“I’ve been doing some calculations.”

“And in other news, the sky is up. Do these calculations have anything to do with our current topic of discussion Helgon?”

“Of course they do Vaingloth. You know our Helgon is as committed to this scheme as any of us, he is simply using own unique tools to ensure it’s success.”

“Thank you Dyrena, and yes, this is relevant to the grace storage mechanisms we have been speaking about.”

“That was two hours ago Helgon.”

“Was it? Oh, well, it’s a new calculation and I don’t have my proper tools here. Did I miss anything important?”

“Why don’t you share the results your calculations have produced Helgon. I can bring you up to speed on the population exclusion process the others have developed.”

“Oh, of course. Well, a few hours ago apparently now, we were discussing our schemes for collecting and storing the grace which will be cast off when the gods fall, as well as the subsequently generated grace produced by our protectorates.”

“Yes. We all recall the discussion Helgon. Do you have something to relevant to add or did it take you this long to catch up with us?”

“I’m not sure Vaingloth. Did we talk about how any one of us will vaporize the planet if our containment devices fail?”

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“Oh, Sasarai I hadn’t seen you there. Um, yes, with the amount of grace we’re speaking of, if one of our proposed containment structures fails, there’ll be a tipping point reaction triggered. Unbound grace at that concentration with flood the bindings which hold together other grace bound systems.”

“Everything is bound by grace.”

“Yes, you see the problem the Vaingloth! Living creatures, solid objects, the air itself. There’s grace everywhere. Once the threshold is crossed, each extra spark added will increase the reaction. And it won’t be slow. Perhaps ten milliseconds for complete planetary conversion.”

“Are you sure Helgon? I thought…can I see you’re calculations.”

“Oh course Dyrena. Please check them over. It’s possible I made a mistake somewhere.”

“No it’s not, but I’ll check them over anyways.”

“What does this mean?”

“What it means Sasarai, is that we need to make sure one of our storage systems ever fails someone is there to absorb the overflow before it destroys us all.”

“But that’s impossible.”

“We’re about to do many things which aren’t possible. What’s one more?”

– The High Accessors creating a system which unintentionally provided the mutually assured destruction which should have kept them in check.

I survived. Sorta.

I’d told Sasarai I wanted “my home”, and “my Holy Tree”, and the Garden back. And I did. The longing in my voice for my old life had been dredged up from a real place. 

I hated him, and I hated the life I’d been forced to live, the mask of lies I’d struggled to cram myself into out of the absolutely correct knowledge that to do otherwise would have meant being killed.

But the Garden was what I’d known. It held so many promises, and I’d invested so much of myself in it. 

And I knew there were good people there. Misguided? Tremendously so. Unlikely to appreciate me exposing their beliefs as standing on lies? Unquestionably. But there had been kindness, and there had been laughter too, and I missed bits and pieces of it.

So my lie had been spoken with truths.

I did want those things.

And I had been willing to offer Sasarai the divine fragments in my hoard.

All of them, which, as it happens to be, was one. A fragment of Diyas, God of Healing.

Had Sasarai expected that I still held his hoard? Yes. Who would be mad enough to give up 1/8th of known divine fragments on the planet? 

Better still, had Sasarai expected that I also held the other 7/8ths of the known divine fragments? I’d never claimed that, but I’d certainly led him to believe it, and the other Neoterics explosion of rage on discovering that they’d lost their individual troves had certainly helped foster that misperception.

I hadn’t claimed the divine fragments for myself though. They were mine to protect and mine to deliver. I held them because they needed to be brought to people who could bear their Blessing and, as it turned out, my new friend Little had a whole city full of people with different strength, ideas, and priorities, which was exactly where the divine fragments I’d carried needed to be.

As for the other cities?

For that I had to thank my other new friends. Xalaria was divinely gifted when it came to tactics and planning, at least as far as I knew. Fulgrox’s position as Blessed of the Harvest meant he had contacts everywhere people ate food, which kind of obviously covered all the places I needed help reaching, and Kalkit as the Blessed of Secrets apparently set up little secret societies wherever they went, as an amusement or something I think?

Anyways, between the three of them, all we had to do was give people in each of the other Neoteric’s domains the key to getting into the vaults, a timetable, and a workable plan for coordinating their actions. 

Seven cities. Seven heists. 

Had they all gone off smoothly? Probably not, but, crucially, enough of them worked out somehow that Sasarai had believed me and had seen a fleeting chance to escape being torn apart by his fellow Lords, and the price I’d demanded? It would have galled him, but it was exactly what I should have wanted and so very, very small compared to what he stood to gain.

And so he gave me my home.

And he gave me the Holy Tree.

And they were MINE.

Could have wrenched them back? I don’t know, maybe. If he’d acted the moment I claimed them, it would have been an interesting struggle.

He hesitated for an instant though since nullifying our agreement meant the other Neoterics were going to do to him what he’d done to his own gods.

And so I burned.

Yeah, turns out the Holy Tree had a lot more power bound up in it than any of us had known.

Let us carry this, Draconia said as my skin literally caught fire.

Yes, as the demon says, we are here for you, Umbrielle said and another blessing was layered onto the dragonscales that emerged from under my burning skin.

It was not enough.

The world was lost in pure ecstasy. I wasn’t simply touching divinity or gazing on it. Every cell in my body was filled to bursting with cosmic unity from the first drop of grace that spilled from the Holy Tree.

And there was an ocean left to drink.

Somewhere farther away than the edge of the universe, Sasarai was screaming on the other side of the room.

I could have wondered why, but I didn’t need to. The cosmos was my thoughts, the beat of my heart was gone and it’s place the ringing of the cosmic stings sang.

Greedy Sasarai had taken the one spec of divine sand I’d given him and sought to impose his will on it. Why? I could see into his mind as easily a glass a water. 

If he had control over one divine fragment and the other Neoterics had none he would still reign supreme over them! 

Did he not know of the danger we were all in?

What I had done was cataclysmically ill-advised, to put it mildly. When I failed, and there was no ‘if’ in that, the entire world would be reduced to less than dust.

But, no, he didn’t care. He simply had no capacity to care about anyone except himself. We were nothing more than toys to him. 

It was sad. He should have been better than that.

I would fix it.

With a divine hand I would fix…

Nothing.

Because I didn’t have hands anymore it seemed.

Oh.

Right.

I was in the process of losing everything, even the concept of existing. I wasn’t going to be saving anyone.

Good luck thing we’re here to save you, Diyas said.

The Guardian never seems to consider that she needs protection sometimes too, Polsguls, the God of Small Problems, said.

Their help preserved me as me, at least conceptually, for a moment longer, which I appreciated, but we’d only managed to handle a few drops from the Holy Tree and there was so more, an unfathomable ocean that was flooding into me.

Thank you Draconia, my demon, mine, I said. It was important that she know I was happy she’d come into my life, even if I was going to lose it.

She didn’t answer.

I tried to feel her with me, but I was pretty far past the point of feeling anything.

Were the god fragments burning in the Holy Tree’s power? It was too much for me, and it was probably too much for them. I couldn’t tell, I was dissolving into the “all knowing divine” but losing too much of the ‘I’ in that for there to be a ‘me’ who could know anything.

