“This is madness. You would have us style ourselves as ‘Eternal Lords’ because why? Because you imagine we can overthrow the gods? The very definition of the eternal? Do you not see the contradiction? Even if this mad vision of yours was practical and not the most deranged form of blasphemy imaginable, it would still argue against itself. If that which is truly eternal can be cast down and destroyed then by what measure could you claim to be eternal when the same could as easily be done to you? No sir, I will have no part in this. You cross lines which we dare not ever even venture near! Go to the Council if you will with your evidence of my crimes if you will since I shall certainty be presenting my accusations against this insanity.”

“As I always believed you would. The others disagreed of course. They said we needed you. That you held too much sway to not be included in our little cabal. I, on the other hand, find thirteen to be an inauspicious number, so, to be quite honest, I am quite grateful you have chosen to reject the membership which they demanded I offer you. I’d been afraid for a moment there that the evidence we assembled might be convincing, but you have more conviction than I guess. Bravo, sir. That leaves us, however, with just one matter to attend to.”

– High Accessor Olmen’s final interview with High Accessor Vaingloth before Olmen’s demise of ‘perfectly natural causes’.

The trip back to Mt Gloria felt a lot less perilous than the outward bound one. As usual though, my feelings can be pretty stupid.

Oh, sure, the deadly, maddened spirits weren’t an issue, largely because I didn’t want them to be. In hindsight, that might have been a mistake, ordering them away that is. Maddened spirits have to go somewhere after all and are staggeringly good at causing problems. Since those problems didn’t immediately involve me however, it was easy to overlook them. I just knew I didn’t feel like getting pulled down into a sink hole because a mountain spirit couldn’t conceive of any other expression for the absence it felt.

Also, for as wonderful company as Zeph can be, it was even more reassuring to have three other Blessed walking along beside us. I’d suggested Helgon could, and in fact should, join us (my plan would have worked even better with him there), but, as I’d expected, he opted not to, explaining that he was “much too at home in his labs to be up for any sort of adventures”.

A glance at Kalkit and the responding shrug had confirmed that Helgon wasn’t lying, but I was pretty certain he wasn’t telling the truth either.

Which was fine. If we didn’t all have our little secrets then what kind of fun would be left for Kalkit, right?

Of course it turns out that sharing a secret doesn’t revoke it’s status as a secret if you’re still keeping it hidden from someone, which made convincing them a bit easier that my plan wasn’t as impractical as the ‘we’ll figure it out when we get there’ approach they’d had in mind.

I still suspected that Kalkit had a different, better plan in mind and was keeping it quiet in case mine fell apart, but I couldn’t help but be a surprised that Fulgrox had thought that “winging it” was the right approach to taking down a Neoteric Lord. Xalaria? Yeah, she seemed hot headed enough to rush into her god’s arena of warfare and battle without anything but a hope and a dream (apparently ‘Strategy and Tactics’ belong to some other god?), but Fulgrox was devoted to the Harvest God, and harvests take planning?

Of course, saying that my Blessed companions ‘liked my idea’ is probably a bit strong. Zeph liked it, but I think that was a little bit based on her faith in me and a lot based on wanting to see Vaingloth dead no matter what it took. If it had been Zeph’s call, the trip back would have been a lot faster too.

But instead we walked.

Not ‘flew in Zeph’s arms’. Not rode atop MB’s soft and fluffy back.

Walked. Like with our legs.

Why?

I wanted Vaingloth to know we were coming.

Normally it wouldn’t be easy for him to sense us, but it doesn’t take god-like mystical acumen to notice a tiny glow dot on the horizon which was steadily getting brighter and closer.

The glow was, of course, me. I still couldn’t talk to Sola, something Vaingloth was no doubt well aware of, but her power was in me and with Fulgrox’s help I was learning, bit by bit, how to tease it out.

Had this been before the Sunfall there would have been hundreds of schools where I could have studied how channel the gifts of grace I was blessed with. All of that practical knowledge had been lost though, and what Xalaria, Fulgrox, and Kalkit could do, they had been required to reinvent themselves from first principals.

Zeph had helped a bit too, but her relationship to the divine was starkly different from the rest of us. The power she held was a part of her, not gifted from a god, and her ability to work with it came as much from the memories of the lives she’d once lived as from any practice she’d done in this one. She understood the most basic techniques we shared and some of the fundamental mechanics, which helped with the first lesson Fulgrox had provided, but what came naturally to her were feats I couldn’t replicate any easier than I could flap my arms and fly like Kalkit could.

After a few days of practicing at all the rest breaks we took, Fulgrox pronounced me ‘not a complete disaster’ as a divine acolyte. I could tell Xalaria didn’t have as kind an outlook on my progress, though part of that was probably concern over the fact that the person leading her into battle (sort of) was about as unsuited for battle as it was possible to be.

