“If anyone had told me that being dead would involve entertaining more visitors and not less, I would have given the whole thing up as a bad idea and invented myself a portal to some other, emptier world. In fact that’s a rather good idea. I should get right on that. Oh, wait, right. No more hands to hold the tools with. Ah cosmic retribution for a life of misdeeds, how wonderful to run into you yet again.”

– Helgon the wishing-he-was-less-Eternal-than-he-is, to the third group of refugees to arrive at the Factorum in the space of two decades since the Sun Fall.

It took almost a week before we were ready to go. That doesn’t sound like a long time, but when every second takes an hour to tick by thanks to the looming threat of a Neoteric Lord finding you, a week becomes the next best thing to an eternity.

What didn’t help at all was that I had almost nothing to do the whole time either.

I’m not an especially big fan of work. Some people seem to find meaning and purpose in being productive. Growing food and cleaning up and repairing all the things that break on a daily basis aren’t anything new to the world following the Sun Fall. We may live under the dictatorial thumb of a quasi-god tyrant monster, but day to day life is probably similar to what it always has been since a society that doesn’t grow food starves, and one that doesn’t clean up after itself dies of the plagues, and one that doesn’t fix what gets broken both staves and dies of the plagues. None of that means that work doesn’t suck though.

In theory therefor, a week where I couldn’t poke my head outside or let any living soul catch sight or scent of me should have been the relaxing vacation I’d always hoped for.

If you think that may I refer you back to the little ‘being hunted by a Neoteric Lord’ problem I was dealing with.

The one time work would have been useful for getting me out of my own head it was, of course, not an option.

To her credit, Zeph understood that before I did and dropped a mountain of books on me before I even thought to ask for them.

A lot of people didn’t care for reading. They sat through their mandatory education periods, picked up enough reading comprehension to recognize signs and decipher simple manuals and called it good.

That was not me.

I read everything I could get my grubby little hands on, even if it meant breaking my own rules about avoiding risks like ‘pissing off people who could do me grievous bodily harm’. Oh, I never let them catch me. Just because I was willing to break a few rules didn’t mean I was stupid about it. There were plenty of books I’d never gotten a peak inside because filching them would have been entirely too obvious.

Zeph, joyously, had some of those!

That turned a week of eternities into a week of slightly more bearable eternities. 

She was good about other things too. 

Like feeding me.

Since Vaingloth hadn’t been able to catch a glimpse of her (when she wants to move, she moves), Zeph was free to move about and managed to bring back a surprising amount of food each day. It wasn’t always in the best of shape, but there was plenty of it. That would have been a welcome change if my appetite hadn’t decided to be flakey as hell.

When I woke up, I’d be hungry. By the time I was conscious enough to shovel food into my face, my appetite had all but vanished. Zeph suggested it might be Sola waking up as well and providing me the support I needed. It was a kind little fiction, but we both knew that wasn’t it at all.

“The last of the travel gear we need should be ready by tomorrow,” she said over what should have been breakfast on the sixth or seventh day I’d been imposing on her hospitality.

“And you said the Factorum is about two weeks away from here? By the route you know?” 

“Two weeks if we’re lucky. We’ll be bringing enough supplies for three weeks though in case we need to make any detours.”

“Can we carry three weeks worth of supplies?” I wasn’t looking forward to the aches and pains of a two week forced march, but a force march followed by thirsting to death seemed even less appealing.

“You are a God Bearer, so anything may be possible, but I’m going to presume Sola will not be able to provide any assistance. That’s what has been taking so long.” Zeph didn’t need to justify herself, and I had been trying to very hard not to complain about how miserable the whole situation was, but I’m not the best at hiding my emotions it seems.

“We’ll leave when we leave,” I said. “I know we’re not safe here, but we’re definitely dead if we’re not ready for the wastelands right?”

“It’s not impossible that we would survive, but it would be much more difficult,” Zeph said.

“I’m a big fan of not making things more difficult than they already are,” I said, though that didn’t reassure her as much as I’d hoped. Because she was just as anxious as I was. She was just better at hiding it.

“I have word of the other people who were at the site of Melty Boy’s visitation,” she said, changing the subject so neither of us would have to think about it too much. I was delighted that she’d come around to calling Vaingloth ‘Melty Boy’. I amused myself by imagining the title would somehow make it out into general usage and reveled in just how enraged that would make him.

Maybe pissing off a quasi-god wasn’t something to hope for, but since I’d already gone all-in on that, it wasn’t like there would be any additional danger in making even angrier at me. 

“Did they get out of there, or were the other patrollers able to get there too quick?” I asked. We’d heard rumors that patrollers from some of the neighboring precincts had been dispatched to deal with ‘a nest of criminals’ but the details had all been second hand.

