“So, tell my Dyrena, what sort of paradise do you plan to create?”

“I won’t be creating a paradise at all Helgon. Quite far from it in fact.”

 “I am not sure I take your meaning. Certainly you can’t mean to organize a hell for your survivors to suffer in, can you? That seems terribly out of character.”

“And what might you imagine my character to be?”

“I should hesitate to say, lest you find the admiration displeasing.”

“Unfounded admiration can be tedious, and in these days I find little admirable anywhere I look.”

“Events do seem to be trending in a more dire direction than our first conversations suggested.”

“Yes. Then it was hypotheticals. Ideas untarnished by confrontation with reality.”

“Would you have us stop then?”

“It is far too late for that. You’ve seen what has happened to the others who raised their voices in opposition. Those who remain in our circle are no longer capable of choosing anything but destruction.”

“Destruction which can be turned to the service of a new creation though, no? Is that not still the goal we all strive towards?”

“In name? Most certainly. It will be a creation designed by those who would see the world burn to light their path to power though, so what can be created but the most exquisite of hells?”

“Not all of us crave power though. Innovation need not only benefit the one who innovates.”

“Perhaps not, but will it benefit any of those sacrificed to see it come to pass?”

“It would not, no more than it can benefit those who die in the senseless conflicts of today.”

“And for you, moral neutrality is achieved by virtue of the mortality of those to be sacrificed. They were going to die anyways, so what does it matter.”

“As you say, we cannot save them, but at least striving towards a future where prosperity can be the domain of all holds some nobility over one where all are designed to suffer.”

“Which is why they will destroy you before overlong. And why they will destroy me first.”

“What other paths are open to us then?”

“Perhaps none, or perhaps one that none have dared walk before.”

– High Accessor Dyrena wavering on the precipice of explaining her master stratagem to Helgon.

I didn’t have a family anymore. They were gone. They weren’t mine. They’d chosen to let me go.

That was what I woke up to banging around in my head.

“Jilya, you okay?” Kam asked, rousing in his chair beside my bed. “If you need more sleep, it’s fine. The ghost guy said to take as long as need. All that healing you did was a lot I guess.”

I looked around the room.

We weren’t in a pod (which was relief), but I had no idea whatsoever where we were (which was not a relief). Notable elements of the room included stacks of books (interesting), wall art in styles I’d never even heard of much less seen before (frightening in some cases, gorgeous in others), and the aroma of recently applied cleaning chemicals. Conspicuously absent however was any sign of my mother or father.

“Where are they? What happened?” I asked.

“Ghost guy, Helgon I think? He’s got them in some lab room he said.” Kam sounded pretty disinterested in something that raised the most piercing of distress cries in my head.

Helgon, one of the Neoteric Lords, destroyer of the world that had been, had my parents in a laboratory?

“What. Is. He. Doing. With. Them.” I felt Draconia’s fire rising within me with each word.

He is not referring to your parents, Draconia said before the misunderstanding lead to a new calamity. Helgon and the other Blessed are in one of his meeting rooms revising their earlier strategy. Your parents have departed with the other refugees from Low Town.

“They left?” I said and amended my question to remove the confusion ambiguity. “Our parents, they left?”

“Oh, yeah. They’re going on to some place called Mt. Gloria. It’s supposed to be safer there.”

“And you stayed?” That made almost no sense at all.

“Uh, yeah, obviously.”

“Why?” I didn’t mean to be rude but, seriously, why would he?

“You were out. Someone needed to look after you.” Kam sounded as confused as I was, leaving me to wonder if we were actually capable of communicating with one another.

Except for the part where he was still mine?

He was?

It surprised me as well, Draconia said. But people are surprising sometimes.

“What about mother? Or father?” I asked, already knowing the answer, absolutely not wanting to hear the answer, and just as absolutely incapable of avoiding it.

“They…uh.” Kam didn’t want to repeat what they’d said. 

Because it would hurt my feelings. 

As though I didn’t already know.

As though I hadn’t heard the hate in their voices for the very idea of sinning against the Holy Tree or the First Tender.

As though I could possibly be unaware of the abomination I had become in their eyes.

“They left me. Did they leave you too?” I asked, the answer to that question somehow even more painful than the answer to the first.

“No. They wanted me to stay with you. They knew you needed someone.”

They did?

“What did they say?” I asked, fairly certain that Kam had misheard or misunderstood them.

“I mean, not much, the train was leaving pretty quickly. A whole bunch of folks wanted to stay and thank you but Helgon kind of shoved them on to the other train and told them they’d see you again in Mt. Gloria once you’d recovered.”

My parents hadn’t been planning on that. I could feel it.

They’d left because they were drowning in confusion and couldn’t bear to see what I’d become. 

But they’d left Kam.

Their precious Kam.

That didn’t make sense.

Sometimes things don’t. As you say, they were lost in confusion, they’re whole world shattered before them. Trust me when I say that can lead to some seemingly inconsistent decisions.

