“What? No of course I don’t like having disgusting breathing things in my city! The fire portal? No it’s not for warmth and light! I need it for my experiments! Well, yes, most of the experiments are enchantments of cold, unfeeling metal, but some, okay one, involves warm metal! Yes, yes, and that’s why the air and water portals are open too. You see it’s all about balance. The warm metal needs the fresh air to cool it and the water to temper it. How much air and water does one experiment need? Well, that’s really not the point now is it. Big portals are simpler…nicer. If they produce more than is needed, then who am I to care? I am, I feel this needs to be pointed out, dead, and far past the point of caring about any mortal concerns. Or mortals. Yes. No concern for mortals. Now be off and do whatever it is you mortals do.”

– Helgon the Reluctantly-Eternal to the small group of school children at the Factorum’s only study hall.

I don’t have anything against being carried. In general. Some people are a lot taller and a lot stronger than me and we can both move a lot faster if I pretend to be a sack of fish food that they’re hauling around. Typically someone like Lucky, with her endlessly long arms, would scoop me up under one of them and I’d be jostled at her side as we escaped whatever trouble someone else had gotten us into. It wasn’t usually terrible pleasant, but it was always better than the alternative of being caught and roasted alive.

Racing down into the darkness beneath Zeph’s basement held that same thrill of escaping danger without all the annoying jostling largely because Zeph didn’t sling me under one arm. Instead she held me like someone would hold a baby. It was comfortable, but only in a physical sense.

I tried to distract myself from the indignity of being baby carried by putting my mind back together after Lucky’s appearance broke it thoroughly.

“How the hell did you find us?” I asked in a failed whisper as we cut over into a section of the sewers I wasn’t familiar with.

“No talking yet,” Lucky said. “We’re still within their perimeter.”

Perimeter?

I cursed, silently. That absolutely sounded like how an official patroller operation would go down. They would make sure there were no avenues of escape well before confronting me. Also, they’d send enough troops that even if Sola could break free somehow, they wouldn’t lose them all before one of them disabled me.

Or at least that’s what Vaingloth probably told them. In truth, if Sola broke free, she could have roasted every patroller in the city, and if I had to glow too bright to be looked at directly for a month afterwards, she would have my full support in doing so.

Wheels and more wheels spun in mind as we ran though.

They knew, in broad terms at least, how I’d escaped them last time. Zeph’s absurd speed had to be something they had plans for.

Plans like driving us into the sewers where routes could be cutoff making speed all but useless.

I wanted to point that out, but I held back. Lucky wasn’t stupid. She had to know that would be the patroller’s plan.

So was she betraying me? I’d caused her a lot of trouble. And Vaingloth had plenty of things to hold over her head. Like like the lives of every person she’d chosen to take care of.

On our own, Zeph and I might have gone anywhere when the patrollers attacked.

If there even were patrollers on the surface.

I’m not a good person, so my mind tends to wander to some unpleasant places. It was able to assemble a scenario where we were running right into Vaingloth’s clutches all too easily.

Say Vaingloth found us. But catching us was going to tricky, because Zeph is insanely fast. Also, predicting what a god is or is not capable of seems like it would be a risky endeavor. What to do?

How about grab one of your target’s few friends and make said friend an offer she couldn’t refuse. Maybe burn up an example or two to make it clear how serious the situation was.

The friend-shaped pawn can then lure me somewhere that I’d be much easier and safer to collect. 

Then you burn up the pawn and all the pawns people too.

Which was why I relaxed.

It was absolutely possible that Vaingloth had gotten to Lucky. It was absolutely possible that she was leading us into a trap just like he’d told her too.  Except for a few little things.

First, Vaingloth didn’t consider people like Lucky to be people. Acknowledging that she even existed wouldn’t have been the first thing to cross his mind. Not with what the long history of how he treated the populace showed us.

Second, the fact that he would absolutely burn up everyone even vaguely related to this was something Lucky would be as keenly aware of as I was.

More important than all that though? Lucky was my friend. I didn’t have many of those. Or maybe any. Maybe we weren’t friends, with how I’d abandoned her. 

But I wanted us to be.

Which meant, I was going to believe in her.

A part of me, a whole freaking chorus in fact, was singing in a dozen ancient languages about how I was making the most foolish mistake imaginable and that I was going to be murder killed until I was giga-dead.

Anxiety sucks.

But it’s also an old, old part of me, so I told it to shut up. 

And then I told it to shut up again.

And again.

And then I just let myself imagine what it would be like to hang out with Lucky again. They were lies. Illusions I spun up in my mind of a better day that wasn’t ever going to come, and didn’t have to.

I couldn’t believer in myself, and I couldn’t believe in the future, but that didn’t stop me from reveling in the daydream I conjured.

“Okay. Now for the fun part,” Lucky said. “Ever been to the Deep Sewers?”

She yanked open a hatch which led down into darkness.

How did I see the hatch? After a week in Zeph’s warmly lit basement I’d forgotten to think about that. The answer was easy to figure out though since I was the only source of light we had.

It wasn’t a lot of light, but I was definitely glowing.

Sola? Are you there?

Only silence answered, but it didn’t matter. She was my god. Bindings or no, she was with me. Anxiety wanted to argue against that too, but I stuffed it into a spiky box where it could shut up and suffer. Sola was with me, whether I could hear her or not.

“Several times. All of them unpleasant,” Zeph said.

“What she said,” I echoed, which wasn’t entirely true, but we didn’t have time for me to explain where I’d found Sola.

“Good. Don’t get eaten then,” Lucky said and dropped down first to clear a path.

I wasn’t sure what she’d meant about being eaten given than I hadn’t run across anything particularly carnivorous when I’d climbed up from Sola’s garden.

Of course Vaingloth hadn’t been filling the sewers with a collection of temporarily alive abominations at that point either.

I could tell the first one we ran into wasn’t meant to last long because it had a purple flame in it’s chest which was burning it up from the inside out.

Lucky hit it with a stick before I could vomit flame on us. That staggered it. A few dozen more whacks while it was down reduced it to a burning pile of jelly.

If I was Vaingloth, I would have been keeping track of all my creations. I hoped that was true, and that he’d felt every blow from Lucky’s club.

Sure, I’d melted his eyes, but he deserved a lot more suffering than that.

A roar from farther down the deep sewer tunnel suggested that my wish might have come true. Like most wishes, I was going to regret making it, but for that moment I let a little bubble of malicious glee rise to the top of my heart.

“I can get her out of here,” Zeph said. “Which exit is clear?”

“No!” I said cutting off Lucky who was about to answer. “We all get out together.”

“You need to live. Above all, you must,” Zeph said.

“I will. I am really good at living. Haven’t failed to do so yet. But you and Lucky need to get out of this too. If I have to make that a goddamn Divine Decree, I will. Neither of you are allowed to die. Am I clear?”

Zeph blinked, shocked, I think, by the fire in my voice.

Lucky just laughed.

“Best not to argue with her,” she said. “The noise will just attract more of them.”

Zeph made an expression that was probably a frown and nodded silently.

I probably hadn’t convinced her, but it didn’t matter. We were all moving and that’s what counted.

When we ran into the next of Vaingloth’s disposable sewer beasts, Zeph deposited me gracefully on my feet and flashes forward.

I don’t think she had a blade, and her claws had always seemed pretty short to me. Much too short to get through the heavy scales on the tube-like monster that was rushing down the tunnel towards us.

A moment later however, she was back at my side and the monster was falling into two cleanly bisected pieces.

“We’re leaving a trail like this,” Zeph said, appearing beside us as fast as she’d left.

“Can’t be helped,” Lucky said. “Didn’t have a lot of time to put together a good escape route, or all that many decoys.”

“Wait, ‘all the many decoys’? We have decoys?” I asked, a whole new set of wheels turning in my head.

“Yeah, Smiles and Oolgoo are working together, and some of the Kobolds know these tunnels scary well,” Lucky said, “They’re killing off some of the other monsters down here to make it a little less clear which paths we’re taking.”

“Oh. Oh that’s good. Melty Boy is going to have to check them all,” I said as we continued running. “He will, but it will take him more time, and that’s fantastic!”

I was on my own for running. Either I’d forfeited the right to a baby-carry by making an adult demand, or Zeph was simply being reasonable that she was a better defender without me encumbering her. I suspected it was probably a little of both, and, as was the theme of my life, regretted the lost a few hundred yards latter when keeping up with the annoying long legs of a Bugbear and a Fox Wind began to prove challenging.

“If we don’t get out of here, you can both blame this all on me,” I said, refusing to fall behind. 

Keeping up with them wasn’t easy, but running was the one thing I actually was good at, so  it wasn’t as impossible or miserable as it might have been.

In fact, given that Lucky at least wasn’t holding back, it was a lot easier than it should have been.

And I was glowing more.

“There’s a whole lot we can blame on you,” Lucky said. “You don’t have any idea the kind of bonfire you lit when you incinerated that Inquisitor do you?”

“Oh. Did someone notice that? Thought I was being subtle there.”

“Oh you were,” Lucky said. “It all happened so fast that most of us had no idea who or what smote the hell out of those guys. We were just happy to be alive. The dickhead in charge though? He’s been a bit less than subtle. He burned up that whole precinct looking for you.”

“Oh. Hmm. So how much of the city wants me dead? Like all of it, I’m guessing?”

“Dead? Oh no. No, no my silly friend. They want you to take the big seat. We’ve had enough of centuries of darkness under the current idiot. It’s time we saw the sun again.”

“If anyone had told me that being dead would involve entertaining more visitors and not less, I would have given the whole thing up as a bad idea and invented myself a portal to some other, emptier world. In fact that’s a rather good idea. I should get right on that. Oh, wait, right. No more hands to hold the tools with. Ah cosmic retribution for a life of misdeeds, how wonderful to run into you yet again.”

– Helgon the wishing-he-was-less-Eternal-than-he-is, to the third group of refugees to arrive at the Factorum in the space of two decades since the Sun Fall.

It took almost a week before we were ready to go. That doesn’t sound like a long time, but when every second takes an hour to tick by thanks to the looming threat of a Neoteric Lord finding you, a week becomes the next best thing to an eternity.

What didn’t help at all was that I had almost nothing to do the whole time either.

I’m not an especially big fan of work. Some people seem to find meaning and purpose in being productive. Growing food and cleaning up and repairing all the things that break on a daily basis aren’t anything new to the world following the Sun Fall. We may live under the dictatorial thumb of a quasi-god tyrant monster, but day to day life is probably similar to what it always has been since a society that doesn’t grow food starves, and one that doesn’t clean up after itself dies of the plagues, and one that doesn’t fix what gets broken both staves and dies of the plagues. None of that means that work doesn’t suck though.

In theory therefor, a week where I couldn’t poke my head outside or let any living soul catch sight or scent of me should have been the relaxing vacation I’d always hoped for.

If you think that may I refer you back to the little ‘being hunted by a Neoteric Lord’ problem I was dealing with.

The one time work would have been useful for getting me out of my own head it was, of course, not an option.

To her credit, Zeph understood that before I did and dropped a mountain of books on me before I even thought to ask for them.

A lot of people didn’t care for reading. They sat through their mandatory education periods, picked up enough reading comprehension to recognize signs and decipher simple manuals and called it good.

That was not me.

I read everything I could get my grubby little hands on, even if it meant breaking my own rules about avoiding risks like ‘pissing off people who could do me grievous bodily harm’. Oh, I never let them catch me. Just because I was willing to break a few rules didn’t mean I was stupid about it. There were plenty of books I’d never gotten a peak inside because filching them would have been entirely too obvious.

