“It’s not about seeing the light of a new dawn. It’s not about being warm and safe. Sure, we hope for that. Sure, it’s the tangible goal in making all these underground passages, and saving all this knowledge. Why we do this though? Why we work to make space for a better tomorrow? It’s not so that we can see it. Even if what we’re working for arrives lifetimes after ours, even if it never comes, what we do here fulfills its purpose for us right now. In working to make our world better, we create the hope that sustains us. We make ourselves the people we want to be. We believe there is good still left in the world, because we become the good we believe in.”

– from the scribbled notes of a speech given by the Ratkin matriarch ‘Small Voices Can Speak To Us All’, after half the rebels in Mt. Gloria were captured in a raid and carted off to the Fire Portals.

We didn’t have a new sun above Mt. Gloria. The shining ball of light and (literally) blessed warmth which was still captivating people’s attention wasn’t technically the sun, and it wasn’t technically new.

“It’s so comfy though,” Sola said and the New Sun sparkled a little warmer.

“I am so glad it worked out,” I confessed. “After the, uh, problem with the castle, I was worried your new home might be a bit too big.”

“If this was my old ‘home’ as you call it, and it’s not my home, you all are, but if this had been what was called the sun then placing it that close to the city would have been a fairly notable problem.” Sola wasn’t distracted, because, you know, god, but she was definitely multi-tasking; talking to me, connecting with all the people who believed in her at last, and taking in her new…hmm, I suppose ‘temple’ was probably a more accurate term for it.

“The old sun? It’s still out there isn’t it?” I asked, and shifted to a more comfortable position on the rubble of the former castle.

You might think rubble wouldn’t be comfortable to rest on, and for normal rubble you’d be right. Normal buildings however aren’t blasted to a fine sandy mush and then baked to a nice warm consistency. If heaven was getting to lie down on a blanket of fresh baked bread, then I had found heaven.

Of course Sola protecting me from heat and fire meant that my gauge for how warm the flaming ruins of the castle were might have been a teeny bit off. I kind of suspected that was the case, since no one had come by to bother me yet.

That no one had any reason to presume I was still alive might have had something to do with that too.

When I released the accumulated power Vaingloth had stolen from the deaths of people over the course a couple of centuries, it had made a rather big boom. A fairly bright one too, though I had to rely on Sola’s reports for that. According to her, anyone who’d been looking up at the ‘flaming angel in the sky’ (I was technically a messenger of hers I guess) would have been temporarily blinded (lucky them) when a flame as bright as the first moment of creation blossomed above them.

She took care of things from there, using the scattered divine power of her domain, borrowing from other domains, and tapping the grace of those who knew and believed in her. In her hands, the fire I released became something like a tunnel to the true sun? People were going to say that her new temple was the sun, but having an object capable of generating the heat it was putting out for a few billion years hovering in the air above the planet would, according to Sola, cause a few tiny problems like tearing the world apart with gravitational stress and sterilizing it of all life with the seen and unseen light it would be emitting. Not to mention the whole ‘melt everything into a ball of molten slag’ which sounded like it’d be super fun for everyone.

So the actual sun was still where it belonged.

And where it always had been.

What we’d done was more a question of parting the veil which had been erected between our world and Sola’s true temple.

Erected by whom?

“I should be unhappy with you I believe,” the familiar voice of Meluna, the High Priestess of the Night said from rather disturbingly close to me.

“Should you?” I asked, not bothering to move. Meluna seemed to have a knack for confronting me when I wasn’t in the best of shapes, but this time at least I was pretty sure I wasn’t in imminent danger. “Your god has to have been pretty lonely for a while now. I’d think she’d be happy for a little company in the heavens, wouldn’t she?”

“And you considered that before you undertook this scheme?” Meluna asked.

“No. Honestly, I’m not that clever. Thinking about it now though, I’d have to guess that it’s something of a relief to her that she doesn’t have to shoulder the whole burden of protecting the world anymore.” I was making several tenuous guesses there, but they fit together so nicely I couldn’t help myself.

“Not that clever? Oh, you definitely should have been one of ours,” Meluna said. I could hear the wicked smile in her voice and took comfort in the fact that I was at least amusing her.

“I’m happy with the god who picked me,” I said, enjoying the warmth around me as it seeped into my long chilled bones.

“And what do you plan to do for her next?” Meluna asked.

“Whatever she asks, or whatever I think she needs,” I said. “Isn’t that how things are with you and the God of Night?”

“Our arrangement is somewhat unlike yours,” Meluna said. “As you say, we have had to do quite a lot of work to protect this world.”

“Only she could, right?” I asked.

“Your god has told you this?”

“Nope. Worked that out all of my own. Mostly from what you’ve said. Night didn’t die when the other gods did. I know you didn’t tell me that, but I, uh, I could tell.”

“Because you’re as much the Beast of the End as you are the woman you once were.” Meluna pronounced that like the verdict of a court, but I heard a sliver of space to make a closing counter-argument.

“I’m neither the beast, nor entirely who I was. But you already know that. I wouldn’t have reached the Factorum if you’d been unsure about what I was.”

