“Do you imagine we will experience the same ebbs and flows of the grace which the gods currently contend with?”

“That seems likely Helgon. Why do you ask?”

“Sasarai mentioned something about how the naturalistic patterns he’s planning to use for his ‘Divine Tree’ will be especially adapted to such changes. I’m considering if that is something we should suggest the others adopt as well? I know you’ve been working on a similar storage issues though Dyrena and I didn’t want to step on your toes as it were.”

“This is very considerate of you Helgon, but in this case my toes are quite safe. Sasarai’s assertion is only arguably correct. His storage mechanism assumes there will be regular cyclical changes in grace, because he’s most familiar with natural processes which follow various seasonal or day/night cycles. My projections show that while the Neoterics are likely to experience variable levels of grace generation, the variations will be on an irregular schedule.”

“Have you shared this with Sasarai?”

“Not as yet.”

“Is this the sort of thing he doesn’t need know?”

“Quite possibly. The other Neoterics seem to be designing fairly idiosyncratic systems for collecting their power. Each will have unique pitfalls, but the diversity may prove to be useful.”

“That would be humorous would it not?”

“Given the impact on the planet’s diversity our scheme will have?”

“And it’s divine diversity. Replacing the myriad of deities we can call on now with twelve gods who will answer no ones pleas but who are in turn dependent on the meager diversity they can muster suggests some form of cosmic justice lurks in the future.”

“Would that I could believe in justice, cosmic, divine, or otherwise.”

“But of course the world has justice in it.”

“And where would I look for this justice?”

“I would suggest a mirror, after all are you not part of the world?”

– Helgon and Dyrena planting seeds together.

The expression I wore was one of abject confusion and horror. Certainly I had done well? I was deserving of praise wasn’t I? I had executed my master’s plans and delivered to him the resources from “every other” Neoteric in the world. It was the opening and closing shot of a war that could never be allowed to start and was entirely unavoidable.

The horror was a reflection of Sasarai’s own.

After all I had just revealed “our” treachery in a space that was imperfectly cloaked.

I mean, don’t get me wrong. It was a good cloak. I should have had every reason to believe that it would keep our words private.

And Sasarai had confirmed that we were in a location where it was safe to speak.

So the other Neoterics just couldn’t be watching us and hearing literally every word I spoke? Right?

I am not the Blessed of Acting, I’m not even sure if any fragments of the God of Acting remain. If they do though, I was their avatar in that moment based on how very hard I fought to keep a manic grin from shattering the mask I was wearing.

“No…no…what have you done?” Sasarai asked.

I hated giving him any credit, but he hadn’t gotten where he was by being a complete idiot. He understood exactly what I was really saying there. 

If I telling the truth, then every other Neoteric was going to have to strike immediately before he had a chance to consolidate the power the divine fragments offered him. If I was telling the truth, I’d tipped the balance of power off the edge of cliff and we were all caught in a moment terrible free fall.

Of course I could have been lying too. He new the claim I was making was a partial lie. He knew I wasn’t an agent working in his name. He knew I hadn’t discovered the secret to raiding the vaults the Neoterics used. He absolutely knew I wasn’t going to give him power over everything and everyone.

With all of those, I had to be lying. Playing for time. Trying to goad the other Neoterics into attacking him before he could regain the divine fragments I’d taken from him.

And that would have been a great idea! In fact it was close to what my original idea had been. There was only one tiny thing wrong with it, one itty bitty detail that Sasarai had gotten wrong.

I did know how to break into the vaults.

And I wasn’t alone.

Not anymore.

“Oh….oh no!” I said, letting the color drain from my face. “Are we not…can they hear us?”

Sasarai looked at me is stark disbelief, because of course the other Neoterics were listening to our every word.

Or they had been. It was hard to imagine that they weren’t teleporting to their vaults or something similar to discover if my claim was correct.

A tremor shook the ground and I felt several blasts of rage rip across the surface of the world.

Someone had noticed that I wasn’t lying. A lot of someone’s it sounded like.

“We need to hide!” I said, calling a divine fragment to my hands, my very best panic coating my words in pure poison as the true cloak of Night descended on us.

That was the last bit of theater I needed to perform. Either the other Neoterics believed my show or they were too distracted by the loss of their access to godly domains, in either case I had nothing more to sell them on.

“I will kill you. I will kill this world!” Sasarai began to grow, manifesting more of his power as he prepared a spell that would do something unutterable to both myself and Draconia.

It wasn’t an unreasonable response.

I had pretty much just killed him, and if he was going to die why would someone like him think the world had any reason to exist without him?