Zeph, joyously, had some of those!

That turned a week of eternities into a week of slightly more bearable eternities. 

She was good about other things too. 

Like feeding me.

Since Vaingloth hadn’t been able to catch a glimpse of her (when she wants to move, she moves), Zeph was free to move about and managed to bring back a surprising amount of food each day. It wasn’t always in the best of shape, but there was plenty of it. That would have been a welcome change if my appetite hadn’t decided to be flakey as hell.

When I woke up, I’d be hungry. By the time I was conscious enough to shovel food into my face, my appetite had all but vanished. Zeph suggested it might be Sola waking up as well and providing me the support I needed. It was a kind little fiction, but we both knew that wasn’t it at all.

“The last of the travel gear we need should be ready by tomorrow,” she said over what should have been breakfast on the sixth or seventh day I’d been imposing on her hospitality.

“And you said the Factorum is about two weeks away from here? By the route you know?” 

“Two weeks if we’re lucky. We’ll be bringing enough supplies for three weeks though in case we need to make any detours.”

“Can we carry three weeks worth of supplies?” I wasn’t looking forward to the aches and pains of a two week forced march, but a force march followed by thirsting to death seemed even less appealing.

“You are a God Bearer, so anything may be possible, but I’m going to presume Sola will not be able to provide any assistance. That’s what has been taking so long.” Zeph didn’t need to justify herself, and I had been trying to very hard not to complain about how miserable the whole situation was, but I’m not the best at hiding my emotions it seems.

“We’ll leave when we leave,” I said. “I know we’re not safe here, but we’re definitely dead if we’re not ready for the wastelands right?”

“It’s not impossible that we would survive, but it would be much more difficult,” Zeph said.

“I’m a big fan of not making things more difficult than they already are,” I said, though that didn’t reassure her as much as I’d hoped. Because she was just as anxious as I was. She was just better at hiding it.

“I have word of the other people who were at the site of Melty Boy’s visitation,” she said, changing the subject so neither of us would have to think about it too much. I was delighted that she’d come around to calling Vaingloth ‘Melty Boy’. I amused myself by imagining the title would somehow make it out into general usage and reveled in just how enraged that would make him.

Maybe pissing off a quasi-god wasn’t something to hope for, but since I’d already gone all-in on that, it wasn’t like there would be any additional danger in making even angrier at me. 

“Did they get out of there, or were the other patrollers able to get there too quick?” I asked. We’d heard rumors that patrollers from some of the neighboring precincts had been dispatched to deal with ‘a nest of criminals’ but the details had all been second hand.

“They did. Most of them. Some of them apparently went to ground in the precinct and managed to hide until today. The other scattered and probably passed the incoming patrollers.”

“What about Vaingloth? Anyone talking about what happened to him?”

“He’s declared a special festival. He’s calling it the ‘Bounty of Light’ festival and its scheduled for tomorrow.”

“And what happens in a Bounty of Light festival?” I asked, pretty certain I could guess the answer.

“For one day, there the cities lamps and beacons will be lit to their highest settings,” Zeph said. “The official reason is to celebrate how close the city is to finally returning light to the world and let people search for the ‘Light Within’ and, although this rumor spread separately, the ‘Last Spark’.”

“And the ‘Last Spark’ would be?”

“According to the rumor? It’s a piece of light magic, or maybe fire magic, or maybe even the god of light. Whatever it is though, the rumor claims it was stolen, right before the Sun Fall, and it’s absence is why the world fell into darkness. People aren’t officially being asked to look for it, but if someone finds it they’ll be the first of all Melty Boy’s advisors.”

“Wow! Instant promotion to the top of the social order. That’s a sweet deal if anyone can find the spark. It would almost be tempting to look for it my…” I cut myself off as my brain finished processing Zeph words. I drew in a deep breath and sighed. “Would almost be tempting if I wasn’t the Last Spark, right?”

“For many it would be tempting nonetheless,” Zeph said. “Melty will be good to his word. Even someone like you, he would elevate.”

“And then destroy me at some more convenient time. After he’s got Sola.” I could see my future if I went for that particularly idiotic choice. “You know, even without Sola, I think I was wrong. That’s not a tempting offer at all. Apart from getting me close enough to him to stab him in the neck, he’s really got nothing to offer me.”

“He wouldn’t be trying to kill you.”

“Sure he would,” I said. “I mean it’s not like I wouldn’t try to kill again if the opportunity arose again. I’d have to imagine that would put me back on his ‘kill violently and painfully’ list pretty quickly.”

“The nine remaining lords can be strange, but yes, I expect you wouldn’t stay long in his graces.”

“Would I even have a chance?” I asked, and then amended. “Of killing him?”

Sacrificing myself was not a play I wanted to make, but if I could free the world from his influence, wasn’t I supposed to?

“With Sola bound as she is? I do not believe you would,” Zeph said, shaking her head as though she could hear the thoughts lurking that were behind my question. “He has had since before the Sun Fall to assemble his defenses, any mortal weapon or tool should have been accounted for.”

“Ugh. I hate him. I hate this whole place. We live in a stupid world!” It wasn’t a new frustration, but Zeph’s reaction to it wasn’t what I’d expected.

“The world was worth loving once,” she said, her soft voice even quieter than usual. “I think much of it still is too. I can see the peaks in the distance and remember sailing over them. They are as tall and proud now as they were then. The same is true of the people.”

“Maybe you’ve met better people than I have,” I said. “Most of the ones I know are just doing whatever they can to get by and survive.”

“I think that’s what people have always done. Even in this world, there are still people like a the Bugbear woman who are focused on helping those who are weaker than themselves.”

“Yeah, but Lucky’s special,” I said, hating myself a little bit more for having ruined yet another of the things she’d spent time and energy building.

“They all are,” Zeph said. “All of the people who try to make the world better than it was.”

A set of people which notably did not include me.

“Even if this world punishes them for it? Or because this world punishes them for it?”

“That they endure in spite of the punishment is admirable. That they try in the first place makes them special though.”

“I wish being special was enough to save them. A lot of people see someone like Lucky and their impulse is to toss her in the fires before anyone else.” That was why I couldn’t see the world like Lucky did. She wanted to help people, I wanted to survive, and sometimes there just wasn’t any overlap between the two.

“She has avoided the fires so far,” Zeph said. “I wasn’t able to find out where she’s gone, but she has definitely fled out of sight of the patrols, or at least no one has seen or heard of a patrol apprehending her.”

“I just hope they didn’t kill her,” I said. “She deserved better than that.”

“You’re damn right I do,” Lucky said, as she lifted a tile up from the basement’s floor and rose up so she was halfway into the room.

“W-w-what?” I said, every sense going past high alert and into borderline hallucination mode. I’d stared at the floor for a week. I tried lifting the tiles. They were both incredibly heavy and laying on top of solid earth and stone. What Lucky was doing was impossible.

Except that I hadn’t checked the tile she’d lifted up.

“I’d love to compare notes Little, but we’ve got maybe a minute before the patrollers get here, so we’re leaving. Now.”

I turned to look at Zeph. She was just as surprised as I was, but, predictably, reacting a lot faster than I was. Before I had a chance to object, she’d hoisted me up into her arms again and we were off, descending into a narrow darkness that I couldn’t help but feel certain was my tomb.

“The wastelands are wide, and their dark rivers cut deep. Walk there and you walk among the dead and the things which should have died but never did. Oh there’s treasure to found and glory to be won, hidden in the wreck and ruin of the world that was, but understand that for the waste walkers, your life is the most delicious treasure of all, and if you’re not careful, what comes out of the waste may be wearing your skin, but what’s hidden behind your eyes won’t be you at all.”

– from the last accounting of Phin Drazel, caravan master and explorer, recovered from his home one year after he set out to find a new path between Mount Gloria and the Factorum.

I was pretty sure Zeph hadn’t rescued me out an ironic need to get me killed in a more horrific fashion than even Vaingloth would have bothered with.

“There aren’t any caravans that go to the Factorum,” I said, stating what was painfully common knowledge.

“We couldn’t be part of a caravan if there was,” Zeph said. “And we can’t risk going to any of the other Lord’s cities either. They would make you their pawn the same as he would have.”

I would have scoffed at avoiding Vaingloth’s name, except for the sense of his presence hovering disturbingly close above us. It was unnerving, and my only comfort was the certainty that if he knew were I was, he wouldn’t hesitate even an instant to try to kill me again. I’d enjoyed hurting him, and I’d put everything I had into making the most of the moments he hadn’t been ready for. There had never been the potential for peace between us, and I was glad that for once he’d been the one to suffer the consequences of his actions.

“Have you been there before?” I asked, wondering if this particular consequence of my own actions was something I could dodge away from or not.

“No. But there are paths which can lead us there,” Zeph said with a sadness in her voice that made me wonder who she’d lost on those paths.

I was already sitting down, but I reclined further back and blew out a breath. I was a city girl, a creature of alleys, and buildings, and sewers. My city sucked, but everything I knew about the wastelands made it clear that they sucked a whole lot more.    

“The god shard you bear will keep you safe,” Zeph said. “Nothing in the shadows will move against a God Bearer unless something greater compels them to.”

“Something greater like Melty Boy?” I asked, knowing that Vaingloth simply had to have plans and resources he could unleash on anyone foolish enough to try to escape from his city.

“No. For all ‘Melty Boy’s’ power, he abandoned those who dwell in the waste. That is neither forgotten nor forgiven. He cast aside his influence over them and will never be given another chance to claim it again.”

“So what greater things are there then?” Because whatever the answer was I wasn’t going to be happy about it, but being surprised by a nightmare greater than a Neoteric Lord would redefine what unhappiness looked like.

“Other God Bearers,” Zeph said.

Which, sure, of course. Sola had been so full of light and kindness, I might have made the mistake of failing to consider that other godly fragments might be a bit harder to deal with.

Then a far worse though occurred to me.

“The waste walkers. Are any of them God Bearers?” 

“Yes.”

As answers went it was everything I didn’t want to hear and pretty much enough to convince me not to go.

“I can’t go. We can’t go. Sola’s bound in spells,” I said. “She’s not going to be able to protect me at all.”

“It’s not her power, it’s her presence which will let us pass through the wastelands.”

“Us as in you and me?”

“I will be your guide, but I will not have your protections,” Zeph said, and took an amulet on a necklace from one of her pouches. “So I will have to provide my own.”

I didn’t recognize the engraving on the amulet but I could feel a distant delight at seeing it which I had to presume came from Sola.

“Would we be safer if it was more than the two of us? Caravans talk all the time about having a minimum threshold of people to keep the waste walkers away.” The survivors from the few caravans which had dipped below that threshold painted some vividly clear stories on why leaving with a healthy surplus of people in the caravan was critical to its success and survival.

“They would need their own protection, even if it was only the weight of their collected souls, but that would make it much easier for ‘Melty Boy’ to find us.”

Which made a disturbing amount of sense. Even just coordinating the logistics of moving a caravan sized army of helpers would make the trip nigh impossible to put together, not to mention recruiting people who would be willing to venture off on a trip they very likely wouldn’t be coming back from.

“So, and forgive me for not asking this better but it’s been a long day, so why?”

“Why?”

“Why do this?” I don’t know that I necessarily wanted clarity on that point, but I definitely needed it. I was more than willing to take the rescue, and be given somewhere better to run to than a well lit basement somewhere, but I’d live as long as I had by being afraid and fear was telling me that people had all kinds of motivations for helping others out, most of which weren’t all that safe to rely on in the long term.

