“What do you mean we’ve run out of Blood Gem extract? Did Insikir renege on his monthly commitment just because our shipment of Graktite Dermal abrasives was only C-grade?”

“Not at all Lord Vitor. No complaints regarding the quality of the Graktite were filed. Our shipment was accepted without question. It’s the caravan Lord.”

“It’s what about the caravan? Don’t tell me that we’ve lost another one? We should be able to track their location anywhere on the surface of the planet and anywhere within the Under Realms. I know those trackers work! I designed them myself! And they could just pray to me if they didn’t!”

“Well, you see, that’s the thing Lord. We do know where they are. Or perhaps ‘where they were’ would be more accurate.”

“Were?”

“Yes Lord. The trackers are still functioning, but the bio-monitors built into them recorded an, an event Lord.”

“What sort of event? The caravan route was carefully divined for its safety was it not?”

“Absolutely. I made sure to check the records and I have them here. The nearest encounter the caravan was meant to have was a Class 2 Peril, an encounter with a fragment of the Cricket God. Well within the capabilities of the guardians who were assigned to the detail.”

“And yet they encountered an ‘event’? Let me see those reports.”

“Yes Lord. Here they are Lord.”

“Good. Good. Yes. This looks comprehensive. What event was able to evade this level of detection then?”
“We do not know my Lord. The caravan was approaching the midpoint of the return journey when they encountered something we have no readings for.”

“No readings? That shouldn’t be…oh.”

“You know what the event was my Lord?”

“Yes. Yes, I believe I do.”

“Can the caravaners be rescued?”

“They can neither be rescued nor recovered. In fact, inform Insikir’s people that we are discontinuing that caravan line entirely. Also all other caravan routes will proceed through Class 3 perils at a minimum. No more low peril routes are allowed. And all patrols must not return directly here. I want an outpost well outside our city limits they stop at first. We cannot have one of those things lured here.”

– Neoteric Lord Vitor discovering that fragments of the End of All Things prowl the wastelands.

Winding up in the Wastelands had been my idea, but that didn’t mean I was entirely happy with it. I knew from Malgenia’s memory exactly what waited and lurked within them. Vitor did too and I’d thought for sure that when I proposed my mad idea of killing the Beast, he’d more or less explode. Then I would agree and drop the idea, and then when I disappeared with Responsibility, he’d know that I was simply being flakey and had changed my mind without telling him. All of which was perfectly in keeping with how Malgenia interacted with her brother and the world at large.

Instead of blowing up though, he got a strange look in his eyes and went thoughtful for a moment.

Then he started pacing.

“Will one Death be enough?” he asked at last, which was not at all the question I’d been expecting.

“You think I need more?” I asked, which was also not at all the question I should have asked. I was on a roll it seemed

“What you are proposing it fantastically dangerous, even for one of us, or especially for one of us,” Vitor said, the wheels still turning in his head.

“You think I shouldn’t go? But I want to try!” I said, lying in Malgenia’s voice with the words I knew she would have chosen.

“Oh, you very much shouldn’t go, but I know you will, just as I know you will likely succeed,” he said, his gaze turning on me with a certainty that was by no means comforting.

Also, wait, he thinks I can kill the Beast of the End?

Can’t you? Beauty asked.

Yeah, this is Malgenia, we’re talking about, even if it’s beyond us, would it have been beyond her? Inhibition spoke from pretty much all of us. We’d believed in Malgenia’s might before we died, and from her memories I had the sense that we were underestimating if anything.

It would have, and it is, Diyas said. The End of All Things is more than you imagine it to be. No power, no matter how vast can slay it as you suggested. 

Well good thing that’s not actually my goal then, I said. Would Vitor know that though? About the Beast?

That probably depends on how much he knows about what his sister became, Reason said. The other Neoterics were afraid of her for good reason after all.

“If you believe I will succeed, why would I need another Death along?” I asked, trying to understand the game he was playing.

“You are singular in your power, and you always have been. Your Deaths however are quite mortal, even if they’ve been well trained. If you bring only one you’ve selected for the Assumption Ritual and she dies before you can complete your hunt you could be left exposed.”

Which was, unfortunately, a true statement. At least from his point of view. That I would die before I allowed harm to befall Responsibility was neither something he could be aware of nor something I could share without completely revealing that I was not even slightly Malgenia anymore.

Vitor’s demand raised an interesting question too; did I want to spirit away all of the Deaths? 

It wasn’t a terrible idea, especially if Responsibility and I choose to simply not return. If I took all of them with me, I could save them all couldn’t I?

I don’t think so, Reason said.

Cloaking that many people will be a lot harder than cloaking just yourself and Responsibility, Inhibition correctly observed.

And, he’s not going to let you take them all, Beauty said. If you try to take more than half, he’s going to claim you need to leave enough behind as reserves.

Does it matter what he says though? He’s as terrified of Malgenia as the rest of them are? Inhibition wasn’t wrong about that either, but Beauty had a response ready for her.

