“It is fascinating how effective punishments based around social rejection can be with Sylvans!”

“Yes, Sasarai.”

“I developed an experimental study you see, dividing up a small population into two groups.”

“I am aware of basic methodology Sasarai.”

“Of course you are Dyrena, but you see for the first group I made sure that any misdeeds were met with stern corporal punishments, as I’d intended to utilize originally, and for the second group, I employed those same corporal punishments!”

“That seems rather…”

“On the offenders family members!”

“…in character. Yes, that comes as no surprise at all I suppose.”

“Can you imagine the results.”

“Likely better than you can.”

“Why the second group showed a nineteen percent reduction is doctrinal violations after a single week! This is so wonderful.”

“It is for someone I suppose.”

“I’d had a factor in my population graphs to account for all of the ones I was going to have to sacrifice as an example to keep the others in line. Or rather that the divine tree would exact retribution on. With this I can work with a smaller, more elite population and they’ll be even stricter about adhering to doctrine than planned! Oh thank you so much for the insight into working within the Sylvan social constraints, Dyrena. This is going to yield such a rich bounty!”

“Don’t mention it. Literally. I don’t want my name spoken of in relation to this ‘discovery’ at all.”

– High Accessor Dyrena gaining an understanding that she may have overestimated the intelligence of her co-conspirators.

I’d never been present when a new Blessed was chosen by their deity, arguably not even when I was, since Draconia choosing me and my be aware of that fact were separate by a span measured in years. With Fiddler Jast though it was hard to miss the transition from ‘very much a dying Goblin’ to ‘Blessed of Small Problems’. That the sheer force of his investiture lifted him a good two feet into the air as his flesh reknit and and his bones all snapped back into their proper place was a tiny bit of a give away from the rest of the people in the car too.

“Woah!” Kam said, ever the master of eloquence and clarity.

To be fair to him, my own contribution to the ‘conversation’ was mute silence at first.

Was it like this with me, ever? I asked, sharing my thoughts only with Draconia.

For me? No. Not at all. I rejoiced quite a lot more when you appeared. From how Draconia spoke I was sure she was being serious but I couldn’t imagine how that would be true.

I don’t recall floating, I said.

That came later, Draconia said. In your case, you weren’t at death’s door nor had you been unimaginably imprisoned for the better part of two centuries. I had slightly more cause to rejoice than you did, you see.

And I did. All the years I called her my demon and she didn’t hate me because I had been freedom for her and even if she’d been a demon, she’s been MY demon.

“Thank you,” Fiddler said, or was it Fiddler and Polsguls? “We owe you…”

“Nothing,” I said before an inadvisable promise was made. Anything they owed me would be mine and owning someone’s promise would give me ownership over a piece of them. I’d pushed on that line a lot farther than I was comfortable with to save my family. I was not about claim dominion over a stranger who’d been in no position to refuse what I’d given to him.

No. We do…Polsfuls tried to put in directly, but Draconia shut him down like I had.

Small Problems, it is we who owe you. This offering of a Blessed cannot cover the loss of your peoples, but let is be a first step towards a renewed friendship.

As you would have it Guardian and Treasure, and I felt Polsgul’s presence withdraw to the normal intensity of the divine with the other Blessed.

“Hey, if you can do that again, we got a lot more injured here still,” Kam said.

True to his word, he was applying what first aid he could to a Crowkin whose left wing had been broken.

“I’m okay, this won’t kill me,” Iskil, the Crowkin said. “Help the others.”

“We will,” Fiddler and I said in unintended unison.

I looked to him for confirmation that he was capable of helping the others and he nodded.

“Not with serious wounds, but leave the little stuff to me,” he said.

‘Little’ in this case seemed to mean ‘not within minutes of dying’ and since there’d been a lot of incidental injuries as the assassins tore through the car, that meant there was plenty to keep him busy.

My skills on the other hand were needed for the people who were near death, and, unfortunately, they were not enough.

At least not on my own.

For these, we will need Diyas, Draconia said. She holds the Domain of Healers. You have one of her fragments, call on it if you can.

Calling on Diyas was both either and harder the Polsguls had been. Her power was in my hands before I fully thought about – because I’d followed her path as well, and bore a mundane version of her blessing already in my gifts.

With a need in front of us, the power of the God of Healers was all too happy to send grace coursing through me and help me manipulate it into the forms the injured needed.

I’m sure with each person I healed, there were sighs of relief and a chorus of appreciation, but I heard none of it. Draconia had stood aside to allow Diyas to work through me and my mind swam with a deeper understanding of bodies and their functions. With each person we healed I saw a river of cells, each little one marching around in a cycle of life, carrying every precious things the body needed. I felt issues, blockages, cuts and breaks and understood the ones we could leave for the body to heal itself and which would need a miracle to return to a state where the whole system wouldn’t collapse.

Everyone’s biology was so different, and yet to Diyas we were all barely noticeable variations on the same core template. Even the dead held lessons, though they lay beyond my or Diyas’ ability to restore.

I’m not sure how much time I spent in that strange, twilight state of knowing everything and being nearly divorced from the material world, but when it came to an end it came to an abrupt one.

The domain of healing I’d been wrapping within was yanked away from me, by someone with a greater claim. With Polsguls, I could have fought to prevent the Fiddler’s Blessing, stating my claim and backing it with Draconia’s power, but not so with Diyas.

Someone was already the Blessed of Healing and, while they had done me the courtesy of allowing me to call on Diyas for the injured and the dying around me, once that need was passed, theirs exerted itself.

I wished I could have communicated with them, but while I could feel their strength and purpose in the instant they called Diya’s fragment back to join the other fragments they held, where they were and even who they were was impossible to tell.

“You did good work there but I’m betting you’re…” Theia started to say only to interrupt herself so she could catch me as a toppled over, “…a bit of hand and some food.”

It was ridiculous. I hadn’t been using my own strength. Diyas had done as the real work. Despite that however, I was very definitely not capable of walking or even standing upright on my own. 

I felt consciousness yearning to slip away and my thoughts grew a trifle fuzzy.

Just like Theia.

Mmm.

Warm fuzzy thoughts against a warm fuzzy girl.

I felt my head nod forward and my knees buckle slightly.

“Need a hand? Be easier to carry her together,” Kam said, putting my other arm around his shoulder so I could dangle between the two of them.

“Probably a good idea. I’d hate to just drop her if more assassins show up,” Theia said, in a tone that told me she would probably drop me, kill all of them and still catch me before my head bonked on the floor.

“We should adjourn to my study,” Helgon said, “Or one of them at any rate. We have quite a few more guests than I’ve been used to entertaining lately.”

Helgon was here?

And we weren’t moving anymore?

I think I might have micro-napped for a moment or two.

But where were my parents?

“I’ve sent them on to their own rooms,” Helgon said. “There are some people they need to speak with.”

People? Who? They didn’t know anyone on the train. They couldn’t. 

“Is she going to be okay?” Kam asked. I wondered for a moment why he was concerned about my mother. Had she been hurt when I wasn’t looking?

Despite my fatigue though, a moment later I figured out that he was talking about me.

“I’m fine,” I said, shaking my head to throw away the fatigue that seemed to be piling up on me.

“No you’re not,” Theia said. “You healed thirty seven people without a break.”

“That wasn’t me,” I said. “It was Diyas.”

“Yeah. Using your body,” Theia said. “That kind of thing doesn’t come free.”

“I am honestly surprised you are as undamaged as you seem to be, though I suspect Diyas’s fragment wouldn’t have pushed you to the point of actual injury as that’s contrary to her role,” Helgon said.

“I’m fine. I’m used to healing. I was the best in my class,” I said.

“You were fourth, and you never healed the things you healed back there,” Kam said.

“We all tied for first,” I insisted, as though that was an important distinction, when he was, in fact correct. “I’m fine. What’s up with mother and father?”

“You’re fine? Okay you can walk on your own then right?”

Of course I could. 

That I was hanging helplessly on Theia a moment later as Kam ducked out from under my arm did not mean that he was right and I was wrong.

“One of the restoration pods then I should think,” Helgon said as Kam took my arm and half my weight from a smirking Theia.

“What’s a restoration pod?” I asked, unsure if I should be dreading what awaited me or welcoming it.

“An improved form of bedding,” Helgon said. “Newly refurbished too. I suppose ‘two’ isn’t a plethora of guests too exhausted to stand, but it’s a trend I am prepared for! Or rather, prepared for after the first one.”

“Don’t we need to talk about stuff? Sasarai stuff?” I asked, my fatigue only growing the farther I had to walk.

“We will,” Theia said. “We made out a lot better than any of us ever dreamed, so there’s a whole bunch of plans we need to review and reconsider. Most of them have nothing to do with the Garden or Sasarai though. Don’t worry, we’ll leave all that till you’re conscious again.”

Also, I will attend to the discussion while you recover, Draconia said, Rest in comfort and peace for now.

“Okay,” I said. “But what about my mother and father.”

“They’ll be here when you wake up,” Kam said. “You know them, they’re not going to want to go anywhere until they hear everything about everything.”

I heard him.

And I believed him.

But something told me he wasn’t right.

They were mine. I’d claimed them. That meant I could reach out and feel where they were, and how they were doing. I didn’t want to do that uninvited, but despite the fatigue, I had to know. I had to feel that they were okay. I had to…

They weren’t there.

They hadn’t died. They hadn’t been taken.

They just weren’t mine anymore.

They’d cast me out.