“Because the alternative is your capture and dissection,” Zeph said, looking puzzled.

“Right. And that’s a great reason for me to get out of here, but what’s in it for you?” I didn’t want to straight up ask her why she saved me, but she seemed to grasp what I was asking anyways.

“Ratkin is a delicacy in the Factorum. I’m going to feed you well on the journey and then sell you off by the pound,” Zeph said before rolling her eyes. “You really don’t remember?”

“Pretend Sola is gagged and somewhere on the other side of the sky,” I said. “Oh, and that I’m a kid at her first day at a Learning Center.”

Zeph frowned at me, which was warranted.

“You’re hardly that young, and certainly not that clueless,” she said. “It’s…it’s just difficult. I can see her in you so clearly. I can tell you’ve chosen her and she’s chosen you, so it’s hard to grasp how much she hasn’t been able to share with you.”

“Believe me, I’d like to know more too.”

“Yes, I do. You’ve only been with her for a short while I suppose?”

“A couple of days,” I said. “We’ve been trying to figure out what to do since I found her.”

“You’ve done well to avoid his attention for that long, though I gather you had some unwitting help there.”

“I did?” Unwitting help is often the best kind since it tends not to get me in trouble.

“He has had the Elite households in an uproar since right around the time I gather you met Sola. I suspect he confused their usual plotting and scheming for being responsible for her loss.”

“Why would one of the Elite’s steal from Melty Boy? He’s crushed upstart houses before and he wasn’t particularly slow or merciful about it.”

“For a god shard? Especially one they could keep hidden? Or deliver to one of the other Neoteric Lords? There are many games they play and embracing their own demise seems to be the point of most of them.”

“Wish I’d managed to go a little longer without drawing his attention then. Would have been fun to see a House or two fall.”

“Fun, yes. Chaotic, certainly. And dangerous as well. The stability the Neoterics provide comes at many terrible prices, but the shattering of that stability carries a price as well.”

“A price that you’re willing to pay?” That she wanted to get rid of Vaingloth wasn’t a difficult guess to make. We all wanted to get rid of the jerk. Zeph however was demonstrably willing to take significant risks to accomplish that, something which had never been true for me.

“For her? Yes.” She bowed her head and folded her hands together, pausing for a breath before she continued. “You know the god shard you carry is a piece of the sun. No matter how little she had been able to share with you, that is the core of her essence and she couldn’t have help it back even if she wished.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of hard to miss. She’s only one part of it though, a fragment that survived the beasts attack.”

“Like many others,” Zeph said. “People believe the gods abandoned them, or failed them, or were destroyed because they were too weak. The truth though is that the gods are still with us. Their power is scattered, or consumed by the beast, but when they saw their ends coming they cast out their domains, broken and separated and terribly, terribly diminished so that the beast couldn’t find them, and would draw no sustenance from them if it did. Their goal was to starve it out and return once it had left and once they’d identified the weak spot which allowed it access to this realm.”

“Sola didn’t mention that. She made it sound a lot more desperate.”

“It was. The alternative was the dissolution of everything that is and will be,” Zeph raid. “Some gods waited until utter destruction was upon them, others shattered themselves early, before they could be devoured at all. All except one.”

“Sola? Was she the last one to fall?”

“No. Far from it. She was the first. She stood against the beast before any of the rest and she fought it for the longest. Other gods fought their own battles and fell despite the shelter she offered. If not for her, there wouldn’t have been time for the rest to do as they did and the beast would have consumed the very concepts that our existence in based on.”

How someone could eat a concept was well beyond me, but I’d caught a glimpse of the beast, I’d felt a distant memory of Sola’s battle, and I believed Zeph’s words. If there was anything that could each the idea of existence, it was the thing Sola had fought.

“You sound like you were there. That you saw her fighting?”

“I was. Or my spirit was. Like you I am a vessel, though where you are still distinct from your god, I and my spirit are one.”

“Like you’re not who you used to be? Like your god ate you or something?”

Zeph chuckled.

“Not at all, and my spirit is not a god. What I am, is what I was, and what I was, what I used to be, was one of the sun’s beloveds.”

I flinched a bit at that. The distant affection I felt was clearly Sola’s, which added more than a little weight to Zeph’s words, but I didn’t do ‘beloveds’ and if that’s what this whole situation was predicated on, things were going to get messy sooner or later.

Zeph’s smile was an understanding one though, and she continued her explanation without expecting a response from me.

“Mount Gloria’s education being what it is, I’m going to guess you’ve never heard of the Fox Winds?”

I shook my head, not sure what other response to make.

“When the sun passed across the sky, she traveled with the winds. I was one of those winds and we were called the Fox Winds since we chased away the lesser spirits to keep her path clear. When she fell, we did as well, wandering for time out of mind, before we managed to return here and find the piece of ourselves which had been lost in the solid world. That is why I will help you. Why I must help you. My path is the path of the sun, your path, and I will give anything to run with her again.”

“There are no shadows which can hide our enemies from the Holy Sight of Our Lord! Though darkness has swallowed the world, it cannot conceal those who would sin against the Holy Covenant which binds and shields us. And know, not later, no, know this today! That they are legion! We see them where they crawl, but they are legion I say! Ever out there, eating away at what is ours. Seeking to take what we’ve made, what we’ve bled and died to preserve and corrupt it into filth. So be alert! Stay watchful! If any would stray into sin, if any would turn against the Lord Eternal, let your voices ring out against them! Bring the light and bring our Holy Judgement down upon them!”

– Traditional Mount Gloria speech to begin the Defender Memorial Service to honor those who died in the previous month guarding the Central Water Portal.

I should have been terrified. I had a Neoteric Lord who was personally invested in killing me dead. Vaingloth was not feeling merciful or playing around. What I’d done to him, melting his eyes, was not something he was ever going to forgive, and he’d had centuries to work out inventive and horrible methods of killing people.

That I wasn’t already dead was due in part to Sola keeping me alive, but doing so had left her bound up far away from me and unable to repeat the trick. 

Which meant I really should have been dead, since Vaingloth was entirely capable of assaulting me from the other side of the city.

Except I think he might have lost track of me.

I couldn’t fault him. As far as I could tell I move moving faster than sound.

Or the threads of spellcraft he’d bound me in were as great at muffling my hearing as they were at blinding my eyes.

The person carrying me, who I probably should have been terrified of as well, didn’t seem to be encumbered by any of that though. They simply ran, carrying me like I weighed nothing at all.

Not wanting to be dropped if we were moving as fast as it felt like we were, I lay still and tried to work out what came next.

Death.

Mine.

Maybe everyone’s.

Which was not a particular helpful observation, even if it seemed like it was unquestionably accurate.

I’d messed up. I wasn’t sure where. Maybe healing Mumora? I’d known that was a bad idea but I did it anyways. I did it anyways but I didn’t regret it.

Which weird. I’d always imagined being caught at something and how angry I would be at myself for whatever stupid thing had landed me there. I knew I’d feel like that because of how angry at myself I always was when I came close to being caught.

But that wasn’t how I felt this time.

I didn’t know how Mumora was doing, or how any of them were. I might have gotten them all killed, but as I lay there in a stranger’s arms, being carried somewhere  not even my own personal god knew where, I saw that I honestly didn’t regret anything I’d done.

Sure, killing the patrollers and the Inquisitor hadn’t been the best choice I could have made. Maybe next time I’d choose differently. In the moment though, unleashing the wrath Sola and I had felt had been what I needed.

That moment had made sense. Dying afterwards also would have made sense. I wouldn’t have like it, I was glad it hadn’t come to that, but it would have been an understandable outcome of my actions.

The situation I was in though? It made no sense at all. Blinded and deafened and as helpless as a baby was not a state I’d been prepared for.

What was I going to do about it?

I had no idea.

Relax maybe?

I mean I was supposed to be dead, and while there are far worse things than death, I couldn’t picture any of them involved by held by strong and sheltering arms while I was whisked away from danger.

Heck if this was some wastewalker monster that had developed a sudden urge for Ratkin-on-a-stick or something, they were welcome to me. I’d be dead but at least without the dramatics and misery that Vaingloth had in store for me.

Except, I couldn’t quite make the leap to accepting that idea.

I wasn’t alone anymore. If I died, Sola was going to lose her connection to the world. Best case she’d wander around as a flickering divine spark until she found someone else to welcome her in. In the worst case, the beast, or maybe even one of the Neoteric Lords, would eat her.

I didn’t like any of those possibilities so I had to live.

I couldn’t do anything while we were moving, and I had no information to plan with for when and wherever we stopped. That left me with plenty of time to fret needlessly though, which was an activity I had lots of practice with and was getting better at all the time.

My thoughts were happily spinning out into increasingly ridiculous scenarios when we came to sudden stop. There should have been a jolt or a sense of deceleration, but instead, one moment we were moving fast enough to outstrip the wind and the next we were still.

“That should have snapped all those threads, but let’s get them off you just in case,” a soft voice said as I was placed onto a hard floor.

One by one the threads of spellcraft which had bound me were cut away, first the ones tying my legs together, then the ones which bound my chest, and finally the ones which had wrapped themselves around my head.

The cocoon I’d been trapped in fell away to reveal a surprisingly well lit basement room as well as my rescuer.

She stood about half again as tall as I did. Where I had more human traits than rat ones, she was the reverse, blending mostly fox traits with a slight morphing towards a human posture and limb length proportion.

“I’m not sure who you are, and I don’t think a ‘thank you’ could possibly be enough, but thank you anyways. That was a bad spot you just got me out of,” I said, feeling oddly secure under the circumstances.

Like I knew this person.

Or, was it this type of person?

Or was it even me who knew them?

Sola? I asked silently, listening for her thoughts as best I could. Do you know who this is?

There was no answer. Or at least none in words. I did feel a distant warmth bloom inside me though. 

My brain didn’t know how to process any of this, but it was smart enough to listen to the unspoken reassurance my god sent me. 

“It could have been worse,” the fox-lady said. “He could have been there in person.”

“If he had been, it might not have gone all that well for him either,” I said, assuming that we were talking about Vaingloth.

“You’re not the first God Bearer he’s encountered. Though I suppose you might be the first one to channel a miracle quite that big. Is who I am not coming back to you though?” She turned in a circle as though there might be a side of her which would jog my memory.

“Have we met before?” I asked, knowing for a certainty that we hadn’t.  I’d met a few Foxkin in the past, but like me they were more humaniform than this woman. She was closer to a fox-version of a Wolfling, with same sort of short fur and a snout and a tail and digitigrade legs the wolf-people had, just sleeker and red where the Wolflings were typical bigger and grey.

“Not in these forms, but my spirit and your shard worked together for an uncountable number of years.”

“You know Sola? Wait, can you cut her free too? Whatever Vain..” I got half his name out before she stopped me with a hand over my mouth.

“Don’t use his name or any of his titles,” she said. “Normally he doesn’t listen for them but at the moment? He’s going to be searching for any trace of you he can find and if he hears his name in your voice, we’ll have a problem I may not be able to outrun.”

“Understood.” Among Vaingloth’s many mythical abilities which people loved to tell stories about, the idea that he could hear his name whenever it was spoken. For those who deluded themselves into putting their faith in him, there was the belief that Vaingloth himself would answer their prayers if they were just good enough because he could hear each and every one of them when they prayed to him. Given how many people were in the city though and how often they prayed for this, that, or the other thing, that had seemed like an impractical hope at best. That he was willing to make a special case for me, seemed less impractical however. “What about made up names for him? Does it matter if we’re thinking about him or is it the actual words he’s listening for?”

