly omnipotent to know what was going on.
“He hid by nose!”
Om turned around.
“I never forget a face, friend. Just take yours away, right? While you still have some left?”
He turned back to the game.
“S'cuse me,” said a voice by his waist. He looked down at a very large newt.
“Yes?”
“You not supposed do that here. No Smiting. Not up here. It the rules. You want fight, you get your humans fight his humans.”
“Who're you?”
“P'tang-P'tang, me.”
“You're a god?”
“Definite.”
“Yeah? How many worshipers have you got?”
“Fifty-one!”
The newt looked at him hopefully, and added, “Is that lots? Can't count.”
It pointed at a rather crudely molded figure on the beach in Omnia and said, “But got a stake!”
Om looked at the figure of the little fisherman.
“When he dies, you'll have fifty worshippers,” he said.
“That more or less than fifty-one?”
“A lot less.”
“Definite?”
“Yes.”
“No one tell me that.”
There were several dozen gods watching the beach. Om vaguely remembered the Ephebian statues. There was the goddess with the badly carved owl. Yes.
Om rubbed his head. This wasn't god-like thinking. It seemed simpler when you were up here. It was all a game. You forgot that it wasn't a game down there. People died. Bits got chopped off. We're like eagles up here, he thought. Sometimes we show a tortoise how to flY.
Then we let go.
He said, to the occult world in general, “There's people going to die down there.”
A Tsortean God of the Sun did not even bother to look round.
“That's what they're for,” he said. In his hand he was holding a dice box that looked very much like a human skull with rubies in the eye-sockets.