“But did you need to make such a mess Sasarai, I mean we are going to be weeks getting this conference room to a point where it’s not mistaken as an abattoir.”

“I’m sorry Helgon, but what exactly would be the point of showing mercy towards those who might have exposed us? Do you think if the slightest hint of what we have planned were to reach divine ears, we would fare any better than this?”

“Well of course we would. Should one deity or another hear of our scheme we’d be reduced to ashes in an instant. Much cleaner than this. I mean, come now, there are splatter stains above the drapes. That’s simply needless.”

“Far from it. These were holy adherents to twelve different faiths. Their durability and regenerative capacity had to be accounted for.”

“Sasarai, there are miracles of healing, there are contingency spells, and there are post-mortem revivification techniques. Not a single one of those requires the dissociation of every bodily cell from every other one to counteract. I mean, come now, a single suppression spell and you could have silenced them all with a cantrip. We’re supposed to be better than…whatever this was.”

“It’s because we are better than they are that this is permissible. Perhaps you’re correct and perhaps you’re not. The important thing is that it is done and that it was done decisively.”

“Perhaps in the future we might attempt to do things correctly as well.”

– the moment when High Accessor Sasarai decided he was going to personally ensure High Accessor Helgon did not enjoy divine status a moment longer than necessary.

We could have hidden. Theia was the Blessed of Night, and Umbrielle was right there with us, giving Theia and the rest of us her full attention.

Even worse for the assassins that Sasarai had sent after us, we had Kalkit with us.

Do you know what assassins rely on? I hadn’t ever thought about, mostly because I thought assassins were a relic of the world that had fallen. We’d learned about them in history as an example of how duplicitous the ancient world’s nations had been. That Sasarai could conjure up a squad of them on command should have come as a surprise, it was decidedly out of character for the First Tender and contrary to every bit of doctrine he’d invented for us. Really though, he’d lost the ability to surprise me the moment I’d understand who Draconia really was.

And that’s why the assassins were doomed the moment they stepped on the train. What they needed most was surprise. Even if Sasarai had given them enough power to simply overwhelm us, a straightforward attack would have been disastrous for him.

Best case, they killed us and none of us got away. The chance that the fight of that magnitude would have escape the notice of the other Neoterics was nonexistent. The fact that I’d escaped from the garden as a roaring dragon wasn’t exactly something that was easy to hide either, but the Draconia, Umbrielle and Helgon seemed to think that the impromptu festival Sasarai had thrown would leave the other Neoterics to chalk up the light show as ‘Sasarai being a weirdo’, or him testing out a new source of faith generation as he’d done many times in the past.

One unexplained oddity wasn’t going to be enough for them to risk moving on, two on the other hand, or one display that he was absolutely not in control any longer? They’d fall all over themselves to claim his power before anyone else could.

The assassins Sasarai sent weren’t going to meet a ‘best case’ scenario (from their perspective though) because Sasarai didn’t know we had a Kalkit and trying to ambush a Blessed of Secrets was the definition of a catastrophically bad idea.

With less than half a minute to plan we didn’t have time for to belabour over elaborate schemes, but with the Blessed of Battle to lead us and forewarning we didn’t exactly need complicated plans either.

The first assassin to strike used a potent paralysis gas as their weapon of choice.

It was a smart move. Lyostine Gas was a readily produced byproduct of the aetheric lighting common in both the Garden and the Low City. Gathering a concentration of it was challenging since there wasn’t much released during a day of manufacturing, but its presence wouldn’t have been noticed since it was odorless and invisible.

Had the gas worked as intended, I would have been paralyzed before I was aware anything was wrong, with Theia likely joining me in helplessness. I don’t think, with her mechanical parts, Xalaria would have been as effected, but since I wasn’t keen on either asking Xalarai to fight alone, or being paralyzed in general, I called on my gift with the winds and blew the gas directly back out of the room.

One assassin down, temporarily, twenty three more to go.

I caught the scent of the other assassins thanks to Draconia’s aid, and have to admit to being more than a little surprised that there were so many of them.  Sasarai, it seemed, was not interested in risking undercommitting his forces to the effort.

The next assassin dropped down from the shadow above my seat, an obsidian blade aimed directly at my heart.

Oddly, that was not the best kill-shot he could have tried for. Sasarai knew the kind of healing gifts I had. If he’d been interested in killing me (and never recovering his divine fragments) he would have instructed them to strike for my brain (which would have been a nice confirmation that I had one given how much I’d seemingly lost my mind with my recent decisions).

Had the assassin gone for a heart strike a day or so earlier, he would have enjoyed a great deal more success. My options for survival would have been ‘have Theia knock him away first’ or ‘Xalaria steps in and block the blow for me’. 

The poor assassin was just a little late for any of that however. As he descended, I looked up and locked my gaze onto his. He was a Sylvan. And a demon, I think. Or at least a pretty nasty ancestor of some kind. What he wasn’t however was used to a Sylvan staring back at him with draconic eyes blazing with glee.

The obsidian blade shattering on my chest probably also came as a surprise.

I mean, when Draconia said she could protect me? Yeah. She was not kidding.

The clawed hand that caught the assassin by the throat and slammed him to the ground wasn’t something he saw coming either, and while it was technically my hand, its strength was very definitely not my own.

The fact that the assassin was battered into unconsciousness on the floor of the car with one sharp move, but not driven through the floor of the train and tossed under the wheels was a shown of supreme restraint on Draconia’s part.

Sure, Xalaria had said “capture them, no killing” but she wasn’t technically the boss of any of us.

That she had a good point was more compelling though, even for someone with Draconia’s level of long suppressed rage. Dead assassins weren’t a tool we could use. Living ones might be useful in convincing Sasarai to turn his thoughts and prayers towards hoping we’d leave him alone.

I wasn’t going to of course, but he didn’t have a Kalkit to tell him that.

Elsewhere in the train car, the others were dealing with the next waves of assassins in the own manner. Xalaria hadn’t bothered to draw a weapon at all. When two assassins materialized in front and behind her, she simply used one to bludgeon the other one. I heard bones crack, but neither one burst like a balloon so I suspected she was holding back too.

Kalkit avoided the assassins that were targeting them via the expedient of hopping on Fulgrox’s shoulder and letting the Blessed of the Harvest convince the assassins that approaching someone that large who was wielding threshing knife was, perhaps not the wisest move they could choose to make.

Theia took the simpler approach of simply not being there. The assassins who appeared in the room knew where she’d been but the strike at someone sitting in her seat did nothing more than ruin the upholstery of the seat back.

That assassin clutched his throat, trying thrash to freedom only to fall limp a few seconds later. We Sylvan consider ourselves kin to the Holy Tree and therefor believe that we grow like plants. We do however require blood, especially that it be delivered to our brains, and unlike a plant if that flow is stopped for even a brief moment, we tend to have issues remaining conscious.

Another assassin lunged out of nowhere, slashing at the spot where Theia had to have been holding the first assassin but a threshing knife pinned him arm through the bicep to the wall. 

It’s not like we were incapable of working together after all.

Another few tried to rush me at once, one appearing mid-leap to knock me through the curtained windows of the train. Theia stopped that one, and Fulgrox caught the next one, smashing him into an assassin he had splayed over a seat back.

The assassin’s strategy wasn’t the most terrible one they could have though and the third one to try found the opening the other two had missed. 

I was tempted to bite him. There was a good chance I could do so without fatal consequences, but Draconia suggested a different course of action.

So I let him knock me off the train.

Like I said, it wasn’t the worst possible strategy for the assassins, since it separated me from the other and let two more pile on as we crashed through the window.

They had made one small mistake though.

The train ran underground through a series of tunnels Helgon had arranged to create to connect several of the cities. Helgon hadn’t bothered digging through solid earth the whole distance though. To the greatest extent possible he’d made use of the nature caverns and pre-existing underground dwelling from before the Sunfall. That meant that when I let the assassins throw me off the train, I’d done so while we were passing through an old dwarven city-cavern the size of the Garden.

Which meant I could fly.

Being outside of the train also freed me in one other way, which I promptly displayed to them.

Breathing fire, as it turns out, is somewhat harder to deliver restrained blows with than threshing knives and unarmed attacks.

To my credit, one did survive!

I mean, they were a bit roasted. But, you know, conjured and enfleshed ancestor spirit. Kinda dead to start with? 

I chalked the drifting ashes of the other two up to at least not leaving mess for anyone else to clean up and soared back into through the broken window.

Unsurprisingly, there were twenty one disabled and/or unconscious assassins to which I add the final one I’d had to catch.

“We won’t have long to question them before Sasarai notices that they’ve been captured,” Xalaria said.

“You will have no time at all,” one of the assassins said, rising to his feet like his limbs were being pulled by invisible strings.

“Sasarai! How lovely to see you again my old comrade,” Helgon said, waving from his seat. “How is that perfectly secret vault working out for you?”

“I knew we should have razzed that city of yours to the ground,” Sasarai hissed from the assassin’s lips.

“Oh, you’re quite welcome to try. Do you know how many defenses are simply going to waste? I mean, please, do try. I’ve been, well I suppose not ‘dying’ to try out some new inventions, but you take my meaning.”

“I believe I do,” Sasarai said. “Which is why this group will not be allowed to reach your domain. Girl, thief, return to me now.”

I took a step forward until my brain caught up with the reflexive obedience that had been drilled into me.

“No.” It was unbelievably hard to say that. For all that I hated him, for all that I hated what he’d done, giving “The First Tender” a simple ‘no’ was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. “Yeah, no, not until I’m ready.”