Don’t lose hope, Umbrielle said. You haven’t been abandoned.

But I couldn’t feel anything.

And then I couldn’t hear anything.

It was too much.

Not more than I could bear, more than anything could bear.

The Holy Tree wasn’t heaven.

It was a hell of inescapable power, gathered far beyond any worldly need until it rotted and could only be turned to destruction and madness.

I’d thought the time had come to cast down the tyrant who ruled my little part of the world, but that time had been so long ago. 

What Sasarai, what all of them, had created was a malignancy and it had done nothing but grow and grow worse the longer they reigned.

I feel under the weight of it.

It was too much.

I couldn’t.

How many had died when the sun fell.

I couldn’t restore them.

How many had died because they made the mistake of being who they were?

I couldn’t lift them back up.

How many had withered and become horrible when they should have been joyous and wonderful?

I couldn’t renew them.

I couldn’t.

I couldn’t.

But there were things I could do.

The Holy Tree was mine.

MINE.

It’s power was MY power.

I couldn’t shape it.

I couldn’t control it.

And I absolutely couldn’t contain it.

But I could share it.

So long as there was a ‘me’, burning, dissolving, lit in every cell by cosmic destruction, but still ‘me’, then the Holy Tree was MINE and, as MY TREE, I was the channel through which its power would pass into the world.

Not as a flood to destroy everything.

Not while the world was MINE to guard and treasure.

I think she’s still there! The voice was unfamiliar but unbearably welcome to here.

Of course she is! We’re still here aren’t we? Another unfamiliar voice.

Then let’s lighten that load a bit shall we? I’d never met the God of Strength, or their new Blessed.

I hadn’t met any of the thousand other Blessed who’d discovered their gods in the last five seconds either, but Oh Sweet Draconia was I glad to hear anything at all and their chorus most especially. 

Together they…sang? Was there another word for what they were doing? For people coming together because they believed in helping not themselves, but the world who needed them? 

Even with a thousand voices, I didn’t know if we could withstand the force of the Holy Tree’s power but they weren’t giving up, so neither was I.

And that let a thousand more join us.

Again and again, as the divine fragments found their Blessed hosts, those people chose to turn from their lives to save others, to save the ones without power, the ones who needed them most.

It wasn’t easy reaching across the world like that, Draconia, wonderful Draconia, said. But as you claimed. This is OUR world.

And I could see again.

Our world.

Garbed in a beautiful dress of darkness and stars with so many voices and so much life still.

Even the broken bits, the fallen and shattered spirits, even the fragments of the beast, lurking their lost corners, all of it, OURS.

Is this how you always saw the world?

No. Only through your eyes has the world ever looked like this.

“Do you imagine we will experience the same ebbs and flows of the grace which the gods currently contend with?”

“That seems likely Helgon. Why do you ask?”

“Sasarai mentioned something about how the naturalistic patterns he’s planning to use for his ‘Divine Tree’ will be especially adapted to such changes. I’m considering if that is something we should suggest the others adopt as well? I know you’ve been working on a similar storage issues though Dyrena and I didn’t want to step on your toes as it were.”

“This is very considerate of you Helgon, but in this case my toes are quite safe. Sasarai’s assertion is only arguably correct. His storage mechanism assumes there will be regular cyclical changes in grace, because he’s most familiar with natural processes which follow various seasonal or day/night cycles. My projections show that while the Neoterics are likely to experience variable levels of grace generation, the variations will be on an irregular schedule.”

“Have you shared this with Sasarai?”

“Not as yet.”

“Is this the sort of thing he doesn’t need know?”

“Quite possibly. The other Neoterics seem to be designing fairly idiosyncratic systems for collecting their power. Each will have unique pitfalls, but the diversity may prove to be useful.”

“That would be humorous would it not?”

“Given the impact on the planet’s diversity our scheme will have?”

“And it’s divine diversity. Replacing the myriad of deities we can call on now with twelve gods who will answer no ones pleas but who are in turn dependent on the meager diversity they can muster suggests some form of cosmic justice lurks in the future.”

“Would that I could believe in justice, cosmic, divine, or otherwise.”

“But of course the world has justice in it.”

“And where would I look for this justice?”

“I would suggest a mirror, after all are you not part of the world?”

– Helgon and Dyrena planting seeds together.

The expression I wore was one of abject confusion and horror. Certainly I had done well? I was deserving of praise wasn’t I? I had executed my master’s plans and delivered to him the resources from “every other” Neoteric in the world. It was the opening and closing shot of a war that could never be allowed to start and was entirely unavoidable.

The horror was a reflection of Sasarai’s own.

After all I had just revealed “our” treachery in a space that was imperfectly cloaked.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. It was a good cloak. I should have had every reason to believe that it would keep our words private.

And Sasarai had confirmed that we were in a location where it was safe to speak.

So the other Neoterics just couldn’t be watching us and hearing literally every word I spoke? Right?

I am not the Blessed of Acting, I’m not even sure if any fragments of the God of Acting remain. If they do though, I was their avatar in that moment based on how very hard I fought to keep a manic grin from shattering the mask I was wearing.

“No…no…what have you done?” Sasarai asked.

I hated giving him any credit, but he hadn’t gotten where he was by being a complete idiot. He understood exactly what I was really saying there. 

If I telling the truth, then every other Neoteric was going to have to strike immediately before he had a chance to consolidate the power the divine fragments offered him. If I was telling the truth, I’d tipped the balance of power off the edge of cliff and we were all caught in a moment terrible free fall.

Of course I could have been lying too. He new the claim I was making was a partial lie. He knew I wasn’t an agent working in his name. He knew I hadn’t discovered the secret to raiding the vaults the Neoterics used. He absolutely knew I wasn’t going to give him power over everything and everyone.

With all of those, I had to be lying. Playing for time. Trying to goad the other Neoterics into attacking him before he could regain the divine fragments I’d taken from him.

And that would have been a great idea! In fact it was close to what my original idea had been. There was only one tiny thing wrong with it, one itty bitty detail that Sasarai had gotten wrong.

I did know how to break into the vaults.

And I wasn’t alone.

Not anymore.

“Oh….oh no!” I said, letting the color drain from my face. “Are we not…can they hear us?”

Sasarai looked at me is stark disbelief, because of course the other Neoterics were listening to our every word.

Or they had been. It was hard to imagine that they weren’t teleporting to their vaults or something similar to discover if my claim was correct.

A tremor shook the ground and I felt several blasts of rage rip across the surface of the world.

Someone had noticed that I wasn’t lying. A lot of someone’s it sounded like.

“We need to hide!” I said, calling a divine fragment to my hands, my very best panic coating my words in pure poison as the true cloak of Night descended on us.

That was the last bit of theater I needed to perform. Either the other Neoterics believed my show or they were too distracted by the loss of their access to godly domains, in either case I had nothing more to sell them on.

“I will kill you. I will kill this world!” Sasarai began to grow, manifesting more of his power as he prepared a spell that would do something unutterable to both myself and Draconia.

It wasn’t an unreasonable response.

I had pretty much just killed him, and if he was going to die why would someone like him think the world had any reason to exist without him?

“You could do that,” I said, dropping the subservient act with the greatest of relief, “but why would you want to when there was so much to bargain for?”