“There’s no guarantee of protection from him, but other names are less likely to attract his attention.”

“Okay, well then, Melty Boy bound Sola up too. I think it was the same spell he used on me, but I can’t tell where the strands are?”

“Melty Boy?”

“I wanted to set him on fire but I had to settle for just melting him a bit.”

“Ah, that would explain why he struck out at you. Normally he would have tried a recruitment strategy.”

“That would have been a colossal waste of time. I will never work for that ass.”

“Others have said that and been convinced. He has many strings he can pull.”

“Wish I could hang him up from them,” I said. Killing the people had been a sin. Killing something like Vaingloth, who should have died ages ago, would be doing the world favor.

“You’re not alone in that either. Though in decades of trying, I don’t know if any have had as much success as you have. And, you really don’t know me? My name is Zeph.” She looked hopeful but all I could offer her was a shrug.

“I wish I did, but Sola’s silent.”

“He must have used a different spell on her then. One not bound to him, probably to isolate her. Otherwise the spell on her would have unraveled too when I freed you.”

She spent a moment paused in thought and I gave her the time she needed.

“I think we need to get you to someone who can break one of his bindings,” she said.

“There’s someone in the city who’s more powerful than he is?” I couldn’t picture it but I also couldn’t have pictured running into a god while fleeing from the murder of a patroller, so my imagination clearly had some significant limits.

“No. Not in the city and not more powerful, but possibly able to break the spell you speak of.”

“There’s someone out in the wastes? I thought the only thing out there were ghosts and monsters?”

“There are as many or more ghosts and monsters inside the city as outside.”

I hated the city, I hated the people in charge of it, and I hated a pretty fair number of the people who lived in it, but the thought of leaving the city still terrified me. I knew the reports of the wastelands were probably overblown. Vaingloth’s people always made things seem worse than they were, and he had every reason to keep people fearful and huddled inside the walls where he could control them.

But there was some truth to the fact that there were terrors outside the walls.

Under the circumstances though, taking my chances with the terrors probably was the better option. 

With my life officially that messed up, my thoughts were drawn back to the other lives I’d disrupted. The ones who deserved for me to do something to fix the damage I’d done to them. Assuming that was even possible.

“One thing, you freed me, but what about the rest of the people at Lucky’s? I’m guessing you couldn’t rescue them too?”

“No. I couldn’t. I’d hoped that by drawing you away, it would draw Melty Boy’s attention from them too.”

“Do we know if that worked?”

“He is searching for you and since he hasn’t found you he may not have taken any action against them. If we try to circle back there though, one of his sentries will be waiting for us.”

“And I’d be doing them even more harm. Yeah. It’s a terrible idea.” And there was the anger at myself that I’d been expecting.

“You haven’t done them any harm.”

“Not directly, but my actions set this all in motion.”

“Then before judging yourself, perhaps you need to watch for how it all plays out. Unfortunately, I don’t think we have the time to take a wait and see approach. “

“Are we in danger here?” I asked with more than idle interest.

“Not yet, but it looms over us. He will find this place, there are only so many places we can hide within the city. Where we need to go is the Factorum. He won’t, and I think can’t, follow us there.”

I’d heard of the Factorum. Lots of people had. It was a city, or it had been one before it lost its Lord. Since then it had stood somewhere impossibly far off in the darkness, with no Fire Portal or any other portal, and no people. Just a silent mausoleum to one of the few Neoteric Lords who’s reign hadn’t been eternal at all.

“Do not think that because our Divine Lord does not stand before you that he is not with you. Do not think that because he does not lift the burdens from your shoulders, your troubles are unknown. And do not think that because you have escaped his judgment for the moment, he will not render justice unto you.”

– Proclamation read each day to the city’s children at their Standard Learning Centers.

When we healed Mumora, Sola had borrowed a miracle from another domain. That had been tricky and wasn’t something she couldn’t necessarily repeat. Burning though? Burning was a part of her and, when she needed to express Divine Wrath, was so natural as to barely be considered miraculous at all.

The miracle, if there was one, lay more in Vaingloth’s survival. Neither Sola nor I had been under the delusion that we would be capable of incinerating the Lord Eternal of Mount Gloria. The light that reduced the Inquisitor and patrollers to dust wasn’t like any I had ever conceived of. It was so bright it shown through the souls of everyone present. Even Vaingloth.

He tried to protect himself, but Sola’s power wasn’t scoped within mortal limitations. His power was worldly and real. Built up from before the Sun Fall, and rich with stolen divine might the gods had shed as they were torn to pieces by the beast that destroyed them. For all that though, he was still mortal and so very far from being ‘Eternal’.

I think it was Vaingloth’s stolen divine power that drove Sola’s rage, even more than her captivity had.

I wanted him dead for burning up my family, and friends, and because he was a miserable ass. He portrayed himself as a compassionate leader who was working oh so hard to help everyone, all the while making sure that his power base was as secure as it could possible be, and toying with the rest of us for nothing more than his own amusement.

Sola wanted him more than dead, and through me she could at last act.

I need to be clear though. It wasn’t all her. She didn’t take control of me. The sin we performed in that moment was real and I was as much or more a part of it than she was. It was her power and her choice, but it was my acceptance and my desire for it which allowed her miracle to flow into the world.

When it hit, Sola’s miracle lit the world. 

I’d been afraid of giving myself way by glowing but in that moment, there was so much light that shadows which had covered the city since before my grandparents were born were chased away.

It was so much light that it went past blinding and into a realm where it revealed a shining light within us all.

And I don’t mean ‘everyone in the melee’ or ‘everyone on the block’. I mean everyone in the city.

And then we squeezed.

Sola and I.

Faster than thought, we took the light from the city and focused it down into the bodies of our enemies. The patrollers didn’t even have time to glow. They were simply gone, and in their passing, I was struck speechless.

I called what we did a sin because there was no other term for it. We saved ourselves. We saved everyone who fought with us. We denied people who were bent on evil aims the ability to execute their cruel agendas.

But what we did was a sin.

As the souls of the patrollers were torn away from their lives, I felt each and every one of them. Through Sola’s eyes, I looked over the grand sweep of their lives.

Were they bad people? They had done evil. Reveled in it at times even. Were there reasons for what they’d done? Had they been protecting people? Had they done good while they drew breath? I didn’t want to see any of that, but to Sola’s eyes everything was laid bare.

I saw the regrets they carried – the ones which had made no difference, and the ones who had stayed their hands. I saw the hurts that had been done to them, the ones which filled them with rage oh so similar to my own and the ones they’d been asking for. I saw their fears, and their hopes, the love they carried, and all the broken paths which had prevented them from learning how to do better than they had.

I didn’t forgive them. I understood them, but I did not forgive. With all the power I wielded, I was not merciful.

I told myself that I couldn’t be, but it was a lie.

There were so many things I could have done in place of what I did. If all I wanted was to defend myself, I could have left them alive, left them with a chance to choose better actions. I could have made them safe, taken from them everything that would have let them hurt anyone again, but at least left them able to learn and grow.

Instead I condemned them and Sola joined me.

The Inquisitor had done the worse things of all of them and was the farthest gone, wrapped in his mania which turned every horrid practice he undertook into a holy offering. He would have been the hardest to disarm, but only to the extent that its harder to snap two matchsticks than one.

Sola burned him, both for the things he had done, the lives he’d ruined, but also to get to Vaingloth.

Vaingloth had only exposed so much of himself, so we could only hurt him to a limited extent.

But he was watching us.

So we invaded his eyes.

We reached out and placed a a fire bright as creation into each of his eyes and then added more, and still more.

He was too far away for me to hear his screams, but they rang loud and clear in my ears anyways. 

I wanted to listen to that song forever. To be lulled to sleep and softly woken by the mad, agonized screams Vaingloth couldn’t contain. I wanted to know that everytime the agony faded and he thought it was over, that was only the prelude to it crashing back even stronger than ever before.

I wanted that, but it was not to be. For all that he was mortal and Sola was a god, Sola’s vessel was me and I was weak and imperfect. My rage didn’t make me strong at all, it just focused me and substituted for the courage I’ve always lacked.

When Vaingloth cut the link the remaining fire we were sending into him had nowhere to go beside the Inquisitor and he withstood no more than half a blink of it before his body was reduced to a concept rather than anything which retained a physical reality.

For a moment, as the last motes of the light dwindled away, there was silence.

For a moment afterward there was too.

All across the city.

For the first time in living memory, a miracle had touched everyone’s life. It had been too big and too undeniable for any to claim it was anything other than what it was.

I’d wanted to stay secret and hidden, but I should have known that the truth of the gods returning wasn’t a secret someone as small as me could keep. Sola was too big, and too important.

The Killing Word hit before the silence faded.

Vaingloth wasn’t dead, and he was far from defenseless.

I felt my blood freeze and my heart burst. All strength left me and the abyss yawned around me.

I would have fallen then except for one tiny detail.

I wasn’t alone.

My blood rebelled against the cold with a warmth that could never be quenched (Thank you Sola). My heart, which had broken so many times before, held strong, bolstered by a fire that roared inside it (Thank you again Sola!). And my strength, which had never been much to begin with, was drawn away like water leaking down a drain, only to be refilled by the ocean of my communion with Sola.

Vaingloth wasn’t finished though. He’d been at the “smashing problems with magic” game for a long time and, as it turned out, this wasn’t the first time he’d had to deal with a god being mad at him.

The threads of spellcraft that followed the Killing Word, showed that the deadly attack had been a feint. Oh, it definitely would have killed me. The best feints were perfectly viable attacks if they weren’t responded to after all. Mostly though it had been intended as a distraction. In keeping me alive through the Killing Word, Sola had been focused on our connection and missed the attack Vaingloth directed against her.

I felt like that was a forgivable mistake since Vaingloth wasn’t anywhere near powerful to hurt Sola. Entrapping someone is not the same as harming them however. I felt his spellcraft wrapping around us like threads of spider silk.

Unbreakable spider silk.

I was able to move my body but my connection to Sola began to drown in shadows as thread after thread was layered down between us.

I felt Sola moving against it, but she hesitated.

I can’t smite this without hurting you, she said in a whisper as her voice and presence became distant and faint.

Go ahead! I said. I can take it!

I had no idea whether I could or not, but I also knew that it Vaingloth could spit a Killing Word across the space between us once then he could almost certainly do it a second time just as easily.

It was too late though.

Sola was gone.

Or? Not gone. She was still with me. I knew she was. I couldn’t feel her, or hear her, or sense any scrap of her power, but who needed any of that? She was a god.

No.

She was MY god.

I looked around the street at the people who were just coming around from their awe-inspired trances. I was glowing like a star thanks to all of the Divine Wrath I’d channeled, so there was no chance I’d be able to hide anymore.

Except…

The threads that had cut me off from Sola? Yeah, they weren’t just metaphysical in nature. I’d been able to move freely for a moment, but in place of a second Killing Word, Vaingloth had turned the spell he’d woven against Sola to include me.

Or rather to include smothering me.

Glowing wasn’t a problem, largely because I wound up cocooned and drowning in very real threads of pure spellcraft.

And I wasn’t alone.

The last thing I saw before the spell working closed over my head was Vaingloth being thorough and covering everyone else who was present with a flood of spell threads.

He wasn’t going to leave any of us alive.

He couldn’t.

We’d seen him for what he was.

In the light of Sola’s wrath, his soul had been revealed just like the rest of ours had been.

