“You want me to make Life Shielding charms Vaingloth? Whatever for?”

“It may have escaped your notice Helgon, but one of our number is excessively adept at the necromantic arts. It seems worthwhile to design some protections from those arts. Perhaps so that the rest of us might be more capable of assisting her, let us say. Something we would only be capable of if we were able to tolerate the environments in which she performs her more sophisticated workings.”

“Would we? I mean, certainly I could imagine it being unpleasant to be exposed to any stray energies she has during her more esoteric casting – assuming she performs documented experiments at all that is – do you know if she follows the Sandust-Hillver Experimental Standards or the Grishak Standards – if she’s a Grishak follower it will be a nightmare to reconcile her results with Insikir’s. He is so adamantly Sandust, with the High Rationalization modifications too. Really, we should speak to them all about adopting the Generalized Faolin approach for reporting. It would save us so much time and make interpolation between the various coordinate spaces they reference so much less prone to error. Uhm, what we speaking of?”

“Life shielding charms.”

“Oh, and why would we need those?”

“Because for the moment we are still very mortal.”

“Well, yes, but we’re hardly likely to be meddling with deep necromantic research now are we? That’s what we have Malgenia for, and, really, do you see any of us holding a candle to her mastery? Why I believe I could train in her arts for the rest of my lifetime and still not arrive at where she is presently, much less where she would be by then.”

“Of course. She is our specialist, but even specialists can require assistance, and we should be ready to provide it should her tasks require more time than we have allotted. This is not an endeavor which we can allow to stray outside out our deadlines after all.”

“Oh! Is that all. Well, I am pleased to say you have no worries there. She’s already completed her assigned duties. She’s currently working on some related projects.”

“I see. That’s a bit worrisome. And what might these related projects be?”

“It’s rather technical I’m afraid. I can’t claim to exactly follow what she was describing. It sounded very exciting though. Something about a form of necromancy capable of affecting even immortal targets. I imagine she means to make the technique available if any gods remain that we need to dispatch, or something like that.”

– High Accessor’s Helgon and Vaingloth discussing why there was little to no point trying to devise defenses against their necromantic co-conspirator.

I could have kissed her. Hell, I probably should have kissed her.

She hated me! She was willing to try killing me!

Responsibility was the absolute best.

First time you, or maybe anyone, has ever formed that thought. Beauty was being sarcastic because that is what she does. That I love her for it annoys her even more, which, obviously, makes it all the better.

“Who am I?” I asked, failing to suppress even a single jot of my delight and intrigue.

Would Malgenia have reacted with either emotion? I couldn’t say. Probably. I think just the sheer novelty of the situation would have delighted her for at least a few moments.

Then she probably would have killed Responsibility.

Or made her High Lady of the Deaths (not that such a position existed, but Malgenia’s whims were often a bit more extreme than other people’s).

Me though? I couldn’t help but drink in the anger I saw in Responsibilities eyes. 

Again, kissing. Would have been appropriate.

Not appreciated.

Not at all.

But she deserved some kind of reward.

Sadly, as Malgenia, the rewards I had available to bestow, especially on one of the Deaths all fell squarely in the ‘dreadful’ category.

So instead I gifted her some more words.

What? It was better than a knife through the chest! I was improving see!

Yes, yes, definitely an improvement, Inhibition said with a faintly amused air.

“Who do you imagine I might be?” I asked.

“I do not know. But you do not seem to be yourself. Has someone delivered a toxin to you?” Notably, she did not release the fire she’d gathered into her hands. 

Assaulting Malgenia was an absurdity at best. Her flames would be smothered the moment she thought of releasing it at me, and we both knew it, but then – huh – maybe that wasn’t her aim? Was she thinking to destroy one of Malgenia’s artworks to gain at least a sliver of pre-emptive revenge? Good thought if so! That was something she might actually be able to accomplish!

I glanced around Malgenia’s Garden. There was no one else present in it who could be hurt. No surprise there, the air was perfectly toxic. I didn’t require protection from it because Malgenia breathed it as easily as any other vaporous substance. Responsibility would have literally melted in an instant but she wasn’t under my auspice, and Malgenia’s grace was just as capable of preserving life as it was of ending it. That she rarely chose the preservation aspect was a character failing I was glad she’d possessed. Destroying her might have been impossible without it.

“Many people gift me with toxins,” I said, entirely truthfully. Novel toxins were one of the more popular gifts the other Neoterics traded to Malgenia for her assistance on the various projects they still chose to coordinate on.

“One of them has…has changed you. Can’t you feel it?” She wanted the old Malgenia back. Or rather part of her thought she did. I was too well aware of the feeling to miss the signs of bargaining and denial that raged behind her eyes.

“Have they now? And what might they have done to me?” I asked. It would have been so amazingly, agonizingly simpler to just tell her the truth directly, but the denial and bargaining she was still trapped in? She very much needed to work through that on her own if we were going to work together.

And I needed her.

I needed her so much.

