He remembers dying. He has died many times, but this death was unlike those; this death, He had every reason to suspect was forever (there'd been no way to check, whether His immortality method would still hold his spirit in the Material world if He died outside it, as a god, not by violence to some trivial physical form but by the sudden and utter destruction of His magic, His people, His mind, His city, until not enough remains to hold it together as it's scattered -

He does not know how long it took. It felt like centuries, bits and pieces trying to glue themselves back together and being systematically shredded again. 

He does not remember who killed him. He remembers his careful and firmly calculated conviction that the opposition of the evil gods would not be enough, that to lose He would have to be betrayed, but He does not remember ever knowing who betrayed Him. He remembers taking that conviction with Him as he dissolved, because on the off chance that He could start over again He needed to start over with that, He would be lost for sure if He forgot that for a second -

He remembers some other things, too. They're jumbled, the product of an entirely different sort of mind, and they fade next to the terrifying gripping salience of the memory of His death, but they're there. He remembers His city in Axis, bright and bustling and beautiful, humming with the delight of people going about free, safe, happy lives. He remembers coils spinning and a glass bulb lighting. He remembers a woman, bold and demanding, Chelish, new to Her powers, her sharp eyes watery - "I knew you had a plan, I knew you were never resigned to this - can we make it happen faster -"

He remembers stepping into a quiet place, like a library, but not full of books, walking through it looking for - 

- "Of course I have all of your records," Abadar says - not says but that's how it's rendering now, as this distinctly human mind tries to reach for the scraps of the memory - "I save every work of mortal hands, that none of it might ever be lost."

"Why don't you tell them that," He'd said, "They'd - they'd want to know -"

"Huh. I never really thought about it."

And tangled in with that, He remembers some things that aren't of this life, memories of memories He's carried through since the beginning, and ones reclaimed in Abadar's First Vault - an underwater city - an alien voice, thrumming with approval - you care so much, maybe too much - 

- men like you and I should not rule, I have seen what becomes of us when we do - 

- flying across the ocean to see what became of Azlantl, and seeing only ocean as far as the eye could see, ocean and a dozen little barrier islands, barely peeking out above the sea -

- and choosing clerics, over and over again, the work He thought He'd never tire of and eventually did, looking into the hearts of men and seeing the brightly-burning spark that'd mean they'd fight, with this, for the right things or at least for the things that in expectation seemed right to them -

- there are a dozen other memories interpretable barely at all, made up mostly of searing some-sensation and overwhelming some-emotion, fitted very poorly into this human head which now hurts very very badly -

His head hurts and he's so thoroughly disoriented, confused, scared, he doesn't know where he is - doesn't know when - but, the last time that he remembers anything at all, it was very, very much not safe.

Betrayed. 

He hangs onto that, and tries to pull the other fragments together around it - the shining city - the proud voice - the woman's bright-blazing hope–

He feels three-quarters blind; he feels claustrophobic in his own head, that can no longer hold all of the pieces that matter.

But he's still here. He still exists - or something does... 

Orient. Where is he? 

It's a two room house, made of stone. It had a window, now boarded up, and a roof, now leaking; the wind is howling and the walls are lashed with sheets of rain and there are other people in here, two women and four young children, sleeping, whatever movement he has made thoroughly covered by the storm.

(This body knows how long it has been like this - three weeks, since the day Aroden was supposed to return. The fields are all flooded and his sister and her children are here because their house blew apart, in the winds, ripped right out of the ground and sent tumbling off through the sky and hit one of the children on the head on the way out - he didn't make it -)

–oh. 

He's still here, as long as anything is left at all he can't give up, but - but he can't look for the next step forward, right now.

He rolls over - moving awkwardly, the shape of his mind not quite fitting the shape of his body, but fortunately the body can make habitual movements without his thinking about it too hard - and he covers his face with his hands, and weeps, silently. For the man this body used to belong to, the price he was used to paying, once, but had hoped never to pay again. For the dead child. For the crushing defeat, the betrayal, and the damage it must have done everywhere, not just here.

One of the children whimpers. One of the women rolls over to soothe her. Mumbles a nursery rhyme, wearily.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride. If turnips were swords, I'd wear one by my side. If "ifs" and "ands" were pots and pans, There'd be no work for tinkers' hands.

