“And tell us, Aspirant Helgon, why do you seek admission to the Clergy of Yauka the Clear Seeing?”

“Because I’m flawed.”

“See, he profanes our halls! To claim faith in the Clear Seeing arises from a defect of character? He has learned nothing from his time in the Novitiate!”

“Your pardon Learned Father, but I made not such claim. My faith in Blessed Yauka comes not from a certainty that I know his will, but rather a certainty that I must improve myself in order to understand that will at all.  I am a flawed creature. I have always known that. What I would set myself to is to refine the base clay of my own being into something ever more worthy. That is my calling and the deepest expression of faith in our Blessed Patron and Eternal Lord I am capable of performing. I cannot see what it is I must become, but the Clear Seeing God’s catechism tells us that we can be better than we are, and so I am called to my belief.”

– An forgotten record from the archives of the Clergy of Yauka denoted with markings for an aspirant who was not likely to advance within the Order

A woman had appeared near me. She was an enemy. A clever, stealthy, incredibly dangerous enemy. 

Thankfully, she didn’t seem to be my enemy.

“My apologies, am I interrupting?” she asked, sliding around the edge area lit by the glow radiating from me.

“Yeah,” I said, not bothering with either tact or wit. It hadn’t been the kind of day that left me with all that many functional brain cells and I wasn’t going to waste the few I had on playing games where I didn’t understand the rules or the stakes. “You knew that though, so what’s up?”

“What’s up? Hmm, I don’t think you’re at all what he imagines you to be,” she said.

Zeph was watching our new visitor with the sort of still silence that didn’t so much promise a blinding and unexpected response at any moment but left the door open should Zeph be so inclined.

“By ‘he’ you mean the Neoteric whose also watching us at the moment?” I wasn’t really guessing there, so I threw a feeble little wave in the general direction of the Lord of the Factorum.

“Clever though,” she said.

“I can hear you, uh, whoever you are?” That I was still flopped bonelessly against MB was not, perhaps, the strongest position to be negotiating from, but it wasn’t like I had an erg of strength available to rise to a stronger position.

“Meluna, you may call me Meluna if I may have your name?”

Zeph shifted before I could speak.

“You may not,” she said.

“You remember more than most I see, Fox Wind,” Meluna said, sketching Zeph a perfunctory bow.

“Do I?” Zeph asked. “I don’t recall the Night being tricksy. That was once the domain of the Wildings.”

Meluna’s eyes opened in something that could have been surprise, delight, or both.

“You do remember! Oh, there are so many questions I would have for you, but one does rise above the others unfortunately.”

“Do I know better than to treat with Wildings? Yes, yes I do.” Zeph said.

“Wise, but not the question I must have the answer to,” Meluna said. “And, if it should reassure you, I am no Wilding. They were held high in my mistresses regard, but while I may borrow their unique bits of wisdom, I am and will ever be a faithful acolyte of my Lady of the Darkest Hours.”

I was aware of a great deal more than I had been before getting munched up by the beast fragment but Proper Nouns and Titles were not included in the beast’s expansion of my consciousness. Probably because it had never known, nor cared, for the names of who, what, or where it devoured.

MB was following the exchange any better than I was, but it was tired too and was, I think, relying on me to determine if the odd lady before us was a threat or not.

She definitely was. My new senses were explicitly clear about that, if not particularly clear on why at first. Her banter told me that defusing her danger was going to be easier by talking to her though, and that seemed to be enough for MB.

“You carry a fragment of Night?” Zeph asked.

“Not for a long, long time,” Meluna said.

That I could make a little bit of sense of. Sort of. If Meluna had once carried a fragment of Night, then she was like me, a God Bearer, or she had been? It seemed weird to think of a god soul leaving someone and that person still holding onto the god’s power as one of their acolytes.

And Meluna was definitely holding onto a surprising amount of godly power. With the hint that she was aligned with a god, or a part of one, it was easy to work out that it was divine energy I was sensing in her. The part that didn’t fit was how she could be holding so much of her gods power if she’d given the fragment of them she’d found away?

“Should you be talking to us?” I asked, without really putting enough thought into the question. “I mean, if you’re worried about me, you’re kind of giving the game away by being here aren’t you?”

I didn’t particularly want her to take a stab at killing me. I was feeling fairly awful still but not that awful. Reflecting on what I’d heard for just a moment longer though had brought a really terrible idea to me and, if I was right, I was honestly be kind of surprised the stabbing hadn’t started already.

“Oh? Should I be worried about you?” the most worried woman of all time who didn’t look worried in the slightest asked.

“If I say ‘no’ are you going to be able to believe me even a little bit?” I asked. If our situations were reversed, I knew I would have started stabbing long ago, but Meluna seemed a bit more level headed than I was.

“Probably not I suppose,” Meluna said with a sad little pout. “If she says I don’t need to worry on the other hand?”