“You could do that,” I said, dropping the subservient act with the greatest of relief, “but why would you want to when there was so much to bargain for?”

“BaRgAin?” Sasarai’s voice had turned so inhuman he was barely able to produce a single word but he managed to croak it out the right one in time.

“I have something you want, now more than ever I would think,” I said, as calm as a frozen pond. 

I’d thought I was going to be terrified at this moment, and I’d been right. What I hadn’t known was that past a certain point, fear falls away. Sasarai was absolutely capable of destroying me. He was capable of smashing Draconia into small enough pieces that she would never pose a threat to him again (and not be terribly useful but rational thoughts like that were definitely unlikely in the face of what I’d done). 

I could feel his power surrounding me, bearing down with enough weight that my bones would have shattered if they weren’t protected by dragon scales and all of Draconia’s good will.

I knew I wouldn’t survive and I didn’t care. I didn’t want to die, but I had to do this, for the world, for the people I cared about, and most of all, for myself.

I showed Sasarai the divine fragment I’d called forth. It wasn’t one of Night’s – the true cloak that shielded us from the other Neoterics for a moment was a gift from Meluna, where the limited one had been Theia’s doing. Instead I held a fragment of Diyas, the God of Healing, but not the one which had been Sasarai’s stolen originally.

I had all of a split second to wonder if Sasarai could tell that before he swiped it from my hand and began to try to make use of it.

Which was rude.

And also something I wasn’t about to let happen until he made the deal I wanted.

With a snap of my fingers, it disappeared from his grasp though – what was mine was mine – settling back into my hoard where it belonged.

“Not so fast. You have something I want.” This part I wasn’t at all sure of, but in a sense it didn’t matter either. I’d either get what I really wanted or I wouldn’t leave the temple I was standing and either way, Sasarai was beaten.

“What.” With a glimmer of hope luring him onwards, Sasarai returned to a more restrained form, though none of his power had dissipated.

“I’ve seen the world outside the Garden now. You lied to us about a lot of things, but you weren’t kidding at how awful it is out there. The things that walk in the wasteland are going to give me nightmares for years, and I know you, but the other Neoterics could be anything. If I have to take my chances with one of you, at least I know how to work with you.”

“What do you want?” If there was a god dedicated to annihilating patience, Sasarai would have been their Blessed in that moment.

“I want my home back. I want my Holy Tree. I want to be able to go the Garden again. I hated my life in there, but if I can be who I am now, I can’t think of a place that would be safer to be.” I said, uttering not a single lie in the process. “Especially if you were the only Neoteric to have any of the divine fragments. I’m not asking you to shower me with honors, but I am willing to give you the divine fragments in my hoard – the ones that will be too dispersed for any of you to find if you kill me – in exchange for what I asked for.”

None of that was a lie.

Not directly.

Only by omission.

“They will not allow this,” Sasarai said.

“Does it matter what they allow at this point?” I asked, conjuring Diyas’ divine fragment to my hand again.

“No,” Sasarai said, taking the fragment from me delicately. “No, it does not.”

“We have accord then?”

“For you alone. Let your penance be that you shall never again see the family you cared so much about that you could steal them from me as well.”

“I understand,” I said, and I did.

I’d just won.

“I will have your hoard then,” Sasarai said, new confidence dispelling the terror which had gripped him.

“And I will have what is MINE,” I said.

Sasarai’s confidence blinded him for the instant it took before the light that erupted from me did the job far more thoroughly.

“Your hoard!?” he objected, unable to conceive of what had happened.

“YOU ARE HOLDING IT.” Could I say it was my voice that spoke? I don’t know. There was FAR too much divine power suffusing my being, more than my soul could ever have held even if I’d become a True Immortal, unlike the pitiful little wretches that called themselves the Lord of the world.

As it was, claiming the Holy Tree Mazana as my own turned out to be both the best and worst idea I’d ever had.

On the plus side, Sasarai had totally missed the opening I’d asked for and agreeing to our deal had let end the last threat he’d posed everyone else. On the minus side, hundreds of years of accumulated grace from a city full of absolutely devout believers, augmented by every technique Sasarai had been able to employ was enough to melt me body and soul and there was literally nothing I could do to prevent that.

I was not the Holy Tree and without it’s incredibly specific and purpose built structure, the grace I’d claimed as mine was sufficient to blast not only me from the face of the world but also a fair portion of the world as well.

I hadn’t counted on that.

I’d never understood exactly how vast the gods had been.

This is more than you. This is more than even I. Draconia’s voice was lost in a rush of joyous power as things within me I’d never understood burned. 

As you say though, you are not alone.