“BaRgAin?” Sasarai’s voice had turned so inhuman he was barely able to produce a single word but he managed to croak it out the right one in time.

“I have something you want, now more than ever I would think,” I said, as calm as a frozen pond. 

I’d thought I was going to be terrified at this moment, and I’d been right. What I hadn’t known was that past a certain point, fear falls away. Sasarai was absolutely capable of destroying me. He was capable of smashing Draconia into small enough pieces that she would never pose a threat to him again (and not be terribly useful but rational thoughts like that were definitely unlikely in the face of what I’d done). 

I could feel his power surrounding me, bearing down with enough weight that my bones would have shattered if they weren’t protected by dragon scales and all of Draconia’s good will.

I knew I wouldn’t survive and I didn’t care. I didn’t want to die, but I had to do this, for the world, for the people I cared about, and most of all, for myself.

I showed Sasarai the divine fragment I’d called forth. It wasn’t one of Night’s – the true cloak that shielded us from the other Neoterics for a moment was a gift from Meluna, where the limited one had been Theia’s doing. Instead I held a fragment of Diyas, the God of Healing, but not the one which had been Sasarai’s stolen originally.

I had all of a split second to wonder if Sasarai could tell that before he swiped it from my hand and began to try to make use of it.

Which was rude.

And also something I wasn’t about to let happen until he made the deal I wanted.

With a snap of my fingers, it disappeared from his grasp though – what was mine was mine – settling back into my hoard where it belonged.

“Not so fast. You have something I want.” This part I wasn’t at all sure of, but in a sense it didn’t matter either. I’d either get what I really wanted or I wouldn’t leave the temple I was standing and either way, Sasarai was beaten.

“What.” With a glimmer of hope luring him onwards, Sasarai returned to a more restrained form, though none of his power had dissipated.

“I’ve seen the world outside the Garden now. You lied to us about a lot of things, but you weren’t kidding at how awful it is out there. The things that walk in the wasteland are going to give me nightmares for years, and I know you, but the other Neoterics could be anything. If I have to take my chances with one of you, at least I know how to work with you.”

“What do you want?” If there was a god dedicated to annihilating patience, Sasarai would have been their Blessed in that moment.

“I want my home back. I want my Holy Tree. I want to be able to go the Garden again. I hated my life in there, but if I can be who I am now, I can’t think of a place that would be safer to be.” I said, uttering not a single lie in the process. “Especially if you were the only Neoteric to have any of the divine fragments. I’m not asking you to shower me with honors, but I am willing to give you the divine fragments in my hoard – the ones that will be too dispersed for any of you to find if you kill me – in exchange for what I asked for.”

None of that was a lie.

Not directly.

Only by omission.

“They will not allow this,” Sasarai said.

“Does it matter what they allow at this point?” I asked, conjuring Diyas’ divine fragment to my hand again.

“No,” Sasarai said, taking the fragment from me delicately. “No, it does not.”

“We have accord then?”

“For you alone. Let your penance be that you shall never again see the family you cared so much about that you could steal them from me as well.”

“I understand,” I said, and I did.

I’d just won.

“I will have your hoard then,” Sasarai said, new confidence dispelling the terror which had gripped him.

“And I will have what is MINE,” I said.

Sasarai’s confidence blinded him for the instant it took before the light that erupted from me did the job far more thoroughly.

“Your hoard!?” he objected, unable to conceive of what had happened.

“YOU ARE HOLDING IT.” Could I say it was my voice that spoke? I don’t know. There was FAR too much divine power suffusing my being, more than my soul could ever have held even if I’d become a True Immortal, unlike the pitiful little wretches that called themselves the Lord of the world.

As it was, claiming the Holy Tree Mazana as my own turned out to be both the best and worst idea I’d ever had.

On the plus side, Sasarai had totally missed the opening I’d asked for and agreeing to our deal had let end the last threat he’d posed everyone else. On the minus side, hundreds of years of accumulated grace from a city full of absolutely devout believers, augmented by every technique Sasarai had been able to employ was enough to melt me body and soul and there was literally nothing I could do to prevent that.

I was not the Holy Tree and without it’s incredibly specific and purpose built structure, the grace I’d claimed as mine was sufficient to blast not only me from the face of the world but also a fair portion of the world as well.

I hadn’t counted on that.

I’d never understood exactly how vast the gods had been.

This is more than you. This is more than even I. Draconia’s voice was lost in a rush of joyous power as things within me I’d never understood burned. 

As you say though, you are not alone.

“Never have I heard so absurd a suggestion.”

“I tell you, the birds are changing. They are becoming something sinister. Something that watches us.”

“Birds watching us? Why next you’ll tell me that fish are evolving so that they can swim. What do you suppose birds do all day?”

“Normally, I would say hunt for food. These however seem to be inclined to hunt for us.”

“And what attacks have these Sinister Hunting Birds made on the good people of our enclave?”

“None. Yes. That is the most sinister thing about them.”

“Oh please, now you’re just being idiotic. It’s sinister that the birds who are watching us are not attacking us as well? Against what sort of rational world are we to measure a statement such as that.”

“I am trying to explain that! I am trying to tell you what I have seen, what others have seen. If you would just look at this report here. I have collected accounts from over a half dozen people who can corroborate my findings.”

“Read that report? I doubt I could lift it. And why should I? I can disprove your brainless theory myself with hardly any effort at all.”

“We need to leave here. Now.”

“Why? Because two birds should happen to alight on the bird feeder in the courtyard?”

“Those are not birds.”

“I assure you they are. See; beaks, wings, talons. Clearly a bird. Unless perhaps I am mistaken and cats have changed attributes with avians? And look, there is not a menacing or sinister twist about them.”

“Yes. They are at the bird feeder, but do you not see; they are not feeding. Why did they fly to feeder if all they wish to do is watch us. Why are they drinking no water nor consuming any seeds?”

“Likely because they’re wondering at the ninny who is staring back at them. Come now, I will settle this once and for all.”

“No! No don’t walk up to them!”

– The last words of Brothers Bonren and Galtos

I wanted to smite Sasarai. 

That shouldn’t have been my reaction. I was supposed to be afraid of him because of the frankly ridiculous power the Neoterics wielded. Even with Draconia’s blessing I could feel how outmatched I was by all the raw power Sasarai had accumulated over the centuries. If that wasn’t enough to overwhelm me, they I should have been quivering from the instilled terror of a life grown and raised under teachings that placed ‘The First Tenderer’ as the closest emissary to god there could ever be.

I wasn’t afraid though.

I wanted to smite him. He had so earned it.

Some of my resistance to the fear his presence was supposed to instill in me came from Draconia. She was ready to burn the world to ash if that’s what it took to incinerate Sasarai. Her rage might have been powerful enough to do it too, but fortunately her nature was stronger than her anger and as a Guardian before anything else, she would not act to destroy the world.

I could though.

So what held me back?

Mostly that Sasarai wasn’t actually in the palace with us.

“I hate you,” I said. The words held no special weight and carried no deadly fire. So I offered an explanation to go with them. “You know how I was raised. You know how we are taught. Devotion to the Holy Tree. Devotion to you. Obedience. Joyful servitude. And love. Love most of all. For you, for the tree, for our beautiful Garden home, but mostly just for you. You conditioned us to love you above all others. All that work. My whole life. A whole society built so that we could convince you that you weren’t just a scared little, worthless man. And in the end? The moment I learned what you really are, I hated you. And somewhere inside, you know that I’m right to, just like you know what every other Sylvan in the Garden will feel when they see how weak and pathetic you truly are.”

