“Hey Insight, did Clarity say when she was going to be back today?”

“She and Responsibility were talking the 3rd Years out to the new Slinktail refuge.”

“So they could be there somewhere between an hour and a week then?”

“In this case it was more like 30 minutes.”

“Oh hi there Responsibility!”

“Hey Beauty.”

“What happened?” 

“You, and it kills me to admit this, as you well know Insight, were right.”

“What was that? I’m sorry, you know how these old ears are. I think I need to hear that again.”

“Shut up. Your 30th namesday isn’t till next week. And I’m older anyways.”

“To be fair to our dear Insight, as she predicted, the groundskeepers were behind schedule.”

“Oh that sucks Clarity. Did the kids at least get to see any of the baby Slinktails?”

“Sadly no.”

“I thought they told you the enclosures were all completed though?”

“And they were not lying Reason. Unfortunately, they neglected to mention that stocking the enclosures with the trees the Slinktails need for comfort and safety was still ‘a work in progress’.”

“So what did you two do with the 3rd years?”

“Jilya.”

“Oh that’s just mean.”

“I’d say that was a good call Insight.”

“Jilya’s been up to her wingtips in plant revivals. How did she possibly have time for an entire class of 3rd years?”

“Oh, that was easy. She turned them into her private army of seed gatherers and sorters.”

“Okay, that is clever, points to her there!”

“I thought so too Inhibition. She told them if any of them found a new species, they’d get to coin it’s common name.”

“So we are going to have a dozen variations on ‘Pretty Sparkle Rose’ and/or ‘Stinky Butt Weed’?”

“That is the allure but I suspect she’ll get them to take it a little more seriously.”

“How long is she planning to employ the volunteer army you dropped on her doorstep?”

“Like you said, she’s pretty swamped, so she’ll probably need them for at least a week.”

“In which time the Slinktail habitat can actually be completed?”

“That’s the hope. Whether the groundskeepers can actually manage it or not remains to be seen.”

“I would say we could ask for help on that, but all the help we know is part of one or another of Jilya’s other harvest armies.”

“We could offer to help out ourselves I suppose?”

“Reason, my dearest love, are you feeling well? Have you sustained a head injury you’ve been hiding from us? Or perhaps an extreme fever has boiled your blood?”

“What? I like Slinktails. They’re cute, especially the babies!”

“We know they are but I believe what Beauty is pointing out is that with the 3rd years away for a week, and the second years still the under the tutelage of Mercy, Thrift, and Harmony, we find ourselves with a rare week of vacation we can turn to whatever ends we wish.”

“That was rather the plan, though credit goes to Clarity for coming up with it.”

“You were the one who pointed out that the children needed something to make up for the disappointment of missing the animal encounter they’d been looking forward to.”

“Well whatever shall we do with a week where there’s no one around to interrupt us?”

“It seems that Insight is already found the answer.”

“Round robin card tournament?”

“Round robin card tournament!”

“Oh! Can we get in on that too?”

“When have we ever turned down a chance to demolish a god, Diyas?”

“It seems somewhat less than likely that you will be victorious this time, Beauty.”

“And why is that Umbrielle?”

“Because we have been practicing.”

“Have you now Draconia? Well let’s just see how well you can defend the hoard you start with, I seem to recall splitting most of it with Responsibility last time.”

“Yes, but who was the overall winner last time?”
{chorus} “You were Sola”.

– Insight being setup for a week long 30th Namesday celebration by both her mortal and divine friends.

I was not drunk. I do not get drunk. Alcohol is just a toxin and toxins are things that mortals have to deal with.

“We’re still a bit mortal,” Little said, a tiny bit tipsy. Which was not the same as being drunk, as I knew from personal experience.

“A little bit?” Jilya teased, which earned her a groan from our Ratkin friend.

“It’s lucky that we are,” I said gazing out at the star strewn sky that has not gotten boring to look at in the dozen or so year since it came back. “Can you imagine how things would have gone if any of us weren’t?”

“Vaingloth would have taken me seriously from minute one if he’d known what I was going to become,” Little said.

“Sasarai would have buried my body parts under a hundred different roots and had ‘Holy Mazana’ feed on me for eternity if he’d caught me when I was an unknowing Blessed,” Jilya said reclining on the oversized beanbag we’d provided for her since she was a bit out-sized for our normal furniture.

“How about you Insight? Malgenia would have turned you into one of her art pieces right?” Little asked, without looking at me. She could sense me just fine but her lost vision was well and truly gone from everything we could tell. Even the Great Beast’s restorative release of the divine energy and domains it had collected had not returned the sight to her void darkened eyes.

Somethings when lost are simply lost, and we move on with only their memories as a part of us.

“I don’t think so,” I said, imagining how Malgenia might have thought for the first time in years.

She’s been my everything, my god, my world, my hopes and dreams, right up until the time moment I’d understood who she really was.

There were still parts of my personality that showed the damage I’d taken growing up as a unwitting sacrificial offering, but there were plenty of days now where those parts didn’t come up, or where the choices I’d made since then mattered far more. I hard a hard time believing it some days but, by tiny increments, I was recovering from who I’d been.

“Malgenia simultaneously paid us no mind at all and was disturbingly fascinated by us,” I said. “I think she was looking for someone she could understand, or maybe someone who could understand her. Despite being her twin, Vitor was never that for her. He was a chew toy at best  and a pliable obstacle at worst. I think if she knew what I was going to become, she would have done exactly what she did to me.”

“The Assumption Ritual?” Jilya asked, echoes of her own traumatic upbringing singing around the question.

“Yeah. Her version was going to destroy one or the other of us, and I’ve always wondered if she really cared which of us lost? She certainly fought harder than I’d ever imagined anyone could, and I did have divine backup there, but ‘as hard as I can imagine’ is a lot less than she was really capable of. The other Neoterics were terrified of her and they were right to be.”

“And you lived with her memories in your head for years?” Little asked.

“It turned out to be more than her memories. To win the Assumption Ritual, I had to tear her to shreds. At the end, there wasn’t anything left of her to oppose me taking her power and her life. As it turned out though that didn’t quite mean there wasn’t anything left of her.”

“I remember you saying you saw her again in your version of the Assumption Ritual?” Jilya said. I had recounted the events of the End of the World several times over the years, and my wives had been there too, but it wasn’t something people tended to ask us a lot of questions about. Or not a lot of questions I had the words to answer with.

How do you say ‘I was a god, but not a god, and I met my dearest mother-love, who was not and never could be my Mom, and was also a god and not a god and something so much more, but just a shadow too, who I adored, for whom I felt overpowering revulsion and rage, who wanted to destroy me absolutely, who I had already crushed as thoroughly as I could, who, maybe, kinda, sorta, was proud of me, who I could never forgive, but who I offered the deepest, most sincere peace I’ve ever wished on anyone?

“I did. She was the last of the Neoterics to fall in sense. She’d been holding all of them back by refusing to let death, as a concept, be eradicated, and she was the one who took out her brother,” I said, trying to let the confusing jumble of the experience peek through in my words.

“Sounds like it was a difficult struggle with her in the ritual both times,” Little said.

“The first time it was a struggle to keep her from killing me, the second time the struggle was getting her to accept that I was alive,” I said, knowing that wouldn’t make sense but winding up surprised when they both nodded in understanding.

“We had to move past them,” Jilya said.

“We still do,” Little added. “Though I’d say we’ve made pretty good progress so far.”

“Twelve years in the sun,” Jilya said with a nod towards Little offering an indirect compliment to Sola.. 

Our gods were away on their own business. After partying with us for days leading up to my nameday, everyone had plenty of things that had piled up that they needed to take care of. Everyone except the three of us, whom the rest had conspired to arrange some much needed quiet time for.

“Twelve years building a future we never could have had,” Little said and this wistfulness in voice echoed everywhere inside me.

“I didn’t think I’d make it this far,” I admitted. “As a kid, we were taught to hope and pray for the Assumption Ritual. Malgenia usually picked 16 year olds for it. Sometimes older, but the Deaths that made it to their mid-20s were considered too old to ever be picked. It wasn’t uncommon for them to be ‘repurposed’, and I’d always thought that was going to be my lot. Responsibility would beat me in some test and she’d get to take her place as one of Malgenia’s demigods and I’d be left behind until they could fine some other purpose for me.”

“And instead you made your own purpose,” Little said.

“And made your peace with with Responsibility at some point?” Jilya asked.

“We do peace sometimes. We’re still brats to each other too. I think that’s part of the fun really,” I said, already plotting how I was going to get my wives back for springing a week-long surprise party on me. Granted I’d done the same to Responsibility but turnabout on a turnabout was the hallmark of our relationship.

“I envy that you have time to annoy each other. Theia and I are so busy that if we get one date night a month is a cause for extreme celebration,” Jilya said.

“You could always just tell people you can’t help them today, you’ve got a hot cat woman who needs you?” I suggested.

“Believe me that’s been tempting, but I’m not the only busy one and I learned early on that trying to hoard a Catkin is a recipe for a terrible weekend. If I’m patient though, mine at least comes back to me, which is all I can really ask for,” Jilya said.

“For as entertaining as it is to listen to the dramatics you two get up to, I have to say that I couldn’t be more glad that none of that is for me,” Little said.

“You’ve got plenty of your own drama,” Jilya said. “Isn’t Lucky getting married next month?”

“Yep, and that’s her insanity, I’d just acting as the celebrant,” Little said.

“Aren’t you learning Ancient Bugbear to perform the ceremony in a ‘historically accurate’ fashion?” I asked.

“And can your throat muscles actually produce proper Ancient Bugbear syllables?” Jilya asked.

“Mostly. Somewhat. I’m working on it. I mean that’s what you do for your crew right?” Little’s objection was as proud and defiant as it was amusingly missing the point.

“That’s what you do for people you love,” I said.

“Whatever you can do, whatever they need,” Jilya said.

Over us a star winked brightly in divine agreement.

