“So, my turn has come? How wonderful. This is a fiendishly clever little trap you’ve constructed. I suppose I must applaud the God Souled you used to create it. How much of the God of Torments did they manage to scrape together? Oh, burned to a cinder did they? Well that’s too bad. Still a fair trade, one God Souled for my august personage? Almost a bargain really. What’s that? Where are my God Souled? Oh my, did you think to replace the one you lost by raiding my house? You really should have listened to Dyrena’s laughter. I did. The poor benighted mortals who sought refuge with me were sent to safer climes long before you even began to move against me. There was never a treasure here for you to claim. All you’ve done is hastened the countdown our kind from ten to nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one…”

– Helgon the Eternal, the third of the Neoteric Lords to fall, moment’s before self-detonating with enough force to destroy the city of Sunrest and a hundred mile radius of its surrounding lands.

Sola was going to help someone, and I was going to get them killed. That thought crowded out all others as I slinked across the slumber pile towards the old lady whose breathing was disturbingly ragged.

Was I doing the right thing? Probably not. Had I put the proper thought into it? Certainly not. Did I have a plan for when my foolish intentions blew up in my face? Who needs plans when you can have a disaster instead!

To be fair, when disaster is the only outcome regardless of how you plan, the threat of it loses its sting after a while. If everything was going to go to hell, I was at least going to burn up knowing I’d made things less miserable for somebody.

It wasn’t hard to snuggle in next to the old Kobold lady. People were giving her more room than they should have, since we all tend to shy away from sickness. That meant she was getting even less warmth than the rest of the pile though, which was making her condition even worse. I dropped down and went back to back with her. She stiffen at the contact and then relaxed when I held still and simply shared my body heat.

Sola had a lot more in mind than just sharing body heat though.

What I’m about to do isn’t part of my domain, but there’s no one to carry the Patronage of Healers so I should be able to borrow it for just a moment. Are you ready? Sola asked, the trepidation in her voice was the sort of sound you really don’t expect to hear from a cosmically divine entity.

Sure. What do I need to do? I asked. Sola’s concern left me wondering if this was an even more ill-advised idea than the disaster I was expecting, but since it was my idea, I wasn’t about to hold back on making at least part of it work.

Stay connected, Sola said and I could feel her reaching somewhere and in some direction which was beyond my ability to capture via words or imagination. Stay connected to me. To yourself. To this world. To everything solid and real that you know.

How do I do that?

If I’d ever shone on you, you could recall what that felt like. What it was like to stand on rich soil, with warmth on your skin, and brilliance lighting your eyelids. You could hold onto the feelings you experienced, good and bad, under my light. But I’ve been away so long, and you’ve never known me. All I can think is to have you hold onto what you do know and hope its enough.

But I do know you? I said and called back the memory of standing in the garden, and feeling the alien warmth of it wrapped around me. In my mind’s eye I saw her standing before me as a figure of brilliant but not blinding light. 

I was still only me in that moment and she was a fraction of herself, but one which I could at least comprehend.

From a world beyond, a vast weight turned and brushed against us. 

The Domain of Healers and Healing.

It transcended time and distance. Wherever there was restoration and renewal, there too was the divine domain. When we bandaged a wound, we touched on and added to its grace. When we rallied against an illness, we stood as a part of it, our innate act of healing also a worship of the divinity which Sola called to us.

The Domain merely brushed my hand with the lightest of feather strokes and I felt my mortality outlined in sharp contrast.

I was small in size and finite in life. I was a grain of sand in the ocean of the Domain’s existence. I was nothing at all of consequence and nothing that would be missed if the domain claimed me and carried me away.

Which was just typical.

If there was one thing my life had prepared me for, it was the notion that I was meaningless. The scale comparison with the Domain of Healers and Healing was a bit more than I was used to but the fact that I was too tiny to matter had all of zero ability to shock or dismay me. I didn’t mind being small and meaningless, it made me feel safe. I was too ‘Little’ to bother with. It’s right there in my name!

The Domain pulled back at that. Like it was surprised that I wasn’t being swept away by its scale and majesty. I couldn’t blame it if that’s what it was thinking, but since I already had a god in residence inside me, my ability to be awed beyond reason had kind of burnt itself out.

I felt Sola reach out and call a miracle from the Domain of Healers before it could retreat from us and then I felt something that I could imagine and wrap my head around for a change.

The Domain wasn’t pulling back on its own.

Someone else was pulling it away.

Someone with more claim on it than Sola or I had.

