“It is strictly agreed therefor that there will be no empowering of Blessed following our Ascension.”

“If we must, Vaingloth, but I still feel that there is a great deal we learn with a few test cases, not to mention the value empowered assistants could bring to our endeavors.”

“Yes, Helgon, that is quite the point. With a cadre of Blessed followers one of us might conceive of an endeavor to eliminate one or more of the others.”

“That is not at all the problem Dyrena. Of course we can have faith in one another. If we lacked that this endeavor would be doomed to failure before we’d reached this stage. No, the issue we must avert, the one which prevents us from allowing any Blessed to arise is the danger of reconstitution.”

“All experimentation to date indicates that even the possibility of one fragment retaining the power to draw in its other, missing remnants is borderline at best.”

“What we are doing is unprecedented Helgon. Your experiments cannot illuminate this future for us, and there is tremendous peril.”

“Is there though, Vaingloth? With the power my people will provide me, and the fragments I’ll have collected no single gods, or more likely the broken fragments of one, would be able to stand against me, and I must assume the same would be true of you as well.”

“It is not a reborn god we must concern ourself with. Remember that which we summon and banish will be capable of returning should too large of a presence emerge within the Divine Realm. Even if a reborn god could not stand against us, its need for vengeance could do unto us what we are about to do unto them.”

– High Accessors Vaingloth, Dyrena, Helgon, and Sasarai lying to each other about long term plans none of them would ever get to enact.

Nobody wanted my brother. I wasn’t supposed to be gleeful about that. Only a bad person, and a horrible sister, would be happy that a whole constellation of god fragments had looked at my brother and said ‘nope, not interested’. 

And it really wasn’t fair. He was the only family I had left. And I did treasure him.

I mean I literally treasured him.

He was part of my hoard. If anyone tried to take him from me (aside from Kam himself deciding to leave because I was horrible) I would destroy them. Not injure. Not reprimand. Not hesitate at all. It might have been Draconia’s influence, or maybe just another facet of my horrible personality, but I didn’t have enough precious things to take any chances with the one person who’d stayed with me.

But I was still fighting back a smile at being the only Blessed in the family.

“It might be because you still stink,” Theia said.

Which was certainly unkind, and I couldn’t blame Kam for taking offense.

“That’s not true! I cleansed and anointed twice today! And I washed off all the blood and stuff I got on me from the train. Tell her Jilya! Tell her I don’t stink!”

I could have been cruel there, and it was tempting, because, again, I’m horrible, but I was pretty sure I knew what Theia was actually saying, and I did owe Kam a lot.

“Not that kind of stink. It’s the grace the First Tender took from us, and our connection to the big shrub,” I said, hearing Draconia’s words in my voice, though in this case I was the only one speaking them.

“Big shrub?” Kam asked looking as confused as I had the first time someone had profaned ‘Holy Mazana’s’ name before me.

“The Divine Tree, our not-actually ‘Holy Mazana’, it’s only divine because it has a lot of stolen grace bound up in it and it’s about as far from ‘holy’ as something could be.” It felt weird to say that so freely. How long had it been since I’d had literally burned out my own tongue before uttering even a single word of discontent with ‘Our Great Protector’? Two days? Maybe? I shook my head. It had been a lot longer than that. I’d been paying lip service to beliefs my heart had rejected years ago. I’d been hiding from everyone but no one more than myself. It was still hard though. I still waited to see Kam’s response, a flinch lurking under my skin at the condemnation that I expected to come leaping out.

“Oh, I get it. We’ve been in the Garden, so it’s like the First Tender has us marked?” Kam said, a smile of understanding beaming from him.

“Yeah. Those fragments can all smell him all over you,” Theia said. “It’s not their favorite thing.”

“Pff, yeah, I can see why. So how do I scrub that off? Is there like an anti-Garden bath I can take or something?”

Seriously? This was my brother? How?

“It’ll fade in time, I think, especially if you don’t use any gifts Sasarai gave you,” Theia said.

“He didn’t give us anything.” That was so painfully clear me. I’d credited him with the gifts I’d give to him when they were mine. Mine.

“Yeah, but he did teach you how to use them,” Theia said. “Or probably just people who worked for him, but the effects the same.”

“Wait, do I still stink then?” I was certain I was more offended by the notion than Kam was, and I didn’t try to hide it.

“It is so tempting to tell you that you do,” Theia said, mischief sparkling in her eyes, “But you have had a rough day, and you did save all those people, so, no, you don’t smell like Sasarai’s blasphemy any longer. I honestly can’t tell what you smell like. Maybe what Sylvans are supposed to smell like? Or maybe that’s Draconia mixed with Diyas and a hint of Polsguls? You’re not doing anything at the moment, so it’s hard to tell.”