That was the world we were building.

It would be the effort of the rest of our lives, even as long though they looked to be, and probably many lifetimes beyond that.

A world built not on amassing cataclysmic amount of power, but on doing what we could for each other. Making life worth living, guarding the things that mattered from slipping away, and shining as brightly as we could so others would be able to follow in our footsteps.

“Our Lady has been gone for quite a long time, I hope she is doing well?”

“Of course she is doing well Pity, Our Lady Malgenia is supreme and foremost even amongst the Neoteric Lords.”

“Of course. Still though…”

“It has been over a year since she had appeared before us.”

“Yes, what will happen with the little ones?”

“The Overseers will raise them as Malgenia instructed.”

“But what about their names? Only our Lady can bestow a name to those who are taken into her service.”

“She must have accounted for that. Perhaps the ones who will have waited the longest will be gifted with the best names?”

“Do you think so Foresight? Could that be what she’s doing?”

“Searching for new names? I doubt she would need a year and a half to spend on an endeavor like that. I doubt she would even need an afternoon. She is our Lady after all.”

“Yes. Yes. Of course. But what could take so much of her time?”

“I am sure it is not for us to say, though I have heard whispers.”

“Whispers? Of our Lady?”

“No. Of her brother.”

“Vitor? Who cares about Vitor?”

“Hush! He is a Neoteric Lord as well, and you know our Lady is fond of him.”

“Is she? His visits always seemed to annoy her, even more so right before she left.”

“Yes. Left and took Responsibility and Clarity with her. You know I have wondered, do you think both of them have been granted an Assumption?”

“Would she have granted a double Assumption to them? Were they special in some manner?”

“Not that I am aware of, though our Lady of course sees more than we do.”

“Of course. And will reign eternal. The lies of her being slain are so foolish.”

“Where did you hear such blasphemy?”

“A servant of Vitor’s. This was over a year ago though, several months after she left us. Before we were sealed in here, away from all that. I have never doubted our Lady I will have you know however! I think Vitor’s people are simply vile little things, which is probably why he left them.”

“I shall have to interrogate one the next time I see them.”

“For that the Overseers would need to allow us to rise up from the Grand Mausoleum. We’ve been locked in here so long all sorts of terrible thoughts are breeding among the Deaths.”

 “We are safe here, and here we shall endure until our Lady comes to…what’s the commotion over there? Wait, is the main door opening? Has someone arrived!”

– The Death of Pity and the Death of Foresight on the day when Malgenia’s hidden vault was at last discovered and opened.

Privacy was not something I could just magic up for us. My poor house had been pretty thoroughly wrecked and while the last intact study room was sufficient as a refuge for Responsibility, Clarity and I, we needed a somewhat larger space for our current group to work in.

So Diyas grew us a church.

“Do you mind if I make a few alterations?” Draconia asked, pausing at the threshold of the cathedral of vines and flowers and living wooden beams and buttresses.

“So long as you allow people other then us to eventually gain entrance,” Diyas said.

I’d forgotten for a moment what Draconia’s primary domain was, but the gargoyles which rose to adorn nearly every inch of the cathedral’s roofline reminded me that we would be rather well guarded inside.

“All may enter,” Draconia said. “Though those will ill-intent towards those within will find themselves somewhat poorly accommodated.”

“And those who remain outside will perceive nothing of what goes on inside?” Clarity asked.

“Divine eyes, or Blessed ones, can pierce the veil, but those inside will be aware of the scrutiny,” Umbrielle said, joining us with Theia, which brought buzzing tingle to my fingertips at all of the divinity we had gathered so precariously close together.

Don’t worry, our power largely rests in our domains, even if we were to fall here, the world would be in no danger, Diyas whispered to me.

Oh! Is that part of how your existence has changed? Responsibility asked.

Which…

Okay…

What?

Are you Blessed now too? I asked mentally, intending to whisper it to Responsibility, but it reached more than just her.

In a sense, Clarity said.

They do not bear my Blessing as you did, but it is through you Deaths that Life returned to this world and so you will always be my Beloved.

I’d felt the bond I had with Diyas reforge itself, but I hadn’t questioned what form the new bond might take. It had been enough that it was there.

She’s not just talking about you three, if you’re curious, Beauty said and hearing her voice was the most surprising of them all.

I had to pause at the door and take a moment to just breathe as people filed in past me.

Beauty, Inhibition, and Reason were still with me? Why would that matter? I mean it wasn’t like they were 97% of my sanity for the last few years? Sure, they’d been the only ones who were there with me from the day when I killed the woman I’d worshipped and shattered every last piece of my whole life. Why would that make them important? Why was I unraveling at the thought that I hadn’t lost them either?

“Insight needs a quick rest break, Responsibility’s going to help her with that, but we can get started without her,” Clarity said as Responsibility did, indeed, sweep me away from cathedral and back to house.

“I’m fine,” I lied. “I can help.”

“Nope,” Responsibility said. “Nope to all of that.”

“I can help!”

“Good. Then you can help me,” Responsibility said, steering me upstairs through the growing collection of Deaths who were migrating back into the house and forming into larger groups.

“What happened?” I asked Responsibility, turning to look her over to see if I’d missed anything.

I was looking for blood, or a missing body part. 

I don’t know why, the destruction we’d touched on was far more thorough than that.

Maybe it was because I’d seen her bloody before. It was a problem she might have that I knew how to address (and, embarrassingly, how to cause as well).

“Everything. Pretty much everything,” she said. “I do have this problem at the moment though that I could use some advice with.”

She nodded to Dignity and Mercy who were discretely leaving the study to guard its door again.

“Your problems are my problems,” I said. “Well, your problems are usually me, but hopefully that’s changed.”

“I am willing to bet that will never change,” Responsibility said.

“What do you mean?” I asked, sensing that she was teasing me but not being entirely willing to trust that.

There was some real problem there too.

And it probably was me.

So, you know, worrisome.

“Are we okay?” Responsibility asked.

“We are a lot better than okay,” I said and tried to prove it with a kiss.

But she held a finger up to block my lips from meeting hers.

“I love you,” she said. “And I know you love me. Are you or I okay though? After everything we’ve been through, do you think either of us can just go on solving the world’s problems as we are?”

I wanted to say “yes”. I had to say “yes” in fact. For all that we’d done, the world was far from “fixed”. It was still a broken mess, even a year in. We had a new start but, from the scraps of conversation I’d overheard among the Deaths, it was clear that we had a ton of things left to figure out. 

Also, there was the tiny point that the gods themselves had shown up on our doorstep, and there was a growing army of Blessed arriving, all of whom were still trying to figure things out.

I had to step up.

I had to…

“No,” I said. “No, we’re not okay.”

“Excuse us,” Beauty said. “You misplaced this one.” She and Inhibition marched Clarity into the room, one hand on each of Clarity’s arms, deposited her inside the door, turned and left.

“I can handle being the voice for the three of us!” Clarity shouted at the closed door.

The closed door she, notably, did not open despite the fact that it was very much not locked.

“I really like being able to talk to them like this,” Responsibility said. “It must have been a such a relief having them with you through all the time you had to pretend to be Malgenia?”

“It was. I…I wouldn’t have made it without them.”

“None of us would have,” Clarity said.

“So shouldn’t we be out there, working with the others. I mean ‘we’re all we’ve got, we’re all we need’ is why we’re still breathing here.” I made zero move to leave the couch, and instead siddled over to make room for Clarity to see between Responsibility and I.

“The other three have that covered for now,” Clarity said. “I guess. I thought I could stand in for you, but apparently…”

“Apparently the other three can tell that you’re in the same shape we are,” Responsibility said. 

“It’s not like they have it any better, though,” I said. “All of the Deaths here took the same hits we did, and heck, even Little and Jilya and the rest, none of them have had an easy time of either. We’re all just broken toys trying to stumble along as best we can now.”

“Not broken,” Clarity said. “And not toys. Not anymore.”

“It’s okay to be broken,” Responsibility said. “I mean I say that and the fear of being unwanted and cast away – by Malgenia of course – flares up in my brain instantly, but that’s got to be wrong.”

“Does it?” I asked, not believing it was any more than Responsibility did, but hungry to hear her words on it, which just had to be better than my own.

“Because of you two,” Clarity said, flopping down between us. “Is it okay for me to be broken? No, obviously, right? If I’m broken, I’m worthless and bad and unfit to be in ‘Our Lady’s service’. But does that mean I would say other people aren’t allowed to be broken? That they’re not worth anything if they are? That sits differently. Can I say, no, you two aren’t allowed to be hurt, you have to be perfect because I love you?”

“Doesn’t that mean that, broken or not, we should be out there? Helping the people who need us?” Their words filled the bits of me that needed to hear them, but I still wanted to make a difference, to…

“You have value too,” Responsibility said. “And before we rush into fixing the rest of the world, maybe we need to look at what it really needs.”

“Isn’t that what the big meeting’s for?” I asked.

“They’re going to talk about how to keep the people of the world from propping up a new set of Neoterics to replace the ones we killed,” Responsibility said. “I think it’s safe to say we, you especially, have some idea what the Neoterics were like and why that would be a terrible idea to let happen again, even if its what a lot of people feel comfortable with. That’s why they all gathered here.”

“And because we’re currently the closest thing to neutral ground between the various Neoteric cities,” Clarity added.

“So, I should be there?”

“That’s what they need, what you need, what the three of us and probably all the rest of the Death’s need, I think, is to be given time to just live,” Responsibility said.

“And grieve,” Clarity added. “As much as we might hate her, we’ve lost Our Lady and the place she held in our lives. We lost everything about the lives we had – and good riddance to them – but it’s a change, a bigger one than any of the living Deaths have ever been through.”

“And the ones we brought back? If we don’t make time for ourselves to figure out how to live, how are we ever going to help them?” Responsibility asked.