I was surprised I’d gotten to say my peace. That I’d been marching up to him, step by step with each word may have held the others back, but it was the surprise I saw hiding in his eyes which truly bought me the time I needed.

“Look up,” he said, confidence and victory oozing around each syllable.

“At what?” I asked, letting a deadly smile crack my lips open. 

He was distant and whatever summoning spell he’d invoked apparently didn’t allow him to sense through his creatures eyes. Thinking about it, that was smart. His projection was less than a shadow. I doubt the other Neoterics could possibly have sensed it. If he’d been inhabiting a flight of death-dealing birds however, his presence would have been far more noticeable.

The downside to being smart, in this case, was that lacking any presence in the Death Bird’s he’d summoned to descend on us, he didn’t have the awareness Draconia had blessed me with. Specifically the sense which allowed me to feel when the Sun decided she didn’t care to share the sky with any interlopers.

She could have burned them to ash.

It would have been a very “sun” thing to do.

But she didn’t, in part I think because the actual sun was still unfathomably far away, and in part because she caught the true peril of the ‘Death Birds’, being, you know, kind of bright.

I chuckled as that thought went through my head.

What? I’m not that old. I can be childish sometimes still.

Sasarai was, unsurprisingly, less amused. 

“Did the sun just get really bright for less than blink?” Theia asked.

“Much less than a blink,” Zeph said.

“She is very clever like that,” Meluna confirmed. “Now, what was that about not covering failure states that you were saying?”

Sasarai vanished rather than reply which was, perhaps, the worst possible thing he could have done.

From our point of view.

“He’s moving already isn’t he?” I asked, turning back to Meluna.

“Most assuredly. He knows he has run out of time. The attack on the Garden is at this point both an inevitability and quite imminent,” Meluna said, sounding neither concerned nor unhappy about the prospect.

“He’s not going to rely on tricks the next time then,” I said.

“What was the trick he tried this time?” Theia asked.

“He summoned a creature that’s only supposed to exist in the root caves beneath the Holy Tree. Their touch is death, and, disturbingly, that doesn’t change after you kill them.” 

There were lots of “scary” stories told to kids about the monsters that lived beneath the roots. I’d grown up believing they were real but probably just embellishments on the truth. The moment the Death Birds had appeared in the skies about though, I’d known exactly how real they were.

“So, it we’d shot them all down?” Theia asked.

“Then whatever they fell on would have died. And any who came across them. And anything that was near them. Had Sola burned them up the results would have been far worse though,” Meluna said.

“Because the dust…” Theia said, working out the ramifications of Meluna’s words.

“Is fatal too.” Was I surprised that Sasarai had tried to kill an entire city with a casual display of his power? No, how could I be? Was I angry? Again, no, but that was due having already reached the limit of my ability to hate anyone.

“So Sola did what exactly?” Theia asked.

“What you see as the sun, is only a portal to draw it’s light and heat to us across the veil Night has cast over the world,” Zeph said. “She simply widened it for a sufficiently brief moment that we wouldn’t suffer an ill effect, and then kept the Death Birds on the other side of it.”

“So they’re, what, floating beyond the veil now?” Theia asked.

“By now I imagine their frozen and orbiting Sola’s main body. They’ll fall in eventually,” Zeph said.

“But that won’t hurt her, right?” I probably didn’t need to be worried, but losing the sun seemed like a particularly terrible idea at this point.

“If the birds could gift her with death, they would simply be adding a domain to her portfolio,” Zeph said. “There is the matter of scale to consider however, and, as a point of reference, our entire world could fall into Sola’s body and she would struggle to notice unless she was paying very careful attention. So no additional domains for her I’m afraid.”

“Can you imagine how insufferable your mistress would be if she held both life and death?” Meluna asked. “Better to let the Beast win.”

“And does Night share your assessment?” Zeph asked, mild curiosity disguising what I thought had to be an insult of some kind.

“Our deities must occasionally trust in our judgment when theirs are lacking,” Meluna said.

“So was it you or Night who arranged for Sasarai to arrive just then?” I asked.

Meluna turned to me with a smile for that.

“You imagine I control the Neoterics?” It wasn’t a safe or simple question, and I felt Theia involuntarily take a half step away from me.

“I don’t imagine anything of the sort,” I said, trying and failing to match her tone. “It does occur to me though that Night, of all the gods, would have been the most adept at keeping our conversation private and preventing Sasarai from knowing where we are, if the desire had been there.”

“But that is the thing about desire, isn’t it? Our desires may prove the undoing of achieving themselves all too easily.” Meluna may not have been intending to be as opaque as it seemed from her answer. For all I could tell, she could have simply been out of practice at explaining things simply.

Fortunately, Theia was there to act as a translator for me.

“The problem with cloaking someone is that if someone else is looking for them and fails to find them, they’ll know something important is happening and may, from timing, or location, or previous circumstances, be able to make a solid guess as to where and why the cloaked person is where they are.”

“So, we’re still being watched by Sasarai then I take it?” I asked, seeing the warning that was hidden in their message.

“Watched by, listened to, probably scented for as well knowing the weird things the Neoterics get up to,” Theia said.

“So if I were to go into great and specific detail about how the ‘Holy Tree’ is going to burn to the ground around him and then we’re going to choke him to death with it’s ashes?”

“He would know that you are taunting him and rest easy in the knowledge that there is no practical method you could use to accomplish that,” Theia said with a nod, as though that was the point I’d been trying to make.

“And if I remind him that he’s never going to get back what I have claimed? That I would gleefully die just to spite him like that. Especially since it means that the other Neoterics will obliterate him?”

“He would know the truth of that as well.” 

“Bear in mind that he knows all of that already,” Meluna said. “Sasarai has many failings, a lack of imagination certainly among them, but while he was far from the brightest, or the most talented of the Neoterics, he was capable of taking ideas from those who were his betters and adapting them to his own use.” Meluna spoke as though she was talking only to me, but I don’t think it was lost on anyone who her audience really was.

“Do you think he knows that the other Neoterics are listening in as well?” I asked.

“Almost certainly. He’s dim, but even he’s not that oblivious,” Meluna said.

“So if I were to offer to meet with him at a spot of my choosing, would he understand that it was trap?”

“I fail to see how he could miss such a thing.”

“But at this point, would he have any option but to come for me anyways?”

“Oh, my dear girl, none of them would be able to risk leaving you alone.”

“Successor? No I’ve never considered who my successor will be. You are aware that we will be immortal do you not Dyrena?”

“Need I point out that the gods are immortal as well, Vaingloth? Or that our entire scheme hinges on the assumption that said status is not an irrevocable one?”

“Pah. All the more reason to have no successors available.”

“You would have your vision fall to ruin when you do? But what of your special people? The ones you will shepherd into our new age?”

“I detect more than a hint of sarcasm in your question, Dyrena.”

“Why Vaingloth? When have I ever been sarcastic? Surely not about this enterprise. Why it shall place us into a new and eternal golden age will it not.”

