“We’re going to disrupt the very balance of life.”

“That is rather the point, given that the current balance is decidedly not in our favor.”

“I don’t mean with just the divine. I mean with everything. I know we’re going to preserve our own peoples but so much else will be lost.”

“If you feel there is anything of value, you’re free to include it in your city.”

“Birds. Fish. Bugs?”

“What of them? I plan to have an aviary for viewing and aquariums will provide most of the food my people will require. As for bugs, good riddance I say.”

“And what will your fish eat?”

“Other fish of course.”

“And what will those fish eat?”

“Other smaller fish? We need not work all that out you know. The miracles we will be able to work will easily be able to bridge any small gaps in the systems we create.”

“Yes, but so much will be lost.”

“Perhaps, but nothing that we care about.”

– High Accessor Helgon and Vaingloth planning their cities before the Sunfall

We’d just stolen the First Tender’s entire stash of divine fragments, so I couldn’t blame Theia for looking around in wonder at where they’d gotten to.

“What do you mean you sent them to your hoard? Where is that?”

“It’s safe,” I said, since I really wasn’t sure how to answer the question more clearly than that. “They’re safe so long as I hold them.”

She’s correct on that, Draconia confirmed for me.

She is, but she’s leaving out an important detail. Umbrielle’s tone held the same trepidation that I saw in Theia’s eyes.

“What aren’t you telling me,” she asked.

“Nothing! They’re safe! Really!”

Yes. No one may steal a treasure guarded by one of Draconia’s Chosen, Umbrielle said which was reassuring because that was exactly what I’d felt when I called on Draconia’s gift.

How had I known that I could do that? I hadn’t. Knowing something requires understanding it. I’d simply wanted to protect the fragments and I’d felt how to do it in response.

There is however a fairly simple method for Sasarai to reclaim his lost treasures, Umbrielle said and I saw understanding light up in Theia’s eyes before I worked out what Umbrielle was referring to.

“He can kill you,” Theia said. “If you’re dead, you’re not guarding anything anymore.”

“Well, yeah, but I’m not planning to give him the opportunity,” I said.

“He’s going to track you down past the ends of the world for this,” Theia said. “He has too. We’ve taken too much from him for anything else to be possible.”

“Have we?” I asked. “Becuase there’s a lot more that we can take from him.”

“Like what? This is the core of his power. These were what let him call for the miracles he’s been relying on for hundreds of years.”

“They made it easier for him. Draconia and Umbrielle said that. He can work miracles with the grace he has stored up in the Holy Tree. It’ll just be harder.” I was understanding my plan as I explained it, and was happy to hear that it was sounding reasonable so far.

“Does he seem like the sort of guy whose happy taking the harder approach to things?” Theia asked and I had to wonder how she knew about the First Tender at all. As far as I knew, he never left the Garden.

That gave me a moment’s pause.

“As far as I knew”? How far did that extend really? I certainly didn’t know where the First Tender was at all times. I don’t think anyone did. 

But the Thicket Walls were so high that nothing could get over them/

Right?

The question of “what about under them” sprang immediately to mind and I pictured the stately First Tender crawling through the tunnels beneath the Divine Tree. 

It seemed unlikely.

On the other hand though, would someone who’d stolen the powers of the gods build himself a prison he’d be locked in for all eternity?

Maybe. There were certainly people who stayed inside their homes all the time and preferred it like that.

The First Tender didn’t seem to be one of them though. We saw him out and about often enough, for all the big ceremonies and even some of the smaller ones. He always seemed to like being among his people, so I couldn’t picture him hiding away forever. Not if there was more to the world than what I’d been taught.

“He can chase us, but what are his chances of finding us? Night keeps the whole world hidden, and outside the Garden he won’t be on familiar ground anymore.”

She has a point. If we can leave this place, Sasarai will have a harder time drawing on his little shrub, Draconia said, and I could feel her eagerness to leave.

A harder time does not mean it would be impossible for him, and, as we are now, we could not withstand him even if he found us on the other side of the world from his reservoir of power. Umbrielle didn’t sound happy about that, merely resigned to it.

“There’s one place, or one sort of place, he couldn’t catch us,” Theia said, sounded decidedly unhappy with the idea she had in mind.

He can travel anywhere in the world, Umbrielle said, dismissing Theia’s claim, but I caught on to what Theia was thinking.

“There are places he can travel, but he won’t be able to call on his powers. Or if he does, he definitely won’t be the one to catch us,” I said with a nod to Theia. She was right. This was a terrible idea, but it would work. For sure. Right up until it didn’t.

A city of one of the other Neoteric Lords, Draconia whispered. You mean to hide us there. Where Sasaria won’t dare use his powers.

“He won’t dare expose us there either,” I said. “If we hide with one of the other Neoterics and he lets them discover that we’re there, they would definitely kill me and take the fragments for themselves, right?”