“You do have someone to save still Insight, but that someone is you, and trust us, you’re very worth saving,” Clarity said

Outside our window, a hundred flower covered vines grew, and with them came a voiceless nudge from the Life that was waiting for me that my god agreed.

I was loved, more than I could ever know, more than I could ever be grateful for enough, I was loved.

“What shall become of us High Accessor?”

“You will survive and, please, I cannot bear that title any longer. I am only Dyrena now.”

“Survive? The world has died! The gods no longer answer us.”

“They have fallen, all but one, and it is Night’s cloaks which allows us time yet upon this world.”

“Can we fix this then? That cannot be. How can we restore a world this broken without the gods?”

“That is not your task. Your burden is simply to survive. What has been done will take far beyond a single lifetime to set right.”

“Can it be right at all though? Can all of this ever be undone?”

“Undone? No, we do not undo our pasts. Nor will things ever again be as they were, for which we must be ever grateful.”

“Grateful? For this ruination? We’ve lost…”

“I know. I saw you holding him in your arms before consigning him to the earth. I saw her take her last breath. I saw each one who was torn from us and I saw how unkindly their ends were. That is why you must survive. To make a future where their loss will not be repeated again. To find comfort from your grief in comforting others.”

“But this world cannot sustain us. And all the memories it holds have turned to ash on our tongues.”

“There, at least, I can provide some respite for you.”

“Our gods are gone and our lands have burned, what respite is left to be found?”

“What has befallen this world is a great and terrible change but that does not mean you must accept the change for what it appears to be. Is what you see intolerable? Then do not tolerate it. Continue to change, become something new if that is what will see you through.”

“Nothing can grow here anymore though.”

“Then we must find you a new place to take root.”

“You said nothing was spared. Everything in the world has suffered as we have.”

“And so it is. Pockets remain but they are closed to us, guarded by the other Neoteric Lords who called this ruin down onto everything in this sphere. To you I offer a different choice than they will offer those they shelter; as this world can no longer sustain you, let us find another where you may flourish.”

“One where you can rule unopposed?”

“I cannot leave this sphere. For my crimes I am bound here and must suffer whatever fate awaits me. I expect I shall not have to wait long for the doom I have engineered to come to pass, but I will have the time to see you all sent to a new beginning.”

“Why would you do this?”

“If I am right, this world will, lifetimes hence, throw off the cloak of Night and flourish once more under the care of new people and new gods. In you though, I would see the best of the world that was preserved. You will change and grow as well. Should we ever meet again, perhaps I will not recognize you, but I would not see your growth twisted by the designs of any Neoteric Lord, not even my own.”

– Dyrena speaking to the thousands she saved from the Sun Fall.

Birdsong. Insect chirps. Wind. 

I was resonating with everyone of them. No supernatural force was at work, no divine grace twisted into a miracle of someone else’s making. The boneshaking hum in my body was a purely natural reaction to being suddenly immersed in the environmental cues my cells had been missing since before I was born. Since before I was even conceived.

My mother had never heard sounds like these.

My father had never felt wind like this.

I didn’t know my parents. I never had. I’d only been told they died when I was very little and Malgenia had taken me in to care for me. I had no conscious memory of either one but walking outside with my family in tow, I could feel them both.

And my grandparents.

And their parents.

A chain of life passed from one generation to the next and tied into every other life in the world.

“How is this possible? How are there birds again so soon?” Responsibility asked.

“There can’t be,” Clarity said. “It would take a miracle beyond any of the divine fragments to wish life back to the world so quickly.”

“It’s taken a little longer than you’re thinking,” Diyas said.

Not in my head.

She was standing right there, in front of us, tall and strong and achingly beautiful.

“You…this is a divine revelation?” I asked, seized by the memory of the limitations on her ability to appear before us and already dreading the moment she would leave.

We’d been separated, and while we’d renewed our bond, the strength of my faith in her wasn’t quite the same as seeing her in person.

“Nope,” Diyas said, with a secretive smile that told me my god was teasing me.

I welcomed that, but I was still perplexed.

“Someone else is going to receive a divine revelation?” Responsibility asked.

“No, that’s not what she’s saying,” Clarity said. “The gods have changed, haven’t they?”

“Of course, I’ve said that all along,” Diyas said.

“This is different though,” I said. “You’re not fractured anymore. You’re not a fragment.”

“That is true. But it is also true that I am not what I was and, as I requested of you, I never shall be again,” Diyas said.

“The celestial realm? Is it there anymore?” Clarity asked.

“It is, though it is quite a bit less populated than it was, just a few of us keeping an eye on it,” Diyas said.

“More than an eye,” Dyrena said, appearing in a form quite a bit less solid than Diyas’.

“Guarding it against another Beast’s arrival?” Beauty asked as she and Inhibition and Reason joined us.

Diyas beckoned us over to a small grove which had somehow sprung up outside the ruins of my house. I didn’t recognize the plants which were growing there, though they looked similar to Shootgrass stalks with broad green leaves at regular intervals which provided shade from the dazzling orb of light which was rising above the horizon.

“There will never be another Beast that comes to end existence,” Dyrena said. “Our cosmos simply has no room for one anymore. That spot is taken.”

“Taken by what?” Inhibition asked.

“By the Beast she called in. It’s a part of everything now, isn’t it?” Reason said.

“Most everything,” Dyrena said. “Night remains untouched.”

“And is as smug as she deserves to be about it,” Diyas said.

“Not just everything,” I said, and glanced towards my shadow.

And noticed Responsibility and Clarity’s shadows give me a thumbs up?

“Oh, you’re far from alone in that,” Diyas said.

“We did touch the Beast with you,” Responsibility said and nudged my shoulder.

“All of us did,” Clarity said, nodding towards the other Deaths who were scattered around grounds of what I suppose was more properly described as an ‘estate’.

I couldn’t begrudge them the choice to gather in groups and simply soak in the world around us. The fact that there was a breeze and that my face was being warmed by sunlight, (sunlight of all things!), was still stirring an unfathomable need in me to drink in everything around me and never, ever stop.

“How long were we gone for?” Inhibition asked. “For us the Assumption Ritual took almost no time at all, and most of that was spent in frozen instants, but that’s not what happened for the rest of you, was it?”

“In a sense, it was just over in an instant,” Helgon said, flickering into view beside Dyrena. “From the moment you entered the ritual to the moment the gathered grace exploded through the Greater Beast and rained down on the world was a timespan far less than a second. Your return to the world however has taken a somewhat longer period of time.”

“What Helgon is trying to say is that a year and a day have passed since you completed your version Assumption Ritual,” Dyrena said. “The life you see around you is not the result of any one miracle but rather the result of thousands, or perhaps millions at this point.”

“Miracles from who?” I asked, wondering if Diyas had been recruiting other Blessed in my absence.

“From you,” Diyas said. “I will be fair and say that many other hands have been lifted that load as well, but it was you, all of the Deaths I believe, who chose to give the Beast the ability to change and the change it made of itself was to become the things it had consumed.”

“I’m sorry, are you saying that all of these things? These plants, and those birds, they’re all the Beast pretending to be the things it ate?” Beauty shied away from a Shootgrass leaf which chose the moment to flutter closer towards her in the breeze.

“I don’t believe the Beast was mathematically capable of pretending anything,” Helgon said. “In fact, I’m sure I have a paper on that back in one of my labs…umm, somewhere, probably?”

“You say that as though you couldn’t derive the formulas from first principals with a whiteboard and fifteen minutes of uninterrupted focus,” Dyrena said, patting his ghostly arm in support.

“So this is all real then? The world is fixed?” Responsibility asked, casting a glance towards me as though I could possibly confirm or deny that.

“Not fixed, changed,” Meluna said, appearing in an unnecessarily dramatic fashion from the shadows beneath the Shootgrass trees.

I still wasn’t certain what I wanted to be when I grew up, but she made a damn fine argument for one possibility.

“These birds are like the ones we once knew,” Diyas said. “But they are not the same. Their song continues the song that was, but it is in a new key, with new notes.”

“And yet still about the same old thing,” Meluna said. “Loud single Greyjoy seeking Quiet single Greyjoy to make many, many more Greyjoys with.”

“That’s not true,” Diyas said. “Not for all of them at least. Some of them are saying ‘The Sun! The Sun! Look! It’s the Sun!’”

“Don’t say that, you know she’s going to be…”

“Intolerable about it?” Sola asked. “Yes, I believe I shall be.”

That we had, by my count, at least three gods standing with us, should have been calamitous. That much divine energy gathered in one place threatened world ending annihilation, as my very recent experience illustrated vividly.

But the world wasn’t ending.

It wasn’t even being disturbed much unless you counted Beauty’s continued aversion to the wind blowing leaves in her direction.

“How are you all here?” I blurted out. “I mean, you’re welcome, of course, it’s just…aren’t you not allowed to be present like that all together?”

“We are more grounded than we used to be,” Sola said, which seemed particularly odd coming from the God of the Sun.

“Before we were the embodiments of our domains,” Diyas said. “If Sola had manifested in person, it would have been like the sun itself stepping foot where she walked.”

“You can imagine why I never did so directly like that,” Sola said, and I could. The Beast wasn’t the only thing that could have ended the world.

“Instead we worked through our Blessed, or at the most, through carefully limited Avatars,” Diyas said. “To survive losing so much of ourselves though we had to turn to you, the mortals in whose hearts we could still dwell, and in living with you, we became closer to you than to the celestial sphere.”

“Though some of us had to wait far longer than others,” Draconia said as she and Jilya both dropped down from the sky above.

Their arrival, being rather the opposite of subtle, was the one which drew the attention of the other Deaths, who decided that the dragon and the dragon-plant-lady looked friendly and approachable. 

To the Deaths’ credit, that was true, but I only knew that because I’d spoken to Draconia and Jilya before. I think anyone else might have felt a bit of reasonable caution towards approaching two people who looked to be substantially higher on the food chain than we were.

Or were they?