It’s one thing to reject a Neoteric Lord’s claims of supremacy out of anger, or spite, or simply a refusal to accept that the work could be that screwed up that someone like Vaingloth would be the best person to be in charge. That belief is easy to come to but frail in the face of even the simplest demonstrations of a Lord’s power.

What Sola’s light had shown us was what Vaingloth really was. A petty, and very mortal man. One who was desperate for power and had done unthinkable things to acquire and maintain it. However great the power he’d stolen made him though, nothing was ever going to change that at his core, and for all his accomplishments, Vaingloth was a pathetic, hateful coward.

As final thoughts went, I wasn’t happy with them.

I’d run out of options and struck back. I’d killed a few people who the world might have been better off without. I’d blinded and hurt the Lord of all Mount Gloria and shown him how very much he was hated. I should have felt better about that. Like I’d at least done one thing that mattered.

It wasn’t enough though.

Hurting people wasn’t what I was here for.

I’d run away all my life because I didn’t want to hurt people. 

I hated it.

I wanted to help them. At least the ones who helped me. And maybe the ones who needed help but didn’t think there was anyone who would listen.

Maybe because no one had ever been there for me, and that felt wrong.

Darkness closed over me, and silence, both shepherding me to the grave.

And then I was moving.

Carried by strong arms which were holding me tight as we slipped past the wind itself.

“Darkness breeds perversion, and the light brings purity. We will bask in his Holy Radiance and be forever pure, all as one, and one to light the path for all. You, who have fallen to criminality and vice. You who have fled from the embrace of the light. You who have sinned against our Eternal Lord and against your fellow man. We do not cast you out. We do not damn you to darkness. Always, the light will welcome and receive. Always will you be held within the fold. And on this day, will your sins be forgiven, your darkness washed away, and your place in the Holy Light secured, now and forevermore.”

– Executioner Three Seven reciting the Litany of the Kindling to a group of ten Bugbears who the patrollers had brought in for ‘Crimes: unspecified’.

Brawls were the kind of thing I ran from at best possible speed. Nothing good ever came out of them, unless you counted how often they wound up with the violent types getting tossed into the flames as Kindling.

I didn’t even have to look around as Oolgoo landed the first hit of the melee. I already knew where my exits were. 

Behind me there was a sewer grating. Not a good option, but a close one. Getting the grate off would take maybe ten seconds? Normally a complete mark against it, but there were enough of us here that the patrollers wouldn’t be paying attention to a little thing like me that was running away from them.

Better than the sewer though was the abandoned building across the street from where Lucky’s place was. It was a longer run but the door was missing so it would take no time at all to break line of sight and put something between me and the patrollers. Something that, critically, could block a Death Mark.

That wasn’t viable either though. The path to it was out in the open and plainly visible. If one of the patrollers did see me running for it, he might think I was going for reinforcements, and that would get me shot dead well before I could make it to the open door.

Which left a straight run away from the brawl. I’d have to get to the far end of the block before I’d find anything that could meaningfully be called cover, but it wouldn’t be hard to communicate with body language that I was not a combatant. As long as the patrollers had to contend with the rest of us, the most they would do with me was remember that a small Ratkin girl had been at the scene and had gotten away.

It would take them zero effort to tie that to the report of a Ratkin girl who murdered one of their fellow patrollers and they’d be out for me in force and with Death Marks ready to shoot first and ask questions never. A lot of small Ratkin girls would die before they decided they’d probably gotten their target, but none of them would have to be me if I was fast and clever enough.

And I could be.

They didn’t know what they were dealing with.

I could hide in places no one had ever even thought about hiding thanks to what Sola could let me do.

A straight run was perfect, and it was right there before me.

So why in all the flame scorched hells were my feet not moving?

It wasn’t Sola.

She was quiet.

And watching.

I could run.

I was really good at running.

And I had every reason to.

“Get out of here!” Lucky said, a single stride carrying her from behind me to five feet in front of me.

So, there! I even had permission to run! Someone who knew me wanted me to leave. Wanted me to live.

Because no one here was going to.

And they knew that.

Oh, the melee was decidedly in their favor. Oolgoo’s hit was only barely the first one and far from the hardest. 

The patrollers and the Inquisitor had better weapons, better training, and better armor. They were practiced at fighting, in theory, though the sort of fighting they were used to tended to involve more kicking unresisting victims as close to death as they could without rendering them ineligible to use as Kindling. That fact revealed itself in glorious splendor as they were met with a hoard of people who’d passed the breaking point. 

The patroller who’d been in the second floor was the first to fall, literally, as a group of elderly residents grabbed him from behind and hurled him to the street.

Ratkin and Kobolds can survive falls from second story balconies and human’s can too, unless they land head first. I couldn’t hear the impact over the yelling and screaming of the fray but I saw it clearly enough to imagine the the shattering crack as skull met stone. The patroller twitched a few times but I’m not sure if that was any sort of living response.

The death of one of their own would have driven the patrollers into a frenzied rage, except for the small detail that they were already in a frenzied rage and it wasn’t enough against the sheer numbers against them.

Punches and kicks had limited impact on the patrollers, but sheer weight dragged each of them off their feet a whole lot faster than they’d been expecting.

The Inquisitor was more of a problem. In part, he seemed to have a supernatural amount of strength, and in part even touching was burning the people who were trying to keep him under control.

Since physical contact wasn’t working out so well though, more than a few turned to simply hurling stones at him. His enchanted robes protected him from most of those attacks as well, but ‘most’ is not ‘all’ and getting clobbered by half a dozen stones every time he tried to speak was disrupting his spellcasting quite effectively.

All of if which made it look like we were winning.

But there wasn’t any winning this. We could make the patrollers and the Inquisitor surrender and they would be back with an army twenty times the size. We could kill them and the army would kill not only those responsible, but everyone in the precinct.

And if we could somehow stop that from happening?

If we pushed back the small army of Inquisitors and patrollers they would send against us? 

In that case, Vaingloth would show up.

Or one of his Champions.

Vaingloth had been able to imprison a god.

There wasn’t any fighting him.

I had to run.

So I did.

Into the fray.

Yeah, I know.

One of the patrollers had managed to pull his Death Mark from his belt though. I don’t know who he was aiming it at. I’d like to say Lucky, or Smiles, of Mumora. Or anyone I should care about. The reality was though that I didn’t know who he was trying to take out before the mob crushed him, except that it wasn’t me.

It wasn’t me, but it should have been. That might have saved him from me biting his wrist hard enough to break bone.

I’m not strong enough to wrestle things out of the hands of any patroller really, except if said hand is no longer functional and producing blinding amounts of pain.

Which gave me a Death Mark.

People holding Death Mark’s are a priority kill target. 

But I didn’t throw it away.

Through Sola I could feel the power in it.

It wasn’t divine, but it should have been

This…this is wrong. This should be a Sacred Relic but no part of Death’s dominion is here. This is an idol to a lie. Sola was freaked out. I was freaked out to be holding a Death Mark, but Sola was freaked out by something far more profound.

I don’t think this one is special, I told her, looking it over quickly to see if there was anything about that seemed custom or unique.

The creator of this has fashioned a replica of the Divinity of Death, Sola said. They’ve created the shell of a false god to steal the power of Death without bearing any of the responsibility of Death’s divine realm.

That made sense on a surface level, but I could tell there was an awful lot more to unpack from Sola’s words than ‘somebody set themselves up as the new god of death and is being a loser about it.’

“Stop!” Lucky’s voice was loud enough to carry over the sound of the melee and held enough authority that people listened to her.

“You will all die for this sin,” the Inquisitor said, his arms pinned to the ground by a dozen or so people with heavy boots stepping on them. Can’t burn flesh through a good thick layer of leather.

“This city is better served if it does not lose a Inquisitor and any more patrollers today,” Lucky said. “This was a misfortune. Nothing more. Let it pass and you will see or hear of none of us again.”

“You will not escape judgment so lightly.” For a guy who was pinned face down on the ground, the Inquisitor didn’t seem to be able to see how precarious his personal position had become. 

Or maybe he could.

Would Vaingloth let an Inquisitor live who’d been defeated by the masses and then bowed his head to their whims?

“Our home is gone,” Lucky said. “We know you’ll be back to burn it down, but we will not be here by then. Let that be enough to slake your vengeance.”

“What about Ferrow?” one of the patroller’s screamed. Not the one whose hand I’d broken. “You killed him!”

“He fell. It was an accident. An accident that will keep the rest of you alive. Or he was pushed. Do you want that to be the story you believe? Do you want us to have to act as though one of us has murdered a patroller?”

I probably should have felt a twinge of guilt at that.

I didn’t, but I probably should have.

“Fine. He slipped.” The patroller was not happy but even the dimmest of bulbs are sometimes bright enough to see when there was only one option which led to him taking more than a four or five more breaths.

“Good. Then we can all walk away from here,” Lucky said. “You’ll chase us. We know that. Consider that another part of your vengeance, or do you not know what it’s like having to live outside the light?”

The patrollers grunted, which wasn’t quite an acceptance of Lucky’s argument but it wasn’t a denial of it either.

“No.”

I didn’t want to hear that word.

Not from the Inquisitor.

Unfortunately, it wasn’t from the Inquisitor.

The words came out of his mouth, but he wasn’t the one speaking them.

The people who were holding the Inquisitor collapsed, felled in an instant by a wordless spell.

Abomination. Sola was absolutely certain of that.

“No. There will be no negotiations. Not today,” Vaingloth the Eternal said, rising in the body of the Inquisitor to stand with an aura of dread might which drove everyone to their knees.

Abomination. Sola was not supposed to be a cold god, and I noted that all too clearly.

I hadn’t been overwhelmed by Vaingloth’s power.

I could still run.

Sola would protect me.

Instead, I saw that Vaingloth was right and I rose to stand.

He didn’t see me.

Didn’t notice or care, that I stood when everyone else was being shattered under the weight of his power manifested.

Vaingloth was right though.

There would be no negotiations today.

ABOMINATION.

Vaingloth’s power was overwhelming. He held more force that the entire mass of Mount Gloria, gathered over centuries.

But only so much of it was given to the Inquisitor. Only so much was he willing to risk on this trivial skirmish.

There was only so much protection his offered the Inquisitor and against Sola, it was far from enough.

I didn’t speak a word. I didn’t make a gesture. I didn’t give him any warning at all.

I simple incinerated them.

The Inquisitor, the patrollers, and every trace of Vaingloth I could reach to send the rage and hate that had built up since the day of my birth.

“Oh, I’m sorry, you had another what? Uprising? Among the workers? That you need because why exactly? I mean, are we not eternal and all powerful? No. No I will not be silent. I told you. From. The. First. Day. that you, all of you, were playing with fire. Shut up. Yes I know we’re all managing Fire Portals. That’s not. Ugh. Why do I bother to commune with any of you. Listen. Enjoy your little rebellion. Don’t kill them all, since none of us will spare you any of our citizens, and do not let them acquire access to any of your portals, or we will make sure that information does not spread beyond the bounds of your city walls. Anyone who disagrees with that sentiment, please, by all means, feel free to test me on it.”

– Helgon the Eternal, in a routine weekly chat with his fellow Neoteric Lords.

Mumora was going to die. I hadn’t helped save her. I’d marked her for death. 

That thought froze me in place in a centuries long moment where her unnaturally youthful body arched up over the balcony she’d jumped from and plummeted gracefully to the street below.