“That was not a request,” Sasarai said. “Return now or your family’s will feed the roots.”

Far away, I could feel the truth of that. Kam’s panic. My mother’s confusion. My father’s terror. Sasarai was not bargaining and he would not hesitate.

“Treasure house? Why would I need a house for my treasure? I intend to fill my entire city with my treasures!”

“While we shall, of course, be preserving all of things which are dear to us, surely Helgon you must agree that some treasures will be  of a quality superior to all others.”

“Nonsense Sasarai. Any invention, any treatise, any idea whatsoever may lead me to new found wonders and understanding. I can no more prioritize my experiments than a father could choose a favorite child.”

“And should someone wish to steal away one of your children? How will you defend your precious things then if you make no arrangement for their defenses?”

“I feel that one of us is not entirely clear on the aims of our endeavor. It is my understanding that with the transfer of grace away from the conceptual maniforms which we nominally are bound to and serve beneath, we shall be gaining control of a concentration of force which will place us atop the peak of this world’s reality.”

“Yes. We shall be the gods of the new world.”

“Then I fail to see why that alone would not be sufficient protection from petty burglary?”

“Is the power of the gods sufficient to dissuade us from our current course?”

“No. Though to be fair, we are quite likely to fail spectacularly.”

“You’ve been listening to Dyrena too much.”

“She’s remarkably insightful. I don’t know why people have difficulty seeing that.”

“Oh. We don’t. We know exactly how dangerous Dyrena can be.”

“Indeed. It’s one of the few things that gives me hope our scheme will only backfire catastrophically.”

“I will never understand you Helgon.”

“Oh, I’m quite easy to understand Sasarai. I simply don’t see the point is setting up an incredibly well guarded vault, burying it under the repository of my power, filling it with stolen god bits, and then hoping everyone will simply forget its there and never bother me. Let anyone come for what is mine I say. The damn stuff is dangerous enough when I try to handle it, if they can survive, I might learn something. That let’s me not worry at all about the stories people might tell of a secret stash of wonders.”

– High Accessor’s Helgon and Sasarai’s disagreement which lead to the subsequent murder of the Silent Archives construction crew in an effort to prevent stories of its existence from spreading.

So, we were dead. I’d known that was what would happen the moment I tossed my old life aside. Learning that the only hope the First Tender had to survive was to kill us though, brought into sharp focus the fact that the accumulated power of several gods was about to be brought to bear on ending my life.

“It’s not all that bad,” Helgon said. “Take it from someone who’s dead, it’s an interesting sort of existence in its own way.”

“No offense, but I don’t think the rest of us get to be whatever is it you are,” Theia said.

“Of course not. You’ll be whoever it is you are without the burdens of the life you have now. No one else could be me. That’d be absurd. Who would I be then?”

“I think what she means is that when normal people die, they’re just gone. No one gets to linger on like you seem to be able to.” I don’t know what I was translating an idea that everyone probably already understood. Maybe because it felt good to reach for whatever shreds of clarity I could.

“Do…do you think your “normal people’?” Helgon asked.

“Blessed don’t hang around either,” Theia said. “We’re not immortal.”

“Of course not, you can’t be, that would defeat the whole purpose of the blessing.” Helgon was looking back and forth between the two of us, with side glances at the other Blessed as though we were children who no one had ever given even the most basic of doctrinal education.

“Before we get into that, we need to form our plans,” Xalaria said. “Sasarai will be already be moving against us. It won’t take him long to find the rail line or to follow it to us. Helgon, how defensible is your citadel.”

“Not at all,” Helgon said. “Please note as a reference that my fellow Neoterics had no trouble in waging their assault on me when they decided it was time to reduce our number by one more.”

“I’m not speaking about holding out against the eight remaining Neoterics. I’m only concerned about Sasarai and the forces he can send at us,” Xalarai said.

“Oh, you needn’t worry about him,” Helgon said. “Not at the moment at least.”

“You believe he will hesitate? About something this critical to his continued existence?” Xalaria asked, her expression shouting how idiotic a course of action that would be.

“Sasarai does not know who he’s dealing with, but he’ll be able to imagine a great deal,” Helgon said. “He’ll know for example that it had to be a Blessed of Night who stole his divine fragments – kudos on that young lady,” he nodded towards Theia, who shook her head.

“Wasn’t me. I couldn’t have taken more than two of them without drawing attention before I got out of the city,” she said, gesturing over to me.

“Yes. That’s what earns you the kudos,” Helgon said. “You see, your presence there will have left traces Sasarai can detect. He’ll know a Blessed of Night was there in his silly little vault. But he will also know the limits of what a Blessed of Night can do. For you to abscond with all of his fragments you would need to be old. Older than he is in point of fact.”

“Blessed don’t live that long, do they?” Theia asked.

“If they were normal people they certainly couldn’t.” The sparkle in Helgon’s ghostly eyes had to be simple mirth, not some hidden knowledge. “That all on its own will give Sasarai pause. A Blessed of Night that old is impossible. We would have sensed someone like that’s presence. Any of the Neoterics would be sure of that. Or rather we would be sure if it was the Blessed of anyone except for Night. With what Night has done for this world, our understanding of her capabilities has been, shall we say broadened.”

“He’s going to be paralyzed,” I said, knowing the fear that had to be creeping through the First Tenders heart.

“Yes. Exactly. Imagine discovering after centuries of being secure in your omnipotence that there was someone you couldn’t see and couldn’t predict who finally decided to move against you.”

“That will make him unpredictable. He may lash out in any direction,” Xalaria said.

“No,” I said, daring to contradict the God of Battle only because I felt like I’d spent a lifetime understanding where Sasarai was in that moment. “He can’t lash out at all. The other Neoterics? Remember? He’s in the worst possible state right now because he still has hold of everything he ever wanted but one wrong move and he’ll lose it all. He needs to keep things exactly as they are, any slip up and over the wall he’ll go.”

“Over the wall?” Fulgrox asked.

“Sorry, personal metaphor,” I said. “If he lets on what’s happened, or even hints at it too much, the other Neoterics annihilate him.  If he leaves the Garden, that would be screaming something was wrong. If he sends a troops out, that screams it too. He needs to at us without using any of his power to do so.”

“Not us,” Theia said. “You. I mean, sure he definitely wants to kill me too, but you’re the one who has all his fragments. If I get captured it’s no big deal to anyone but me. If you get captured though…”

“If Jilya is captured and she can be made to tell him where the fragments are, then all of this will be for nothing,” Xalaria said.

“That’s something I’m not sure I follow,” Fulgrox said. “You said you took all the divine fragments, but where did you hide them? I mean, you were still in Sasarai’s domain then right? What’s to stop him from just finding their hiding spot and writing you off  as something to deal with later?”

“They’re not in the Garden anymore,” I said. “They’re in me. They’re mine.”

“So, you swallowed them?” Folgrox asked.

I couldn’t fault him. I’d claimed them and tucked them away into my hoard as an almost reflexive action, with very little conscious awareness of how I was doing what I was, only that I needed to do it and so it happened.

“Not swallowed,” Helgon said. “They’re stored, I believe, in Jilya’s conceptual realm.”

“Her…what?” Fulgrox asked.

“It would take eleven years of coursework to properly explain, or perhaps only six in your case, since you seem to have solid grasp of several fundamentals already. The simple, and inaccurate, explanation is that the conceptual plane the gods formerly resided on is not an external dimension to the world. Within each of us, there is a conceptual realm.”

“Like a mindscape?” Theia asked.

“Yes, and absolutely no.” As an instructor Helgon was about as useful as many of the ones I’d studied under so I did what I always did; shrugged and kept listening. “The conceptual realm isn’t our thoughts and daydreams. Those are a separate thing. Think of it more like the projection of who and what you are into a dimension of information. That’s more or less backward from what’s happening, but as I said, this is the simple version.”

“And this conceptual space is somewhere real or just imaginary?” Xalaria ask, revealing that she was as lost as I was.

“Yes,” Helgon answered, which I would have punched him for, but, you know, ghost.

“I think the important thing is that Sasarai can’t just cut her open and pull the fragments out, right?” Fulgrox asked.

“Exactly. In fact, cutting her open would rather ruin his chances of his ever getting them back at all.” Helgon seemed delighted that Fulgrox had followed his explanation.

“What would happen if he cut her open anyways?” Theia asked.

“I expect she would die,” Helgon said.

“And the fragments?” Xalaria asked, apparently unconcerned by that prospect.

“They would drift through the remains of her conceptual space I imagine. In time, when someone synchronized enough with either who Jilya had been or was ripe to receive a blessing the divine fragments would return to the world through them.”

“And Sasarai would never be able to predict when or to whom that would happen, would he?” Xalarai asked.

“You’re not killing Jilya,” Theia said. She was joking. Mostly. I think.

“Of course not,” Xalarai said. “But it’s an option she will want to be aware of.”

“Thanks, but I’ve spent a lot of effort surviving this long. I don’t think I want to hand Sasarai that particular victory over me, even if it would be a hollow one for him.”

“Even distasteful options are valuable to be aware of,” Xalaria said. “There are fates far worse than death, and circumstances where victory may already be lost but actions yet remain to us.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, planning to keep it in my mind as far away as conceivably possible from any plans I was going to put together.

“It sounds like we have some time to work out what we’re going to do then?” Theia said.

“We don’t,”  Kalkit said. “There are assassins on the train. They’ll be here in twenty seconds.”

We all stared at Kalkit.