“Wait, if we smell bad because of the First Tender, how did she ever get Blessed in the first place?” Kam asked, showing more interest in things that weren’t himself than I was used to from him.

“No idea,” Theia said. “I’d guess Draconia wasn’t in a position to all that picky?”

It was far more than that, Draconia said, speaking to both of Theia and I. If Jilya hadn’t held my domain in her heart, I couldn’t have so much as whispered to her. She was the only one who visited us besides our captor in almost two centuries but it would have meant nothing if she wasn’t who she chose to be.

Which suggested the hand of some guiding force I was not entirely comfortable contemplating. I’d been under the control and guidance of a ‘higher power’ I’d believed in with all 

“Or one of the other divine fragments could have reached out to bless her, right?” Theia said.

No. She is mine. Draconia’s wasn’t answering Theia’s question. She was making me feel better, and I appreciated it. I’d lost my family, my home, and my ‘Great Protector’ because those had all been lies. In their place I’d found the things I could put my faith in, and that was a treasure beyond price.

“It weird only hearing part of the conversation,” Kam said. “I’m jealous.”

“You don’t sound jealous,” Theia said. “In fact you’re taking this a lot better than you should be.”

“I don’t know, a little while ago, I had a knife to my throat, and mom and dad did too. I kind of figured out the sort of guy the First Tender was when he said they were going to bleed me out slowly and make our parents watch, so they’d put on a good performance when it came time to talk to Jilya.”

I knew I’d rescued my family, but I hadn’t understand what I’d rescued them from, or the damage Sasarai had done in the short time he’d had them in his clutches.

“You wanted to be drafted though. You wanted to fight for the Tree,” I said, anger doing a temporarily passable job of holding back a fresh round of tears.

“Well, yeah, but I guess that was kind of stupid too. I mean I just wanted the good life that came from it. And to be looked up to. And, you know, to protect people. That seemed like a good thing too.”

“Yeah. Yeah it did,” I said. 

How many Sylvans had been feed to the roots fighting the monsters Sasarai controlled? 

The temperature in the room started to rise and it wasn’t Draconia’s fire that was doing it.

It was mine.

Our world was built on corpses and sustained by the creation of new corpses, and it didn’t have to be like that. 

We could be better.

We wanted to be better.

But that didn’t serve the small number of people who’d decided they were the only ones who mattered and the rest of us existed as currency to be spent on whatever they desired. 

“You said, the others were debating what to do next?” I asked Theia.

“I’m not sure it even counts as a debate, but, yeah they’re trying to come up with something.”

“Good. I think I can settle that debate.”

“Are her eyes on fire?” Kam asked.

I dimmed that down. I was going to be speaking to both Blessed and Gods. Best not to start off on too contentious a foot.

“Aww, you shouldn’t have told her,” Theia said. “I wanted to see where she was going with that.”

“Oh, you will,” I said. “I think they’re all missing something. Before we talk to the other Blessed though, I need to talk to Helgon. Alone.”

“Are you sure?” Kam asked. “I said I wasn’t going to leave you alone.”

“You’re not,” I said. “Believe me. You…”

I hugged him. 

My stupid brother.

MY stupid brother.

“I can’t tell you what it means that you stayed, you butt.”

“Hey, you need me, I’m here,” the butt said, and I knew he would be. 

Even if he stunk, even if I couldn’t offer him anything beside being his sister and having his back like he had mine. I had him because he had me. Maybe we hadn’t had a choice about being born into the same family, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t make a choice to be in one that was more than the inertia of being together and some meaningless blood history.

“Yeah. Me too,” I said. “Go with Theia to the lab though. See what you think of the arguments the other Blessed are making. You won’t be able to hear their gods, but they can tell you what the gods are saying.”

“One question though, are they really gods? I mean the First Tender never claimed to be, and Holy Mazana is just a big reservoir right? So are these things really gods or are they just pretending too?”

“We’re not pretending, but we are no longer the gods we once were. We are fragments, and it is only through people like your sister that we can act on this plane and connect to others anymore,” Draconia said, speaking with my voice. She hadn’t asked in words, but I had consented when I felt her intention.

“Share with me what you talk about with Helgon will you?” Theia said.

“Maybe,” I said. “Depends what bribes you’re ready to offer.”

“Oh. We’re at the bribery stage now are we?”

“I do like treasure,” I said.

Theia rolled her eyes at that but I saw the smile hiding at the edges of her mouth.

She took Kam away and I turned to find Helgon waiting behind me with his hands folded together, patiently allowing me to explain why I’d summoned him.

“You were part of the cabal that destroyed the old world, correct?” It was a simple question and one which held less malice than I’d expected. Maybe because he was already dead, though that clearly didn’t seem like a sufficient payment for his crimes.

“I was.”

“And you had a plan to destroy the rest of the cabal.”

“I did.”

“Then simply tell me this; which step in your plans is this?”