There's a small shrine, on the boarded-up windowsill. It has a woodcut of Aroden and a silvered metal with Iomedae and a painstakingly written list of relatives, because the priest had said that in the Age of Glory the dead could be returned, and it would help to know who had prepared a dinner and a bed for them.

Focus. He can grieve later. 

He can't stay here. It hurts, because - what are these poor people even going to do - but the damage is already done, there, he can't give them back the person whose body he stole. And it's only going to be worse if he waits until they ask questions. 

He lies still, waits for the mother and child to both be asleep again. 

...Does his current body have any magical abilities. (He's not even sure what to look for, at first, it's been so, so long since he was human.) 

He is a farmer in good health, age 28, he can read and do a bit of accounting, and he has absolutely no magical training whatsoever. The town has a wizard, who they send their laundry to in good years where there's spare money. He knows that wizards need a spellbook, and need to be clever, though the fellow who does the laundry doesn't seem that clever. 

Well, it's something anyway. The farmer is probably reasonably clever, if he can read - he can't remember if the immortality setup was meant to select for that at all.

It is unfortunate that he's about to head out into a storm and has no magic to do anything about it, but he doesn't see a better option, trying to impersonate a dead family member for days or weeks seems worse. 

When he's confident that everyone else in the cottage is soundly asleep, he gets up, moving slowly and cautiously, the sound of the storm covering any noise he makes. 

No one wakes up. 

He pauses to check if there are any warm and/or waterproof clothes by the door; he's reluctant to steal more from these people even if they have money, but it would be very stupid to risk dying of exposure. 

He has a long warm coat that looks like it would stand up to an ordinary rainstorm, though maybe not this one.

He takes it, along with the sturdiest available footwear, and then opens the door very quickly and slips out and shuts it without looking back. 

The winds have calmed down a little bit, from how intensely they must have been blowing to cause the devastation that can be seen all around him. It's still raining quite hard; there's still water six inches to a foot deep, and in the places where the water is running it's running very fast. 

The town isn't far away.

Then he'll head for the town, head tucked in against the rain. Not that he's sure what he's going to do once he gets there. 

There's a temple to Aroden and a temple to Erastil. There is an open-air market, the stalls deserted. There are some houses, including the one where the wizard who takes laundry lives.

He spends a while staring in frustration at laundry-wizard's house. 

It very likely has some sort of ward on it. Which he can't even see. (Feeling blind is almost the worst part, right now.) It - probably isn't that good a ward, he doesn't think the man can be very high level, since he didn't come across to the previous inhabitant of this body as very sharp, and if he were a good wizard he'd have better things to do than laundry. Still, he has magic and right now Aroden has nothing. 

He could check the temple to Aroden, anything in it arguably sort of belongs to him, but it's unlikely to have useful magical artifacts.

After a little more thought, and trawling through any context on human magic that he can dig up or re-derive from first principles, he turns and scopes out the area for nearby penned livestock. A low-level wizard might be able to ward his house, but it would probably be a one-time-use spell, so he needs a diversion. 

This is a dead goat. This is a live goat, but not very alive. These chickens are super dead.

He has to briefly turn away, blinking back tears. 

Sigh. What happens if he gingerly picks up one of the (more recently-dead) chicken corpses, and - gently tosses it at the wizard's door? He isn't sure if the wards are only against living things, but if not, it shouldn't make a loud enough thump to wake the man, in which case he can give a go at coaxing the not-very-alive goat to move under its own power. 

Nothing happens with the dead chicken. 

Nothing happens with the live goat, either. Maybe the wizard decided to spend his probably-very-limited spells elsewhere.

Well, it's certainly neither the kind of place nor the kind of weather where break-ins by neighbours seem like the most likely threat. 

He tiptoes around, scoping out windows. (Does his host-body seem to have any memories of seeing inside the house?) 

His wife usually took the laundry over. He's met the man at church, can call a face to mind, but not a layout of the house. 

The windows are boarded up because of the horrible rainstorm.

Which makes perfect sense and is very inconvenient. 

Does the man lock his door at night. 

He slides a bar across the door, probably more to keep it from blowing open than to keep out neighbors.

Aroden spends a minute seeing if there's any way to jimmy the bar loose from the outside - maybe with the aid of a stick he can snap off from a nearby blown-down tree bough - and if not he'll check the boards on one of the windows that from house-layout seems least likely to open onto the man's bedroom.