“The eternal gold age shall be our eternal golden age. We will be its masters and, unlike the foolish deities we must contend with, we shall not allow for conditions which might unseat us, having learned from the openings we will use.”

“Perhaps. That is the structure of the scheme I suppose. But I must also question what should happen if we were to grow tired out of our positions? At some point, however far in the future that might be, certainly we will have done all that we care to do. Best I think to have an idea for how a transition of power might be arranged, lest we be caught cobbling something together when our interest in this world has waned to its utmost nadir.”

“Best not to, I assure you. Constructing an avenue by which our powers may be inherited will do nothing but provide an incentive for those who stand to gain that inheritance to hasten it’s coming.”

“But certainly if we attempt to hold our power close forever, there will be those who nibble away at it, or find the fragments we leave laying around to use against us?”

“I, for one, will be leaving none of my fragments in reach of anyone save myself.”

“We shall need to certain Draconia is among the first defeated then if you intend to assemble a hoard of your own.”

“I have Sasarai working on that as we speak.”

“Intriguing. Shall I offer to review his Sacred Geometeries?”

“No, I’m sure…okay, I can’t say that. Yes, please do. We’ve all seen his work before.”

– Dyrena convincing Vaingloth and, indirectly, the other Neoterics of the value of creating secret hoards for the divine fragments they meant to harvest.

Mt. Gloria looked weird. A sprawling city laid out around a mountain wasn’t so different from the Garden but the almost complete lack of anything growing was just unnatural. How were people supposed to live without space to grown food?

The former Lord had specialized farm areas built beneath ground and then piped in light and heat to them, Umbrielle said.

“That seems like a lot of work when he just could have…” I started to say and then ran into a limit to my thoughts of having grown up in the Garden.

What could he had done without his own Mazana to provide light and heat?

“It’s worse than you’re thinking,” Theia said. “Whatever you have to say to Little, I’d suggest not mentioning ‘Kindling’ to her.”

“Why?”

“That’s what Vaingloth used the people of Mt. Gloria for,” Theia said. 

“Wait, he burned up people to heat the city for people? How? That could never work?”

He wasn’t burning them to heat the city. He had a portal to the plane of Fire for that. He claimed he was burning people to keep the portal open when he was just using that as a means to harvest their grace, Umbrielle said.

Hmm, similar to what Sasarai does in the Roots, though a bit more direct, Draconia said.

Somehow the death of nearly everyone in the would-that-was had less impact for me. They were too remote, and too numerous, their deaths too unspecific for any of that to evoke more than an intellectual level of revulsion. The idea of lighting people on fire was one my imagination was disturbingly capable of providing imagery for however, and the connection to the deaths in the roots of the Holy Tree made them too real for me to brush aside.

“I’m glad he’s dead,” I said, my stomach fully turned at the thought of how awful the Neoterics could be.

We are as well. An unmistakable voice said as I flew in close enough to be fully illuminated over the city. 

The Sun was speaking to me and her splendor and majesty was nearly overwhelming.

Sola! Draconia was as delighted as I was overwhelmed. How did so much of you survive!

Oh, I very much didn’t, Sola said. What you see now is the result of a lot of work reassembling the bits of me we could find. My Blessed is rather exceptional in that, and so much of this is thanks to her.

“Can we meet her?” I asked. “I think I may have set some things in motion that are going to impact, uh, well everyone.”

Things? Such as? Sola asked.

“I claimed all of the divine fragments the First Tender, err, Sasarai held as my own,” I said. “He’s going to be coming for the ones that are here, and so are the others.”

You…you took little Sasarai’s stolen fragments from him? Without him knowing? Oh! OH! And you’re the Blessed of Draconia, so he can’t….

I wasn’t aware that the Sun was capable of breaking down into gales of crippling laughter. She tried to speak a few more times but wasn’t able to get any words past the fit of giggles that gripped her.

“We should probably head to the castle,” Theia said.

I nodded, which she could at least feel if not see directly. It made sense that we’d find the Sun Queen in the highest room of the palace after all.

And there again I was mislead by my time in the Garden.

We landed on the highest open terrace I could find only to discover that the Sun Queen was not in residence. I had to shift back to my Sylvan form in order to fit on the balcony that had seemed the most promising spot, which left Theia clinging to me until she was sure of her footing. The temptation to switch back to dragon form was oddly strong but I pushed it aside. As…comfortable as that might have been, we had work to do, and danger to warn about.

“You’re here to see Little?” the fox woman who spoke appeared in a rush of wind which could not have been coincidental. 

“Hiya Zeph,” Theia said. “Meet our newest Blessed. Jilly, Blessed of Guardians and Treasures, meet Zeph Foxwind, Honor Guard to the Sun.”

I noticed an important distinction in the introduction there. Zeph wasn’t the Honor Guard to the Sun Queen. She was an Honor Guard of the Sun itself.

I had no idea what a Foxwind was, but Draconia’s gifts to my sense were telling me in no uncertain terms that the woman I was looking at was not of the same mortal stock as the rest of us.

“A pleasure to meet you Blessed Jilya. You seem to have amused my mistress greatly, but I imagine your haste stems from a more pressing source?” For all the speed with which she’d joined us, Zeph was remarkably calm and unhurried in her speech.

“It does,” I said. “Would I be able to speak to the Sun Queen? I think she needs to hear what we’ve done and discovered as soon as possible.”

“The who?” Zeph asked.

“Oh, I’m sorry Jilya,” Theia said. “Little doesn’t go by any titles like that.”

It was Zeph’s turn to be amused, though unlike Sola, she constrained her mirth to a wry little smile.

“No, no,” Zeph said. “I’ll be happy to take you to the Sun Queen. She is going to be delighted with that title.”

“Um, I’m sorry, I just thought…” I wasn’t sure what I thought. Except that of course anyone in charge of a city must have some suitable grandiose title to go along with it. 

Damn you Sasarai. 

Clearly the heaviest of his many crimes, Draconia said.

You too? I asked, affronted at the betrayal from my own god. Affronted and, of course, comforted. If Draconia was willing to joke about something then it couldn’t be that serious.

I can ask her to return to the palace? Sola said, having regained control of herself.

“I can get her,” Zeph said.

Or you could all remember that I can hear you as well, Little said, her voice distant but not impossibly so. I can head back in a few minutes, let me just wrap up the discussion I’m having with the builders here or they’ll be stuck for days.

“Why don’t we come to you?” I suggested.

That would be ideal if you could, Little said. There’s a prayer group that I wanted to check in on and I think they would be delighted to meet a new Blessed.

“I know where that is,” Zeph said. “We can meet you there.”

“We should walk,” Theia said. “This is the first city Jilya’s had a chance to really see.”

“I think we need to hurry,” I said, feeling the impending approach of the Neoterics like a new doom about to collide with the world.

“We will, but I think I know what you’re looking for now, and walking the city is going to be something we need to do to find it.”

I was about to argue when I stopped to consider who Theia was blessed by.

As the Blessed of Night, or even just a specific aspect of Night, also known as the god who saved the world by hiding it from a power beyond even divine might, Theia should have been able to sense where our quarry lay as a simple part of her domain.

Kalkit as well, as the Blessed of Secrets, should have known of its existence the moment they received their first gifts.