Kalkit, meanwhile, kept their thoughts to themselves.

I kind of liked that about Kalkit. Sure, they were judging me just like the others, but unless it became a problem, I wasn’t going to hear about how terrible I was as a divine host or wanna-be priestess.

With my ‘newfound mastery of my divine gifts’ I was able to do such exciting things as ‘glow a little brighter than before and intentionally instead of just as a side effect of existing’ and ‘provide a bit of warmth in a slightly larger area though not as big as when Sola was free to work her power through me’ and, best of all,  ‘light easily flammable things on fire’! 

I have to confess that last one was pretty fun once I worked out how to do it. I don’t have a good relationship with fire in general, but that’s because fire has always been something out of my control, a tool for punishment or a meager reward for far too much labor. Being able to set things on fire myself though? Getting to choose the flame and control the burn? Hehehe. I already loved Sola, but the fire thing? Delightful. Simply delightful.

Also, it made cooking a whole lot easier.

Yes, technically none of us ‘needed’ food, but ‘not needing’ and ‘not wanting’ are two very different things, and while Helgon wasn’t willing to come with us, he did insist on packing us the tastiest selection of foods I’d ever had. 

Don’t get me wrong, raiding Vaingloth’s private garden had been a mindblowing culinary experience, but Helgon understood a couple of little concepts called ‘spices’ and ‘flavor’. 

Did I eat far, far too much of our provisions at the first meal? 

Yes.

And I will not apologize.

We were in the wasteland, and I needed strength, and on my literal soul it was so good I could not stop.

Did that wind up costing us an extra day because I was incapable of any movement until I finished digesting the five hundred meals I’d eaten in one sitting? 

Yes.

I am still not going to apologize though.

Extra delay getting Sola back. More peril for the people in Mt Gloria. The chance that a spirit who wouldn’t listen to me would decide to attack at any moment. 

All worth it.

I already hated Vaingloth as much as I possibly could but if there’d been any room left to hate him more, the fact that he was responsible for feeding me a lifetime of horrible mush instead of even one meal like the one Helgon provided? Death was literally too good for him. There could be no forgiveness for such a crime. Ever.

That first meal on the road did restore a lot of my strength too. I wasn’t exactly up for long runs or any desperate struggles but the hike back to Mt Gloria seemed a lot more viable after I’d slept and my stomach wasn’t threatening to burst at any moment.

In the back of my mind, I’d expected I’d only be able to put up the “tough” facade I’d been wearing up to that point for a few hours and then I’d be forced to have Zeph carry me for the rest of the trip. That was still tempting from time to time as we crossed the miles of silent, empty ruins, but I was going to need all her speed and strength later so tiring her out by asking her to haul my carcass over days of rough terrain seemed overly self indulgent. 

MB was an alternative too, but it was feeling as nervous as I was and I wanted it to feel like it could rely on me, since it really didn’t have anyone else.

The closer we got though, the more real everything began to feel. In the Factorum, my plan had been a fanciful daydream. With each step on the road though, I was marching closer and closer to a reckoning that had been coming since before my great grandparents had been born. 

I’m not good at reckonings.

Or marching to my doom.

Fleeing to safety? Yep. That was much more my speed.

This world didn’t have any safety to offer me though. Vaingloth could never have forgiven what Sola and I did to him. Which was fine, because he never could have forgiven me for taking her from him before that. Or forgiven anyone for possessing power that he desired even before I found her.

We were doomed, she and I, before we made any choices at all. 

And then a city had risen up and chanted my name.

That put Vaingloth beyond revenge or lust for power.

Our existence, Sola’s and mine, had become antithetical to his.  In us, people were seeing another choice for who and what they could be. Who they could believe in. 

And maybe they were wrong.

Maybe they were madder than Vaingloth was.

I could offer no proof and wasn’t about to make the claim that I knew how to lead them to something good.

I didn’t need to though. All on their own people had figured out that, however bad things could go by believing in Sola, they would still be better off than they were where Vaingloth had brought them.

People may tolerate tyranny, they may even cling to it out of fear of the alternative, but they will never prosper under it.

Vaingloth had locked us into a eternal moment of torment by taking away the promise of a better future. 

Sola, by her sheer existence, spoke of the rising of new days. 

Had Vaingloth understood what that meant, he would never have used her as a glorified crop lamp. If he’d understood what she was, he would have destroyed her and any other fragment of her he could have found.

He hadn’t been afraid of her though, and he certainly was never of afraid of me.

I hung onto that thought as we approached Mt Gloria.

Vaingloth hadn’t been afraid of me, but he was going to be.