Xalarai was on her feet first, followed almost instantly by Theia.

I, on the other hand, reacted with the stunned, motionless silence that I’d spent years practicing.

Don’t worry. We’re going to be fine.

That was too little to go on for me to relax, except when your god explicitly tells you that you’ll be okay, it turns out to be a lot easier to relax than I’d expected. I even let a little smile play across my lips as I felt Draconia’s power flowing into my limbs.

I’d never been much of a fighter.

That was not true of her though.

“They say that the true strength of a person lies in the friends they hold dear and who will support them in their hour of need. Do we have any of those Dyrena?”

“Why we have each other do we not my dear Helgon? All twelves of us, united in common purpose, daring to dream the undreamable that we may have our heart’s desires, and destined to rule over the world as a council of wise and harmonious elders to lead the people into a brighter tomorrow.”

“While that is an answer, I feel as though I need to restate my question.”

– High Accessor’s Helgon and Dyrena refusing to acknowledge that they’ve both acknowledged that they’re doomed.

What was worse than the devil you knew? The devil you didn’t. I’d heard that saying as a kid but though it was irrelevant. All the devils were dead after all.

Then I learned what the First Tender was.

As the “train” hurtled through (hopefully) barren tunnels and brought me ever closer to a devil I’d never heard of the day before, I found I was oddly free of panic. Largely I think that was because the devil I didn’t know had arranged to get me away from the the devil who knew me all too well.

“Are we far away enough that we can talk freely?” Fulgrox asked. He was seated next to me since he needed a bit more than one seat and I needed a bit less.

“Yes, though Helgon can hear us,” Kalkit said.

“I can speak with you as well, if you like?” a ghostly person appeared in the aisle between the seats we’d chosen.

I assumed they were using a simple projection spell like the First Tender used on holy days when he needed to speak to all of the assemblies at once. The more I looked at him though the more the expanded senses Draconia blessed me with told me that, no, he wasn’t a projection, he was literally a ghost.

“Take a seat,” Xalaria said. “This will save us from having this conversation twice.”

“I’ve never found that I’m able to have the same conversation twice,” Helgon said. “Especially not with new people. Hello my dear, you must be one of Sasaria’s special people?”

“That’s what he always told us, but he also said we were the only people left in the world, so I’m not sure how special we really were to him,” I said. I don’t know why I wanted to dispel the notion that I was anything important. Maybe it was just that I didn’t want to be anyone important because of my connection to a hateful jerk like Sasarai “the First Tender”.

“If you weren’t before, you are now,” Xalaria said. “You know what you carry already do you not?”

“Not what, who,” I said. Demon or no, Draconia had never been a ‘what’ to me.

“Yes, a good bond there, and an old one too,” Helgon said, eyeing me with a dissecting gaze. “How ever did you escape the notice of my old…well calling him a friend would be a stretch, we never liked each other much at all as I recall, let’s say coworker, yes how did you escape my old coworker Sasarai’s notice as long as you did? I thought he was at least vaguely observant. Most of the others were.”

“Wait, what do you mean ‘escaped his notice’? Didn’t you gain your blessing today?” Fulgrox asked.

“In a sense, I supposed I did?” I certainly hadn’t treated my relationship with Draconia as a blessing the whole rest of the time we’d been together.

Perhaps not, but you kept the both of us safe, do you’ll notice I’m not complaining.

“Which is it.” Xalaria didn’t strike me as the sort of who appreciated ambiguity, even when it was more accurate than the simple response her question demanded.

“Jilya had her blessing when I found her,” Theia said, taking the burden of answering and explaining off my shoulders. “People seem to be pretty locked down there though from what I saw, so I don’t think she had any cause to use it before I showed up and messed up her day.”

Freed me more like it. I didn’t share that with anyone but Theia caught me eye and gave a small nod of understanding.

“And how did you come by that blessing?” Helgon asked. “I expect Sasarai was guarding his fragments rather tightly.”

“He’d hidden them in a shrine deep below his tree,” Theia said. “Jilya knew how to get there.”

“I stumbled into it when I was a kid,” I said. “There was a small maintenance tunnel that went to it that had been sealed off. But the seals were, uh, kind of weak. And I was curious.”

“So you, what? Wandered into the most important room in a Neoterics entire domain and spirited one of his legendarily rare divine fragments away without him noticing?” It wasn’t that Xalaria didn’t believe me, it was that when she put it like that even I found my story a little lacking.

She had a little help, Draconia said. And she didn’t spirit me away.

“But if she didn’t have your fragment, then how…?” Fulgrox tried to ask.

How did she use my gifts? Easily. She didn’t, Draconia’s answer seemed to make even less sense to them than mine had.

“But, how?” Fulgrox asked. “Being Blessed isn’t a thing you can just turn off.”

“You can’t,” Kalkit said. “But there are means to hide it.”

“Really?” Helgon drew the word out into at least three syllables. “Oh, oh that’s just perfect.”

It was weird to see a ghost convulsing with laughter and I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

“What am I missing here?” Theia asked.

“I believe our friend is amused by the fact that the theology Sasarai inflicted on Jilya was directly responsible for his inability to detect what she had done,” Kalkit said.

“And, oh it’s so much better than that,” Helgon said, recovering partially from his laughter. “She never would have been able to truly rescue the divine fragments if she hadn’t formed so long standing a bond with her god. Sasarai not only precipitated his own downfall, his grand little ‘perfect society’ made a perfect incubator for it as well.”

“That’s a stroke of good fortune for us all then,” Xalaria said before a puzzled look crossed her face. “Wait, divine fragments? You left other Blessed behind?”

“Nope. Not a one,” Theia said.

“Then what…?” Xalaria looked from Theia to me and back to Theia.

“You should be the one to tell them,” Theia said with a small wave of her hand towards me.

“I’m curious how the ghost knows?” I said, disturbed by the idea that my hoard might not be as hidden as I’d thought it was.

“Deduction, nothing more,” Helgon said. “When you know someone as long as I’ve known Sasarai, you can tell a lot about their life by the little things they do.”

“Little things like?” I asked, sensing the understatement in what Helgon was saying.

“He’s throwing a festival. Quite a big one. Fireworks, light shows, quite the pageant.” Helgon wore a delighted smile but for a moment I couldn’t understand any of what he was saying.

What did the First Tender have to celebrate?

Why wasn’t he raging?

I’d stolen a huge amount of power from him, he should have been livid beyond words.

If I was him I would have…

Oh.

I would have hidden everything that had happened.

I would have done my utmost to make sure no one could guess that anything meaningful had changed at all.

I would have been so afraid that the people around me would destroy me the moment they senses my weakness that I would have projected as much normalcy as I possible could have.

I had hidden everything, I had kept people from guessing the changes in me, and I’d projected perfect normalcy. I had to laugh too. At last I had proof that I was the Child of the Garden than I had always wished to be, and of course it came after I understood what a terrible fate that was.

“You understand! So delightful!” Helgon said.

“Understand what?” Fulgrox asked.

“He’s hiding,” I said. “He’s desperately scared and so he’s hiding what happened behind as much pomp and ceremony as he can throw at it.”

“I’m pretty sure he can have whatever parades and parties he want and no one is going to forget that they saw a dragon set their precious tree on fire,” Theia said.

“They won’t forget. But they will believe. Whatever story he comes up with. No matter how ridiculous it is. All he has to do is feed them something to explain what they saw and that will become the only truth they can live with.” The anger I felt at that wasn’t new. I’d stuff it down so many times, told myself that it was ‘the evil of my doubt chewing away at the virtue of my faith’, and I’d believed it, or forced myself to believe it no matter how painfully it had twisted my sense of who I was.

“That seems like an awful lot of worry for losing a divine fragment, even a powerful one,” Fulgrox said. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just not make a big deal out of it?”

“Hard not to make a big deal out of everyone seeing their living god-tree go up in flames,” Theia said.

“She’s right,” Xalaria said. “For the Neoterics, especially at this juncture, even the appearance of weakness is something they have to guard against. They’ve been telling themselves that Vaingloth was a fool and that he wasn’t beaten but rather got himself killed. They’re all afraid to move on Mount Gloria because they suspect it’s been trapped by one of the others, or that Vaingloth might be less dead than it seems. Even the loss of a single divine fragment would be enough to tip Sasarai’s position into dangerous territory.”

I looked over at Theia, who was suppressing a gleeful little smile. She nodded at me to fill them in.

“And what sort of territory, just as a hypothetical exercise, would the loss of all of the divine fragments that he’d collected mean?” I asked.

No one in the train car made the mistake of thinking I was asking a hypothetical question. None of them seemed to be able to accept that for a moment however.

Except for Kalkit, who was studiously grooming himself and seemingly unconcerned with the conversation’s direction.

“The loss of several divine fragments would place Sasarai in a position where he could be certain the other Neoterics would come for him,” Xalaria said slowly. “The loss of all of his divine fragments would remove any cause he had for constraint whatsoever. Please tell us how many fragments he retains.”

“None. Not a single one.” I’d been concerned that he could have hidden some of them elsewhere, or perhaps had a few on his person when we raided the Shrine, but as I’d claimed them, I’d learned to feel their presence clearly.

Sasarai had no divine fragments left under his control at all.

He was still fantastically dangerous of course. The divine fragments were a key to power, but they were not powerful in and of themselves. Not for someone like Sasaria who they never would have chosen to grant their blessings to.

Sasarai had all the divine force he’d stolen and all the grace his worshipful people had generated for generations all safely locked up in the Holy Tree. He was far from helpless.