“True enough.”

“And you also know I’m no threat to Night.”

“No threat? Oh I very certainly know that’s not true.” That Meluna sounded appreciative of that claim said that one of us was probably half mad and I could not be sure which one of us that was.

“We’re only here, like all of us, like every living and unliving thing, because of your God. I think you can trust that I’m inclined towards being rather grateful to her for that.”

“And what do you believe you should be grateful for?”

“When the beast was rampaging, when it tore apart the other gods who rose to fight it, your god was only one not to step onto the battlefield, wasn’t she?”

“That sounds rather cowardly. Should I take offense?”

“None is offered, so you’d be stealing offense I guess?”

“Oh you so should have been ours.”

“Maybe. I do like how your god works. Not fighting wasn’t cowardice. It was smart. While the other gods held off the beast and kept it distracted, she hid our world, cloaking us as only darkness can. The beast didn’t stop because it ran out of things to devour, it stopped because it thought it had run out of things to devour, and that’s because your god played to her strength and sheltered us when no one else could.”

That the God of Night’s actions also plunged us into centuries of cold and in a lightless, lifeless waste wasn’t the epitome of wonderfulness, but with the circumstances she’d been under I could not fault her in the slightest.

“Would you believe there are even Neoterics who have not worked that out?” Meluna asked.

“They can’t possibly be…” I stopped, thinking of just how far up his own ego Vaingloth had crawled. “I’m sorry, I was about to say something very stupid. Do continue please.”

That bought me an honest laugh from Meluna.

“Officially, I am here to offer our congratulations and to welcome the back the sun,” Meluna said. “I am not supposed to add ‘it took you long enough you old slacker’. I am under specific instructions not to convey that in fact.”

“I will make sure Sola does not receive that message then,” I said, completely aware that everything I heard, Sola could hear too.

Thankfully whatever ancient divine rivalry there was between the sun and the night was not rekindled by the friendly jibe.

“Also, I told a few people that I might be able to locate you, if it happened that you were still alive, and they seem to be arriving just about…now.”

I knew she’d vanished. Couldn’t see her go, but if I knew anything about Meluna it was that she had a love for dramatic gestures which I would never come close to equaling (and I’d risen on wings of flame to put a new sun in the sky, so I felt that was saying something).

“Over there!” Lucky’s voice called out from pretty far away. “I see something moving in the flames. It could be her.”

“Bring the water buckets up,” Smiles called out next. He was probably standing beside her and from the sound of it so where a bunch of other people.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just gimme a second. It’s really comfy here.”

“The buildings still on fire. It’s not safe in there. Let us come get you!” Lucky sounded worried for me. Which was mean of me, so I struggled up to a sitting position and found I was in better shape than I’d expected. 

Granted my measuring stick for how bad I could feel was a lot longer than it used to be, but, hazarding another guess, I decided I was probably in one, more or less, unbroken piece.

It was a day of surprises for everyone!

“We’re going to try to put out a bit of the flames so we can reach you,” Oolgo said, his deep Bugbear voice loud enough to blow the flames out (okay, it wasn’t) and let me figure out right where they were (not especially difficult).

I was about to tell them they didn’t need to worry. For one there wasn’t much building left. For another the fires that still burned weren’t going to be put out by water, or anything else. And lastly, I could make it out on my own. With a little tripping and stumbling, sure, but that was going to be my life so I kinda had to get used to it.

Except I didn’t. 

As I went to start moving, I felt the softest, most luscious furred head nuzzle up beside me. Before I had a chance to squeal in glee, MB had lifted me up in its jaw and tossed me on its back.

I knew it could have leapt straight out of the fires, but instead it strode gracefully through them.

Showing off.

Which, I mean, I could claim I wouldn’t have done the same were I in its place, but as mentioned, I am a bad liar.

I felt the moment we exited the flames as a pleasant heat dropping away. The city was far warmer than it had been but bathing in flames was a special delight only I got to enjoy it seemed. Happily though, I at least wasn’t cold anymore.

“Was that you?” Lucky asked. She was probably pointing up at the New Sun. Or maybe she was gesturing to the powdered ruins of the castle? It didn’t matter, the same answer was true for both.

“Nope. This is all of us,” I said. It sounded cool and humble, mostly because I’d been rehearsing it to sound like that but, if it worked at all, it was because it was the absolute literal truth. Everything that had happened, had been because there were a whole lot more people working to make it come about than just me.

“There she is,” Xalaria said said. “Told you she’d be fine.”

“To be fair, you said she’d be fine if anyone would be,” Fulgrox said. “And there don’t seem to be a lot of other people who are fine around here.”

“Fine dust perhaps,” Kilkat said.

“Not just dust,” I said. “Ashes. These are the ashes of those who’ve gone before. It’s their last gift to us. I know we’re all tired, but let’s see about making sure everyone get some so that none of us will ever be cold or lost in the dark again.”

And that’s how we began.

With the threat of the Neoterics on the horizon, and the threat of the Beast of the End hanging above us, we got to work on rebuilding our world.

Together.