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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Other God Bearers,” Zeph said.

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

Then a far worse though occurred to me.

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

“Yes.”

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

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

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

“Us as in you and me?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why?”

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

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

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

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

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

Zeph frowned at me, which was warranted.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Sola? Was she the last one to fall?”

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

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

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

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

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

Zeph chuckled.

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

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

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

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

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

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