But he was still afraid of the other Neoterics, which, in turn, left me terrified of what they were capable of doing.

“He should be moving to destroy us immediately,” Xalaria said. “With all the forces he can command.”

“That’s not what he’s doing,” Kalkit said. “And he’s right. It wouldn’t save him. He only has one hope. He has to make sure none of the other Neoterics find out the truth. Not until he can kill us all.”

“I must confess I rather look forward to the day when all these irksome enemies are where they’re supposed to be.”

“What’s that? Oh. Enemies? Do we have enemies?”

“Yes, Helgon. Many and all of dubious quality.”

“Is not that a preferable state High Accessor Vaingloth? Or, would you prefer our enemies, um, whoever they might be, to be of sterling quality? Only the best foes to test ourselves against? Yes, I supposed to could see the value in that. Does seem like a lot of bother though. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just kill them all?”

“Yes Helgon. That is exactly my point.”

“I’m afraid I don’t see it.”

“Don’t see what.”

“Your point. If you’d like our enemies to be dead, why haven’t you killed them already. We are planning on killing more than a few people with the Grand Plan of Ascension, are we not?”

“No one else is calling it that Helgon, and yes, yes we are, which will be the proper time to put our enemies in the ground, since it will be too late for anyone to notice.”

“What if they’re Dwarves?”

“Dwarves? Why would…no, no do not say it.”

“I mean, putting a Dwarf in the ground would hardly trouble them would it? I gather they rather enjoy being underground.”

“I…you…where is Dyrena. I must have at least a minute of intelligent conversation or one of us will suffer an aneurysm and I cannot for the life of me say who I would prefer that to be.”

– High Accessor’s Vaingloth attempting to steer High Accessor Helgon into premature homicide so as to weaken Helgon’s position pre-Sunfall.

There’s a unique frustration that comes from having ten million questions you want to ask coupled with being so overwhelmed that forming even simple sentences was a challenge.

Fortunately Xalaria and the others who’d been waiting for us were more intent on shepherding us to safety underneath the Low City than they were in answering or asking questions.

This is more developed than I’d expected, Draconia said, her voice warmer and dearer than I’d ever allowed it to be. It was tempting to immediately cast myself back into unity we’d had when we flew from the Garden but I could feel how much we both needed me to stay ‘me’ and not just a tiny part of her.

It’s been a few generations, Umbrielle said, give them time and you’ll find people of all species can be rather industrious.

My surprise stems less from what the people here have put together and more from Sasarai’s tolerance of their industriousness, Draconia said. These buildings are more defensible than any he created before the Sunfall.

“The more defense the residents provide for themselves, the less effort he needs to expend in keeping away the spirits of the wastelands,” Xalaria said, which wasn’t entirely surprising. She wore the mantle of her blessing from the God of Battle so openly that it was impossible to miss her divine connection. That she’d bothered to listen in to our chatter was a touch more unexpected but then if she wasn’t the observant sort, I’m not sure how she would have known where to find us.

Unless the tiny bird-person or the giant green skinned man was responsible? They hadn’t introduced themselves, largely because we were moving at such a brisk pace that there hadn’t been time, but I could feel the giant carried a blessing related to growing things and the bird-person carried…something else? 

Secrets, Draconia said, speaking to me alone. They carry the Blessing of Secrets, an old ally of mine, though with less overlap between our domains than many seemed to think.

I considered that for a moment and saw what she meant. Secrets can certainly be one layer of protection for something that’s treasured, but secrets are flimsy, dangerous things and some treasures cannot be kept in secret. What Draconia protected was guarded by more than obfuscation and shadows.

Not that shadows don’t serve their purpose too, Draconia said to me. Our world would have been lost entirely without Night’s shadows to hide us away in secret.

Xalaria had led us down into a basement, and then through a dried up sewer system to, of all things, a gilded staircase.

“When did anyone have time to build this?” I asked, marveling at the gold foil not for its value but for oddity of its placement on a staircase leading down from the sewers of all places.

“Before the Sunfall,” Fulgrox said. His blessing was from the God of the Harvest and while he appeared to be a giant to me, I learned that he was simply a tall and stout orc which, somehow, my studies of the ‘Fallen World’ had failed to ever mention as a species of people who’d existed once upon a time, must less persisted into the present day.

“The Betrayers didn’t build their own cities,” Theia said. “They’re more into destroying and stealing.”

“They didn’t even bother with rebuilding,” Fulgrox said. “All the work you saw above ground? The people of the Low City put everything there back together. Created new fields and everything. I’m guessing the same was true for your people into the walls?”

That wasn’t what I’d been taught but I found myself questioning the Garden’s history Sasarai had sold us. Had the ‘Holy Tree’ really called forth fields and orchards aplenty inside the walls to provide for us when the rest of world grew barren? If it could do that why were so many people tasked with the tending and upkeep of the fields and orchards?

“I don’t know,” I said. “They told us the Holy Tree gave us everything we have, but the only miracles I ever saw from it were ones the people offered to it.”

It sounded stupid and obvious when I said it like that, and I felt like the world’s most clueless idiot for not seeing past Sasaria’s lies the first time I heard them, or the twentieth, or the thousandth. 

“The most difficult things to see are the ones which everyone agrees aren’t there,” Kalkit, the Blessed of Secrets Crowkin said.

Which, sure, I should have been easier on myself. When everyone tells you something from the time words first started making sense, it’s hard to consider that they might all have been lying.

But they were.

Or passing on a lie, which was worse since it meant I couldn’t even hate them properly. My parents, my family, my teachers? They were all victims of the society Sasarai had built even when they were the ones who made up that society. 

Down the golden staircase we went as I wrestled with thoughts like that, and with who I’d been. 

I’ll never be that person again.

Would you want to be? If you could? Draconia asked. If you’re memory of these days could be washed away and you could go back to the life you’d known, would you?

Lose my memories? I asked and answered her question in three words.

Draconia laughed. I knew I chose well.

Sorry it took me so long to see it.

I’m grateful it was so soon. I’d thought it might take your whole life.

If I’d been discovered, it might have.

You were never in as much physical danger as you imagined, Draconia said. You are mine after all, but while I can protect you from physical harm, your emotions are your own and I have seen how deeply today’s events would hurt you.

It’s not so much today’s events as what they tell me about all the events that led up to them. All the times I was lied to. All the times I lied to myself. All the times I called you a demon.

I found that last one delightful if I’m being honest. It’s rare that I’ve had a connection with anyone who didn’t worship me. It was nice, at times, to be asked to be no more than your demon.

I think…I started to say and asked myself if what I was about to say was really true. Turning it over in my head, I found that, oddly, it was. I think sometimes I liked being ‘possessed’. It made me feel special.

Special?

Well, I had it all twisted around, but I had to be better than some other people because I had an actual ‘demon’ possessing me and I wasn’t doing the things they did. I mean, I had an excuse to be ‘bad’ but I was still being faithful and good and just the most perfect dupe ever.

That sounded so good right up until the end there.

Yeah, sorry. I’m just flip flopping all over the place.

And what would you expect of someone who’d step away from the only life they’d known and was faced with a world they’d been told didn’t and couldn’t exist?

I didn’t have answer to that. 

And in that moment, I saw that I didn’t need one. I was going to be a mess. I was going to better than I’d been before. I was going to be both of those at once and either them at any given moment.

But I’d have her with me through all of it.

Together, we stepped through the ornate archway at the bottom of the gilded stairs.

Chaos abounded. People of more shapes and sizes and colors than I could have imagined were thronging around a lighted platform in a dark tunnel.

They have a transit system! Draconia asked, apparently knowing what it was we were looking at.

Yes. It’s quite new, Umbrielle said.

“Yay! We might actually survive till tomorrow,” Theia said, following Xalaria’s lead through the crowd without hesitation. “I wasn’t sure you all would be able to get this up and running in time.”

“You came back with twice the haul we were hoping for, providing you a clean getaway is the least we could do,”  Fulgrox said.

“A clean getaway to where?” I asked but my question was lost in the din of the crowd. It was easily to see the value of traveling underground, but I was pretty sure they were underestimating Sasarai’s willingness to wreck widescale destruction to get back what I’d taken from him.

Oh.

Right.

They didn’t know what I’d taken from him. All they knew was that Theia had come back with a new Blessed in tow. They couldn’t sense the contents of my hoard. No one could.

“This will give us a headstart but we’re still going to be pursued,” I said.

“That’s why everyone else is here,” Kalkit said. “Anyone who wants to work against your old master is evacuating with us.”

“Won’t that slow us down?” I asked. I couldn’t begrudge anyone from trying to escape Sasarai’s rule, but fleeing with them, at the pace of the slowest among them seemed like I’d be inviting trouble right into the midst of the people most interested in avoiding it.

“Oh, we’re not going to be walking,” Theia said with a broad smile as the sound of rushing wind grew closer.

How wind was blowing underground didn’t make sense until I saw a creature burst from the tunnel, racing in front of us and bury its head down the other tunnel.

A creature made of metal.

A creature that was, in fact, a machine of some kind.

A creature that people began piling into.

So, not a creature at all.

“What…?” was all I was able to say.

“Let’s get onboard,” Theia said. “Xalaria’s got a private car for us. We can talk there.”

I nodded because at least some of those words made sense and following Theia seemed a lot safer than lingering in the depths of a city that shouldn’t exist.

