“Do you imagine I’ll need two or three rooms for guests Vitor?”

“Guests? Those rooms are for guests? I thought you were making spare butchery rooms?”

“Abattoirs. Though technically that term should be applied to rooms for livestock, not people. And, I won’t have any of those. Abattoirs. Not people. I shall quite a few people!”

“I’m sorry, I must have heard you incorrectly. I could swear I just heard you say that you won’t have any rooms in your abode dedicated to taking people apart for your various little games?”

“I never play games. Games are something you can lose. If you can’t lose then it’s a pastime. Also, why would I limit only a few rooms to that purpose? That seems wasteful.”

“Ah. Yes. Right, your entire abode will…you know, I don’t know why I would have thought anything else.”

“I agree. Most foolish of you Vitor. But you still haven’t answered my questions. I want to make sure I will have enough room for guests to be comfortable.”

“I believe the last thing you will need to worry about will be making guests uncomfortable my sister.”

“Oh? You like what I’ve done with the spaces which have already been constructed?”

“Your style is resolutely your own.”

“Yes. The architects said I should express myself in the design and decor.”

“That would be the architects who are now a part of the decor would it not?”

“Yes, though I’m not sure if that’s an expression of me or an expression of them.”

“I doubt they would be wearing the expressions you left them with of their own accord, so I would say the sculptures in question are distinctly a part of your voice.”

“And my guests will see it as you do?”

“Do you know who these guests will be? It would be easier to gauge their reaction if I had a clue as to who might be visiting you?”

“I am quite uncertain myself. I suppose it will depend on the children you select for me.”

“Children? You want me to pick out children for you?”

“If you want something done properly, you must do it yourself, correct? Which means I shall need to raise them properly if they are to serve as proper vessels for me – or perhaps I can employ a college of overseers? Yes. That might be preferable. I believe I lack the talent for growing things, small people especially.”

“Can we go back to the bit about these children serving as vessels for you?”

“Well, how else am I supposed to live forever?”

– Neoteric Lord Vitor discovering that Malgenia is not quite the same sort of Neoteric Lord as he is.

It’s funny how a day can pass and bring you no answers whatsoever. I had made progress but that progress consisted of making it out from under my covers and wandering aimlessly around a new expansion of the garden. Progress however does come with some drawbacks.

“You haven’t remodeled in so long I thought you’d sworn it off for eternity sister.” Vitor had found me because that’s what he does when life in general hates me.

“Why would I swear at remodeling? I don’t want to make any pacts with a building?” I asked, gambling that Malgenia’s brand of aggravating stupidity might drive Vitor away sooner.

Or if not at least he’d be as annoyed as I was.

“I recall making quite a few pacts with different restrooms during my stint of collegiate studies.” He sounded wistful about that but I wasn’t sure I followed what he meant. 

Could he have been sickly often in college? Vitor? Sickly? No, those two ideas could not coexist. For one thing he was far too proficient with bodily augmentation via applications of grace. If anyone could ever have been immune to the illnesses of the ancient world it would have to have been Vitor, given what he managed to become.

Although.

The image of Vitor absolutely miserable with the sniffles flashed through my mind. Not a memory, sadly, just a silly dream, but it was so cruelly delightful I couldn’t help but smile.

“Since you seem to be in a good mood today, perhaps I may ask if you’ve made a selection yet?” Vitor asked, completely misreading me.

And like that my smile faded.

Yes, I had made a selection.

No, it was not a good one.

Yes, the Death I’d chosen was the right one.

No, I was not going to proceed with her.

Yes, I needed to find a new one.

No, I did not want to.

The impression of Responsibility’s lips flitted vividly back through my mind.

Which did not help!

I was so doomed.

Probably, Beauty said.

That’s also not helpful. Reason backing me up was nice but I knew Beauty was being honest.

“I have never removed your capacity for asking questions,” I said, not intentionally meaning it as a threat, but not NOT meaning it as one either.

“And yet they all love her,” Vitor whispered to himself so quietly that a distracted Malgenia wouldn’t have noticed. I, who did not have the option of allowing herself a moment’s lapse in awareness in the presence of Vitor or any other Neoteric Lord, heard his complaint all too clearly.

It did my heart good.

Vitor was the sort of person who deserved an eternity of suffering, but maybe not the sort Malgenia could have inflicted. Unspeakable agony was perfectly justified for any of the Neoterics based on the cataclysmically evil choices they’d made, but in Vitor’s case I felt that an eternity of unending irritation and frustration was the proper fate. He needed to never quite figure out how miserable he really was.

Powerlessness was important too though of course. That had to be a given for any of the Neoterics, myself included. I was horrible for what I’d done to Malgenia, but give me centuries with no accountability and I would…well probably not be worse than her, but the world didn’t need even the lesser plague that a copy-Malgenia would represent.

“So, who is she?” Vitor asked, undeterred from ensuring that his sister was going to take care of herself.

Charming. Very brotherly. That none of the other Neoterics could handle the power Malgenia had accumulated and her failing to take the next Assumption would mean the end of all of them sort of soured any feelings of sibling affection I might have mistaken him for having.