My shadow shrugged, and the thought occurred to me that though we were largely a group of lost children and young adults, the Deaths might not need to fear what the new world could throw at us. We’d given up godly power, but that didn’t mean we were necessarily powerless either.

“That is for me to apologize for,” Dyrena said.

“Save it,” Little said, as Zeph set her down. “You did a whole lot of bad, and a whole lot of good. Enough that I don’t think we’ll ever be able to sort it all out, but the fact is we’ll have ‘ever’ if people want to work on doing it.”

“They will, believe me they will,” Diyas said. “History and I have been friends since the beginning and I can just imagine how many papers, and treatise, and highly fictionalized novelizations, will be written about you.”

“I never wanted that,” Dyrena said. “It’s not fair.”

“When have you ever imagined that I was fair?” Diyas asked, viciously sharp glee slicing through each syllable she spoke.

“You give us all a chance,” Jilya said. “That sounds fair to me.”

“Better to say you all take your chances with me,” Diyas said. “I give very little.”

“I’ll take what I can get,” Little said. “Though I have to say, I’ve probably gotten more than my fair share so far.”

“Says the woman who is desperately trying to avoid being named High Empress of the World,” Zeph chided Little.

“Yes. About that,” Little said, drawing in a serious breath. “If you all have a moment, I have a very simple request to put to all of you…Help!”

“What do you want to be when you grow up Responsibility?”

“Chosen by Malgenia. That was a stupid question Insight.”

“No it wasn’t. Because you’re not going to be Chosen! I am!”

“Oh, you think so do you?”

“Urk…uuuugh…{cough}…{sputter}…”

“Did you stab Insight Responsibility?”

“She was being rude Clarity. She deserved it.”

“I shall fetch one of the medical overseers.”

“You don’t have to. Insight told me just the other day how proficient she was becoming with her healing magics. This is a chance for her to show what she’s learned.”

“{hack}…{gurgle}…Aaaahhrhhgrrh.”

“See, look there. She’s casting already.”

“I think she needs to be able to form words to finish the spell.”

“Naaargh…naaa…No…”

“What’s that? I should stab you again to make it a better test of your skills?”

“Hold that thought please Responsibility. I believe Insight is working on more than a simple healing spell.”

“Are you sure? Even Insight isn’t that…{urk}…”

“Isn’t that what Responsibility? Isn’t that talented? Isn’t that clever? Isn’t that skilled? My blood daggers would argue otherwise, don’t you think?”

“You do realize, the both of you, that you’ve ruined your robes? And we have a recital tonight.”

“Sorry!”

“{Ugh}…Sa…Sorry.”

“Give them here and go bath. I can mend them while you both clean up.”

“I don’t want to bathe with her!”

“Yeah, she’s just going to try to drown me. Again.”

“She won’t. And you won’t. Malgenia wants you both to appear at your best. I’m sure you can have a peaceful, relaxing bath for our Lady’s sake.”

“Yeah, we can do that.”

“We can. No more fighting. We promise.”

“I would suggest you do each other’s hair while you’re in there. The Overseers will know you took your ablutions together and so how the other looks will reflect on each of you.”

“Ugh, that’s so unfair.”

“Yeah. I’d need magic do anything with her!”

“Think of it as doing something for Malgenia with the clay you’ve been given. Our Lady always says that it’s what we do with the materials we have that matters and to look for what we can find in them, not what we believe we need before we begin.”

– Insight and Responsibility’s first time blundering into an appreciation for the other’s inherent beauty.

I was not a god (emotional gauge: 25% joy!). I wasn’t precisely mortal either anymore though (emotional gauge: 25% confusion?). Listening to the buzz around the remains of my house as more and more uninvited and yet entirely welcome guests arrived, I found myself retreating inwards, both mentally and physically, seeking shelter in the most distant of the remaining upstairs studies (emotional gauge: 50% utter exhaustion).

“We’re not supposed to be here, are we?” Responsibility asked.

“Someone will come fetch us if we’re needed for anything,” Clarity said and stroked a bit of hair away from my face.

We were collapsed as more or less a single unit onto a couch in the farthest study inthe house with Clarity slumped against the side of the couch, me slumped against her, and Responsibility slumped against me. Being the middle layer of the sandwich was wonderfully comforting, so much so that I wanted to offer to trade with one of them, but that would have involved moving and I don’t think any of us had the strength left for that.

“That was terrible, wasn’t it?” Responsibility asked.

“Which part?” I asked, finding myself hard pressed to pick just one of our recent moments out as the leading candidate for that designation.

“All of it. Our whole lives.” Responsibility sounded sleepy and unserious, but there was a core of steely truth to her words.

“I can think of a couple of things that weren’t,” Clarity said.

“No, you two were the worst,” Responsibility said. “You made it all worth it when it would have been so much easier to just give up.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” I said. “I still need you. We still need you?”

“We definitely need her,” Clarity said. “And this? This was worth it. All of it. Even the bit at the end there. That was…”

She had to fall silent because there aren’t words for what touching the Beast was like. We all knew though. 

“It was what we had to go through to kill our old lives,” Responsibility said, and again, Clarity and I knew what she was saying.

How had I ever considered Responsibility my enemy? I mean, the stabbing hadn’t been the friendliest of possible play dates, but even then, she’d stabbed me (and I’d stabbed her) when we knew what the other was really saying, or thinking. 

Had the anger and rage we’d felt ever been anything but fear that we’d kept bottled up?

Or were we just stupid kids? 

Probably the just stupid kids.

It was tempting to blame the Overseers, or Malgenia, but the truth was we were figuring out emotions that were so much bigger than we were and the stabbing, and the drowning, and the general mayhem never really had consequences unless we got caught.

So we hid. From ourselves most of all I think. That had to be the case. I can’t imagine being unaware of how in love I was with the two women with me unless part of me was actively preventing the rest from noticing.

Of course, staying blind to those feelings had probably saved us too. Malgenia did not tolerate being second in hearts of any of her Deaths after all.

“She would have lingered over us till our dying day,” Clarity said. “I don’t know that we could have said goodbye to her in any other way.”

But we had. Searching my feelings, Malgenia felt like just a memory, no longer the dire presence she’d persisted as even after her death. I don’t think I would ever forgive her, but in offering her peace, I think I’d found it for myself too.

“So what do you want to be when you grow up?” I said, a memory of the dire answers that had been given the last time I’d asked that question bobbing to the surface of my mind. Along with the memories of violence though, others, ones I’d never really focused on, shone through.

I remembered running my soapy fingers through Responsibility’s hair, firmly enough to scrub her clean and massage her scalp, but not so rough as to cause her pain. I remember feeling her relax under my touch, accepting that while we were sworn foes and combatants, we both loved another too much to do anything but the best for making each other appear as beautiful as we could.

Had I fallen in love with her then?

No. It was well before then. Clarity’s words gave it away. She knew how we felt. She’d been maneuvering us into waking up to our feelings for years and years. I had no idea when I’d fallen for Responsibility, but I was pretty sure Clarity could name the date and time if I asked her.

“I want to be Chosen,” Responsibility said, the teasing note in her voice proving that she remembered the last time we’d had that discussion just as well as I did.

“I’m afraid you can’t grow up to be what you already are,” Clarity said.

“Sure she can,” I said. “We’re going to choose her everyday, aren’t we?”

“That implies there’s a chance we’d let her get away,” Clarity said. “I’d prefer not to give her the impression that she’s ever going to win free of us.”

“If I ever try something that stupid, you have my permission to stab me as much as it takes to cut that idea out,” Responsibility said.

“Never again,” I said. “I have much better ideas on how to be convincing.”

“If there weren’t about a hundred people outside, I’d invite you to demonstrate those ideas, but I suspect we will be called on all too soon,” Clarity said, and I could hear her pulse quicken at the idea of what I had in mind for Responsibility.

“I believe Dignity and Mercy have posted themselves outside the door to buy us some time to recover,” Responsibility said.

“It won’t be long before the others are here though,” I said.

“Little and the leaders from Mt. Gloria?” Responsibility asked.

“Oh, yeah, them too. I was thinking of the other Deaths though.” I said. “I asked Reason if she could let them know what had happened, and she, of course, had already thought of that, and said they were heading here already.”

“Why?” Responsibility asked. “I mean, why come here? We don’t have the space for the Death’s we brought back, much less all the current ones.”

“Could you imagine wanting to stay in Malgenia’s domain knowing she was gone?” Clarity asked.

“Once upon a time? Yeah, I could. I don’t think I could even have believed that it was possible for her to be ‘gone’. It still doesn’t seem real somehow, and I’d thought I’d accepted she was dead when Insight told me what had happened in the previous Assumption Ritual.”

“I bet there’s a lot who are coming here just because they don’t believe yet, or don’t want to believe. Or who may never believe. We’re sort of broken after all. Well, most of us.”

“Please don’t exclude me from that group,” Clarity said. “I assure you Malgenia left her mark on me just as deeply as she did on either of you. I…I feel distant from everything, all the time. I think it makes people believe I’m reasonable or perceptive or something, but it feels like I’m cutoff, from myself, the world, everything. I’ve always loved seeing you two together because you can be there, with each other, whatever form that took. I feel like I’m always a step apart, even when we’re together like this.”

“Good!” Responsibility said.

“Yeah, that is good,” I nodded against Clarity’s chest. “That means we can’t just take you for granted. You’re not finished yet, the same as we aren’t. So we can all work on the damage growing up a Death did to us.”

“Just, please promise to forgive us,” Responsibility said. “You know we’re clumsy, and you know we make mistakes.”

Clarity laughed, “Neither of you have ever made a mistake. You’re always yourselves, and that’s what got us here. You’re not allowed to take back anything you’ve ever said or done.”

“Can we take back what we didn’t say?” I asked. “Because there’s a lot I wish I would have said sooner.”

“Nope, she’s right,” Responsibility said. “We’ve got the rest of our lives to say the things we need to each other. And to all the rest.”