The ‘private car’ Theia led me too was a room where Xalaria, Fulgrox, Kalkit and couple of other people were waiting on tall backed bench seats which were facing each other. I was just able to take the seat Theia directed me to when I felt the car lurch and begin accelerating as fast as the wind.

“Where is this taking us?” I asked, thinking of all the lost corners of the world and the horrors that lurked in them.

“The one place a Neoteric won’t risk going,” Xalaria said.

“The domain of another Neoteric,” Theia said.

“Separate populations seem like such a bother. What benefit could that possibly bring you?”

“I have explained this Dyrena.”

“High Accessor Dyrena. If you’re going to insist on titles, then you would be wise to remember mine while my patience lasts.”

“I…our titles are important when others are around.”

“Yes. Our titles are important. Especially the ones we are to claim.”

“Indeed. And that is why I will maintain multiple populations. It’s a safeguard you see.”

“Humor me and explain what it is I am meant to see, High Accessor Sasarai.”

“The population which will be restricted within the Prime Garden can be isolated from contact with the other remaining city. Without outside contact if will be the work of no more than a generation to set boundaries within their minds to ensure there are no thoughts of rebellion. With no external influences their devotion to my ‘Divine Tree’ construction will be unwavering and unshakable.”

“And the secondary population?”

“As we have agreed, contact between our cities will be valuable if properly controlled. We will each have access to miracles which will be more costly for the rest, and production capacity of goods unique to our peoples. The secondary population is meant to serve that need. The faith they hold won’t be as potent as my prime people but it will be useful enough for day-to-day tasks.”

“And should they rebel?”

“Then they will be eliminated and I will restock their number with the least useful members of the prime population.”

– High Accessors Dyrena and Sasarai engaging in a discourse which revealed to Dyrena the frailty of Sasarai’s proposed system and showed Sasarai that Dyrena needed to be the first of the Neoterics to fall.

For a place people thought was completely secure, there were an awful lot of paths out of the Garden. The big ones, the ones all Sylvans know about are the ones that run under the Thicket Wall. Those are the fiercest point of our defenses. Idiots like my brother Kam were always eager to be called up by the Draft so they’d have a chance to go and win fame and fortune fighting “the horrors” that waited “Below the Roots”.

It was true that people who were drafted didn’t always make it back and for the longest time I’d imagined the horrors which had been waiting for them down in the darkness.

With Draconia’s blessing I could sense a lot more than I ever had before though, and what lay “beneath the roots”? It wasn’t alien to the Garden. All I felt below us was Sasarai’s power, the same as what permeated the air around us and the sky above.

Whatever monsters my people fought down there, the First Tender knew about them and held dominion over them the same as he did for everyone in the Garden.

So that route was closed to us.

And the Thicket Wall was, as far as I knew, as impenetrable as I’d been told it was.

So what did that leave?

“Okay. You’re turn to hold on,” I said to Theia, after recovering from the our through the shadows. 

She’d managed to carry me back from the Silent Archive to a perch on one of “Holy” Mazana’s limbs that was blocked from view by a dense curtain of leaves. The leaves had turned out to be exactly what I’d needed. An inheritance I’d been felt entirely justified in claiming after all the prayers and devotion I’d offered to the false god the First Tender had inflicted on us.

Except for one small problem, the perch Theia had brought us too would be have been wonderful to hide away in and spend a week or more talking about all the things I still didn’t understand.

Unfortunately, the tree started moving.

“What’s that?” Theia asked, her senses almost certainly picking up the shifts in divine power the accompanied the trees surge into mobility.

“That’s our sign to leave,” I said. Running away had been scary. Right up until that moment. As an unimaginably large reservoir of grace began to swirl in the tree, I couldn’t imagine anything I wanted to do more than flee.

Theia agreed. Without a single word of disagreement, she took two steps towards and pulled herself close to me.

This was how we’d traveled through the shadows, but in this case we didn’t try to leave the Garden via the shadow paths. Sasarai knew them too and had closed them the moment he noticed the divine fragments were missing. Umbrielle had been sure he would and we’d all sense the moment she’d been proven correct.

Which was why I’d wanted the leaves.

They carried the same grace as “Holy Mazana” did but they were mine now. 

Holding Theia close in my arms, I took the step I’d dreaded for so long.

My last step in the Garden.

The perch she’d found was a high one, so we had plenty of time to fall.

Wind whistled past us but it was drowned out.

Around me a beast of talons and teeth, scales and wings roared as I gave myself into Draconia’s keeping.

Where we’d plunged downwards, the rush of air turned, catching in the wings I’d known for so long were waiting for me.

I was a Devout Daughter no more.

I was an Aspirant of the Holy Tree no more.

I was a Sylvan no more.

The creature I’d become was horrifying and I couldn’t have been happier.

Fire burned through my veins.

It filled my lungs like the sweetest of air.

The attack came with no warning, and held no mercy. I had offended little Sasarai beyond reasons.

But he’d offended us far more.

The distance between Draconia and I shrank to the width of a leaf.

We would not fall.

Little Sasarai had his little tricks and power aplenty to back them up.

But we knew Tricksters.

And we knew some tricks ourselves.

The blast of power from the Overrated Shrub slammed into the leaves we carried in our fist.

Our leaves.

Our power.

But still a part of the silly shrub.

And Holy Mazana, Guardian of the Garden, Deity of the Sylvans, and Last Light in the Broken World, the thing I’d spent my entire life striving to worship with all my heart despite the doubts that assailed me?

It burned.

My roar became a terrible, terrible gale of laughter.

Silly little Sasarai. Always so easily overconfident.

The poor little fool had been so enraged that he’d held nothing back. His blast had been thrown directly from the Holy Tree within no thought or concern for defense.

Who could attack him after all?

He’d felled the gods.

He’d held us captive for decades.

He was so sure nothing could touch him and hadn’t we come like timid thieves in the night?

He’d forgotten.

The Night wasn’t his ally.

All the power he’d cast at us?

He’d never guessed he was casting at his precious little shrub.

The screams from below were instantaneous.

My roar had roused everyone who was out and the shadow I cast as I soared above them had sewn confusing. The sight of the tree erupting in flames though?

Existential Horror.

The Garden lost its mind.

Belief which had stood for lifetimes was drowned in terror and I felt the shock of it explode through the currents of Sasarai’s power which permeated everything around us.

And that bought us the window we needed.

The fire in me called to burn down the Thicket Wall too. It was an abomination strangling the souls of every Sylvan entrapped within it but they weren’t mine.

Not yet.

Also, for all the damage our trick had done, it was only enough for a moment’s reprieve, and that moment called for flight, far and fast.

With Theia clinging to the me, I gained altitude and moment both, slicing through the air with a borrowed mastery of the skies eagerly given from one of the fragments in my hoard. For   so many years, I’d mistaken the winds that carried us were a gift from Mazana, but as I called on the “blessing” the Holy Tree had “given” me, I could feel the truth at last.

The Holy Tree gave us nothing.

My proficiency with the winds, and with healing magics? Those were my own gifts. Ones I’d given to tree because I’d been told that everything good I possessed I owed to the parasite god Sasarai had us enslaved to.

I didn’t have the strength or the time to burn down the Thicket Wall but my rage and need for vengeance was answered by a far vaster need from Draconia and as we sailed above the wall, fire streamed from our jaw reduce the nearest part of the wall to ash and setting the impenetrable vegetation beyond that aflame with pure orange fires.

And beyond the flames?

With new eyes, I at last saw what I’d feared since I first met Draconia, the emptiness beyond the Thicket Wall. The desolation I was bound for. The doom of my life.

But of course it wasn’t empty at all.

Below the wall, ten thousand sparks lit the night, revealing the metropolis which sprawled below the mountain Sasarai’s tree stood at the summit of.

And on the horizon? A distant but clear glow and warmth.

There was no way I could feel the warmth of the sun which lay beyond the horizon from where I was, but it was warm and comforting nonetheless. The Desolation and the Emptiness I’d always be threatened with did exist, but far away there was proof that the world wasn’t lost, that somehow the broken had been mended.

“There,” Theia shouted over the wind. “Put us down there. We can hide in the city with the other Blessed.”

Is that wise? I asked, speaking as Draconia and Umbrielle did since I wasn’t used to forming words with my maw yet and Draconia and I were linked so closely together that I wasn’t actually quite sure where I ended and she began anymore.

“If we fly into the wastelands now he’ll be able to keep track of us. We’ll be the only divine things out there.”

Not the only, Umbrielle said. But we will be recognizable.

Aren’t we inviting calamity on the lower city if we hide there?

Not if we don’t stay there long, Umbrielle said. You felt the crack too didn’t you?

I’m not sure I’ve ever felt anything more satisfying.

I feel like I should take offense at that, Umbrielle’s tone was mocking, which seemed odd given the seriousness of the situation before us, but served to remind me that she and Draconia had a different perspective on even something as the single most dramatic point in my life to date.

If we survive this, perhaps I will give you a century or two to try to upstage that moment, Draconia’s offer was also in jest. Mostly. There were undercurrents of real desire though to though and I had to wonder what exactly their history might have entailed.

That was a something to pursue another time though and since everyone else seemed to be in agreement, I descended towards the courtyard Theia had pointed me at, shrinking and changing back to my normal form fast enough that no one seemed to notice our arrival.

“I can’t believe you got us out there!” Theia said and kissed me.

It wasn’t a passionate thing. Or a romantic thing. She was simply that excited to still be alive.

I was excited too.

My knees for example had finished their transformation from dragon form through their normal Sylvan nature and continued on straight to jello.

