“The experiment seems to have caused a detectable amount of damage.”

“Really? Do you think so? The shard is maintaining its authority and form. I think the decrease in power can be attributed to a lack of channeled grace alone. See, watch as I provide it with a little dram, that should perk it right back up.”

“I was referring to the Blessed, not the shard.”

“The what? Oh, the mortal vessel. Yes, yes, we’ll need someone to sweep up the ashes before the next test. Not really a loss there, our stock is quite plentiful after all.”

“Perhaps we should select the next subject with an eye towards compatibility with the shard?”

“I don’t take your meaning. How would we know that?”

“Ask them I would think?”

“A waste of time. If the test subjects could provide useful insight into the process they wouldn’t have wound up as test subjects.”

– from the voice notes of the Neoteric Lords Hanshel and Tallgrim’s first sessions with a shard of Nylssa the God of Fauns.

Complicated questions usually have simple answers I’ve found. ‘No’, for example, tends to works really great. Or at least it tends to be the right answer to a lot of complicated questions. Saying ‘Yes’ to something someone is hesitant to ask usually results in a transfer of the complications they’re facing so that said complications become your problem, and I am not a fan of either complications or problems.

“There is another piece of information you may wish to be aware of,” Helgon said, addressing the other God Blessed. “My newest interloper here is, at present, cut off from communion with the divine shard she carries.”

Xalaria, Fulgrox, and Kalkit turned to look at each other with even more concern than they’d been showing previously.

“Cut off?” Xalaria asked. Was she hoping I would contradict Helgon? Or maybe soften his warning somehow?

“Yep. She’s still there, but I can’t talk to her, and I think she’s limited in what she can do through me.” There was no sense holding that back. If they had intended to trick me into lowering my guard so they could attack, I’d rather had it over and done with sooner than later. If their intentions were more benevolent, or worst case, they needed my help, making them aware that I could do much for them would save me a lot of trouble later.

“How is that possible?” Fulgrox asked. He caught his hand before it could reach forward on it’s own. I don’t think he was intending to shake me until Sola fell out, but for all I knew that might have worked.

“Vaingloth’s handiwork,” Helgon said. “One of his standard spells.”

“Can you undo it?” Xalaria asked.

“I would need rather specialized ingredients for a working such as that I’m afraid,” Helgon said.

“Ingredients like what?” Zeph asked, her attention focusing on Helgon rather than Xalaria.

“The primary one would be my old co-conspirator’s corpse,” Helgon said. “If you could procure that however, I believe Little’s problem might resolve itself on its own.”

As answers to one of the questions which had driven me across the wasteland to this place, that one sucked.

“I see a large, Vaingloth shaped problem with that idea,” I said. “Apart from that though, I’m in favor of the idea.”

“I believe you would find nine Neoteric shaped problems with the idea,” Helgon said. “Or perhaps eight, or, for all I can say, perhaps there’s no one who would stand with that pompous fool.”

“The other Neoterics won’t stand with him, but they will scramble to claim the power he holds if he loses control of it,” Xalaria said. “It’s what we came here to speak to you about.” She was looking at Helgon when she said that which was a relief since I’d already tried to kill Vaingloth and it hadn’t gone well when I had Sola at her full power backing me up.

“Oh, be assured, I am desperately in favor of the notion as well. The practicality of it however eludes me,” Helgon said. “Sadly that is not a new issue either. The Lord of Mt Gloria may be an idiot but he is a careful idiot and quite secure in his position and power.”

“There’s no such thing as perfect security,” Xalaria said.

“Which of the Neoteric are backing you?” Zeph asked, her wary attention returning to Xalaria.

“None of them, despite any claims they might have made,” Helgon said. “Believe me, no one is in a position to compel the Neoteric Lord or force them to honor any bargains they have made.”

“Their treachery is, unfortunately, not a secret,” Kalkit said. “Their weaknesses on the other hand…”

I’d been under the impression that Xalaria as a Blessed of the God of Battle was the primary danger among the trio. I’d thought that because my brain was operating at about five percent of its usual power. Even five percent was enough to pick up on what Kalkit’s simple statement really meant.

I reached a hand down to scratch MB behind the ear and tried to convey the idea that getting on the Crowkin’s bad side was an incredibly bad idea.

Was I overreacting? Maybe. My instincts were on the side of ‘running and hiding’ as a primary defense mechanism and anyone who could intrinsically see what was hidden foiled that almost entirely. That they were sufficiently attuned to their god that they could spy the most dangerous secrets of the Neoteric Lords though told me that I might not have been overreacting enough.

“Is it to be blackmail then? That would be delicious, but also overwhelming likely to backfire,” Helgon said.

“If I told you, then it wouldn’t be a secret,” Kalkit said.

“But we did have a few questions for you,” Fulgrox said, “and for her.”

“How did you even know I’d be here?” I asked. Zeph and I had planned to head to the Factorum well before we actually left Mount Gloria. The trap Vaingloth had managed to spring on us hadn’t required that he be aware of that, or that we were planning to leave at all.