We both looked over at Zeph, but I turned back to Meluna before Zeph could answer.

“You probably could have just let us talk then, couldn’t you?” I asked, still trying to puzzle out what Meluna’s angle was.

“And eavesdrop on you? I could never be so rude,” said the woman who clearly loved nothing better.

“I’d forgotten what dealing with Night’s acolytes was like,” Zeph said. “Wish I hadn’t remembered.”

“The question, I’m afraid, stands. Can you speak for this one?” Meluna said, a more serious air settling over her as her postured straightened and I got a sense of how very tall she was.

“No,” I said. “It’s not fair.”

“Life rarely is,” Meluna said.

“So we shouldn’t be?” I might have been a bit irate there.

“It’s okay,” Zeph said, forced into the role of peacemaker, which had not been my intention.

“It’s really not,” I said. “I get why Night might be concerned about me. Hell I get why you might be concerned about me. You’re obviously right to be at least a bit worried, I mean I think I did something new and new can be scary. I’m not exactly going anywhere at the moment though, so rushing to decide how worried to be doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense.”

“I see why Sun likes this one,” Meluna said. “So simple. So direct.”

“You can sense her in Little still?” Zeph asked, an unexpected note of relief in her voice.

“You can’t? Isn’t the glow a bit of a giveaway?” Meluna asked.

“Little has felt like her since we met,” Zeph said.

I winced. If I ‘smelled’ (for lack of a better term) like Sola naturally, I could see how Zeph couldn’t have been sure if I had Sola with me still.

“Hey, I don’t suppose Night can do something about the bindings Vaingloth hit her with?”

Yeah, I’d used his actual name. Meluna wasn’t going to recognize ‘Melty boy’ as a reference, and I still hadn’t forgive him for anything.

“Before I know who you really are? No, I don’t think we’ll complicate the situation like that just yet.”

“You did hear Zeph right? She used my name at least a couple times already,” I said.

“That’s not what she was asking for at first,” Zeph said. “She wanted to take your name from you.”

“Meaning?”

“It would have been as insurance, nothing more,” Meluna said. “I could have given it back.”

Zeph gave her the sort of glare that told me ‘could have’ was very different from ‘would have’.

“And with my name you could have…?”

“Controlled you, in case you proved quarrelsome,” Meluna said.

“Or killed you,” Zeph said.

“If you had proven to be more than quarrelsome,” Meluna said without a hint of guilt or shame.

“Ah. Thank you then Zeph. I’ve had quite enough of people being able to kill me just because they decided they didn’t like me.”

“Oh, it’s not like that at all,” Meluna said. “I confess I’m quite taken with you. You do however seem to be made up of equal parts god and beast however, which presents, as you observed, a worrisome set of possibilities.”

“I’m not worried about her,” Zeph said. “Not anymore.”

“But you were?” Meluna asked.

“Of course she was,” I said. “She saw me get eaten by something that destroys everything it devours and then I popped out a moment later.”

“With a monster in tow,” Meluna said, nodding towards MB who’d decided the conversation was boring and that catching some sleep while it could was the wiser course of action.

It was completely right about that and I really wished I could partake of its wisdom, but getting stabbed in my sleep probably wouldn’t agree with me all that much, so I kept talking.

“We’re both monsters,” I said.

“Yes, but that’s part of my role as acolyte,” Meluna said.

“No. You’re whatever you are. I mean MB and me, we’re both monsters. We’re both Little, and we’re both something else.”

“The beast?” Zeph asked, concerned but not scared unless I was ready her body language all wrong.

“Not anymore,” I said. “The fragment of the beast that was here had changed in the time since it was split off. Not much, but it was enough for it to find an end to what it was so it could become something else. Me, sort of.”

“Why call yourself a monster then?” Zeph asked.

“I melted a Neoteric Lord’s eyes,” I said. “And I murdered someone the day before that. Before I met Sola. It was that or be tossed into the fire as Kindling, so I’m not apologizing for it. The patroller got what he deserved, but I’m not kidding myself either. MB’s a monster because I kind of infected it with who I was. So if I’m not so great, it’s probably burdened by that too.”

“You are either the worst ambush predator I have ever known or the very best,” Meluna said.

“Do I say thanks to that?” I asked, turning to Zeph.

“Hard to tell.”

“I don’t think it matters what you say as I believe I have my answer, odd though it may be,” Meluna said, watching me intently nonetheless.

“You trust her then?” Zeph asked.

“Not even slightly,” Meluna said. “But Night has taken no offense at her.”

“Just to be clear…” I started to ask.

“Yes,” Meluna said. “And no, of course not, how silly, that would be impossible, and ridiculous, and this conversation never happened. You’ve clearly been dreaming this whole…time.”

And with her last word, she faded back into the darkness.

But I understand her first yes.

There was still a god in our world.

Night had survived.