Without question, Umbrielle said.

In fact, Sasarai will do everything in his power to conceal your theft. The moment the other betrayers learn of his weakness they won’t hesitate to betray him as well.

“Seven is such a better number than eight, isn’t it?” Theia said. 

“And six is pretty than seven,” I said, it being all too easy to follow the line of reasoning the Neoteric’s subscribed to.

Having just lost one of their number, the prospect of the balance shifting again would send them all scrambling, Umbrielle said. If there is one thing which unites our betrayers, it is ruthless greed. Give them the sense that a watershed moment has arrived and they will turn ravenous in their hunger to consume all they can and be the last Neoteric standing.

“Huh. You know, when you put it like that…” 

“Yeah. That occurred to me too,” Theia said. “Just one little problem.”

“If we purposefully put them at each others throats, we’re going to be the first ones they wipe out.” I didn’t have to guess at that. Even as limited as my experiences had been I had a sense of how ruthless people worked. I’d seen “upstanding” and “virtuous” Sylvan’s cut down (verbally) close friends and loved ones when positions of prominence in a congregation opened up. For people who’d dared to desecrate the gods themselves? I was pretty sure the “cutting down” would be swift and entirely literal.

“So, maybe that’s our backup plan then?” It seemed like I reasonable option if we were caught dead to rights anyways. There was only one additional problem with it I could see. “Assuming there is an ‘our’ to this?”

Because, really, why should there be? Theia could escape on her own pretty easily. I knew the odds against me were absurd, and if “we” were doomed, then why should she face the wrath of someone who’d managed to kill all the gods and then spend the last two centuries getting more powerful than that?

“You thinking of giving up on me? Probably a smart move all things considered,” she said, with the sort of nonchalance that told me I’d said something very wrong.

“No. What? No. I mean you don’t have to…I’m confused,” I said. Because I am nothing if not supremely eloquent. “Why are you helping me?”

“Helping you? How I am helping you? You’re helping me. This is my mission we’re doing here,” she said, looking as confused as I felt.

“Your mission? This is my life!”

“Yeah! That I seem to be ruining!”

“Ruining? What? How? Are you…” I took a breath. This was getting ridiculous, even for me. “Okay. Stop. I think we’ve got some very different ideas of what’s happening here, and we are running out of time. Let’s just hit the important bits. I’ve got the divine fragments. You had planned to take them to find more people who they were drawn to right?”

“Right,” Theia confirmed, thankfully not adding any clarifications that would have given us anything further to argue over.

“So, that means we can work together, that we will work together until we’ve got some resolution to this?” I had no idea what resolution we could possibly find, but the idea of being stuck with Theia for the foreseeable future didn’t seem all that terrible.

“If you change your mind about that, you need to give me the fragments,” she said.

“I thought you couldn’t hide them all?”

“Maybe. If this gets to be too much for you though, if you need to come back here for your family, or because Sasarai makes you an offer you can’t refuse, you’ve got to promise to give me the fragments. He can’t…”

I held a finger to stop her.

“The divine prisons are mine. MINE. I am their guardian and they are my treasure. The divine fragments within them belong to no one. I don’t know what Night’s blessing is like but my blessing is more than power and communion. My blessing comes with duty. Sasarai gets the prisons back from me by only one means. ”

I felt a shadow of Draconia’s power manifesting around me.

We’re not quite ready to pit ourselves against Sasarai, Draconia said. Though, believe me, I understand the temptation all too well.

I understood how impossible the challenge would be, how much vaster he was than both Draconia and I, even with his constellation of deities beyond his reach. Draconia had studied him since the Sunfall and the picture she shared was beyond daunting.

And that was fine.

If he wanted his gods back, he would have to destroy me and I would fight him with the full knowledge of that in mind. Maybe I couldn’t win, but I would hurt him as terribly as I could. He would destroy me but not without being diminished, and I would make certain that his wounds were all too visible to his fellow Neoterics.

“Then it sounds like we’re both in this to the end then…partner,” Theia said and extended her hand.

I wasn’t sure what the gesture meant, until Draconia shared a memory with me of people shaking hands as a sign of agreement and camaraderie.

“Partners,” I said, clasping her surprisingly warm hand in mine.

Theia gave me a small smile at that and started to say something but caught herself and changed to, “So, our next step is going to figure out how to get out of here.”

“How did you get in?” I asked and then shook my head. “No! Don’t tell me. The First Tender’s not getting the gods back unless he kills me but if I’m captured he’ll know spells to draw out the things I know, and I don’t want to risk any of your secrets.”

Theia chuckled at that.

“You are definitely not what I expected.”

“That makes two of us. I’m not what I expected either,” I said, feeling like my old life had crumbled to leaf dust already. “In fact, maybe that’s exactly what we need.”

“What do you mean?”

“Can you get us back to the surface? I think I know exactly how to get us out of here.”