It wasn’t the fall that was going to kill her though. Kobolds are about the same size as me, and I can handle falls that would turn one of the bigger folks into a splattered mess on the street. Mumora wasn’t going to go splat either. She was just going to be hurt. Probably in her arms so she couldn’t fend anyone off all that well. Definitely in her legs too, which would mean escape via my favorite tactic of ‘running away’ would be out of the question.

That wasn’t what guaranteed her death though. The injuries I watched rushing closer to her simply guaranteed that her death wouldn’t be delayed at all. It was the Inquisitor who was going to kill her.

Or maybe one of his goons.

I felt Sola coil up in me at the thought and begin to reach out with a miracle that I had to fight back.

Miracles weren’t going to save anyone.

All a miracle would do was get us killed too. By “us”, I primarily meant me and her, but the Inquisitors weren’t known for their restraint. If they had even the slightest reason, everyone here would die, either directly at their hands or as Kindling for being under suspicion of fomenting rebellion.

Sola did not care about that.

Sola wanted to help.

Sola needed to help.

And I didn’t let her.

I wasn’t being brave. Or smart. Or wise. I was just scared. Not of the moment before us, but of all the moments like it I’d seen and all the misery that came from them. Misery that I’d avoided dying to by being scared. By running away and not looking back. By not letting myself care.

I knew there was nothing admirable in that. I knew the whole world was filled with better people than me, but better people died. A lot. All the time from what I could see. The world didn’t want better people. It wanted people who could be used. It wanted people who could hide. It wanted people who didn’t try to change it because for as awful as it was, the world was exactly how the people who were in charge wanted it.

And so Mumora fell.

And I didn’t stop her.

But Smiles did.

I’m not sure how he moved that quick. One moment he was at my side and then next he’d leapt down the street and body checked Mumora mid-fall, turning her falling momentum into lateral motion. He clung to her and they landed and rolled out of the fall, each of them absorbing parts of the fall for the other.

The patrollers were already reaching for their weapons as Smiles and Mumora began to rise painfully back their feet. Neither was broken, but both were bruised.

“Alive!” the Inquisitor commanded at the site of bare steel in the patrollers hands, which prompted them to yank the Pain Marks from their belts instead.

Pain Marks, the joke goes, is how patrollers say ‘hello and good day’ to the citizenry, since every citizen makes a patroller afraid for their lives. That’s not technically true. Usually patrollers reach for their swords because the fist sized spell disks which carry the pain spells are more costly than simply stabbing someone. That patrollers are uniformly bullies and cowards, convinced that the citizens are both pathetic and terrifyingly deadly, is however entirely true in my experience.

I flinched waiting for the electric snap of the Pain Marks discharging. The snap which was always followed by choked screams of agony.

In this particular case however, the snap was interrupted by grunts of surprised pain.

“There’s no need for that,” Oolgoo said. “You came here to ask some question. I’m sure we can facilitate the answers you need.”

He’d caught the lead patroller’s outstretched arm in one of his hands and was squeezing hard enough that the tiniest erg of extra force was going to turn the man’s arm into a bag of shattered bone splinters.

The other patrollers were being hemmed in by the people from Lucky’s who’d been dragged out into the street too.

“Get out of our way. Now. Get out now,” one of the other patroller’s screamed at Crystalline, a young dwarven woman who was standing on her toes in front of him to block his shot.

“Put it down. Don’t hurt them and put that down,” Crys screamed back, pointing at the patroller’s Pain Mark but not trying to take it from him.

I understood what she was doing. If she tried to grab the Pain Mark away from him one of two things would happen. She would fail, and he would turn it on her so long that her nerves glowed. That was the good result. The bad result would be that she would get the Pain Mark, and he would then pull out the Death Mark.

Death Mark’s are magical disks, like Pain Marks. They’re tools that all patrollers are equipped with and that a lot of citizenry has access to as well. Magic death amulets seem like the kind of things the Neoteric Lords should probably have kept out of the hands of the populace, and I’m sure Vaingloth would have eradicated them if they were anything more than pacifiers for the common people.

Oh, certainly, a Death Mark can and will kill you if the user has the focus to use them, and there were definitely a lot of people who frothed at the mouth over the necessity of bearing one at all times and practicing with them regularly. The most fervent Death Mark carriers seemed to be certain that it was only the threat of their personal pacifiers which kept a horde of ‘criminals’ from assaulting them at any and every moment.

The truth was, most Death Mark carriers only ever killed themselves with them, either accidentally or “accidentally”. The patrollers had, in theory, some reason to be afraid of them, except for the small issue that they were routinely outfitted with Death Wards. Not great Death Wards, but plenty to shrug off most of the Death Marks a civilian would have.

In the unlikely event that a civilian did manage to kill a patroller with a Death Mark, said civilian could look forward to the Special Patrol showing up. Said civilian, their family, and the block they lived on typically did not survive that encounter.

With that sort of power imbalance on their side, you might expect the patrollers to be a little more comfortable in their day to day encounters with the rest of populace, but no, any and every situation had to be met with total domination and anything which threatened that required an overwhelmingly brutal response.

So Crys was being reasonable, or as reasonable as she could be in the situation.

Which was of course why one of the other patroller’s Pain Marked her to the side of her face.

I’ve been clipped by a Pain Mark before. It sucks. It really sucks. Like lose control of bodily functions level of suck.

Crys gritted her teeth.

And stood there.

My brain kind of fritzed out at that. I was so impressed that for a brief moment, I forgot to be afraid.

And then another one Pained her.

Didn’t change anything.

Except that she smiled wider.

“Please,” Oolgoo said, speaking to the Inquisitor instead of the patrollers. “You need answers. Let us help you get them. It will be easier and faster for everyone.”

“Cease,” the Inquisitor said, and the patrollers stepped back.

With the Pain Marks removed Crys sagged a little but kept herself upright by what had to be a divine level of will.

“Come here, or everyone you see will die, you last and most painful of them all,” the Inquisitor said to Mumora and Smiles.

I watched the two of them glance at each other and I knew the silent discussion they were having.

If they ran, they might get away. Probably not. The Inquisitor would probably kill them, or bind them, or turn their bones to ice or so some other horrible thing before they could take five steps. But maybe those five steps would be enough. He might miss. 

Even if did though, he wasn’t kidding. Everyone else would die.

‘Everyone else’ didn’t necessarily include anyone they cared about. We were people who’d crashed at the same nest, not blood relations, and even the thickest of blood bonds weren’t something most people were willing to sacrifice themselves over.

If I was them, I would have run. Five steps can be a lot.

They didn’t though.

The idiots gave a damn about us.

They were going to die to give the rest of us (except for Crys) a chance to live.

I hate them.

Sola didn’t understand.

Which was good.

I didn’t want her to.

“Why did you flee?” the Inquisitor asked as Mumora got into stabbing range.

“He said I was an old lady,” Mumora said, and gestured to the balcony where the patroller who’d been bringing her out was standing as slack jawed and witless as most patrollers did most of the time. “Said I was unnatural, but I ain’t old and I ain’t unnatural. He wouldn’t listen though.”

“I see. And are you not Mumora Greyfletch?” the Inquistor asked.

“Yeah I am. Named after my grandmother,” Mumora lied.

“Your grandmother? And where is she?”

“Got shipped over to East Market two days ago,” Mumora lied without batting an eye. “Probably catch up to her at Sunk Rock though next time there’s some fish work there.”

It was so terribly plausible that I was sure it wasn’t going to work. Patrollers tend to hate it when you give them a reason to bother someone else and no reason to be petty and cruel in the moment. Inquisitors though I had less experience with, so I waited to see if this one would follow suit.

“East Market and Sunk Rock. Good. We have an investigation in East Market already and Sunk Rock is no great distance,” the Inquisitor said in a tone lacking in malice or disbelief.

It was enough to make everyone, the patrollers included, relax.

But not me.

And thankfully not Smiles.

The Inquisitor drew his Death Mark with such easy grace I don’t think anyone understood what he was doing until he had it aimed directly at Mumora’s face.

Smiles wasn’t large enough to overpower the Inquisitor, but what size can’t accomplish, decisive action sometimes can.

As the Inquisitor brought the Death Mark up, Smiles launch himself up directly under the Inquisitor’s arm causing the life quenching magic to fly harmlessly into the sky.

If there’d been a moment of stunned quiet that followed, all would have been lost. The patrollers were trained, and paranoid, and would have rallied.

The people around me, and the people watching at Lucky’s did not give them that moment though. With a roar the crowd turned as one, and the deadly melee I’d been fearing commenced.

“It has ever been my impression that my fellow Lords insist on populating their cities with the survivors of the Sunfall rather than good solid constructs because they can imagine no other use for power or proof of its existence than the subjugation of others.”

– Helgon the Eternal to no one while tinkering with her thirty seventh failed attempt at creating a self-willed construct.

I wound up in the sewers. I mean it wasn’t a surprise or anything. The sewers weren’t exactly spacious and so me and Smiles were obvious candidates for the crews that got sent down there. There’s no positive spin to put on sewer work either. Maybe once upon a time, sewer workers were held in some kind of great esteem for what they had to put up with, but if so that had died with the old world.

Smiles and I crawled back to Lucky’s that night at the end of the work cycle. He stunk. I stunk. Everyone stunk. Lucky’s had the answer to that though – warm showers! One of the perks of ‘volunteering’ for sewer work was that you could have an extra water ration sent to your home, and for a change the extra water ration wasn’t a miserable little trickle.

I hadn’t needed a shower the previous day thanks to my extended swim, which had been part of the reason I hadn’t been too unhappy with the sewer work. A Ratkin who was too clean was a Ratkin who stood out. I’d managed to get reasonably dusty on my climb out but the smell wasn’t as easy to replicate. One day in the sewers had fixed that though. 

If I wanted to smell bad, why was I happy to have a shower to look forward to when we got back? In part there was the ‘too much of a good thing’ going on. I needed to smell normally bad, not horrendously bad. More than that though, the soap most nest’s used had a specific smell too and that was as much a part of my olfactory disguise as anything else.

I’d had that all planned out. What I’d forgotten to plan for though was Sola.

Are you making the water warmer? I asked her when I noticed that it wasn’t merely ‘not cold’, it was actually warm to a degree that felt criminally good.

I should be warming oceans, Sola said. I thought this was the least that I could do.

It’s heavenly but it’s going to attract more attention. There’s mist rising in here.

I’m heating all of the water in the building.

Which…I don’t know why that surprised me. I knew how vast Sola was, or how vast she had been. To her, something like all of the water coming into Lucky’s building was no different from all of the water in a teacup or all the water in the city.

Can you afford to do that? I asked, thinking of the beast that was waiting to devour her still. One quick flash of light and everyone who saw it lost their minds. This isn’t going to make them any saner.

To be fair, the people from Lucky’s were the sanest madpeople I’d ever encountered. My second biggest fear had been that one or more of them would start blabbing about the light they’d seen which had to be exactly the sort of thing Vaingloth’s agents would be looking for in order to discover where I’d gone.

That was the second biggest fear only because I was convinced that the Eternal Neoteric High Lord of Supreme Blah Blah Blah must have some infallible mystic means of tracking Sola and so was going to show up right behind me, personally, and ruin my day something fierce.

But he hadn’t.

I’d kept my head down and worked on repairing a few holes in the sewer walls while staying ready to flee on an instant’s notice only to have that instant never arrive.

I got out of the shower and signalled the next person, a halfling guy, that the stall was free. My clothes were almost dry by the time I got back to the slumber pile but I stayed in my borrowed bathing dress anyways since it should have taken until more before they were wearable under normal circumstances.

