The miracles should have worked.
Jophyr had stood tall in the village square, hands outstretched, glowing like the sun on laundry day, and declared a field blessed. He had used the proper phrasing, the right amount of sparkle, and, at least, two dramatic pauses.
The field promptly flooded.
It wasn't a gentle, nourishing irrigation. It was a full-blown, ankle-deep, root-rotting swamp. The scarecrow drifted away like it had someplace better to be. It probably did.
Snik Snak crossed his arms as the villagers stared in stunned silence, the muddy water creeping toward their shrine to the Blessed Potato. "Welp. That's one way to fertilize."
"That was not supposed to happen," Jophyr said. He was trying to push the water away using celestial light, but it only made the water shimmer. Ominously.
It was the first of many miracles to go wrong that week.
Snik Snak's plan, hastily scribbled on a scrap of paper, was to convince the villagers they had gotten the wrong deities. Or prophets. Or…whatever they thought Jophyr and Snik Snak were supposed to be.
Step One: Embarrass themselves. Consistently.
Step Two: Hope the villagers found someone else to build statues of.
Despite understanding, and wishing, that this needed to end, Jophyr had been reluctant at first. Misrepresenting divine authority and all. But Snik Snak persuaded him. The villagers were worshipping a cabbage with his face on it, after all.
And so began the Age of Incompetent Miracles.
Blessing a child's doll?
It exploded into glitter. Actual, aerodynamic glitter. The family's cat is still finding flakes of it in places cats were never meant to sparkle.
Attempting to calm a dog?
It began speaking fluent interpretive dance. The dog has since been asked to lead morning prayers.
Anointing a goat?
That one backfired so spectacularly the goat now runs a local dispute mediation circle. She's booked through next month.
Then there were the crops.
With his eyes glowing, Jophyr knelt before a field of tomatoes and declared them sanctified.
They grew teeth.
Actual, visible molars. One snapped at a passing squirrel.
By day three, the villagers began whispering.
By day five, they started arguing.
"It's a test!" "It's a curse!" "He's lost his favor!" "The cabbage has better posture!"
That last one stung a little.
The faith fractured like an overbaked biscotti. A group of farmers began offering prayers to the goat. The splinter cell started taking diet advice from Snik Snak's discarded grocery list, which had included the words "crispy thing, maybe edible".
Jophyr sat, slumped against the wall, glitter still stuck to his robes. "This is awful," he said. "This misleading. How will they find the peace they desire?"
Snik Snak had been digging through an old satchel of temple paperwork while Jophyr mused. It was mostly receipts, primitive sketches of divine llamas, and one suspiciously greasy scroll titled "Prophetic Laundry Tips".
Then he stopped. "Glowstick. You might want to see this."
He held up a parchment, ancient and brittle, bearing the unmistakable seal of Tyr.
It read:
By decree of holy judgment, let this village bear the mark of divine cuation. Its people shall know no clarity, that they may better understand faith through absence.
Jophyr read it twice, then a third time for good measure. His aura dimmed. "They weren't waiting for salvation. They were punished into longing for it."
Snik Snak took the parchment and folded it carefully. "And you were the nearest glowing thing that looked like hope."
The celestial didn't respond. He stood up and looked out at the villagers.
The dog was mid-pirouette.
"It is time for a most drastic approach."
They staged their fall from grace.
It started with an announcement. Their time on this mortal plane was over, their test complete, and the paperwork filed in triplicate with the Department of Divine Ephemera. Jophyr spoke solemnly of ethereal cycles and radiant departures, while Snik Snak improvised a rousing addendum about the starch-based transfiguration of fate – something involving potatoes, reincarnation, and a suspiciously specific warning about reheating leftovers.
The pair stood in the square, backs straight, expressions serene. They were surrounded by confused, but reverent villagers desperate to find spiritual meaning from the pair's mismatched socks and Snik Snak's mid-speech belch (immediately deemed an omen of thunder).
The villagers wept. Someone fainted into a flower bed with the theatrical flair of an amateur actor and full-time gossip. A bard hummed softly – their song would later be known as "The Ascension Dirge of the Glorious Glowing Goatlings". A trembling child stepped forward and offered one of the molars plucked from one of the more aggressive heirloom tomatoes. It had been wrapped in a clean handkerchief that had been monogrammed with Snik Snak's initials with a glittered glue.
Jophyr had chosen a pose he had once seen in a stained glass window. A blinding flash of light burst around him. Chickens screamed. Bread glowed. A particularly startled duck took flight straight into a clothesline. Jophyr activated every ounce of divine shimmer he had left, which included a gentle chime, three sparkles shaped like exclamation marks, and a brief aromatic aura that smelled of rosemary.
Snik Snak clapped his hands together and hurriedly whispered a few arcane syllables under his breath. A cloud of fog billowed outward and the villagers gasped as the square vanished into a thick mist. Then, without missing a beat, Snik Snak grabbed Jophyr and cast another spell to muffle their footsteps and cloak their escape in a kind of supernatural stealth reserved for smugglers and late-night snack thieves.
"Quickly," Snik Snak hissed. "This is our cue."
The pair bolted through the fog, practically invisible to the distracted growd behind them. Unfortunately, not to shrubbery or errant robe hems.
Jophyr's robe snagged on a bush.
The kobold wizard tripped over it.
"Keep running!" Jophyr whisper-yelled, leaning down to help the wizard.
"I'm trying! Get your robe under control!"
The villagers stared into the dissipating fog, mouths agape.
"They're gone," someone whispered. "Back to the heavens."
"Or sideways," another replied. "The cabbage never did explain the fourth dimension."
Jophyr and Snik Snak didn't stop running until the village had disappeared behind two hills, a crooked fence, and one unusually judgmental cow who watched their escape with the expression of someone who had seen too much and never approved of any of it. A commemorative plaque would later be placed in that spot, and is still there today. It reads "Here ascended the Great Ones. Beware the Tomatoes".
The pair staggered into a clearing and collapsed beside a fallen log, their breaths coming in sharp wheezes. Small sparkles flitted around Jophyr, remnants of his divine spell.
Snik Snak removed his hood and lay flat on the grass, limbs splayed out. "So," he panted, "do we talk about how terrifying it is that your old boss declared divine punishment via paperwork?"
The celestial, sitting with his arms draped across his knees, nodded slowly. "We talk about it. We figure out what else he has done."
There was a pause filled only by the wind and a distant, almost menacing sound of something rustling in a bush with a tomato-like squish.
"After a nap," Snik Snak sighed. "Don't bless anything. If you do, I'm throwing a tomato."
"One of mine or one of yours?"
Snik Snak stared up at the sky. "If it has teeth, it counts as yours."
Jophyr smiled softly. "That's a fair metric."
They lay in silence for a moment.
"We're never doing that again."
"Agreed."
Another pause.
"Except maybe the smoke," Snik Snak said. "The fog was a nice touch."
"It was effective," Jophyr admitted. "It smelled faintly of elderberries."
"Glowstick, I swear if you turn elderberries divine, I'm moving to the Underdark."