Oh, he’d let us take them all, but do you believe he wouldn’t be scrying as hard as he could to see what you were up to? Beauty said.

Couldn’t we block his scrying? We have access to a lot more grace than he does? Inhibition asked.

We do, but managing a spell strong enough to cloak all the Deaths and cut Vitor off from seeing what we were doing would definitely alert the other Neoterics, I said, feeling like I’d bitten off far more than I could chew and was on the verge of taking an even bigger bite.

Also, we need to consider that there is a difference between ‘cloaking’ and ‘protecting’, Reason said. If we really do run into a fragment of the Beast, cloak or no cloak, we’ll need to be able to flee and the gods themselves had trouble with that.

How many could we realistically expect to carry with us if we needed to flee from a Beast fragment? Inhibition asked.

“Two,” I said. “I’ll take two if you think one is not enough. Having a spare should be more than enough shouldn’t it? If two of them die on me, I can always just come back and grab another one.”

“I suppose more than that would create a different set of problems,” Vitor said, entirely distracted from the mental conference I’d been a part of.

“Good, good,” I said. “I’ll go tonight then!”

“Won’t you need, no, I imagine you wouldn’t. Do you know where…no, no sense asking about that either,” he said.

“We are having quite the conversation,” I said confident and correct that Vitor was paying no attention to me at all anymore.

What other Death will you take? Diyas asked and I felt a collective eyeroll from the Deaths I shared Malgenia’s form with.

So.

Yeah.

That was how Responsibility and I wound up in the Wastelands with Clarity.

What? Of course Responsibility wasn’t happy. I wasn’t happy either. Neither of us could deny that there was any other choice for who would go with us though.

I couldn’t take more Deaths because I couldn’t protect more than two of them.

Or, if I’m being honest, I wasn’t sure how many of them I could protect but there were two who I was willing to break the world to ensure the safety of.

Clarity had been all too easy to convince to come along on our trip, something which neither Responsibility, nor I, was pleased with.

“Would you care to join us?” I’d used five whole words. Malgenia probably would have used one. I’d been (relatively speaking) verbose to give Clarity a choice in the matter, all while knowing how nonexistent that choice was.

Clarity’s answer was written for her the moment she was adopted as one of the Deaths. 

Which brought up the next most terrible choice I had to make; whether to tell her who I really was or not.

Again, it was almost not a choice at all. In a physical sense I could have continued the deception. I could even have trained Responsibility at times when Clarity wasn’t with us. Deception is not challenging when you have the sort of power Malgenia does. Granted Malgenia herself rarely bother to use her power to deceive anyone since she rarely bothered to care what anyone else thought or did, but that was her and my needs were noticeably different than hers had been.

“She’s never going to forgive me,” I said, huddled in a bedroom in the small house I’d called up out of the stones on our first night in the wasteland.

“This is Clarity. You have met her right?” Responsibility asked.

“She shouldn’t forgive me,” I said. “You shouldn’t either I suppose, but I don’t want to give you up, so, please?”

“It’s not getting any less weird to hear you talk like that wearing her face.” Because Responsibility knew Malgenia was not built for anxiety – I’d literally never seen a memory of hers that had even the slightest hint of it. “Also does that mean that you want Clarity to give up on you.”

I really like this one, Beauty said.

“I hate you,” I said and hugged my knees to my chest.

“I’d miss you if you didn’t,” Responsibility said and kissed me on the forehead.

I could feel Clarity coming up stairs from the kitchen where I’d summoned food for us. 

Which should have been a giveaway.

Malgenia loved receiving food but had not, in any of our recollections, every made any for herself or for us. It wasn’t unbelievable that she would be able to call forth a feast but with two Deaths to attend her, she definitely would have waved up some ingredients and had her darlings do all the culinary work.

“So you think I should tell her now?” I asked, rising from the floor and dropping into the head seat at the table, where Malgenia would obviously be lounging.

Or, maybe not. It wasn’t like she shared meals with us. It might have been more in character for her to let the Death eat together while she, I don’t know, star gazed at the pitch black empty sky? 

Listen, I loved her but Malgenia was weird, okay?

“I could do if you want?” Responsibility said. “But we both know who she needs to hear it from.”

And we did. 

I just…

She was going to hate me.

For what I’d done to Malgenia.

For abandoning them all.

For bringing her along without telling her the truth.

For picking Responsibility.

Oh, it was going to hurt.

And I deserved it.

“My Lady, dinner is served,” she said, depositing three plates heaped with various dishes we’d made for Malgenia over the years and sliding into the last open chair.

“Clarity,” I said, gathering all my courage and stealing as much from Beauty, Inhibition, and Reason as they were able to give. “There’s something I have to explain…”

I struggled to find the verbal rope I was going to hang myself with only for Clarity to speak up without prompting.

“You’re Insight. I know. Try the Bloomberry scones, they’re amazing!”