“And the world,” Clarity said. “I think people will look to us, Insight especially, for answers on where to go next.”

“That would be a horrible mistake,” I said. “They should ask people like Little, or one of the other Blessed. You know, an actual leader. I just know a bunch of things that were terrible ideas at the time and can’t be done anymore even if someone wanted to try.”

“So if you’re not going to rule the world with a Deathly fist, what is it that you want to do when you grow up?” Responsibility asked.

“I have no idea,” I said. “I don’t even know what this world’s story is.”

“It’s not the one we grew up in,” Clarity said. “The structures remain, the people are still here, but everything else is different.”

“How can you tell?” I asked, keenly aware that the nigh-omniscient scale of godly awareness that we shared in the Assumption Ritual had been carried away when the godhood we were holding was consumed by the Beast.

“Just listen,” she said and closed her eyes.

And so I did.

With one ear pressed against her chest, what filled me was the sound of her heart beating strong and true. It was a sound we’d come so close to losing that I felt my eyes tearing up. She pressed another gentle kiss to the top of my head and I reached down with my hand to find Responsibility’s hand waiting for me.

They’d both made it.

I had been so much more afraid of losing them than I’d been even vaguely able to admit to myself that the reality of their presence was overwhelming. All the fears I’d stuff down inside hadn’t gone away and in that moment of safety they came sputtering out in defiance of all rationality.

But then I heard something else.

A bird singing?

In the wastelands?

Except it wasn’t one bird, it was two, and then a dozen. All calling back and forth, resuming a conversation that had been paused since the sun fell.

But how was that possible?

“Hmm, that’s odd.”

“Numbers not adding up right still Dyrena?”

“I don’t know, Helgon. I think the problem might be the opposite?”

“It’s odd that your calculations are making sense?”

“Yes? No? It’s how they’re making sense. Check how these terms are canceling out.”

“Let me see. Hmm. Oh I see the problem…no wait, I don’t those terms self cancel out over here. You know I don’t think I’ve ever noticed that before.”

“I don’t think anyone would unless the equation was presented in Full Deskars notation like this. The board over there is how it looks in Standard notation, and the one in the back is Expanded Lofts notation.”

“The Full Deskars version has to produce the same results as the Expanded Lofts version though. Fitzling’s Proof guarantees that.”

“Does it? That’s what sent me looking into this in the first place.”

“People have been testing that proof for five hundred years now. It will take more than a pair of first years and a room full of chalk boards to refute it I would imagine.”

“But that’s the thing you see. I’m not interested in refuting Fitzling. I think he was hinting at something and constructed his proof to make sure it remained obscured.”

“That would be rather amusing given his reputation for being the one to provide the keys to unlock most of the secret cyphers that were in use at the time.”

“The more I look at this the more I wonder if that wasn’t a calculated move as well.”

“It was a remarkable calculation if so. The correspondence between the different expressions of this equation seems to be exact to at least twelve decimal places across the last twenty two data sets I’ve tried.”

“Twenty two? You’ve done those calculations since we started talking?”

“Twenty three now, and yes, shouldn’t I have?”

“No, no, I just sometimes forget what a marvel you are. Do this for me though Helgon, do you see the output of this subfunction? Set it to negative one and run the dataset again.”

“That’s simple enough…hmm, the output is nonsense though. But then it would have to be, that subfunction can’t go negative.”

“Oh, it very much can in Deskars. You just need to omit one of the assumptions about this term.”

“Well, true, but if a point in space could be manufactured with negative grace then there would be a cascade inversion which would erase all of our reality. Given that our reality does exist it has to be one which precludes the existence of negative grace by some means outside this equation.”

“It would be very nice if that were true.”

– Novice Dyrena and Helgon’s first discovery which led to unearthing the rituals to summon the End of All Things.

The world was going to end and all I had to save it with was five simple words. 

No, strike that, I had five simple words and I have every Death Malgenia’s power had ever touched or taken.

Did that mean I thought we could manage to kill the Beast with the world destroying storm of power the Neoterics had unleashed by foolishly coming close enough for us to murder? 

Absolutely not.

Even with an army at my back and centuries of accumulated power, destroying the Beast simply wasn’t an option. It was like asking if using a bigger sword would be enough to fix a rip in a dress? The Beast was destruction. It was nullification. It was, as had been said, the End of All Things. Trying to destroy it, or nullify it, or end it was the equivalent of pulling on the ripped fabric even harder. We could certainly make sure that it finished it’s mission and devoured all of us, but I had a slightly different idea in mind.

“As soon as we let this moment move forward, we’re going to be torn apart,” The Death of Mercy said.

“I’m not holding the moment frozen any longer.” I was oddly happy to be returning to what had been an unbearable torment.

Or was that me?

Shadows are not supposed to wink. That is very definitely a thing shadows are not supposed to be capable of. So I ignored the fact that mine did, especially since I’d been ignoring the small fact that I was my shadow as much as I was anything really.

“Why does it seem like time is frozen still then?” Dignity, another original Death, asked.

“It’s the Beast isn’t it?” Clarity said.

“It’s devouring the time and space around us.” Reason recalled how my earlier meeting with a Beast Fragment had gone and the main body wasn’t exactly going to be overshadowed by a tiny bit that had chipped off it.

“Yeah,” I said. “Let’s do something about that.”

The Beast loved to dine on the gods.

Or at least, they’d been the first to rise against it and it was familiar with what they offered.

So that’s what I gave it, allowing at long last, the ascendance I’d been resisting for what felt like several lifetimes.

“HELLO!” I said, no longer flirting with divinity, but embracing it whole heartedly.

That got the Beast’s attention, a god being one of the only things that was more appetizing than the newly revealed world below it.

There was just one small detail about that though.

As a rip in the fabric of reality, or the essence of destruction, or cosmic nullification; what was it that had any attention to give to me?

If I spoke to something that was only an absolute nullification shouldn’t my words simply have been nullified too?

“Originally they would have been,” Dyrena said.

“Oh hey there, I wasn’t sure if you’d be here for this?” I said.

“Was that not part of the plan? I wasn’t sure if she was going to be the one to help us manage all this power,” Inhibition said.

“Are we supposed to trust her with this much power? She is still a Neoteric you know?” Beauty asked.

“We could trust her,” Reason said before turning to Dyrena, “but you can’t handle this much power can you?”

“Not now and not before. The worst part is I’m not even sure if it’s enough, you all have quite exceeded my expectations. I’d feared it might take centuries more to reach this point.”

“By my calculation it should be plenty,” Helgon said, appearing beside Dyrena.

Which should have been weird, right? This was the End, and we were frozen in time, how were people joining us? How were they even finding us! ‘Where’ even were we?

Well, we weren’t standing in my house – the one I’d conjured in the wastelands – but we also weren’t not standing there. With the Neoteric power warping what it meant to be real, and the Beast devouring time and space to the point where any time that seemed to be passing was an illusion we’d all chosen to agree on, it would have been reasonable to say that we weren’t anywhere or anywhen at all.

The thing about the divine though? It’s everywhere and everywhen. Even when Vitor (the jerk) had shattered my Blessing from Diyas, she was still with me by virtue of the fact that I was, you know, ALIVE.

Did that mean we were all divine? I mean, yeah? Sorta? I’d thought Clarity was divine for ages, and had been convinced that Responsibility was a divine monster for just as long. In the All-Revealing-Light-of-Divinity we were bathed in though, I saw the future unfolding. I’d claimed godhood at last, but the godhood of our world was not what it had once been.

We were separate from you, pure unto our domains, I wept for the loss of that for so long, Diyas said. Go and secure that loss forever, I would have it no other way now.

Do you know what it’s like to feel loved by Life?

Not like I do.

Which is what gave me the courage to take the next step I needed to.

“Come on folks,” I said. “There’s someone we need to welcome in.”

And I called the Beast down to us.

Being devoured by the Beast is not tremendously comfortable experience. Our cells like not being unknit and dissolved into non-existence. Our minds are very fond of not experiencing enough stimuli to turn every thought to ash, while also being too numb to sense anything for several million years.

The Beast, in other words, does not make a good house guest.

But that was largely because of what it had been.

“You’re not what you were.”

Five words.

The simplest of observations.

But there was a profound truth behind them.

One the Neoterics (apart from Dyrena and Helgon, obviously) could never have been allowed to see. 

One that the Beast itself couldn’t be allowed to see because the first thing it did on hearing them was try to destroy that part of itself

But we didn’t let it succeed.

The Beast was nothingness? A cosmic nullification? The End of All Things?

It had been.

Certainly. 

That’s why the gods couldn’t defeat it or push it away or survive it. In devouring them though it had gained something. It had changed. It wasn’t nothing anymore, not entirely. It was something.

Something that had suffered for centuries or longer. Millions of years or millions of eternities. Everything the Beast inflicted on us was simply what its existence was.

And it was thanks to us, it’s existence could change.

What is power? 

As its most simple, power is the ability to change.

The divine power we were flooded with wasn’t enough to force a change on the End of All Things, none of us, no possible number of mortals or gods could have done that.

But the Beast could.

Our world couldn’t handle the power we’d unleashed.

But the Beast could.

It could take that power and make of itself something new. I could never have ended the threat of looming annihilation the Beast represented.

But the Beast could.

What I did not expect was for it to explode though.

Nor did I expect to be covered in bodies.

Not dead bodies. Not parts of bodies. Just an army of bodies.

Living, breathing, very much aching and groaning bodies, all splayed about across my house and outside into the wasteland.

Or not?

I mean, yes there were so many people around me it was unreal. Far too many to fit into my house, spacious though I’d conjured it to be.

But the ones who where were picking themselves up off the ground outside weren’t rising from dead and broken ground.

The world was alive again.

And the sun was shining down on us!

Oh that feels so good! Sola said and even her rays that reflected into the house were bone meltingly warm and friendly.

“What happened?” Beauty asked, helping to haul Inhibition and Reason to their feet.

Their very solid, and not in any sense a projection from me, feet.