“We lived!” I agreed. “We lived! We lived” I’d flopped down onto the ground and found myself staring at my hands, which were shaking from the waves of disbelief that poured over me.

“You did more than live,” a woman of organic and mechanical parts said. “You won.”

Which, coming from the God of Battle was rather heartening to hear.

“We’re going to disrupt the very balance of life.”

“That is rather the point, given that the current balance is decidedly not in our favor.”

“I don’t mean with just the divine. I mean with everything. I know we’re going to preserve our own peoples but so much else will be lost.”

“If you feel there is anything of value, you’re free to include it in your city.”

“Birds. Fish. Bugs?”

“What of them? I plan to have an aviary for viewing and aquariums will provide most of the food my people will require. As for bugs, good riddance I say.”

“And what will your fish eat?”

“Other fish of course.”

“And what will those fish eat?”

“Other smaller fish? We need not work all that out you know. The miracles we will be able to work will easily be able to bridge any small gaps in the systems we create.”

“Yes, but so much will be lost.”

“Perhaps, but nothing that we care about.”

– High Accessor Helgon and Vaingloth planning their cities before the Sunfall

We’d just stolen the First Tender’s entire stash of divine fragments, so I couldn’t blame Theia for looking around in wonder at where they’d gotten to.

“What do you mean you sent them to your hoard? Where is that?”

“It’s safe,” I said, since I really wasn’t sure how to answer the question more clearly than that. “They’re safe so long as I hold them.”

She’s correct on that, Draconia confirmed for me.

She is, but she’s leaving out an important detail. Umbrielle’s tone held the same trepidation that I saw in Theia’s eyes.

“What aren’t you telling me,” she asked.

“Nothing! They’re safe! Really!”

Yes. No one may steal a treasure guarded by one of Draconia’s Chosen, Umbrielle said which was reassuring because that was exactly what I’d felt when I called on Draconia’s gift.

How had I known that I could do that? I hadn’t. Knowing something requires understanding it. I’d simply wanted to protect the fragments and I’d felt how to do it in response.

There is however a fairly simple method for Sasarai to reclaim his lost treasures, Umbrielle said and I saw understanding light up in Theia’s eyes before I worked out what Umbrielle was referring to.

“He can kill you,” Theia said. “If you’re dead, you’re not guarding anything anymore.”

“Well, yeah, but I’m not planning to give him the opportunity,” I said.

“He’s going to track you down past the ends of the world for this,” Theia said. “He has too. We’ve taken too much from him for anything else to be possible.”

“Have we?” I asked. “Becuase there’s a lot more that we can take from him.”

“Like what? This is the core of his power. These were what let him call for the miracles he’s been relying on for hundreds of years.”

“They made it easier for him. Draconia and Umbrielle said that. He can work miracles with the grace he has stored up in the Holy Tree. It’ll just be harder.” I was understanding my plan as I explained it, and was happy to hear that it was sounding reasonable so far.

“Does he seem like the sort of guy whose happy taking the harder approach to things?” Theia asked and I had to wonder how she knew about the First Tender at all. As far as I knew, he never left the Garden.

That gave me a moment’s pause.

“As far as I knew”? How far did that extend really? I certainly didn’t know where the First Tender was at all times. I don’t think anyone did. 

But the Thicket Walls were so high that nothing could get over them/

Right?

The question of “what about under them” sprang immediately to mind and I pictured the stately First Tender crawling through the tunnels beneath the Divine Tree. 

It seemed unlikely.

On the other hand though, would someone who’d stolen the powers of the gods build himself a prison he’d be locked in for all eternity?

Maybe. There were certainly people who stayed inside their homes all the time and preferred it like that.

The First Tender didn’t seem to be one of them though. We saw him out and about often enough, for all the big ceremonies and even some of the smaller ones. He always seemed to like being among his people, so I couldn’t picture him hiding away forever. Not if there was more to the world than what I’d been taught.

“He can chase us, but what are his chances of finding us? Night keeps the whole world hidden, and outside the Garden he won’t be on familiar ground anymore.”

She has a point. If we can leave this place, Sasarai will have a harder time drawing on his little shrub, Draconia said, and I could feel her eagerness to leave.

A harder time does not mean it would be impossible for him, and, as we are now, we could not withstand him even if he found us on the other side of the world from his reservoir of power. Umbrielle didn’t sound happy about that, merely resigned to it.

“There’s one place, or one sort of place, he couldn’t catch us,” Theia said, sounded decidedly unhappy with the idea she had in mind.

He can travel anywhere in the world, Umbrielle said, dismissing Theia’s claim, but I caught on to what Theia was thinking.

“There are places he can travel, but he won’t be able to call on his powers. Or if he does, he definitely won’t be the one to catch us,” I said with a nod to Theia. She was right. This was a terrible idea, but it would work. For sure. Right up until it didn’t.

A city of one of the other Neoteric Lords, Draconia whispered. You mean to hide us there. Where Sasaria won’t dare use his powers.

“He won’t dare expose us there either,” I said. “If we hide with one of the other Neoterics and he lets them discover that we’re there, they would definitely kill me and take the fragments for themselves, right?”

Without question, Umbrielle said.

In fact, Sasarai will do everything in his power to conceal your theft. The moment the other betrayers learn of his weakness they won’t hesitate to betray him as well.

“Seven is such a better number than eight, isn’t it?” Theia said. 

“And six is pretty than seven,” I said, it being all too easy to follow the line of reasoning the Neoteric’s subscribed to.

Having just lost one of their number, the prospect of the balance shifting again would send them all scrambling, Umbrielle said. If there is one thing which unites our betrayers, it is ruthless greed. Give them the sense that a watershed moment has arrived and they will turn ravenous in their hunger to consume all they can and be the last Neoteric standing.

“Huh. You know, when you put it like that…” 

“Yeah. That occurred to me too,” Theia said. “Just one little problem.”

“If we purposefully put them at each others throats, we’re going to be the first ones they wipe out.” I didn’t have to guess at that. Even as limited as my experiences had been I had a sense of how ruthless people worked. I’d seen “upstanding” and “virtuous” Sylvan’s cut down (verbally) close friends and loved ones when positions of prominence in a congregation opened up. For people who’d dared to desecrate the gods themselves? I was pretty sure the “cutting down” would be swift and entirely literal.

“So, maybe that’s our backup plan then?” It seemed like I reasonable option if we were caught dead to rights anyways. There was only one additional problem with it I could see. “Assuming there is an ‘our’ to this?”

Because, really, why should there be? Theia could escape on her own pretty easily. I knew the odds against me were absurd, and if “we” were doomed, then why should she face the wrath of someone who’d managed to kill all the gods and then spend the last two centuries getting more powerful than that?

“You thinking of giving up on me? Probably a smart move all things considered,” she said, with the sort of nonchalance that told me I’d said something very wrong.

“No. What? No. I mean you don’t have to…I’m confused,” I said. Because I am nothing if not supremely eloquent. “Why are you helping me?”

“Helping you? How I am helping you? You’re helping me. This is my mission we’re doing here,” she said, looking as confused as I felt.

“Your mission? This is my life!”

“Yeah! That I seem to be ruining!”

“Ruining? What? How? Are you…” I took a breath. This was getting ridiculous, even for me. “Okay. Stop. I think we’ve got some very different ideas of what’s happening here, and we are running out of time. Let’s just hit the important bits. I’ve got the divine fragments. You had planned to take them to find more people who they were drawn to right?”

“Right,” Theia confirmed, thankfully not adding any clarifications that would have given us anything further to argue over.

“So, that means we can work together, that we will work together until we’ve got some resolution to this?” I had no idea what resolution we could possibly find, but the idea of being stuck with Theia for the foreseeable future didn’t seem all that terrible.

“If you change your mind about that, you need to give me the fragments,” she said.

“I thought you couldn’t hide them all?”

“Maybe. If this gets to be too much for you though, if you need to come back here for your family, or because Sasarai makes you an offer you can’t refuse, you’ve got to promise to give me the fragments. He can’t…”

I held a finger to stop her.

“The divine prisons are mine. MINE. I am their guardian and they are my treasure. The divine fragments within them belong to no one. I don’t know what Night’s blessing is like but my blessing is more than power and communion. My blessing comes with duty. Sasarai gets the prisons back from me by only one means. ”

I felt a shadow of Draconia’s power manifesting around me.

We’re not quite ready to pit ourselves against Sasarai, Draconia said. Though, believe me, I understand the temptation all too well.

I understood how impossible the challenge would be, how much vaster he was than both Draconia and I, even with his constellation of deities beyond his reach. Draconia had studied him since the Sunfall and the picture she shared was beyond daunting.

And that was fine.

If he wanted his gods back, he would have to destroy me and I would fight him with the full knowledge of that in mind. Maybe I couldn’t win, but I would hurt him as terribly as I could. He would destroy me but not without being diminished, and I would make certain that his wounds were all too visible to his fellow Neoterics.

“Then it sounds like we’re both in this to the end then…partner,” Theia said and extended her hand.

I wasn’t sure what the gesture meant, until Draconia shared a memory with me of people shaking hands as a sign of agreement and camaraderie.

“Partners,” I said, clasping her surprisingly warm hand in mine.

Theia gave me a small smile at that and started to say something but caught herself and changed to, “So, our next step is going to figure out how to get out of here.”

“How did you get in?” I asked and then shook my head. “No! Don’t tell me. The First Tender’s not getting the gods back unless he kills me but if I’m captured he’ll know spells to draw out the things I know, and I don’t want to risk any of your secrets.”