To be fair, I’d also seen Malgenia’s memories of the few attempts on her life she was certain he was behind. They’d been tentative assassinations, more probing tests to see if containing Malgenia’s unique quantity and style of grace was possible. When the “experiments”, to use the ‘gentler’ term Vitor labeled them as, proved to all be disastrous failures the efforts to make Malgenia the fourth Neoteric to fall dwindled away.

Dwindled but did not depart entirely. The need to remove her was an inevitability in the minds of the other Neoterics, since each was convinced that if twelve could be reduced to nine then their number could and should be reduced to one.

Malgenia believed that too, in a sense. Rather than plotting the demise of the rest of the Neoterics though, she simply waited. Her brother and the rest spoke of being immortal, but Malgenia understood the promise of mortality far better than any of them could. Given time, they would all find their ends, and all she had to do was wait (or so she’d thought).

“You know the names of my Deaths? Have you been carousing with them?” I asked, both buying time with a non-answer and genuinely curious to discover how much Vitor already knew. The phrasing and tone were intentional. Again, not a threat, but Malgenia did not tolerate the other Neoterics visiting her Deaths, and only made occasional exceptions for Vitor for reasons that seemed to escape everyone, including Vitor.

“Of course not dear sister. It would not do to disrupt your careful cultivation. I do inquire as to their progress from your overseers however. They say that you spoke with the Death of Clarity and allowed her to draw a portrait of you yesterday.”

Killing Vitor was wrong.

Not in a moral sense.

In a “I don’t know how I’d handle all the grace he has on top of the impossible ocean of Malgenia’s and I’d like not to erase the world” sense.

On the other hand though…

Woah! Inhibition said. 

Yeah, let go of that mantle there, Beauty said.

Or smite him, but make it count, Diyas said.

I’m not sure if anyone had ever believed the gods were good influences on our lives, but I have to assume they’d never met a collection of fragments that had been blasphemed against quite like Diyas had.

Better idea, pout, Reason said.

I had no idea why that was a better option, not at first, but I did it anyways.

“I’m sorry, was that supposed to be a surprise?” Vitor asked, slightly flustered by the flair of divine power he’d sensed from me.

“I can’t get you anything,” I said, grasping what Reason’s play was.

“You were…for my celebration? A picture of you?”

“Well not anymore,” I said, leaning into the pout. 

“No. Please. I would enjoy that very much,” he said, a long dead echo of actual brotherly affection sounding in his voice

“It won’t be a surprise though.”

“It already was!”

“Fine. But not till she’s done with it. And if you don’t like it, I get to keep it.” I said.

“What would you do with a picture of yourself?” he asked, as though his castle wasn’t adorned with well over a thousand portraits of him.

“Make a statue,” I said, channeling the most horrible idea I could come up with – or in other words making certain I sounded like Malgenia.

Vitor looked at me quizzically and then frowned remembering in an instant exactly what, or rather whom, Malgenia preferred to use as clay for her ‘statues’.

If that left him with the impression that Clarity was of no importance to me and that she couldn’t be used as any sort of tool or lever against me, then the disturbing notion came with the bonus that I could hold off on smiting him to oblivion for a little while longer.

Disappointing, Diyas said.

“They also tell me you spoke with the Death of Responsibility? Even singled her out for personal attention?”

The urge to smite him wasn’t quite the same, but it was there. 

Can we hold her back if we need to? Beauty asked.

Not for something like this, Inhibition said.

And Reason was quiet.

Probably because she already knew I wasn’t going to smite Vitor.

Which was impressive because I had not at all come to that conclusion.

I mean, would I end the world for Responsibility’s sake? A few days ago, probably not?

Or was that a lie?

I’d picked Responsibility out for what was not a marriage proposal but something disgustingly similar to one.

And she’d kissed me, but I very much had not refused the gesture.

Would I burn the world for her? 

But she’d stabbed me!

That should have bothered me, shouldn’t it?

If anyone else had stabbed me, my response wouldn’t have been subtle or kind, even given the fact that a stab wound was essentially meaningless to me.

So why didn’t it matter than Responsibility had done so.

I loved her, but…

But that word didn’t mean what it was supposed to.

I loved all the Deaths.

I loved Malgenia.

I loved Clarity.

But Clarity was different.

And so was Responsibility.

I’d been dancing around and over the thought for a day already and it still settled in my stomach like a block of stone.

“She was entertaining,” I said, dissociating into my best Malgenia impression, or at least the best one I could manage in that moment.

“So you’ve made your choice then?” Vitor sounded delighted, because in the end that was all that he cared about. 

If he’d actually paid attention to the relationship between Malgenia and her Deaths, he might have been noticed that I wasn’t exactly as faithful as I appeared to be. He might have saved her from me. 

And he might have been able to save Responsibility from me.

Except the Neoterics never saved anyone beside themselves. The rest of us they’d kept around to toy with and terrorize away the boredom of the eternity before them.

If anyone was going to save Responsibility from me, it was going to have to be me.