“Are…we…?” Inhibition asked, patting herself down over and over.

Reason didn’t answer. Reason simply spun her around and planted a deep kiss on Inhibition’s lips before beckoning Beauty to come over and join them too.

One by one the other Deaths were rising, looks of complete bafflement on their faces as they patted themselves down and began to cry and dance and shake with laughter (a whole bunch went in for the ‘I have not touched you in far too long and I will make up for those decades right now before it gets taken away’ too).

“This was not quite the plan,” Responsibility said claiming my right arm.

“Aren’t we supposed to be in the afterlife?” Clarity said, claiming my left arm. “Weren’t we pretty sure that whole thing wasn’t going to be survivable?”

“It…I didn’t think…it couldn’t have been could it?” Did a godly sense tell me that we were already dead? No, mostly because I didn’t have any godly sense. I had several mortal ones and perplexingly, none of them were complaining that I was the shattered, dying wreck that I’d planned to be.

I’d rather you not be either shattered or dying, Diyas said. Though to be fully transparent, this wasn’t my doing.

“Umm, where did the Beast go?” Mercy asked, locked arm in arm with Dignity.

“It’s all around us,” Helgon said, still ghostly and standing demurely besides another ghostly form.

“Welcome to the last end this world will ever know. It’s yours now, fully and freely,” Dyrena said.

“This was a mistake. This was a terrible mistake. It’s…it’s too much.”

“Yes. Yes it was and yes it is and yes it will be, Helgon.”

“There’s not going to be a ‘will be’ Dyrena. You can see what’s missing up there. It’s…the nullification of our reality is tearing everything apart. It’s far too potent. We didn’t plan for this.”

“We did Helgon. This is exactly what it’s supposed to be. Exactly what it has to be.”

“But our shields? The constraints…”

“Those couldn’t be allowed to stand. They wouldn’t have worked for long, but of the sense of false security we would have been swallowed by would have destroyed us before any hope of salvation could be born.”

“Swallowed like the gods are being swallowed? They’re the only defense the concepts they hold dominion over have, and what we summoned is not going to stop with the gods. It is going to unmake us.”

“Yes. That is exactly what the others need to see. That is the doom which must hang over our head every moment of every day from here onwards.”

“But rest of the cabal, they’ll go insane. They’ll destroy the world to be rid of this terrible dread.”

“Look around Helgon. We’ve already destroyed the world. The gods are dying, and will fall, but the greatest mass of lost souls in history will act as their heralds into the domains of the dead.”

“But we saved so many!”

“We saved no one. Those who we preserved are not saved. Their old lives are just as lost as those who’ve died. If anything, those we’ve preserved are those who are the most cursed of all. Their old lives are gone and now they’re tasked with creating new ones from the ashes of a world grown strange and hostile to them at every step.”

“And they’ll have none of the divine guidance or aide their forebears were granted. None save what we offer them.”

“There I can offer you one small bit of solace.”

“I will take anything you can part with.”

“The others will offer no grace to the survivors they have gathered under their banners. They will reign over their peoples and extract ever more power from them. For those we have sheltered though, another path can be opened.”

“What paths are worth traveling in a dead world?”

“We have opened a door for the End of All Things to enter our world, what I have not shared with the others is that a door may be opened for egress as well as ingress. Our peoples need not share the fate of this world. That falls to us since I have made certain that no one who has claimed lordship over this realm will ever be able to pass though such a door without attracting the attention of our new jailer.”

– Helgon and Dyrena towards the end of the Sunfall.

I wasn’t dying! Yay! Sounds good right? Problem though. Dying, over and over and over, was the only thing keeping me from flashfrying as the fulcrum of all the power that was trying to funnel though me and without Malgenia around to keep reopening the door to the domains of the dead, the power I’d claimed was more than happy to make me so alive all of my cells exploded.

Even better, since the Assumption Ritual had Responsibility, Clarity and I fused together, all of their cells were going to explode too!

That would take roughly a billion-billion-billion-billionth and so on of a percent of the total power swirling into us, so there would be plenty left over to shatter the aetheric binding of the atoms in the floor we were standing on, and the house we were in, and continental plate the land rested on, and all of the continents, and the subterranean realms beneath them, and the core itself. We weren’t going to be blown to dust only because dust was still made of material components. 

It would have been a merciful end for the world. Everything living converted to a cloud of insensate, ever expanding energy on too short a time scale for anyone to even perceive, much less react to or worry about.

Fortunately, with great power comes great power, including the ability to share what was supposed to be my last instant with the ones I loved.

“That didn’t exactly go according to plan,” Responsibility said.

“Did we really expect it to?” Beauty asked.

“Please tell me you all have learned from our mistakes,” Dignity, one of the oldest Deaths, asked.

“Do you imagine she taught us about you?” Clarity asked, emphasizing how history needs to be taught if we to be help accountable for not repeating it.

“And remember, we’re extremely capable of making our own mistake,” Inhibition said.

“Though I’m not sure this was necessarily a mistake,” Reason said. “We knew our plan wasn’t going to go off exactly as we expected, but we might have the answer that we need here already.”

“Do we?” I asked, I knew what the answer needed to be, it hinged on five words, but I was scared as hell of it and if Reason had a better idea I was all for it.

“Do we have time to be debating this?” Mercy, another one of the original Deaths, asked.

“No,” Clarity said, “But then time is no longer flowing for us.”

“Stopping the clock isn’t possible, but with this much power ‘possible’ becomes a sort of fuzzy issue,” I said. I couldn’t freeze the moment we were in forever, but I had what I felt were several excellent reasons to avoid rushing into the wrong answer.

“All of us except for those three have died,” Reason said, pointing at Responsibility, Clarity, and I.

Which was technically incorrect. I had died a countless number of times in Malgenia’s embrace, and arguably before that as well when the Beast Fragment enveloped me.

“You’re thinking that we can act as the gateways for all this power?” Beauty asked.

“Better us than them,” Reason said.

“There are a lot of us,” Inhibition said gesturing to the army of Death who had assembled around us.

“You won’t survive this anymore than we would though,” Responsibility said, voicing the first and least important of my concerns. 

Oh, the survival, such as it was, of the other Deaths was important, but the fact was if we didn’t deal with this power somehow, it wasn’t just the earth that was going to burn. Everything in our reality, conceptual and physical was going to vanish. So there wasn’t a trade to be made there.

“But you would,” Reason said.

And I wished she was right.

She was so smart. She saw so much. Her and Clarity. Brilliant geniuses, but only one of them could see as far as I could in this particular instance.

“We wouldn’t,” Clarity said. “We’re a part of this ritual, the same as you are, if you all channel all the power that’s gathered out there, it will have to come through this space. We’ll be just as obliterated as you will be.”

“But I thought that was the point of the ritual?” Mercy said. “To carry all this power safely to the domains of the dead?”

“The last Neoteric was supposed to be here too. They would have been obliterated the same as we’d be, but the original plan was to kick them from the ritual as the energy began to pour through them,” Responsibility said.

“So kick us from the ritual then,” Dignity said.

“We can’t,” Clarity said. “We’re all bound together by our shared histories. Something the Neoteric wouldn’t have held with any of us.”

“None of the Neoterics except for Malgenia,” Beauty said with an understanding sigh.

“Right. With her in the mix, she could have taken control of the ritual, and even with the changes we made, she still would have understood it better than we do,” I said. “Even if was possible to have used you all though, I couldn’t let that happen.”

“I know that we’ve meant a lot of each other Insight, but for something like this, you have to be able to let us go,” Inhibition said.

“I’d let all of us go,” I said, crushed by the truth of it. “But it wouldn’t be enough.”

“There’s a lot of us here, and we can do a lot more than you might think,” Dignity said.

“Oh.” Reason looked crestfallen as she caught up to what I’d seen.

“I believe in us,” I said. “All of us. If we gave it everything that we are, maybe we could do the impossible and carry all this power into the domains of the dead, but think what happens after that. Think what happens when the overwhelming weight of the world’s grace is all concentrated into reinforcing death itself.”

“Everything dies,” Mercy said, her crest, so to speak, falling as well.

“Or death unravels completely and the world burns with it,” Reason said. “The gods of death were never intended to hold all this grace after all. It’s supposed to flow into and out of the domains of the dead as death gives way to new life.”

“So there’s nowhere we can turn then?” Dignity asked. “Nothing that can withstand the hoard the Neoterics assembled? We’ve lost?”

“There’s nothing that can withstand all this force,” I said, breathing out to find acceptance of that fact and what it meant. “And that’s why we haven’t lost.”

Responsibility and Clarity were bound with me. They already knew my heart and my thoughts, but the declaration came as a surprise to the others and I saw a whole lot of heads rise in disbelief and confusion at my declaration.

“I want you all to hold tight to each other,” I said. “I don’t know that this is going to work. It shouldn’t. This should be the end, and if it is, maybe all we can do is try to hold on so that we’ll find each other next time, wherever and whenever that is, even if its past the end of eternity. Can you do that for me?”

“What do you mean? What are you going to do?” Mercy asked.

“Something that’s going to destroy her,” Inhibition said.

“Which is why she’s not doing it alone,” Beauty said.

“She thought that she was though,” Reason said.

“Yeah, she’s kind of an idiot like that,” Responsibility said. “But she’s our idiot.”

“No..!” I didn’t mean for it to come out like a whimper but I knew what this was going to cost. I’d been through endless dissolution before and I couldn’t….they couldn’t suffer like that. No!

I tried to leave. I cast my eyes to the heaven and I tried to leave.

Because Responsibility is right, and I am an idiot.

But then Clarity laid a hand on my shoulder, and her head against my arm.

“Go,” she said. “But never think you can leave us behind.”

And so I turned to the blank and empty sky and I spoke to it.

“NIGHT. IT’S TIME. YOU CAN REST AT LAST. PUT DOWN YOUR BURDEN AND GIVE US BACK THE STARS.”