So how had I worked it out?

Well, my god is better than theirs.

I’m not supposed to approve of that sort of thinking, Draconia said in an approving tone.

To be fair, I couldn’t sense what we needed to find, but I knew we could find it somewhere in Mt Gloria.

And Theia’s words made sense. Even letting Little know what I’d discovered wasn’t going to change the need to explore until we proved out my hypothesis.

“Lead on!” I said, falling into step behind Zeph.

Theia took up a position beside me and bumped my shoulder with hers.

“Bet you didn’t think you’d wind up here when you started looking for me?”

“I didn’t know here existed, so, yes, that’s a safe bet,” I said.

“No. I meant working together,” she said and bumped me again.

I almost stopped at that, the whiplash of recalling what I’d been thinking and feeling almost snapping my brain.

“I wouldn’t be here without you.” I think I whispered the words.

“Looking for an apology?” Theia asked, her voice light with a hint of challenge in it.

“What? No. I mean I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for you,” I said, a new idea running through my head.

Dyrena had left plans in place to guide the course the world would take when she “left”.

I know Helgon was convinced she was dead, and that might be true, at least for some definitions of ‘dead’. Given that he was dead and yet still quite chatty and involved in the world’s current affairs, I wasn’t convinced that death meant quite the same thing to them as it did to the rest of us.

The important thing though was that Dyrena’s plans for the world had to include responses to someone doing what I had done. That it had been possible for me meant it was inevitable that someone would have managed it eventually.

But I’d only been in a position to take Sasarai’s divine fragment collection because Theia had been with me. 

And for as good at hiding as I was, I’d also been moving closer and closer into Sasarai’s orbit with my training and my insistence on being a pure and perfect member of Mazana’s clergy. I’d been wildly successful in hiding my Blessed state but the moment Sasarai had been given reason to really pay attention to me, I would have died then and there.

And Theia had saved me from that.

No. She’d done more than save me. 

I was finally who I really was because of her.

But it hadn’t been her idea to be where she was.

She’d been sent there.

That did stop me.

“Theia,” I asked. “Who are you working for?”

“So the plan is that we will all harvest the fragments of the deities with temples nearest to our sanctuary cities?”

“Yes Helgon, that is what we’ve been discussing for the last hour and a half.”

“My apologies Vaingloth, I have been working on a theorem to predict the distribution of divine fragments and it seems that proximity to a temple will have less than a three percent impact on the scatter radius of fragments under all but the most extreme of edge cases. In fact, if you look here, you’ll see that the greatest correlation in fragment distribution is…”

“Helgon, we all acknowledge that you received top marks in Aetherodynamics and Transubstantiation Processes…”

“Not to mention Grace Fluidity and Philosophical Remanifestation Continuum Calculus!”

“Yes. Yes, we are ALL aware of your credentials. In this SPECIFIC case however, the research we commissioned clearly shows that the divine essences will seek to ground themselves out in the most aligned temples to the domains involved.”

“Well that’s just foolish, the research is clearly wrong. Who did we have working on it?”

“The Sightbound Sages of Skysden.”

“How sad. Their standards have clearly slipped. Did we pay them much? Can we get a refund is so?”

“No, we can’t…what makes you think you know more than an academy of Enlightened Sages?”

“Well, because they’re wrong, clearly.”

“They are wrong because you have a theory?”

“No. I have a theorem.”

“That you cobbled together in an hour while we in a discussion?”

“It was an hour and a half you said, and I must confess I wasn’t paying much attention.”

“Helgon, we do not have time for this. We have a study, backed by data, and the testimony of learned men with ten times the experience you possess.”

“You’d think they wouldn’t have made a mistake like that then. Did someone perhaps pay them to bias the study? I mean, if you wish, certainly found your cities in proximity to the great Temples, I just thought we might arrive at an imbalanced equilibrium between us if we were to neglect considerations regarding the Blessed of the Gods, which is where any remaining shards will be making their homes.”

– The High Accessors being convinced to ensure that the Blessed are preserved beyond the Sunfall.

I wasn’t leaving my brother behind. I mean, yes, I was flying away from Helgon’s city as fast as Draconia’s wings could carry me, but, importantly, Kam was still mine.

Hey, my dearest brother! Can you hear me?

“What the hell?” Kam was speaking aloud, I could tell that even though I was only hearing his voice because he was thinking his words as well.

How did I know I could read Kam’s mind? I didn’t. And I couldn’t. I could just give him my words, and listen for the ones he wanted to give me. I couldn’t know what he was really thinking about anything and I very much did not want to. The connection we shared was amazing, thanks to Draconia’s gifts, but being privy to whatever random nonsense was bouncing around his head sounded like an excellent method for driving both of us insane.

I need to get to Mt Gloria, pretty much immediately, I said, trusting that the increasing distance between us was only physical and would do nothing to diminish my words.

“Wait, what?” He was confused, which, sure, that was a sensible reaction. 

Remember how I pulled you out of the First Tender’s execution room? Same idea, but this is just words.

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so you’re going to Mt. Gloria. Do you need to see Mom and Dad?” 

“No. They don’t want me anymore and that’s fine.” It was not fine. “No, I need to see Little.”

“Theia’s asking why you’re going to Mt. Gloria. Oh and Xalaria doesn’t look happy.”

Can you relay this for me then, tell them that there are plans in motion that the other Neoterics are going to notice really soon and we need to get ahead of them while there’s still time.”

“Okay, sure.” The fact that he seemed to understand what I was saying felt deceptive. I had the strong suspicion that he was simply accepting what I was saying and happy to pass along whatever I told him. 

Would he have questioned me if I said something completely ridiculous? Maybe? Probably not though. I think his response to all of belief falling apart, was to shrug and decide that if it didn’t effect him in the moment, then it wasn’t worth caring about.

Or maybe that was just how I wanted to be?

“They’re asking what plans you’re talking about?” Kam said and then added “Oh and Theia’s asking if you want her to go with you?”

That would have been great but I’m pretty far away already. Draconia’s no slouch when it comes to flying.

There were dangers in the world, quite a lot of what Sasarai had told us about the wastelands were true. Draconia could sense that so clearly that even I was picking up the shades of spirits that hungered for whatever they could take from us. Turning back might have sheltered us from them, but I couldn’t be sure how quickly the window that I saw would close, especially with Sasarai hellbent on reclaiming the powers I’d claimed from him.

“Umm, she wants to know if its dark where you are?” Kam asked.

The sky above me held no luminous branches, no leaves with even the barest comforting glow. I’d read of the stars which once graced the night sky but only empty shadows remained where they’d once shone. 

Far off in the distance though, there was light.

A still living sun.

My guidepost and goal.

It’s so dark I don’t think even a Neoteric could see me up here, I said, fairly certain they’d have other means of locating me. I beat my wings faster, placing my hope in sheer speed to deliver me beyond their immediate grasp.

I wasn’t fast enough to escape someone catching me though.

Wisely, I didn’t roll or kick when I felt a pair of arm locked around my neck.

Was this your idea or hers? Umbrielle asked Draconia.

Entirely hers, Draconia said with no small bit of satisfaction drowning her words.

