“Why am I writing what it was like when we lost the sun? Because people need to know. Yes. I am aware that we were all there, but there will be people who come after us. There have to be. This can’t be how our story ends.”

– from an unnamed diary found in the ruins of the Outer Factorum.

I could sense a lot more than I’d been able to before the beast chewed me up and get our aetheric molecules all mixed together. That didn’t make the world any brighter, easier to understand, or in any sense at all safer. It did allow me to notice a few things I’d missed before though, like, for example, the divine grace Zeph carried with herself and how close it was to turning against me.

Not that she was going to hurt me. That would have been a terrible idea for all involved and Zeph is just simply a better person than that. No, she was all of a single excuse from bolting to somewhere far beyond the horizon.

It would have been a sensible thing to do.

She’d brought me here because the Factorum held at least some the promise of shelter from the wrath of Vaingloth and the things that prowl the wastes. I could sense that she was correct on both of those accounts and why that was the case.

Me being eaten by the worst of the things in the wastes had definitely not been part of the plan. Me, in a sense, becoming one of the worst things in the waste was the plan more or less exploding into gorey bits.

And yet, she wasn’t running yet.

“Sorry about that,” I said, nudging my Mini-Beast away.

It liked her.

Maybe because I liked her?

Or maybe it had an ounce of sense and decent taste in traveling companions?

In either case though it clearly needed to learn some manners.

“We don’t lick people without their permission,” I said to the giant monstrosity that loomed over the two of us.

I was still pretty out of it I had to admit, but breathing and speaking and not seeing all of time and space while feeling the crushing emptiness of the cosmos pulling me apart for an eternity was good. Made me feel a bit more like who I was supposed to be.

I did not want to go to sleep.

The thought struck me like a hammer when I caught a glimpse of what my dreams were going to be like.

Yeah.

No sleeping.

Forever.

I forced my eye lids open despite the lead weights that had been attached to them.

“I don’t know if I’ll be up for walking much farther,” I said, the rocky ground looking like the most amazing bed I had ever seen.

“I…” Zeph looked from me to my Mini-Beast and back.

“I know how weird this is,” I said, which was sort of true. At once point while I was being digested I’d known everything. I don’t recommend it. Knowing everything is far too much and all I could retain of it was how much that sucked. Ignorance is not actually bliss, but too much awareness without the ability to filter it is definitely peak misery. 

“I…” She still thought she couldn’t outrun the beast. 

And she was sure I couldn’t.

“Could you do me a favor?” I asked. “There’s someone in the Factorum. I think. Could you go and check with them if it would be okay for us to come in. I think they need to talk to us.”

She looked at the Mini-Beast and then at the path through the stadium. I would not want to have tried to flee through a place like that. Much too open and something like the Mini-Beast wouldn’t be slowed by the ground clutter at all.

“I’ll be okay here,” I said. “And I know you can make it there and back a lot faster if you don’t have to carry me.”

“I’m not worried about carrying you,” she said.

“That’s not surprising. You’ve been carrying me since we met. But this okay. I will be here, just like I am now, when you get back.”

“And what of her?” Meaning Sola. Who was the most important one in this situation.

“She’s still not free. Melty Boy’s bindings are stupidly strong, which I suppose they would have to be or she would have shredded them a half second after he cast them. I can feel her though.”

“Will she be safe.”

“From the things in the wastes? The spirit fragments? Definitely. You can feel them running away too can’t you?”

“I can.”

Can’t imagine why the spirit fragments that herded us to the beast were suddenly trying to be as far away from me as possible? Surely they didn’t think that I held a grudge? Or that I might not be well disposed towards something that had been intent on killing me themselves if Zeph had given them half a chance? 

Probably just a silly spirit thing.

“But will she be safe from you.”

Zeph was still holding me.

She didn’t have her claws extended.

She wasn’t presenting any physical menace at all.

And she didn’t want to kill me.

But she would.

Without hesitation.

Even if it meant her own death.

And if that had been required, I would have welcomed it.

“I’m a mess,” I said. “This is nothing new. I’ve always been a mess. I’m not who I was. But that’s nothing new either. What is new is that I have people in my life now that I’d be Kindling for. Sola protected me, and I have to admit, it’s hard not to love her for that alone. But that’s a self-ish sort of love isn’t it? Like she does a miracle for me and I repay her with my love until I need another miracle? Ick, even saying that feels awful.”

Zeph’s expression made a wonderful transition from a blank and homicide-ready look through growing confusion and into the outskirts of amusement, so I kept speaking.

