As much as godhood and living for a very long time is awesome, it comes with certain drawbacks - like having to follow a set of rules, having to keep the universe intact by existing/performing certain functions, and being susceptible to a very small set of absurdly powerful binding spells known by some HARDCORE HUMAN MAGES. The god-binding magic is difficult to execute (probably requires a lot of time, effort, blood sacrifice, and eyes of newt), somewhat hard to maintain, and incredibly dangerous because chances are, when the god is unbound, it’s going to be EXTREMELY PISSED.

But while it’s bound, its PHENOMENAL COSMIC POWERS are going to be nerfed to a manageable level, and it’s going to look human (for the most part). This happens to Aalit for at least a year or so, and…well, basically, the whole ordeal went almost exactly like Journey to the West, where Sun Wukong is a grumpy teenage winter god dragged along to the Godless Lands by a ragtag bunch of misfits with a sorcerer in tow. He is mostly supposed to act as muscle for these fools, and commune with/intimidate the hell out of lesser spirits along the way. He’s not happy about the ordeal, unfortunately.

In the end, he gets unbound, but the spell is not completely broken, so he has to hoof it back to his mountain and go ask Vantao (the sun) to undo it. Because Vantao is a deity who’s ALL ABOUT magic - unlike her brother (who is the night god of ARCANE KNOWLEDGE and whom I haven’t named yet), she is responsible for negating and destroying magic instead of propagating it. So she does.

Knowing that, however, it’s not surprising that Aalit is KIND OF LEERY at the knife she’s swinging around - she could potentially hurt him. And not in the human, bleedy way, either.