Theia chuckled at that.

“You are definitely not what I expected.”

“That makes two of us. I’m not what I expected either,” I said, feeling like my old life had crumbled to leaf dust already. “In fact, maybe that’s exactly what we need.”

“What do you mean?”

“Can you get us back to the surface? I think I know exactly how to get us out of here.”

“We are bound by our perceptions. What we cannot see of the world,  and as we cannot see we cannot interact with, cannot command or plan for, and cannot take advantage of. There are so many things which pass us by, things which we will never be aware we have missed, things which in turn control us, and dictate the course of our lives, leaving as at the mercy of forces far greater than we can ever be.”

– an except from the pre-Sunfall philosopher High Accessor Aukmetle’s treatise on “The Role of the Divine”.

“Accessor Aukmetle was once regarded as a deeply insightful scholar and his books on philosophy found favor with a great many people who, apparently, had never encountered the concept of ‘imagination’. This seems to be a particular disease which is prevalent among those of high station who believe they achieved their positions solely through their own efforts.”

– from the foreword to “The Role of the Divine” in its annotated reprinting as part of a collection of “Early Ventures into Philosophy”.

I was making a terrible, unforgivable mistake. And I intended to make it as deeply and thoroughly as I could.

“Seriously, if we take all of them, I have no idea how we’re going to get out of here,” Theia said. “Night’s blessing let’s me hide myself really well, but hiding other people is harder, and hiding this many gods? I’d need to be Night herself to do that I think.”

I did not stop pulling the gem-like stars from the walls. I couldn’t. 

They were mine.

I had spent so many damned years fighting against ‘the demon’ within me. As it turns out, when you stop fighting against the grace of who you truly want to be, there’s a tiny bit of euphoria that comes with it. 

I should urge caution here, Draconia said, again speaking only to me. Claiming all of these divine prisons as ours will have serious repercussions.

Yes. I could feel a wave of terror ready to crash over me from the fallout of what I was doing. Against that wave however stood the twin blessings, entirely mortal in origin, of “I’ve been afraid for so long I am not capable of caring anymore” and “this is right and I will kill or die to defend it” which together rose higher than even the great and terrible Thicket Wall.

I would rather you not die, Draconia said. I’ve rather enjoyed being your demon all these years. Also if we could avoid killing, that would be preferable for your sake.

But what if there are people who need to die? Because there were several people I could think of, most with the title “Tender” in some form or other, who very definitely needed to shown the exit from this world.

Killing is a tool and tools have their use. It is easy when one has an effective tool however to see it as the solution to each problem you encounter, and easier to lose sight of the unpleasant consequences which follow. Even in defense of what is ours, we’re best served if we can find a better path forward.

But sometimes there isn’t one.

Sometimes there isn’t, but many other times it will seem as though there is not, which is why we always look for the better path.

But what if the ‘better path’ lets them hurt us again? Isn’t that just weakness to let the wicked live to be a problem tomorrow when we could have fixed things today? I hesitated reaching for the next divine prison. Could I commit myself to this if I had to leave myself defenseless as well?

Whose voice do you hear those words in? Draconia asked. Who taught you that mercy was weakness?

No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m…

That was exactly what I was saying.

Exactly what I’d been taught, not in so many words, but by all the stories that hailed our victories over the creatures below the roots, and how Holy Mazana destroyed the broken spirits who dared threaten us.

“That’s still far, far too many for us to take,” Theia said.

She was right. I was going to get us all killed. I was going to get my family killed. I was going to wreck everything and accomplish nothing.

You may, Draconia said. No one, divinity or mortal, can be certain of what the future holds. Doing what we’re doing now is obviously perilous. It will place a vastly powerful foe against us. One I cannot match in battle. It will turn your entire society against us. Everything you’ve known, everything you’ve worked towards, all changed, all probably lost.

Hearing it pronounced like that was sobering. The mania of indulging in my divinely aligned urges faded away. What I was doing, claiming the role of protector to the divine fragments, it went deeper than a triumphant moment of rebellion. I was setting my feet on a path I couldn’t turn back from. 

I stood in an undecided moment still. I knew where my heart lay, but no one else did. I could slink back to my old life. I could reach within and pull forth the mask I’d worn for so long. I could pretend I was still a creature of unquestioning faith. I could be safe, and could plan my next steps for when the time was right, when it would be safe.

I could do all of that, but I can’t can I? I wasn’t asking Draconia. I already knew.

You can, she insisted. Never deny yourself the ability to choose, never hide behind a certainty of belief.

I can’t because I’ve already chosen, I said, and felt a calm seep through me that did more than hold back the wave of terror. It drained the terror away.

This was the right this to do. That didn’t mean it was safe. That didn’t mean people would agree with me. 

“We have to take them all,” I said, in answer to Theia who’d been watching my silent struggle. “This is the only chance we’ll have to rescue any of them. If we only take one or two, the rest will be taken into the First Tender’s personal custody. He’ll probably jam them into the heart of the Divine Tree or somewhere else impossible to get to.”

“Draconia said he doesn’t come here much though?” Theia didn’t look confused so much as grasping onto the hope that her plan could still be salvaged.

He doesn’t, but he will when he feels his power being diminished, Draconia said.

Was that what he did when you were taken? Umbrielle asked.

I wasn’t taken, Draconia said. I’m still here. Jilya carried forth my Blessing, but she didn’t claim me as her own until today.

“And so now he knows, or will know, as soon as he tries to call on the domain of the gods we’re rescuing,” I said. The pieces had been falling into place for a while but as we talked I say ever more clearly how I hadn’t had a choice.

Not in the sense that I couldn’t have done anything else, but with every “I had no choice” there’s always an unspoken “if”. In this case it was “I had no choice if I wanted to being able to stand who I was”. Draconia was right. I could have chosen to abandon the divine fragments. I could have snuck back to my old life. I could have betrayed everything I understood myself to be. What I couldn’t do was any of that and live with myself afterwards. 

I’d tried hating myself for years and, shockingly, that hadn’t done anything for me at all.

Dying won’t do much for you either, Draconia said.

I’m mortal. Dying isn’t a question for us. How we live is though.

The calm I felt wasn’t resignation. I hadn’t given up. I’d simply accepted who I wanted to be, and without the fear that had been holding me back, ideas I’d never let myself consider played out to form plans that I am certain no other Sylvan in history would have dared to consider.

Or, to be fair, been capable of pulling off.

I mean, I was Blessed. That did come with some advantages.

“Okay then. We’re taking them all,” Theia said and began pulling divine prisons off the walls with me. “You know I can safely say, this is not at all how I expected our next meeting to go.”

“Oh? Really? How did you think we would meet?” I asked, surprised because I’m an idiot, that she had been thinking about meeting me again at all.

“Less pleasantly,” she said. “I thought we were going to throw down that first night and then we got interrupted, so I thought you’d want to go for a second round when we met again.”

She sounded neither unhappy with the prospect of that nor unhappy that it hadn’t come to pass.

“That interruption almost got me in a lot of trouble,” I said. “I kept hoping the next time we met I’d be able to get my old life back, but, well, that didn’t exactly turn out as planned.”

“Sorry about that. I’ve kind of got a gift for finding trouble,” Theia said, jumping up to snatch one of the gem prisons that was mounted the highest.

Not a divine gift, Umbrielle said. She came up with that one all on her own.

“No apologies needed,” I said. “I prefer this trouble to my old life.”

“How bad were things?” Theia asked, pausing in her collection.

“What do you mean?” I asked, knowing exactly what she meant.

“You’ve been going in and out, and that makes sense. It sounds like most of this stuff is brand new to you and there’s a lot that has to be a big shock. It looks like you’re embracing it though and I’ve never seen anyone turn around on what they believe in that quickly.”

Her concerns there were easy to see. Was I suffering from some sort of breakdown? Was I going to breakdown further? Or worse, was I just saying what everyone wanted to hear so I could betray them later? 

“I had a good life. For someone else. My ‘good’ life though was killing me. I know I’ve been given a lot of gifts, but the most of them came at a cost I couldn’t really pay. Not forever. And not anymore. Today, when I saw the ‘Holy Tree’ almost destroy a girl, I was finally able to see a price of obedience that I should have seen for years now. That wasn’t the turning point though. You were.”

“Me? What did I do? Apart from invade your house and kick you butt that is.”

I stopped and shot her a look of challenge.

“I don’t recall my butt being touched at all.” It was meant to be an objection. I think.

“We’ll have to see if that can be arranged then.” Was she flirting with me? I had no idea. I’d heard of it being something people did, but not, you know, to me.

She probably just wanted the rematch she’d talked about.

“Yes we will,” I said, since seeing her in action had been more educational that a month of schooling. 

She raised an eyebrow as though I’d been flirting back. But I hadn’t been. I was just agreeing with her.

Draconia was notably silent on the subject.

Not ‘she didn’t have anything to say’. She specifically was making no comment.

And she definitely wasn’t laughing at me silently.

No. Why would she be?

“So, how do we survive the next ten minutes then?” Theia asked, prying the last of the divine prisons loose from the wall.

“Can you take us back to the chapel?” I asked.

“Not with all the divine fragments,” she said.

“What divine fragments?” I asked as innocently as I could.

“What do you mean ‘what divine fragments’, the ones we piled up right…okay where did they go?” Theia asked.

Oh, he is definitely going to kill you, Umbrielle said.

“Wait, what happened?” Theia said.

“I claimed them. They’re mine. So I sent them to my hoard.”