There were fewer people in the room than there’d been the previous evening which I attributed to the bits of side talk I’d heard on the journey back to Lucky’s that with most of the work happening in other precincts, the people from Lucky’s were going to be able to spread the details of our plan farther by finding a nest for the night in those districts. That happened a lot,  though not typically as an exercise in community building. Usually people took wherever they could get it and crashed wherever that was. The city shuffled people around as needed, but it did not shuffle them back to where they’d been. If you wanted to return home after your shift, you needed to get back on your own.

The other reason the common room was empty, it turned out, was because when people were put into the mindset to make connections with each other, a fair number of them either admitted to the romantic connections they’d been hoping for, or were inspired to pursue said connections once they learned more about the people around them

Happily, I was neither hiding feelings for anyone, nor inspired to develop any. Smiles was roughly my age and the right species but, and no offense to him, no. Just no. It’s possible I was wired different than other people, and even other Ratkin, but I had less than zero interest in pursuing anyone, Ratkin or otherwise.

Smiles seemed to be of a similar mindset, which I’d observed to be more common than people assumed for Ratkin. We had the reputation of being fertile little baby machines since we typically had four to six kids at a time and could have them a couple of times a year. What people missed about that was how most of us had to be outside that process or we’d overrun the meager food supply that was available to us.

“Food wagon’s going to be coming by in a bit,” Smiles said when I flopped down onto the floor beside him. “Want to help me grab stuff for the old folks?”

The old folks weren’t terribly old in most cases. Shockingly, in a populace that was used for fuel and expendable troops and whatever happened to people beyond the air portal, a lot of people didn’t make it to old age. That didn’t mean a lot of people didn’t wind up too hurt to work for extended period of time though. Some of them were never going to be able to do the kind of work that the Milgos of the world doled out, but that didn’t mean we threw them away. It was too likely that we’d be in the same boat as they were for a while at least. That’s what we told each other, but I think a truer reason was that letting people die for our own convenience wasn’t who we wanted to be. 

I’m not saying we can’t be awful to each other, and there are definitely nests where only able bodied people are welcome, but most nests seem to understand that you gotta help everyone if any of us are going to make it.

I tromped down to the street with Smiles and a bunch of other people, letting my thoughts linger on how many of the food packs I could carry back and feeling marginally safer since there were no signs that anyone had noticed my role in healing the old Kobold lady Mumora.

That I literally ran right into one of Vaingloth’s Inquisitors as I turned the corner at ground level should have prompted any number of unfortunate reactions, but I lucked out. I froze. Just like any other Ratkin would have.

Perfect cover.

“Pick this one up,” the Inquisitor said the patrollers that were behind him. “Pick them all up.”

“Shall we call for the wagons sir?” the near patroller out of the set of four asked.

“No. We just need to question them. Hold them in the center of the street and don’t let any scamper away. If any try, cut their legs out. Our Lord Eternal may want to personally question them if it looks like they know anything of value.”

One of the patroller’s short sword’s poked me in the back.

Rudely.

So I moved.

I could feel Sola moving too within me, but I shushed her down to buy myself a moment to think.

We don’t know what their questions will be, I said to Sola, since for the first time in my life I had someone to throw my crazy ideas at for review. There’s zero chance they’re not looking for me, but they clearly don’t know that I’m the exact person they’re looking for. 

They will not harm you, Sola said with the sort of grim determination that was the opposite of comforting to hear in the voice of a god.

I don’t want them to harm anyone, I said. I think the option we have for that though is making them think there’s nothing interesting here. This has to be part of a general sweep right? If they’d heard what happened last night they would have brought more than four patrollers.

If he knew you were here, I believe my captor would have come in person.

That was good, but it definitely did not make me feel good.

“Looks like you were about to have dinner,” one of the patrollers said. “Sorry to interrupt there. If you can help us find the lady we’re looking for, we’ll let you get right back to that.”

They were looking for a woman.

I was a woman.

Only a lifetime of practice kept my feet bolted to the floor. 

Could I have asked them who they were looking for?

Yes.

Was it ever, EVER the right idea to talk to a patroller?

No. Never.

It wasn’t worth lying to them and telling them the truth was the literal worst possible choice in every situation.

My fellow captives, since that was what we were at the moment, knew that too. Even the scumbags among us have had it drilled into them that patrollers cannot be trusted. Too many people who’ve opened their mouths have wound up as Kindling for that to be a point that’s open to debate.

“If there’s cause for us to think any of you are hiding her though, we’d have to impound this shipment and arrest you all as potential accomplices.”

Because there was never a carrot without a much bigger stick when you were dealing with the patrollers.

I was oddly proud that no one said anything. Solidarity wasn’t guaranteed by any means, but for a change people were managing to not be idiots.

“This Kobold the one?” a patroller asked from a balcony on the second floor. He had Mumora by the arm and it looked like he’d dragged her out of the shower.

“Bring her down here and we’ll see,” the Inquisitor said. “Keep the building sealed though in case it’s the wrong one. No one gets away, am I making myself clear this time.”

“Yes, Inquisitor,” the patroller’s said in unison.

I’m not a good person. I should have felt horrified that they’d found Mumora but my first reaction was relief. I was safe. Then the horror came, tagging along after the thought of what Vaingloth was going to do to her.

She was doomed. No matter what she answered, no matter whether she was or wasn’t the one they were looking for, Mumora was doomed. They were going to take her in for questioning, use every technique they had for breaking down her resistance, and all the ones that amused them or whatever, and then they would put her onto the pyre. Another life spent to buy warmth and life for Vaingloth and his minions.

Mumora apparently understood that too because she bit the patroller on the hand and wordlessly threw herself off the building.

“You want to eat, you gotta work. Say you can’t work, and you’re saying all you’re good for is this month’s Kindling. So step up if you’ve done the work, and you can have some food, or stay back and you’ll be food for the fires.”

– Quartermaster Joro Dunn as a cover while he secretly distributed foodpacks to the bedridden members of the Blackened Rose Commons. 

Workdays are all the same, and every day is a workday. For people like me, the day started with the First Brightening, when the beacon from the Eternal Lord’s palace was raised to the first notch of brightness. That was the sign that we needed to get up and get to the nearest recruitment point.

Normally, I’d stumble along in the middle of the pack of people from whatever Nest I’d flopped down in for the night. If I could manage to wiggle to a spot at the front of the crowd, there was a better chance I’d be picked for something with a decent daily food allotment. More often than not though, I was left at the back and got to make do with the work no one else wanted.

That was how normal days went. This time I rode to the recruitment point on Goptrop Oolgoo’s shoulders. Goptrop was the Bugbear who’d been sleeping nearest to me. Goptrop had Smiles, the other Ratkin who’d been nearby on his other shoulder. We’d each tried to decline his offer, but Goptrop had been clear that we were all in this together and that meant nobody was going to get stepped on. As a tall guy, it was his duty to make sure of that, or so he’d said.

I could have fought more, refused the ‘kindness’ since it was definitely going to put me in a position where people noticed me. I could have, but that would have made me stand out even more than accepting the offer like Smiles had.

The Nest I’d stumbled into turned out to be in West Pumps, or the Westside Water Pump and Filtration Precinct, which was good since I’d at least heard of the West Pumps. Mount Gloria is huge, and travel through it is limited to those who needed to move from precinct to precinct for work related reasons. Rich people could claim their work required them to be pretty much anywhere in the city, but there were plenty of places none of them ever visited. People like me were more widely traveled, but that was rarely of our own volition.

“How many Firsts did they have yesterday?” Smiles asked. ‘Firsts’ being the jobs they were looking to fill before all the others, the ones they had to get people for, which in turn tended to pay the best.

“I think it was fifteen?” Groptop said. “Maybe twelve? It was low. So should be good for today.”

Looking at the crowd, I wagered that we had somewhere around a hundred people waiting for work orders, and of them there were a bit more than two dozen of us who’d been in Lucky’s Nest and were planning to present a united front. 

I didn’t like our odds. Even If Groptop was right and they had twice as many Firsts to fill, the chance that they’d need all of us for them was minimal.

An hour later though, when the Second Brightening provided us with enough light to see people more than a couple arms length away, I could feel the mood of the crowd had shifted a bit.

“Why are people moving back?” I asked, observing a subtle but definite retreat from the raised podium which was set up in the middle of the square where work was doled out.

“It’s Milgor,” Goptrop said, which explained precisely nothing to me, while also telling me all I needed to know.

I’d never met or heard of this “Milgor” but I’d run into so many people like him that I recognized him instantly from Groptop’s tone.

As the lanky young human man climbed up behind the podium, his story became painfully clear.

He was newly promoted to his position. He’d been following the former Work Administrator around for month, which was how Goptrop and Smiles knew him. From said predecessor, this Milgor had gotten the idea that his words needed to be law, and that nothing was more important than getting all of the jobs assigned to him completed that day, no matter how much time had been allotted for the work. In short, he was going to be absolutely miserable to work for because he had no idea how to do his job, the conviction that he needed to always be right, and lived in absolute terror that someone was going to notice he wasn’t really needed at all.

How did I know all this about Milgor?

You have to deal with precisely one Milgor to recognize the type when he reappears, and I’d dealt with hundreds of them.

True to form, Milgor mounted the podium looking harried and annoyed, which by Second Brightening would have been feat if that hadn’t been the state he was perpetually locked in.

“Quiet dogs!” He banged his hand on the podium to get our attention. That no one was looking anywhere else already had apparently escaped his notice. I would have taken offense since I was clearly a rat and not a dog, but the dogfolk I’ve known have been remarkably cool, so I couldn’t say I minded being confused for one, even if that wasn’t at all what was happening.

“Whatcha got for us today, Boss,” a human guy from another nest called out.

“Work. Just like always,” Milgor said. 

I wasn’t sure if they surgically removed the sense of humor from the Work Admins or if possessing a sense of humor was merely an immediate disqualification from the role. Milgor missed the collective eyeroll of the crowd and ruffled his papers before getting on with things.

“The Gloria Founding Festival is coming up. We’ve got street renewal and sewer work here, and piping replacement in High Press and Baker’s Row. Those are the priorities,” he said, peeling the top three sheets off his stack of papers and placing them on the podium.

“What about the farm pod? It should’ve been ready for harvest yesterday,” a halfling woman near the front called out.

“Farm work is suspended until further notice,” Milgor said.

“What? How are we going to have a festival with no food?” “We’ve got ten rows ready to go now, we don’t pick ‘em they’re just going to rot!” “I spent the last two dozen shifts working the pod. I deserve to be there when they get picked!”

The crowd was understandably unhappy with Milgor’s pronouncement. I wasn’t though. I was terrified.

“Farm work is suspended. Until further notice,” Milgor said. “A member of the Civil Patrol was assaulted yesterday and until the culprit is apprehended, no work on farming will be performed.”

“That’s crazy.” “Who did it?” “I didn’t hear about any patroller getting assaulted, where did it happen?” “Who’d hit a patroller? Nobody’s that stupid.” “What does farming have to do with a patroller getting punched?” “What are we supposed to do about it?”

Milgor clearly did not have the answers to those question, but I did.

That’s crazy? Yes. Yes it was.

Who did it? Well, me, obviously, and the moment anyone else got that answer I was as good as dead.

Where did it happen? Not in this precinct, so it might as well have been on the other side of the world.

Who’s stupid enough to hit a patroller? I am, clearly.

What does farming have to do with the patroller who was murdered not assaulted like the official report claimed? Absolutely nothing, except that it would make people desperate. 