“You kept your intentions secret,” Kalkit said with a shrug of their wings.

“What? That…you can’t know everyone’s secrets all the time.” I wasn’t objecting because that seemed impossible. I’d had a small taste of what Sola could do and someone who’d had more than a week or so with their god would probably be able to share in the god’s domain a lot more than I had with Sola. What I was mostly grousing about was why anyone would ever have bothered to know anything about me.

“Not everyone, but anyone, and you became a bit more worth looking into after the entirety of Mount Gloria rose up chanting your name.”

“They.

Did.

What?”

I  had faced the wastelands, and admittedly been terrified the entire time. I had faced Vaingloth, and admittedly been less than a second from a horrible death. I had even walked directly into a fragment of the god-killing, world destroying beast, and been completely destroyed by it. You would think after all that, I would be immune to panic.

You would be miserably wrong.

“Yeah. It’s why we ran over here now,” Fulgrox said.

When he said ‘ran’ I was pretty sure he was being literal, except maybe in Kalkit’s case who probably flew.

“The situation in Mount Gloria is unique and unstable,” Xalaria said. “And you are a pivotal component of it.”

I could run but it wasn’t going to help.

Actually I couldn’t run. Even the panic gripping my mind wasn’t enough to talk my body into that sort of effort. There were no reserves of strength in my legs for the terror to tap into.

In hindsight, that was probably a good thing, but then if I had run I’m not sure what difference it would have made with Kalkit able to track me wherever I tried to hide.

“You want her to return and what?” Zeph asked.

“Finish what she started,” Xalaria said.

“What I started was ‘dying horribly’ and I have to say I’m super eager to resume that.”

“Even if it would save your god?” Fulgrox asked.

There was a hope in his eyes, as though an appeal to the divinity within me would be the magic phrase to overcome the sense of self-preservation which I clearly had only a nebulous grasp on anyways.

“Save Sola? Nope. She would absolutely not want me to die horribly for her.”

“She’s a coward too then?” Xalaria seemed to think that was her magic phrase.

I could see why. A lot of people I’d known would have jumped up to fight to disprove her claim. 

Yeah. Jump up to fight the Blessed of Battles.

A lot of people I’ve known have been idiots.

“Sure. We’ll go with that if its what you can understand,” I said. It wasn’t the right answer. I mean, I’m kind of an idiot too, and I couldn’t deny that Xalaria’s words did hurt. The thing is though? I’ve gotten used to that pain. Oh, sure, on some level I was still trying to pick a fight with her, which was just as stupid as throwing a punch would have been, but on another level I really did mean what I said.

Was I a coward? Sure. I valued continuing my own existence over almost anything. Did I rise to do the right thing when I could? Nope. Definitely not all the time, or even often enough. 

Was it more complicated than that though? Yeah. Over the years, I’d sort of accepted that it was, and with Sola believe it me, I saw it even more clearly.

I was afraid. Of a lot of things. And that fear served a purpose. Could I do the right thing in spite of it. Sometimes, and those times counted too. More importantly though, by not hiding the fact that I was afraid from myself could I keep from turning inwards and tearing myself into something really terrible? Someone who liked to hurt others for example because the illusion of power that came with perpetrating violence made them feel less helpless? 

I wasn’t a good person. I knew that. But the things I did were done for better reasons and hurt people the least that I could.

Maybe that’s not a lot to be proud of, but its who I was, and Sola loved me for it, and that was what mattered.

“What are you willing to risk then? To see your god freed?” Kalkit asked as Fulgrox laid a hand on Xalaria to stop her from taking the bait I’d thrown out.

“Don’t you already know that?” I asked, even parts annoyed and worried that Kalkit might be asking simply to be polite.

“Your motivations and beliefs aren’t secrets, not as far as my god’s domain defines things,” Kalkit said.

“But you’ll be able to tell if I’m lying, right?” Like I said, the domain of ‘secrets’ was potentially a really terrifying one.

“Most lies are design to hide something,” Zeph said. “Kalkit always catches those, but that’s not every lie.”

“That’s oddly inconvenient,” I said. “Broad enough to be annoying and yet not precise enough to use as convincing proof.”

“You are not the first people to remark on that,” Kalkit said.

“For what it’s worth, I can hear lies of all types,” Helgon said. “But, you would all be fools to trust me.”

“Noted,” Xalaria said and locked her gaze on me as though the God of Battle gave her some special insights too.

“Listen to everything I say then, and understand me. I am not willing to risk anything for Sola. Because Sola is too valuable to risk. If the only means I have of getting her back is to kill Vaingloth, then Vaingloth needs to die, but I am not going to toss Sola away, or worse back into his clutches, on a half baked plan that ‘might work if we get lucky’. I do not get lucky. Things always turns to crap, the dice always bust, everything always falls apart. So no, I am not willing to risk myself to save Sola. We’re both too valuable for that, and, much more importantly, I think I have a better answer for how to handle Vaingloth.”