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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I probably should have come up with a lie instead.

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

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

Which was a terrible idea.

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

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

Why? Why would he do that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was a happy thing to dream about though.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We should get her in on it,” I said.

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

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

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

I wanted to run. Right then. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Which was odd.

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

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

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

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

Eight hours? Gone in a blink?

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

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

But I didn’t dream at all there.

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

So what do we do now then?

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