“They did. Most of them. Some of them apparently went to ground in the precinct and managed to hide until today. The other scattered and probably passed the incoming patrollers.”

“What about Vaingloth? Anyone talking about what happened to him?”

“He’s declared a special festival. He’s calling it the ‘Bounty of Light’ festival and its scheduled for tomorrow.”

“And what happens in a Bounty of Light festival?” I asked, pretty certain I could guess the answer.

“For one day, there the cities lamps and beacons will be lit to their highest settings,” Zeph said. “The official reason is to celebrate how close the city is to finally returning light to the world and let people search for the ‘Light Within’ and, although this rumor spread separately, the ‘Last Spark’.”

“And the ‘Last Spark’ would be?”

“According to the rumor? It’s a piece of light magic, or maybe fire magic, or maybe even the god of light. Whatever it is though, the rumor claims it was stolen, right before the Sun Fall, and it’s absence is why the world fell into darkness. People aren’t officially being asked to look for it, but if someone finds it they’ll be the first of all Melty Boy’s advisors.”

“Wow! Instant promotion to the top of the social order. That’s a sweet deal if anyone can find the spark. It would almost be tempting to look for it my…” I cut myself off as my brain finished processing Zeph words. I drew in a deep breath and sighed. “Would almost be tempting if I wasn’t the Last Spark, right?”

“For many it would be tempting nonetheless,” Zeph said. “Melty will be good to his word. Even someone like you, he would elevate.”

“And then destroy me at some more convenient time. After he’s got Sola.” I could see my future if I went for that particularly idiotic choice. “You know, even without Sola, I think I was wrong. That’s not a tempting offer at all. Apart from getting me close enough to him to stab him in the neck, he’s really got nothing to offer me.”

“He wouldn’t be trying to kill you.”

“Sure he would,” I said. “I mean it’s not like I wouldn’t try to kill again if the opportunity arose again. I’d have to imagine that would put me back on his ‘kill violently and painfully’ list pretty quickly.”

“The nine remaining lords can be strange, but yes, I expect you wouldn’t stay long in his graces.”

“Would I even have a chance?” I asked, and then amended. “Of killing him?”

Sacrificing myself was not a play I wanted to make, but if I could free the world from his influence, wasn’t I supposed to?

“With Sola bound as she is? I do not believe you would,” Zeph said, shaking her head as though she could hear the thoughts lurking that were behind my question. “He has had since before the Sun Fall to assemble his defenses, any mortal weapon or tool should have been accounted for.”

“Ugh. I hate him. I hate this whole place. We live in a stupid world!” It wasn’t a new frustration, but Zeph’s reaction to it wasn’t what I’d expected.

“The world was worth loving once,” she said, her soft voice even quieter than usual. “I think much of it still is too. I can see the peaks in the distance and remember sailing over them. They are as tall and proud now as they were then. The same is true of the people.”

“Maybe you’ve met better people than I have,” I said. “Most of the ones I know are just doing whatever they can to get by and survive.”

“I think that’s what people have always done. Even in this world, there are still people like a the Bugbear woman who are focused on helping those who are weaker than themselves.”

“Yeah, but Lucky’s special,” I said, hating myself a little bit more for having ruined yet another of the things she’d spent time and energy building.

“They all are,” Zeph said. “All of the people who try to make the world better than it was.”

A set of people which notably did not include me.

“Even if this world punishes them for it? Or because this world punishes them for it?”

“That they endure in spite of the punishment is admirable. That they try in the first place makes them special though.”

“I wish being special was enough to save them. A lot of people see someone like Lucky and their impulse is to toss her in the fires before anyone else.” That was why I couldn’t see the world like Lucky did. She wanted to help people, I wanted to survive, and sometimes there just wasn’t any overlap between the two.

“She has avoided the fires so far,” Zeph said. “I wasn’t able to find out where she’s gone, but she has definitely fled out of sight of the patrols, or at least no one has seen or heard of a patrol apprehending her.”

“I just hope they didn’t kill her,” I said. “She deserved better than that.”

“You’re damn right I do,” Lucky said, as she lifted a tile up from the basement’s floor and rose up so she was halfway into the room.

“W-w-what?” I said, every sense going past high alert and into borderline hallucination mode. I’d stared at the floor for a week. I tried lifting the tiles. They were both incredibly heavy and laying on top of solid earth and stone. What Lucky was doing was impossible.

Except that I hadn’t checked the tile she’d lifted up.

“I’d love to compare notes Little, but we’ve got maybe a minute before the patrollers get here, so we’re leaving. Now.”

I turned to look at Zeph. She was just as surprised as I was, but, predictably, reacting a lot faster than I was. Before I had a chance to object, she’d hoisted me up into her arms again and we were off, descending into a narrow darkness that I couldn’t help but feel certain was my tomb.