Seemingly? I asked.

That they left says something, that they left your brother says something as well, if those seem contradictory it likely means that the situation is more complex or nuanced than they or you can fully see. Give it time. That may not make anything better, but it will makes things clearer I believe.

Which left me with the question I really did not want to ask myself; did I want things to be clearer? Did I want them to be better.

They’d left me. Even if that was only to make sense of the new life and world before them, could anything, and did I even want anything, to change the fact that they’d left.

If they appeared in the doorway saying ‘oh my daughter, we are so sorry, can’t we just forget it and go back to the family we were’, would I say yes?

No. 

I couldn’t.

The bond we’d had, the one that let me pull them from the scene of their execution, they’d walked away from that and in doing so revealed it to be a lie. A lie I’d believed enough to   work magic through, but one I could never cling to again.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Kam said, reaching over and hugging me.

Hugging me? What? Why?

Oh. I was crying. 

Stupid eyes.

I wanted to push him away. He wasn’t supposed to be nice to me. He was an idiot. And he got everything. And…

And I’d gotten him. He was my only family now.

So I hugged him back and stopped crying.

After a minute or two I stopped crying.

Stupid eyes.

Fortunately I was able to wipe my eyes off on his shirt a moment before the door to the room slid to the left into the wall and Theia leaned in.

“Umbrielle said you were up and wanted me to get you some food. I thought I’d check to see if you were feeling up for it though. Either of you.”

“Oh, I can definitely eat!” Kam said, because of course he could.

I checked in and found my own appetite…missing?

I can sustain you, Draconia said, you’ll enjoy eating more than divine sustenance though.

And with that the fact that I hadn’t eaten since my entire life collapsed came roaring in and out of my as my stomach protested the lengthy fast.

“I think I could start eating the walls here,” I said, unable to hide the embarrassing growl from my guts.

“I don’t know the Sylvan diet, but I can promise that Helgon’s cooks can come up with something you’ll like better than the walls,” Theia said, and leaned back out of door for us to follow her.

Kam trotted along right beside leaving me to bring up the rear as though they were some kind of honor guard clearing a path for me. I wasn’t thrilled with that image but I consoled myself with the knowledge that the only reason Kam was in front of me was because he wanted to get to the promised food first.

“Once you’ve had something to eat, we could use you in the debate room,” Theia said.

“Debate room? I thought Helgon had everyone in lab?”

“Everything here can double as lab space. Or a library annex,” Theia said. “Labs are where people get things done though, and we are definitely not getting anything done.”

“I thought you were setting up new plans?”

“Yeah. So did we,” Theia said and I could feel her eye roll of exasperation despite being behind her. “Our gods aren’t quite able to come to the agreement we’d been hoping though.”

Why anyone is surprised that Battle is hot headed astounds me, Umbrielle said.

Harvest has raised some interesting and compelling points, Draconia said, but I still hate their suggestion that we spend the next century growing a base to work from.

Theia glanced back at me with the clearest of expressions – ‘can you see what I’ve been dealing with’ and I had to wince in acknowledgement. If the main argument was between immediate action and long term plans, I could easily imagine the points each side was making, and could see value in ones which my heart just rebelled against.

I wanted Sasarai dead. He was a threat and his crimes were unforgivable. The sooner he was dead the better.

Sasarai was also immensely powerful though, and part of a delicate web entities who were all capable of annihilating the world again if they saw fit.

“I have no idea how I’ll be able to help there,” I said, a desire to stay as far away from that room as possible rising within me.

“I think they mostly want to see if they can build a consensus from a wider array of gods, or at least their fragments.” Theia said, turning to stroll backwards so she could talk to me directly.

“I thought the gods were dead?” Kam asked.

“They’re not,” I said at the same time Theia said “They are.”

“So I’m right and wrong?” Kam asked.

“Pretty much,” Theia said. “The gods of the Fallen World died, but bits of them are left behind, and are the heirs to the domains the gods had responsibility for. So they’re dead, just not dead like we’ll be someday.”

“Huh, okay, yeah so they’re like Mazana’s leaves then, like not the full god, but a part of it that’s still got that holiness and stuff.”

“That’s…” I started to say not how it worked, but on reflection, it was a lot closer than I’d expected Kam to ge to understanding things, “not precisely right, Mazana’s not a god it turns out – more like a big bucket – but yeah, otherwise I think that’s right, isn’t it?”

I glanced over to Theia for confirmation, but Helgon was the one who answered since he was waiting for us as we stepped into the kitchen 

“For cursory explanation, this is splendid. Completely wrong as well, though that is an artifact of the limitations of our mortal languages which we all must labor under. Fortunately for you, there is a path to greater clarity if you should desire!”

“Years of study?” I guessed.

“That is always ideal,” Helgon said. “In this case I was considering something more expedient however, to wit, rather than explaining your Blessed state, have you considered asking the myriad of divinities you carry if any of them would share their blessing with him?”