And you, of course, did all you could to dissuade her and convince of a more reasonable course of action? Umbrielle wasn’t asking a question because she very clearly already knew the answer.

This IS the reasonable course of action, I said and added, Thanks for coming though.

Have I ever given the impression that I like missing out on the fun? Theia asked.

This may not be fun. This may be pretty awful in fact. I said, all-to-easily imagining how badly things could go if the Sun Queen of Mt. Gloria didn’t believe me, or if she even questioned me long enough for Sasarai to strike.

All the more reason not to miss out, Theia said. With her clutched tight to my back, I could sense some of the emotions radiating off her.

Excitement. Concern. Irritation.

It would have been nice to be able to discern where those were directed by my senses weren’t quite that good, and Draconia’s domains didn’t include much in terms of emotional analysis.

How did you get here? I asked instead, guessing that was a safer subject to broach.

You’ve seen me step through shadows, she said, a questioning note in her voice as to why I would even need to have asked in the first place.

I thought you had limited range with that?

I do, but distance is dependent on a lot things. 

“Xalaria is asking what you’re doing,” Kam said and then amended his statement. “Sorry, she’s asking for exactly what you’re doing. Also, I’m supposed to tell you that we’re heading towards the trains and we’ll be in Mt. Gloria as soon as the fast line can get us there.”

Make sure Xalaria keeps you with them, I said. You’re the only one who can communicate between us at the moment.

“Yes! I’ve got a job!” That he sounded legitimately delighted about that was both endearing and idiotic. “Oh, Xalaria still wants to know what you’re doing. Exactly what you’re doing.”

Is Helgon with you?

“Yeah, should he be?” Kam asked.

I can travel outside my city now, at least along these rail lines, but my capabilities are rather limited here, Helgon said, speaking in the same silent space the gods and the Blessed used.

Which was chilling.

Oh, don’t worry, I can only do this because I’m with your brother, Helgon said. The others have no connection to you or him, so they have no presence here.

What about Sasarai? We were both part of the Garden since we were born, I asked.

Oh Sasarai could easily use one his divine fragments to…oh dear, he seems to have misplaced those hasn’t he? Such a shame. I mean all that power and no means to focus it beyond his own silly little skills, which always ran more towards compulsions and personal enhancement than I ever thought was sensible. Did he even once listen to me in that regards though? No, no I assure you he did not.

I felt the chill within me begin to thaw. It was at least a little amusing that I’d managed to take from Sasarai the things that would have prevented me from taking things from him. Given that he was nothing like a worthy Guardian however, that felt so properly within our domain that neither Draconia nor I held even the slightest of regrets.

Could you explain to the others what you told me, I asked.

I would be delighted to, though I must confess I am far from certain what I said which led you to flee my presence to quickly?

I didn’t…No Helgon, I wasn’t running from you I’m running towards what you spoke about.

But we were speaking of Dyrena and I can assure you she is not to be found at Mt. Gloria. She is not to be found anywhere on this world I am sad to say.

Part of me shared his sorrow at her loss. Despite having never met her, and very much despite her playing a key role in the destruction of the old world, I regretted that I’d never get to meet a woman who was not only held in such fond regard more than a century after her passing, but also a woman who seemed to be very likely the reason there still was a world and people upon it, rather than the emptiness of oblivion from a failed attempt at usurping divine power.

Another part of me was delighted by Helgon’s words though.

If even someone as close to Dyrena as he’d been couldn’t see what I had, then maybe there was some hope that the other Neoterics, aside from Sasarai, weren’t hot on our heels.

They would be of course.

If I was right, we were about to wake up every Neoteric in the world.

The fact that such an awakening would be best described as ‘apocalyptic’ was only tempered by the landscape below me already having been ravaged by a world ending apocalypse. 

Things were going to get bad, but there were a lot of places where ‘bad’ would be noticeable in the slightest.

Explain this to them then, I said. Tell them of Dyrena’s vision for the world she desired.

I would be glad to but I don’t see how that will answer our Blessed of Battle’s questions or allow her to plan for the disruptions which I gather will result from your present course of actions.

Just go ahead and let them know, I asked. I wanted to see if they independently came to the same conclusion I did. And let me know what Kalkit says okay?

I waited a few moments before Theia spoke up.

Care to kill me in while we wait?

I will but let’s see what the others take on it is, I said, the waiting driving me a little nuts.

Kalkit says, and I quote, ‘That’s not possible’, end quote, Helgon said and added. The others are not sure what you or Kalkit are referring to.

Ask them what is hanging over Mt. Gloria at the moment.

A sun? Oh. OH! The shock in Helgon’s voice was palpable and his next words came in no more than a whisper.

She’s still here.

“It’s not so bad Helgon.”

“They killed you. It’s exactly that bad.”

“It’s not so unexpected then.”

“Speak for yourself. I didn’t expect this at all.”

“Oh, please. We spoke of this. I told you this would happen.”

“But not to you.”

“Yes to me. To me first, to me most certainly.”

“It shouldn’t have.”

“Do you think so? Do you think after what we did, what we allowed to happen, we somehow deserve better?”

“The rest of us? No, certainly not. But you did.”

“Helgon, dearest Helgon, I bear more responsibility for what occurred than you ever could.”

“But it was my theorems, my formulae, my machinery, they were the foundation for all of this. And they turned those on you.”

“Do you think so? Do you think after the long hours we’ve spent together, I was unaware of the reach of your contrivances? That I somehow missed the peril and potential they encompassed?”

“No. No of course not. But does that mean…?”

“That this is all a trick? I am afraid not my dear Helgon. Or at least not one from which I will return to this world from.”

“But you are here, now, can’t you remain? Just a little longer?”

“Tarrying is not for me. There is more that awaits me, so much more than we’d ever guessed. I am unbound from the concerns I once carried. Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“One or two ties remain, but, alas, that which calls me onward has a gravity which will not be denied. And should I try, I fear I would do terrible harm.”

“We’ve already done terrible harm, what’s a tiny bit more?”

“What we wrought has changed the world, but life remains and hope persists. Where I to return…”

“And when my time comes?”

“We are not the same. The shape of my existence is not the shape of yours. Perhaps you will follow as well, or perhaps you shall have the time and solitude you have always craved. That will be for you to say.”

“I should never want so much time or so little of your company.”

– Helgon and Dyrena’s “last” goodbye, apart from the laughter which remained to tease Helgon and keep him company through a century of empty nights.

I could easily imagine why a Neoteric Lord might want to die. The sheer guilt they had to feel, assuming any feelings remained to them, had to be overwhelming. That wasn’t what Helgon was telling me though. His friend Dyrena had not chosen to die because of the regret she felt for her actions.

“It’s not your plan. It’s hers.” I wasn’t asking a question, though I didn’t know for certain that my statement was true.

“I think she would have enjoyed meeting you,” Helgon said. “I also suspect she would deny that the plan you speak of was solely hers. She would go on and on about how no scheme or work which involved others, especially posthumously, should ever fully be attributed to its initial architect.”

“But she was the one who set the current course of events in motion?” I felt like I could just glimpse the shape of what the Neoteric Lord Dyrena’s plan had been. 

A grand scheme to support and develop those who had every reason to destroy the Lords who’d destroyed her.