Sola had said I wasn’t the only one who’d made contact with a shard of the gods, but in that fleeting instant before we lost touch with Domain of Healers and Healing I felt my soul touch on the soul of someone so terribly like me my heart almost shattered.

And then they were gone.

The Domain. The other God Bearer. Not fleeing. Not hiding. Simply elsewhere in the vast realm the gods were native too.

Which, a cold dread told me, was a phenomenally good thing.

I was too small for the god devouring beast to notice. Sola wasn’t that small, but as long as she was hidden within me she was arguably safe. Adding more godly shards to our mix would make us stand out no matter how grounded I was, and the beast was still as ravenous as it had been when it first appeared. 

Our narrow escape had been worth it though. Sola nudged me to drop my hand down and lay it on the Old Kobold lady’s back. That was all it took to share the miracle we had taken with her. 

As divine grace flowed into her, the old lady went still and silent. 

Which meant my first though was that we’d gone too far and killed her.

What? It was a reasonable thought. Nine times out of ten that was exactly how my life went, and the tenth time was worse.

In this case though? This time was outside not just my experience but the experience of everyone who was present.

I thought by being quiet, what I was having Sola do would escape people’s notice.

It did not.

Grace shared is not grace diminished. What we gave to the old lady did more than renew her health. It filled her up and bubbled over to touch everyone else in the room.

There was light, brief but undeniable, which drove back the shadows and banished sleep. I hung on to the thoughts of being just myself in Sola’s presence and managed to avoid being the source of the light, but what we do has echoes in the world around us no matter how much we try to hide from them.

The old lady sat up and muttered something in a language her people kept mostly to themselves. 

“What was that?” someone asked. “It’s warm,” someone said with awed reverence in their voice. “Someone was here,” another said, echoing the thoughts of most of the people in the room who were busy looking around for the presence they’d felt wash over us all.

Sola’s presence.

Are they going to start worshipping you? I asked, imaging all too easily how that could go very badly for me.

They don’t know me, Sola said. I’ve never been a part of their lives.

You weren’t a part of mine either, I said.

You accepted me.

They seem like they’d accept you too. I couldn’t help but think that Sola might be better off with someone who wasn’t, well, me.

It would be an exchange. Taking me in to gain something from me.

Isn’t that what I did?

No. You didn’t. You accepted me from the moment we met. Your concern was for me, not for yourself. Some here might have done the same, might still do the same, but I have no interest in risking being devouring by them. I will seek another if I must, but for now I feel safest with you.”

The flash of light in the room was gone but no one seemed able or willing to just rollback over and go to sleep. No one except for the old lady, who I saw was breathing easily and regularly. I couldn’t tell in the candlelight if she looked better too, but something told me the miracle had some more than simply let her breath well and find some much needed rest.

“What do you think that was?” a dwarven guy beside me said, sending a thrill of panic down my spine before I saw he was speaking to a goblin who was on the other side of him.

“Was it something the Lord did?” the goblin asked. “They were saying that he’s gonna be able to fix things up real soon, for everybody, didn’t they?”

“Hell no. That was not King Oh-So-Vain,” an old Ratkin said. “He’s been saying he was going to do something for us any day now since I was too young to work the farms. He’s never done anything like whatever that was and he never will.”

“Careful there Killer,” Lucky said from the doorway to the room. “Patrollers hear you thinking old Vainy isn’t the perfect and wonderful, they’ll toss you on the pyres faster than you can blink.”

“I’ve been careful my whole life,” Killer said. “All it ever got me was being old with old regrets.”

“Maybe, but they’re not going to burn up just you, now will they?” Lucky asked.

“Gonna burn us all up in the end,” Killer said. “But you all deserve the chance to pile up as many regrets as I have before then, I suppose.”

“Why don’t we all get back to sleep and see how it looks when the beacon lights come on,” Lucky said and closed the door to the slumber pile room to keep the heat in.

In the dim light, it sounded like everyone agreed with that and no one did. People moved back to where they’d been, and the conversations took on a more hushed tone, but no seemed to be going back to sleep.

Maybe no one was able to. I certainly knew sleep was off the table for me after the day I’d had. My heart was still racing at how close we’d come to being caught. And the fact that there was definitely someone else like me out there. And all the thoughts of what was going to happen to the people around me who’d been woken up in more than just the literal sense.

With all those things on mind, I missed the old lady rolling over but I did not miss when she laid her hand on my arm and whispered “Thank you” to me.

Her surprisingly young and strong hand.