The longer we talked, the longer she refused to wilt before me, the more certain I became that none of the other Deaths would be as capable of breaking the cycle Malgenia had trapped us in.

All cycles break, Diyas said. Some of them however taking a rather aggravating amount of time to do so. We are fortunate Responsibility was at hand, though an uncertain future could easily have yielded another to shoulder the burden she took on with you.

“Your divinity. That’s what they’ve taken from you. Or damaged? Or hidden?” Responsibility said. “You approached us without it today. While you sat with Clarity and let her sketch you, it was diminished. I watched her sketch you and the essence she captured could have been the essence of no more than a lowly Death. Even now, sheltered as I am by your grace, you do not shine with the Terror and Majesty you always share with us!”

Oh course I didn’t. I very specifically needed you not to be afraid of me you silly ninny…is not what I said to her.

I think she picked up on the sentiment anyways though, Reason said.

I considered, for a petty and cruel moment, unfurling Malgenia’s full aura as a counterargument to Responsibilities point but that would have been entirely self-defeating.

“Come see my latest blossoms,” I said, turning from her without addressing her claim directly.

Would she figure out that she was right? Probably. Would she understand what that meant, and what the real cause was? Maybe if she’d had her own divine fragment to guide her, but on her own it was a tiny bit more than I could expect her to piece together.

Hence the need to lead her onwards gently.

Malgenia’s Garden would feature well in nearly anyone’s nightmares. I hadn’t added anything new to it because I objected to turning living things into unliving and undying artwork. 

At least I think Malgenia regarded what she did as artwork.

I’d torn down the worst of the “blossoms” after I’d laid the groundwork of explaining to Vitor how bored I was with the Garden’s contents and how I ‘longed to work in a new medium’.

Vitor had, wisely, not enquired as to what, or more specifically who, that ‘new medium’ might be made from, and hadn’t objected at all when I’d lain to rest the undying specimens that I could figure out how to release with the memories I was able to pull from Malgenia’s shattered remains. 

Bones were, if not a more tasteful base to work from, at the very least incapable of screaming, or sensing anything at all.

The “blossoms” I led Responsibility to were indeed the latest work I’d put together – a chain of figures worked together from the bones the Garden held and ones I’d been gifted when I mentioned what my latest project was. 

The figures were ones no one but me would ever see or recognize, I’d thought. Images of myself, and Beauty, and Inhibition, and Reason, and so many other holding hands as they danced ever forwards from a past shrouded by the living thorny flowers which overgrew them more and more towards my figure, the latest in the chain, around whom no flowers grew at all.

I’d hoped for a gasp of recognition, but that was expecting a bit too much really.

For one, my sculpting wasn’t the best in any medium, and bones in particular were not optimal for expressing individual traits and distinctions. Especially since I had refused to shape them into smooth flowing curves with Malgenia’s powers. Spikey and sharp, each figure stood with jagged edges all around and hands clasped together in desperation more than tenderness.

None looked like the graceful, adoring Deaths any of us had been in life, with my figure the least of all since, where the others were polished white, I’d made sure to cover my boney incarnation with dirt and ash. 

The others had all been sinned against. I, on the other hand, had committed a sin unthinkable to any Death before me.

What you did was not a sin, Diyas said.

What I did was necessary, it may even have been just, and I would do it again and worse if I had to, but I cannot forget that is was the most evil thing that I could do to Malgenia, because if I do, I could do it again when there might be any other possibility at all.

Diyas’ silence was profound, not because I’d offended her but because I was right, and that’s not something mortals can usually claim when speaking to a god, or even the fragment of one.

Diyas wasn’t the only one who was silent though.

Responsibility had followed me just like she was supposed to, she’d observed my sculpture just like she was supposed to, and she understood the message I left in it, just like she was supposed to.

I didn’t turn to look at her.

I didn’t need to.

Instead I gave her my back. A clear and open target. Not one she was willing to take just yet, but it was part of the message too.

“This…,” she tried to say and paused. 

I knew where she was. I could feel the emotions radiating off her. She understood the message the figures shrieked, but she very much did not want to hear it. To put any of her thoughts into words was impossible. It might make them real, and that could shatter her world.

A whisper of mercy blew across my heart and I thought of playing the sculpture off as one of Malgenia’s whims. The message could as easily be a joke as a depiction of the truth. Malgenia’s humor ran to both dark and odd places. If I wanted to I could let the usual mask of madness Malgenia wore hide away all the terrible things that were racing through Responsibility’s mind. I could unveil a fraction of Malgenia’s divine aura and reassure my second favorite Death that all was still well in her world, and that the whole day had been a delightful little diversion designed to satisfy some unknowable craving of one whose cravings were unpredictable at the best of times.

I didn’t choose mercy though.

I needed Responsibility.

And so I asked her a question which would confirm her deepest dread.

“Tell me, what do you see, my Dearest Responsibility?”

She was silent.

And I waited.

She paled.

And I waited.

And I was rewarded.

“Insight…” Responsibility’s voice was a strangled whisper. Malgenia never called us her “Dearest”.

But I did.