What were they supposed to do about it? Find me and turn me in. That wasn’t going to happen, but I believed that largely because I was sure the crowd would simply grab someone they didn’t like and turn them in instead. Much easier than finding the real culprit and much safer too.

“We’ll take the street renewal and the pipe replacement,” Goptrop said, stepping forward with me and Smiles still on his shoulders. Some of the other people from Lucky’s nest fell in step behind him.

“You ain’t leaving the sewer work for us,” a goblin lady said from the front of the crowd.

“You’re right. We can take that too,” Goptrop said.

“How many are in your crew?” Milgor asked.

“Around eighty or so,” Goptrop said. I knew that was a lie but it didn’t sound like a lie.

“Crews are not allowed to be that big,” Milgor said, and his deputies shifted behind them. There were only six of them vs roughly a hundred of us, but they had weapons and armor and we had a desire to remain as uninjured as possible.

“It’s not,” Goprtrop said. “We’ve just got people who’ll work with us. No official leadership or crew ties here. Just thought we could make things more efficient for you so the work could start sooner.”

“How quickly will you be ready to start?” Milgor asked. He was exactly stupid enough to see the upside to himself and overlook the shift in power of allowing his workers to determine how work was done. It absolutely would be more efficient and make people a lot happier but it would also show how completely unnecessary he was.

“Now. We can start now,” Goptrop said and for a moment I was afraid that this Milgor might have two entire brain cells to rub together since it looked like he was actually considering the idea.

“Be about it then. Your work will be inspected at the end of the day, so make sure it’s flawless.” 

Milgors always said some variation of that. Usually, no one took it seriously. In this case though? No one took it seriously in this case either since this Milgor was nothing special. The only one who was concerned was probably me, and that was solely because Inspectors, if they actually showed up, were likely to be looking for more than work defects. In this case they would be looking for me and I had no idea how much they would have to go on in their search.

The crowd started to move before I could get too worried about that and I was legitimately shocked to see how many people moved with us. I’d been a little absorbed in my own thoughts on the ride over, but not enough to miss Goptrop organizing most of the workers who were present.

Looking around at the people from Lucky’s nest who were close to us though, I saw that I hadn’t missed anything. Goptrop wasn’t the one who’d been building bridges with the other work crews. It was the Kobold lady Sola had healed. And the kid who’d been freezing. And everyone. They’d spread out when we arrived. I thought they’d done that in order to be sure to catch the Milgor’s eye better but as we headed out they all came back together and shared a series of knowing nods.

When they said ‘we were in this together’, I’d assumed they’d meant the people at the nest. I knew what work crews were like, and while we were too big to qualify as one, it wasn’t unheard of for crews to work together until they got shifted apart or burned up.

There are more of them than there were last night, Sola said and I felt her warmth flowing out across the crowd, radiating not just from me to them but each of them to each other.

How? I asked. Most of these people never met us. They didn’t see what we did, and I haven’t heard anyone talking about it this morning either.

Because if they had they would have been dragged away and everyone knew it.

That’s how faith spreads, Sola said. It’s not from speaking of me, it’s from connecting with each other.

“We can survive without these so-called ‘Eternal Lords’. We’re Dwarves of the Granite Fortress. We don’t need the sun or the sky. All we need is stone to work and tools to work it with.”

– Balkon Heavysmith, last Mayor of the Granite Fortress in his last speech before the Terrors of the Wastes annihilated the Granite Fortress and all within it.

There is very little I like less in life than being caught. I suppose the punishment that follows is usually worse, but that’s rarely something I have any influence over. The moment when someone discovers what I’ve done though, and understands that I was the one who did it? That’s all on me, and it feels terrible everytime.

“Thank you, you made things so warm in here,” I said to the now considerably less-old Kobold lady I was sleeping near.

I don’t know why people try to deny their actions when they get caught. That never works since it’s exactly what the person who caught you expects. If you really want to make them question whether they’ve got the right person, you need to confuse them.

“Oh, no, that wasn’t me,” the formerly-old Kobold last said. “It was you, when you laid down beside me. I felt so much warmth.”

“That’s why I picked this spot,” I said. “It was so much warmer than where I was.”

People think they can remember the exact order of things perfectly, and that is hysterically far from the truth.

People also think that some clever dialog can get them out of troublesome situations, and that is similarly far from the truth.

No matter what I said, the old lady was going to remember me, and if she wanted to believe I was the one responsible she would hold onto that belief, secretly if need be, until and unless someone else stepped forward and presented an overwhelming claim for being the one responsible.

Since she wasn’t exactly wrong, I didn’t have much hope that someone else would step forward to take the blame. I hadn’t stopped to consider it, but so far the event was limited to the people in the room since all of the old windows were boarded tightly shut in order to keep the warmth of the slumber pile in as best as possible. That was going to give me a running start, where the patrollers would have been on us immediately if the flash of light had gone off outside.

I’m sorry. I had to do something, Sola said, sensing the disquiet that was radiating down to the tips of my toes.

No, we had to do something, I said, fighting not to fidget and give away the lie I was telling the Kobold lady. You wanted to do the right thing. We just need to figure out how to survive it now.

Are we in danger? It doesn’t seem anything in my realm noticed us.

Someone pulled the domain away, but I don’t think there the problem. The problem is the people around us. They’re all going to remember this.

That may be good. Miracles have been gone from this world for so long. Perhaps they can be the ones to help rekindle the faith this world has lost.

‘Rekindle’ was not the positive term that Sola apparently thought it was. I tried to move past that but I couldn’t fight off the shiver that went down my arms and legs.

“Are you still cold?” the Kobold lady asked. “You feel warm.”

“I’ve been cold for so long, I don’t think I know how to feel warm anymore,” I told her. Which wasn’t a lie for a change.

She pulled me into a hug, to share her body temperature. And Bugbear who was nearby joined in. Then another Ratkin.

I probably should have come up with a lie instead.

“I think whatever happened here, happened because we were all together,” the Kobold lady said.

“Yeah, we should stick together,” the Bugbear said.

Which was a terrible idea.

This is what faith is meant to do, Sola said. I never held the Domain of Community, but even for as distant as I was, I know that faith in me was meant to unite those I shone on, because I shone on all the same.

If the patrollers see a tight knit group forming who are all getting alone too well, they’re going to get suspicious. If they tell people about the experience they just had, the patrollers are going to take that story right to Vaingloth, and if he’s looking for you, he’s going to be able to put two-and-two together and come up with ‘burn everyone in the group’.

Why? Why would he do that?

Because it’s what he does to everyone, I said. Get on his bad side and he tosses you into one of the fire portals. One simple punishment and you’ve done something useful for the city and are no longer a problem he needs to worry about.

He won’t try that with us, Sola said, a note of mournful certainty sounding in her voice.

What’s to stop him? Even if we could fight him, he can burn this whole city to ash.

That was supposedly the state of the other cities from the old world. The ones which didn’t have an Eternal Lord to watch over and protect them. Opening portals had seemed like a great idea, but it turned out that opening them and controlling them were two separate abilities with ‘control’ being a lot harder.

I had no idea if that was actually true. I was willing to be that half the stuff that we knew about the rest of the world and what had actually happened to it was made up in order to keep us in our place.

We would not let that happen, Sola said, and I felt a measure of her divine power shift at the thought. 

So. Okay. Yeah. I suppose if a god whose domain was related to heat and light didn’t want something to be burned, they just might be able to do something about that.

What about flooding it then? I asked. He knows what you are, so maybe he wouldn’t try fire. What’s to stop him from using the water gate to simply drown the city.

I will not let you drown, Sola said and then sighed. I will not let you drown, but these people who not be so protected.

That’s what I’m worried about. I mean, Vaingloth probably wouldn’t drown the city just to get us, but he’s got a lot of other tools. Just having the patrollers bring them in and separate us all would be enough. We wouldn’t know what was happening to them and the patrollers could simply kill us off, one-by-one. Vaingloth the Eternal is this city. He can do anything here.

Not anything, Sola said. He has limits, limits closer to yours than to mine, and he is not Eternal. And…and I feel as though I know him? Not from the time he held me in the garden, but from somewhere else. Whatever power he wields now, I don’t think he had it then, and if any power he can gain…

….Is power he can lose, I said, mulling the idea over in my head, as if I had any hope of bringing out his downfall.

It was a happy thing to dream about though.

Except if he dies, there won’t be anyone to control the portals, I said, spotting the obvious flaw in that idea too quickly to able to enjoy the daydream of it.

I could provide everything the fire portal can and more, Sola said and then admitted, the others are beyond me however.

We’d need to be ready for the other Neoteric Lords to come for us too, I said. I’ve never heard of them being friendly with one another, but I think if we could kill Vaingloth, the others would probably be a bit worried about that.

“Tomorrow, we should apply for work together,” the Bugbear said, demonstrating the sort of ‘togetherness’ which we did not want the Neoteric Lords to develop.

And the sort of togetherness which was going to make us look out of place.

“Yeah, like Lucky did,” the other Ratkin said.

I knew how Lucky’s last venture had turned out, so that wasn’t an experience I was terribly interested in repeating.

“We should get her in on it,” I said.

I didn’t have anything against Lucky, and I certainly didn’t want her involved with a group of god-addled Kindling-bait. As the voice of experience though, she was the one person who might able to shut things down before anyone poked there head up enough to get the patrollers interested in us.

The slack jawed and confused face of a patroller who’d been stabbed eleventy-billion times came back to my mind.

Oh. Right. Being associated with me was a terrible idea, even apart from any divine nonsense that was going on.

I wanted to run. Right then. 

And that impulse would get me killed. Sometimes the cleverest option for fleeing trouble was simply to stand still.

I was safe. Huddled in the casual embrace of a group of strangers I was safe. No one would think to look for me, or care about one small Ratkin girl in a group like this. I told myself that over and over until reason started to penetrate the terror of everything that could happen to me.

I was safe and I was warm and things were okay for now. I needed to stick with my plan of hiding alongside everyone else for it to have any chance of working at all. Best case, I could go back to living a life like the one I had with the patrollers and Vaingloth never figuring out who I was. Worst case…well worst case I would be dragged off to a torture dungeon or something in the next ten seconds, but a more realistic worst case was that the patrollers would put the kind of pressure on that would eventually wind up with someone selling me out. 

And then I’d get put in the torture dungeon.

I could watch for the pressure the patrollers were using and where they were applying it though. I could be ready for them and stay a step ahead as long as I kept my ears open and my mouth shut, two things I had a lot of practice doing.

“We should try to sleep if we’re going to try to work tomorrow,” I said, immediately failing to keep my mouth shut.

“Go ahead,” the Kobold Lady said. “I can keep watch over us now.”

Which was technically Lucky’s job, but it seemed like a lot of people wouldn’t be sleeping anymore. In fact it seemed like a lot of them didn’t need to after the revelation they’d experienced.

I closed my eyes to pretend I was sleeping and opened them a moment later when people began to stir and get up.

Which was odd.

That I felt more rested and clear headed than I had before I blinked was odd too.

“The first work bell’s run,” the Bugbear said. “We’d better get down there if we want to get a job together still.”

I shook my head to figure out what had happened only for Sola to speak up.

You didn’t have to sleep, but you needed it, she said. It’s been eight hours now.

Eight hours? Gone in a blink?

I was going to put a plan together though, I said.

Spiraling in anxiety is not the same as plan making, Sola said. I can feel the shape of your thoughts. You needed a reset. And to dream.

But I didn’t dream at all there.

You always walk in dreams. You just don’t always remember them.

So what do we do now then?

You had a plan that involved staying together with these people. Let’s try that and see what we can do by working together.