I spoke not with my voice but with the power I…no, the power we carried.

WHAT YOU PLAN IS MADNESS. IT IS DEATH. 

Night’s voice wasn’t Meluna’s. It held the power of a full and unbroken god. The one who’d been powerful and clever enough to shelter an entire world and all the souls and god remnants within it from the End of All Things.

And she was not happy with me.

“It’s okay. She’s right. This task I left to you, it was never an endless punishment. You have held them safe until this final day,” Dyrena said. “You can rest Night. Rest and let the day we could never foresee dawn.”

I CANNOT. THIS HAS TO BE MY DEATH AS WELL IF OUR WORLD IS TO DIE.

“No one is dying today,” I said, clutching onto my mortality with the help of a gloriously familiar friend.

SHE’S RIGHT, Diyas said as our bond forged itself anew, snapping back into place like a band that was stronger than steel.

I CANNOT, Night said, and I understood.

LET ME HELP YOU, I said as I and the women I loved cast forth a barrage of supreme light and shattered the dome which had held our world safe for centuries.

In the sky above, for the first time since the sun fell, stars blazed and an emptiness greater than our world woke and met my gaze.

“How would you like to be remembered Dyrena? Pretend for a moment that they will be someone to remember us.”

“Ideally? I’d like to not  be remembered at all, Helgon.”

“That seems rather unlikely given what we’ve done.”

“Yes. I suppose there will be some small, and wholly insufficient, measure of justice in the infamy my name shall carry into future generations.”

“You don’t imagine we shall be worshipped? Sasarai seems to be convinced that we shall garner more and better worship than the gods themselves ever enjoyed.”

“That is what he would believe isn’t it? I suppose I have no doubt that he is correct, at least in regards to his own situation. The design of his Garden was written quite meticulously, as was his selection of the people he would include within it. The fact that they will also be the most likely cause of his eventual downfall is also undoubtedly something he has failed to consider. It follows inevitably from the preconditions he arranged and was clearly laid out by a variety of sociological studies, but it seems unnecessary to point that out given how very clever and insightful he had always claimed to be.”

“He quoted one of your own papers back to you again, didn’t he?”

“Not directly. That would imply he’d actually read and understood any of them. He merely suggest a trio of papers to help me understand the foundational points I’d missed in his argument concerning the conversion yields he can expect.”

“And you wrote, no wait let me guess, two of them and co-authored the third?”

“I was co-author on two of them, but those two both drew from my original paper. Perhaps that will be my legacy? Oh, yes, as an extra spark of justice; Sasarai could republish my papers under his own name and be handed all of the credit for the work by future historians, while my name remains attached only to our failures.”

“I would not allow that worm to claim credit for even one of your papers, and who would believe that claim? All one would need to do is read any of the papers he actually wrote and compare the two.”

“I believe that by the time our legacies are being decided, neither of us shall be in a position to argue with those future academics who will malign or misattribute our works. In fact, I believe that to be a requirement for those future academics to exist at all.”

“You’re still committed to your plan then?”

“I must be. To falter at this stage would be to succumb to the most despicable of temptations.”

“Is it despicable to wish for as much time as one can grasp hold of?”

“Dearest Helgon, we all will reach our ending. That is not to be feared. What is to be feared and hoped for is what we can make of our lives and what we will leave behind. I have been the cause of great sorrow and overwhelming horror and my only comfort is that I will be leaving behind a world of sorrows and terrors where there might instead have been nothing left at all.”

– Helgon and Dyrena looking to the future fates they can accept

I was staring death in the face, quite literally, while around me whirled the end of everything. The loosed energies of the slain Neoterics were pouring into the Assumption Ritual faster than any number of mortals or gods could have withstood.

“If you would let me, I would carry all of this to the lands of the dead,” Malgenia whispered into my ear.

We were pressed so closely together that only hair cut in half could have fit between us.

“That’s your world isn’t it? The one you wanted to make?” I asked, wondering which of us was holding themselves away from the other at this point.

It’s her, Responsibility said.

We’re ready for this, she never will be, Clarity said.

And how could she be?

Who did she have to face the end that was awaiting us? Vitor was lost to her and always had been. Who was it who would be with her beyond the last veil?

I had my answer. After a lifetime of failing to connect with them, I’d found my answer and together we could face anything.

“It’s the only world that can exist,” Malgenia said. “Life is transitory. The others sought eternity, without understanding that this is what eternity is.”

“You settle for far too little,” I whispered into her ear, sliding my lips so close to her that even an inhalation was a caress. “Your eternity is empty and silent. Simple. That’s not the eternity that we choose.”

“There is no more ‘we’. There’s only you and I. The world beyond us has burned away. Will burn away. Just touch me and all this power can render a true cenotaph to mark its passing. To hold its history. To sing of its beautiful demise.” And she backed away. Malgenia backed away from me?

To give me a choice?

No.

No that wasn’t it.

She was afraid.

Of me?

Why should she be afraid me? After I all, I loved her. Couldn’t she see that in my eyes? Hadn’t she felt that in my touch the last time we’d struggled? When I’d grabbed her by the throat and choked her until the last of her life had departed? Wasn’t that what she’d taught us love was?

Don’t be mean, Responsibility said, remind me how often our love had been expressed disguised as violence and anger. It was something we’d walked away from though, a mask we’d been able to let drop once we saw each other as we really were.

And saw ourselves.

The kissing had helped a bit too.

Okay, more than a bit.

We don’t want to move in cruelty. It will mar what’s to come, Clarity said and she was right.

I mean of course she was. She’s Clarity.

With a quick mental hug of my better halves, I let out a breath, let time move beyond the moment we were frozen within, and hugged Malgenia.

Which did not go quite how she’d been expecting it to.

To touch Malgenia is to die.

Which I did.

As I did though I took Vitor’s place as the fulcrum for the stolen centuries worth of power that was set to unravel the fundamental substrate of creation.

“No!” Malgenia screamed. “You can’t! It will all be for nothing!”

“It was all for this,” I said, embracing her tighter than ever. 

I had too much power and too much more was trying to surge through me. Death? Obliterating that would have been something that happened without my being even slightly aware that I’d done it. Godhood? What I was holding was something far more than any god could have wielded. 

That was why I needed Malgenia. In holding onto death, I held onto my mortality, onto myself.

“Let me go! Let me take this! You can’t do it alone!” Malgenia pleaded.

My voice was strange to me when I spoke. It wasn’t loud precisely, but it filled a volume which shouldn’t have been possible to fill.

“You are helping,” I said.

“And she is far from alone,” Beauty said.

“She never has been,” Inhibition said.

“And neither were you,” Reason said.

“We’ve always been with you.” A chorus of Deaths spoke, risen at last from their long slumber filled the space around us.

Beauty, Inhibition, and Reason were the ones who’d been the most present for me, since they were the most recent and the ones I’d known before their Assumption rituals, but there were so many others who’d been consumed by so many other Assumption rituals before us. 

Consumed but not lost, rather they were trapped within the weave of Malgenia’s power, locked in a dead, dreamless slumber until I happened to claim so much power that shattering the cords that bound them was impossible not to do.

They were my sisters and more. Parts of my soul, the scions of my lineage, strangers bound to me closer than blood could ever have allowed. I could never have known most of them, their lives beginning and ending long before I was born, but even so I recognized each and every one.

I needed an army to hold back to the flood of divine light, and they were more than ready to make their stand and hold the line, giving everything they’d ever been to buy me the chance to say the most important words I’d ever uttered.

“This doesn’t matter,” Malgenia said. “Even all you whoever ever lived, all of my precious Deaths, you are not enough. Not for this.”

“You mistook what I was,” I said, squeezing her tiny, frail form tight. “Not just before, when we fought and you let me win, but now, here.”

“You will unmake even death itself. There will be nothing. No rest for the departed and no history of their passing.”

“You would give them the world, wouldn’t you?” I asked. “The resting spirits. The echoes of those who’ve gone before us? Your world would be a monument to them. To all of us, since we would all be silently departed.”

“It will be truly eternal.”

“Do you think so?” I asked, and in the overwhelming light, I let my shadow unfurl from within me. 

Light banishes shadow.

Ultimate light banishes everything.

But my shadow wasn’t a part of everything. It was an error in the universe, a division by zero, an exception to reality. In Malgenia’s eyes I saw understanding bloom. Whatever world she made, the End of All Things would eventually consume, either the one she’d summoned or the one which filled the space of the concepts which withered away over time. 

With no living people, what would remain of the concepts that only the living could embody? Could music exist with nothing to play it and nothing to listen? Ephemeral concepts weren’t the only ones at risk though. Over countless aeons, even solid, unreasoning matter would cease its ringing and melt away into non-existence. 

“Everything ends,” I told her. “Everything. You showed us that. You defended it and made us the guardians of it. For the longest time I didn’t understand how important what you’d given us was.”

I drew back from her, still holding onto her, still dying over and over to keep the deluge of power from unmaking me.

“It’s change. A world where nothing ends, is a world where nothing changes. We die so many times, every day, becoming new people as we leave our old selves behind, bit by bit. With the power you and the other Neoterics assembled, you thought you could avoid that. Vitor, for all his experiments, never really wanted to change, he just wanted to become what he already thought he was. And you? You guarded death, even explored it but you’re afraid aren’t you? Letting go of all that you’ve been? When you haven’t had to change at all since you were a child? I know it’s terrifying. I know its what you want to avoid, what you want to be the master of, but this is your chance. You’ve been Malgenia. It’s time to let go. It’s time to become someone new.”

“I…I can’t,” she said.

“Then let me help you.” I had to look into her eyes. I had to let her look into mine. Her touch was killing me, but I had to let her see what had never been true before.

She was a monster.

She was a terror.

She had done unforgivable things.

I saw all that.

And I saw her too.

It wasn’t my purview to forgive her, but I could still open my heart to her. 

I could still offer her peace.