Revenge was a motive which featured in a lot of performances of tales from the old world. The First Tender encouraged that since it reinforced his narrative that we, the Chosen Survivors, were due our vengeance against the immoral masses whose profanity had led to the destruction of the old world. We were the oppressed ones. We were the ones who’d been made to suffer. We were the ones with a unique moral position, and the right to demand vengeance against those who’d wrong us.

That wasn’t Dyrena. It couldn’t be. Anyone who could weave a plan that would hang together a century or more after their death, would have to have seen that death coming far before hand (which Helgon seemed to think was possible) and therefor would have been able to form an even better scheme to prevent it and punish those responsible first.

She hadn’t.

She’d allowed for her own death for some reason, and set in motion a plan that was going to undo her fellow Neoteric Lords when they’d grown sloppy enough to miss the machinations which were moving against them.

“While I remain endlessly impressed by her prowess, I feel I must temper your expectations somewhat,” Helgon said. “Dyrena’s ‘plans’ were rarely as specific as you might imagine. As you say, she set certain events in motion. She also established caches of resource and ensured that weaknesses of the other Neoterics were recorded for those who chose to act against them. She did not, as a rule, provide specific instructions or dictates for those who effected her desires though.”

“Caches of resources?” I asked. It wasn’t the most important thing Helgon had said, or the most surprising, but it was something I could see an immediate use for, and something the others might not be fully aware of.

“Nothing so grand as weapons to outfit an army, I’m afraid,” Helgon said. “Dyrena saw little use for those. Far more often she would squirrel away a small trove of books. Or perhaps a single jewel which might have value when it was needed most. She had remarkable foresight for gathering things of actual value.”

“And you know where these caches are?” I felt a tension rising in my nerves the was powerful enough to lift me onto the tips of my toes. 

“Only ones which had long since been looted,” Helgon said, wandering over to one of the pieces of wall art which turned out to be a rather stylized map of the old world.

Country names and borders I’d never heard before were illuminated as he swept his ghostly hand past them.

“I know of a dozen places on each continent where she left troves which have helped those who stumbled on them over the decades. They rarely contained what seemed to be most needed but I can’t recall them ever failing to be useful.”

“Useful for what?” I asked, trying to grasp what Dyrena’s true aim was, since revenge was simply too small a goal.

“Preservation, usually. Only the very desperate tend to locate one of her troves.”

“Desperate to escape one of the other Neoterics?”

“Not universally. Some of the ones I know of had already escaped their local Neoteric, though that is the minority by far.”

“And you?”

“There was no cache left behind for me,” Helgon said, his voice going softer and slower with each word.

“What about ones left for those fleeing from you?” I asked.

He turned to look at me, confused for a moment, before a small smile slip his lips and he shook his head.

“No one ever needed to escape me,” he said.

“Because they all died with your city before they could?” I asked, knowing that couldn’t have been right.

“I believe my fellow Neoteric imagined that to be the case. It’s likely why they thought I wouldn’t strike against them, for fear of ‘injuring my people’.”

From the inflection he put on naming ‘his people’ I understood what he was really saying.

“You didn’t have any people? Wait, you didn’t save anyone from the Sunfall?” I asked, processing what the would have meant for those who’d lived in his city at the time.

“There were those who suspected that as well,” he said. “Of course I didn’t let them check. Our domains are sacrosanct by treaty and by the divine power of our rule.”

“What would they have found if they had checked? What did you do?” There was some missing element to what was going on, some part of the Dyrena’s plan which Helgon had been privy to which was crucial but it eluded me.

“I did just what Dyrena knew I would. Just what she argued had to be done.”

“Which was!?”

“Nothing which can be spoken of. Not yet.” Helgon wasn’t being a jerk simply for the sake of being annoying. 

But he was enjoying being cryptic.

Which was definitely annoying.

“We could mess up her plans, and yours,” I said. “Without even meaning to. In fact we’re almost certain to! If we don’t know what’s you’re doing, what you’ve done, and we know you were a part of the whole Sunfall thing, we almost have to, don’t we?”

“If you could undo what we did with the overthrow of the gods, you cannot imagine how I would rejoice, much less how she would have,” Helgon said. “If I might offer some advice though, destruction is far simpler than creation, and creation is often far simpler than restoration. As much as I miss the days of yore now that they are lost to me, bringing back what was will never be the wisest path.”

“Because restoring what was would mean restoring a world set to destroy itself all over again.”

“A quote from the philosopher Valshama? Apparently Sasarai supplied a surprisingly more thorough education than I would have credited him with providing!” 

“Valsha-who? No, I wasn’t quoting anyone. That just made sense.”

“Huh. You would be surprised at the company you could keep with that sort of ‘sense’,” Helgon said. 

“Not with Dyrena it seems. I can’t see what her goal was, or what her plan would be leading us to?”

Having him simply tell me didn’t seem right. In part it would mean trusting him, which I wasn’t entirely sure we could afford to do. For as nice as he seemed, and despite the help he’d already provided us against Sasarai, there was still the possibility that he held plans which wouldn’t be to our benefit. I couldn’t see that, but then neither the gods nor the people of his time had seen that he was part of a cabal which would destroy their world, so staying wary while accepting the help that we clearly needed seemed like the wisest course of action I could choose under the circumstances. 

Also, it just felt better to figure things out my own. I’d been praised enough as being a good student, that valuing myself for my intelligence seemed to have stuck in my personality somewhere, even with the mound of data that suggested I was a complete idiot for worshipping Sasarai as I had.

“I can help you there, but I am certain I cannot provide a definitive answer for you,” Helgon said. “Don’t mistake me, at this juncture I would enjoy nothing more than assisting you in whatever course you might take against Sasarai and the others. Unlike Dyrena, my delight at the prospect of their downfall is more than enough to allow me to linger on here. That said, I can do no more than provide assistance to you because I do not trust that I understand the full extent of her plans myself.”

“She didn’t talk about them with you? Not even hints?”

“Oh, no, no, we spoke of our goals and plan quite extensively. The problem isn’t that she didn’t tell me her plans, its that she told me so many of them and spoke at length of the value of them all that I am quite sure she managed to obfuscate what she actually intended far beyond my ability to determine which she eventually chose to implement and which she chose to forego.”

“Could she have just done them all?”

“She was a singular genius, so perhaps I shouldn’t rule that out, but had she brought to life all the dreams she spoke of, we would be sitting in a very different world.”

“Tell me about that then,” I said, grasping at whatever threads I could.

“Dyrena’s world? Hers would have been an unfallen realm. Different from the world before, with power stripped away from people like myself and her and most certainty from the other would-be Neoteric Lords. In place of an eternal night, we would live beneath a life giving sun and stars which listened to the wishes made upon them. Old feuds would have been forgiven, and ancient sins accounted for. I thought she meant to make a world of love and brotherhood, but she laughed at that too. ‘People will always be people’ she’d said. She didn’t wish to deny them that, merely give us the vision to see each other as flawed but still worthy of redemption, should we choose we it.”

And I saw it.

It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. Not after all this time..

But…

“I need to go to Mt Gloria.”

“Now?”

“Yes,” I said, my voice dropping as my body began to change and Draconia’s power flooded through me.

With the beat of wings as wide as a building, I rose into the starless sky and with my god flew towards the life giving sun.