“So, I don’t love her for that. I mean, probably I do, but she could let me go and choose someone else, and I would still choose to love her. Because I know her. Not a lot, but you don’t have to know everything about someone to know the most important bits of them.”

“And what are her important bits?” Zeph asked, at least temporarily intrigued by my argument.

“She still believes in us. In me. Despite what a rotten person I am. She can see the things I’ve done, all the times I’ve failed and what a general disaster up I am, and she still believes in me as I am right now. Not ‘oh but Little has so much potential’. Not ‘even a runt like her can be useful or somethings’. No. None of that. She picked me with all the flaws I’ve got, not in spite of them. Did I pick up a few more flaws by being stupid enough to get myself eaten? Yeah, probably. Is she still on my side though? Is she still shining down on me no matter how much darkness there is around us? It would take a god to understand why, but, hey, look, guess what she is!”

That drew an actual smile across Zeph’s vulpine face.

“I don’t want to be a better person to be worthy of her, or because she demands it. I want to be a better person because thanks to her I can believe I could be one.”

My Mini-Beast gave a huff of agreement, which surprised both Zeph and me.

“And, this?” she asked. “It’s…it’s not what it was either?”

“I feel like I could have answered that better while I was dissolving,” I said. “If I think about that too much though, I feel like my brain is going to go right back to dissolving, so I’m going to make up my own answers for you.”

Zeph looked at me like she was checking to see if my brain had already started the whole dissolving thing and that was probably a good thing since I was still a bit too messed up to be sure.

“I think MB is something new. It’s what the beast could have been if it had become a part of our world instead of trying to consume it. Bear in mind, I’m almost certainly wrong, but it does feel like it fits here. Maybe because it’s so tiny? I mean compared to what it was. Or even what it was when we met it. Before it was chipped off? Maybe that thing couldn’t have become part of our world. Maybe it had to fight and be fought. I have this dim memory that fighting the gods was the whole reason it was brought here.”

“Brought here?” Zeph was back to being concerned in an instant.

“I am super fuzzy on this, but the beast isn’t a naturally occurring thing here, right? I mean that seems pretty obvious given, you know, everything that happened. Somewhere in the eternity I spent inside it I think I saw it being called to our world.”

A growl escaped Zeph’s lips.

It was not a natural sound for her to make and I was grateful it wasn’t aimed at me.

“The Neoterics.”

I nodded.

“Pretty much has to be doesn’t it?”

Because, who else could possibly have had enough power? Or had any interest in doing something so incredibly stupid?

Except, was it stupid?

I had no idea what Vaingloth and the rest’s positions had been in the world before the Sunfall. Presumably they’d been someone important, but I was willing to bet that powerful people were pretty much the same before and after the Sunfall. If so then the one thing an important person like Vaingloth would have wanted was to become more important.

And who’s more important than the gods?

Well, if you can arrange for the gods to get eaten by a giant monster from beyond reality? Then probably you are. 

Or at least I could see someone like Vaingloth thinking like that all too easily.

And it had clearly paid off for him.

Sure our world was a total wreck. Apart from some dubious cheats with the portals, there was nowhere that could sustain life at all, and nearly everyone who’d once lived here was dead, and the things that remained where inimical to the existence of basically anything else.

But look at how good that was for Vaingloth! He was in control over everyone! Or everyone in Mt Gloria. The other Neoteric Lords were beyond his control, as were the people they owned.

People like the ones in the Factorum. 

The Factorum which the other Neoteric Lords had wiped out. 

Yeah, I could sense the whispers of their handiwork in the destruction around me. It wasn’t hard to believe either. The only thing that could be a threat to a Neoteric Lord in this dead world was another Neoteric Lord and they’d been slowly winnowing their own numbers down ever since they’d seized control of the world the gods.

How many of them were left?

Nine.

Why did I know that?

Because sensing that kind of thing was easy.

Not vaguely comforting, but easy.

“That’s I think why we need to talk to the person in the Factorum,” I said.

“Who are they?” Zeph asked.

“I don’t know their name, but I think they’re the Neoteric Lord who ruled here.”

“There is no Neoteric Lord here,” Zeph said. “That’s what makes this a safe place. It’s Lord died decades ago and none of the others have dared to claim it since.”

“Hmm, yeah, that feels about right. Funny thing though, I don’t think being dead means quite the same thing for them as it would for us, because there is a definitely something like a Melty Boy in there and I’m pretty sure it knows we’re here too.”

“Stay here. I’ll be right back,” Zeph said, placing me gently on the ground away from the spot where all of my meals from my entire life had been heave out.

I would have said she left like a razor slicing through the air, but I’m pretty sure her intention was to slice through the something rather more substantial.