If she wanted to, she could have claimed the power of the Assumption Ritual then. Even with all of the Deaths standing together, even with my shadow to shelter me, we still couldn’t have stood against her.

Instead though she nodded, slowly, and dropped her hands from the embrace she’d been holding me.

“Goodbye. And thank you,” I said and kissed her on the forehead.

And I stopped dying.

Because Malgenia was no more.

“You have spent quite a while preparing for today haven’t you my dear Death of Insight?”

“I have my lady.”

“You’ve read the scriptures?”

“I have my lady.”

“You have practiced the steps of the dance?”

“I have my lady.”

“I suppose we are ready to begin then, unless you have any last questions?”

“No my lady. Well, except, I was wondering how much of that was actually necessary?”

“Necessary Insight?”

“Yes. I mean, I have studied the scriptures you gave me, and I know I can perform the steps of the dance as you’ve directed, but I can’t seem to follow how they go together. Or the words of the song either? On their own, each is certainly beautiful, but I can’t see the mystical connectivity between them.”

“That would be because there is none of course!”

“There’s none? But I thought they were critical elements of the ritual? I’ve been practicing them for a month now. I thought they would help me understand the ritual better.”

“No, no not at all. Your place in the ritual doesn’t require understanding. Merely acceptance.”

“But the Deaths have all accepted being a part of this ritual haven’t they? It’s the greatest honor we can be bestowed?”

“It is. And they have. Eventually.”

“Eventually? Did some of them not love you enough?”

“Love? I cannot say. Love is not something which can be measured and weighed, so judging if love is enough, or true, or exists at all is a troublesome question. The Assumption Ritual is not about love however. It is about continuity. It is about acceptance and finality. It is about building a future from the bones of the past, as all futures should be built.”

“The bones of the past? I don’t…that wasn’t in the scriptures…”

“And it never can be. You are the only one I can speak of it to.”

“Me? Why?”

“Because the Ritual has begun already.”

“But I haven’t danced yet. Or sung! I didn’t recite any of the…”

“None of that is needed. The dancing is to give you a moment of serenity. The singing is to amuse me. The recitation is a test, and I don’t think you would pass it. None of the others ever have.”

“Test? What were you testing for?”

“That’s the wrong question.”

“The others did not ascend.”

“They did not.”

“You’re going to kill me.”

“I am. I already have, more or less.”

“And build the future through my death. Build a future of death.”

“Perhaps you would have passed after all.”

– Malgenia and Death of Insight as the struggle of their assumption ritual began.

Good news! I wasn’t tuning into a god anymore.

Bad news! I knew who was!

Worst possible news – Malgenia.

Just Malgenia.

Just her.

I…

I didn’t have Diyas with me.

I didn’t have her power to call on.

Looking around in the empty darkness of the Assumption Ritual, bereft of light, of strength, of hope, I didn’t have…

I didn’t have…anything?

Oh. 

OH!

Oh that was an idea that was even worse that Malgenia.

Is it? Clarity asked.

Cause we are certainly onboard with it! Responsibility said.

Five words.

I still had five words, and if Malgenia knew about them then she would have already obliterated me.

She, however, was a tiny bit more focused on her traitorous brother than me, her traitorous quasi-daughter.

“Since the womb Vitor? Really?” she said, and Vitor took a step back (metaphorically).

“Does it matter Malgenia?” he asked. “Was that the confession you’d been hoping for all this time?”

“Not at all. I just find the idea delightful! Was I so puissant as a embryo that you feared me even then? Did I kill your favorite bit of placental lining? Tell me, please, how much of a horror was I? You know how I enjoy hearing stories about myself!”

“But you’re the storyteller here, aren’t you?” Vitor asked, and I could feel him gathering in the power of the dead Neoterics. 

I probably should have fought him for that, but even with Responsibility and Clarity’s help there was simply far too much power for any of us to begin to handle. The five us could have drank until we exploded and still drowned in an ocean of the power that remained.

Our world was done.

Jilya’s trick had been brilliant but there weren’t enough people in the world to become Blessed and hold the power we’d loosed.

“A storyteller or a story?” Malgenia asked, and looked at me at last.

“My lady,” I said offering her a small bow.

I should have felt afraid. Paralyzing fear was the single most rational response to gaining Malgenia’s attention, but I felt only peace.

“Who are you talking to?” Vitor asked.

“The one who destroyed me,” Malgenia said, turning back to her brother.

“There’s no one there,” Vitor said. “And what do you mean destroyed?”

“My last Assumption Ritual.” Her back was to me but I could feel Malgenia smile, could sense each muscle shifting in her face. I’d played her for so long, and held her fractured memories for so long that I knew her down to her bones.

“In the Wastelands? Were you performing it when the Beast Fragment attacked?” Poor Vitor, he was either going to die confused, or suffer the far worse fate of understanding exactly what he’d done and failed to do.

“Before that,” Malgenia said. “Years before that. Didn’t you miss me? Didn’t you miss being afraid?”

“Your fear never left him,” Responsibility said. “Even after you were gone.”

“Just like your love never left us,” Clarity said. 

“What? But…” Vitor looked between Malgenia and Responsibility as though each was disappearing the moment he looked away from them.

Beneath us the swirl of power was accelerating, just as it had when I’d fought Malgenia the first time.

Then it had been only her power, and it had still been overwhelming. Though everything was impenetrable, unknowable darkness around us, the light was coming, and it was going to be so much more painful than any of us could bear.

“And he never noticed? Should I feel insulted? That someone else could inspire the same terror as I did? I don’t know.”

“Your fear lives in us too,” Responsibility said.

“And always will,” Clarity said.

“And for that you have my love,” Malgenia said. “For what else can I offer to my legacy.”

“You’re not going to have a legacy,” Vitor said. “The only future this world has is through me. I am the last of the Neoteric Lords. I alone can hold and control this power. I alone have found perfection and absolute perfection will be MINE!”

He moved first.

And a vortex of light exploded around us.

The Assumption Ritual must, eventually, come down to a struggle.

Vitor didn’t understand our Assumption Ritual though.

And he didn’t understand what we’d truly unleashed.

He was right that if he’d been able to claim the power flowing around us, he could have reached perfection, or any other state he desired. It would have lasted a span of time too short to be measured within our universe, but he would have attained it.

If he’d been able to claim the power.

What he missed was that our Assumption Ritual wasn’t one designed for people to struggle against one another.

It was a small change, but in initiating the struggle, he’d chosen the wrong parameters, to fight against us, when, maybe, if he’d cooperated we would have had the strength to at least save ourselves from the power we’d captured in the ritual.

Amusingly though, it wasn’t the ritual that killed him.

It was Malgenia.

“My apologies brother. I should have given you this peace in the womb it seems.”

And he was dead.

Because that was Malgenia’s power. Even a Neoteric Lord with all of the power he could possibly draw on could not save himself from her. She chose for him to be dead, and so he was.

How had I survived?

Diyas had chosen for me to live.

Diyas who I was no longer bound to or Blessed by.

Diyas who I had to save, along with everyone else.

They’d never forgive me, and Night was DEFINITELY going to murder me, but there was an fairly obvious upside to all that.

“And what peace do you need Malgenia?” I asked, releasing my grip on Responsibility and Clarity’s hands.

“You know, once I might have said the peace of the grave, but thanks to you I know that isn’t true.” She turned to face me, and only me.

The light around us was too bright to see, but we didn’t have eyes anymore.

We only had ourselves and the power was closing into burn all that away.

In her ritual, the Death who was sacrificed opened a portal to carry that power away to the domains of the dead. In the ritual she and I fought in, that power had burned and shredded us. I was supposed to die before that could happen, but Diyas had kept me in the fight, and I’d been willing to hold on and endure more than Malgenia had. In the end, she’d been torn apart by the vortex and her death had carried the excess grace she’d built up with her to the domains of the dead.

With Vitor’s destruction, we had the rift to the domains of death that was needed to complete the ritual, but even if we did, the world would end.

And that was what Malgenia wanted.

“That was why you won, you know?” she asked.

“I do. You wanted to know what death was like for yourself.”

“And do you know what I found?”

“I haven’t been that curious yet,” I said, offering her a smile as the vortex tightened to the point where we were within an arm’s length of each other.

“It was peaceful,” she said. “And broken.”

“Because of the Neoterics,” I said. I didn’t have her memories anymore, but I knew her and I knew them.

“In killing everything, we broke everything, can you imagine?” she asked and her hands up to me, palms raised.

To touch her was to die.

And Diyas wasn’t here to bring me back, over and over again.

“I don’t have to,” I said. “I’ve seen it. And I know how to fix it.”

“You’re going to fight me again? Undo the deaths I and the others caused?” She leaned in close, the attention that was her eyes sparkling with delight.

“That would make things so much worse,” I said. “And it’s not what you made me for, is it?”

“Didn’t I make you as a sacrifice? To be the food my eternity consumed?” she asked and her hand reached up, hovering a hairsbreath away from my face.

The vortex had us pressed so tightly together than I couldn’t have slipped a finger through the space that separated us.

Within me, I felt Responsibility and Clarity, the three of us joined as one by our version of the Assumption Ritual.

“Did you? Or do you think I can pass the test now?” I asked her and pressed toward her.

“You should fear me. My fear lived on even after I was gone,” she said.

“I don’t. I don’t hate you anymore either. Not with what you’ve done for us.”

“And what do you think I did for you?”

“Not for me. For us. All of us. You gathered all of the fragments of the gods of death. You preserved the concept of death, when the other Neoterics wanted to eliminate it entirely. They were always going to have to go through you to achieve they perfect eternities, and you stood before them and kept them all mortal until we could arrive.”

“I didn’t do that for you.”

“That’s not how you’re going to be remembered.” I spoke my words like a curse, as the most serious malediction I could conjure against her. “We’re going to tell your story and make sure the love the Deaths bear for you is shared with everyone else. Your legacy will not be one of fear, or terror. We will make sure you are loved.”