“Wouldn’t it be easier if we just applied to be Blessed though sister?”

“Easier? Easier in what manner Vitor?”

“The Blessed lived a, well, blessed life. No studying, no striving to master the abilities they’ve been granted, and they’re all treated as though they were beyond reproach, so no listening to father bang on and on about ‘our responsibility to keep the family name in the highest of standings’ and the rest of that rubbish.”

“Oh, were we supposed to care about any that?”

“Supposed to? Well of course. It’s because he thinks we care about our familial duties that he’s paid for the things we’ve asked for, like this dreary little visit to this dreary little resort.”

“I find the ambiance here quite lovely.”

“Of course you do, and that is why I will be selecting our vacation spots for the foreseeable future.”

“So long as they’re near a necropolis, I’m sure I shall have no objections.”

“Malgenia, please, there’s quite a bit more to life than visiting necropoli.”

“Obviously. Life is full of many things, many tiresome and uninteresting things.”

“I find good meals and charming company neither tiresome nor uninteresting.”

“And becoming a Blessed would provide you with more of either than you have presently?”

“I suspect it would. People throng to attend the Blessed.”

“I do not recall there being any fetes to which you lacked an invitation in this last year? In fact I recall several you wish you could have turned down but were compelled to attend for some reason or other?”

“Father. Father is always the reason.”

“And do you think the High Accessor of whatever god chose to Bless you would be more or less demanding than Father? Of their newest Blessed? And what about the god to which you had pledged your utmost devotion above all other things? Do you imagine they would sponsor you in the endeavors you wished to pursue, or would you be constrained to spend all of your time managing and growing one of their domains?”

“Hmm, well I suppose when you put it like that. But where does that leave us? Perpetually under father’s thumb?”

“I suppose that depends.”

“On?”

“How much influence do you imagine father could exert over a High Accessor?”

– Though many would see Vitor as the more active and thoughtful of the twins, that was largely because few, if anyone, else was witness to certain key interactions between the two.

What I was planning to do wasn’t that much of a violation of the natural order. I had told myself that several times and had almost managed to convince myself of it even if Reason found my arguments somewhat incomplete.

“I think the most impressive thing is that you managed to outwit us all,” Reason said. “We all knew you had some sort of scheme cooking, but we were so focused on predicting the sort of insanity you might attempt that I don’t think any of considered that the insanity might be contagious.”

“So you’re saying you will help then?” I asked. I knew the answer. She knew that I knew the answer. The important bit was at least maintaining the appearance that she’d tried to dissuade me, especially since the others would hold both of us accountable for anything we failed to consider.

“I shouldn’t. Should I?” Reason turn to address the question to Diyas who was calmly enjoying some tea from the stores I’d conjured earlier.

Given the peril of utilizing Malgenia’s powers, I was rather grateful Responsibility and Clarity had been with me for well over a month. Early on, conjuring anything they needed had been simple and easy, but for common things it had become easier to simply conjure a reasonable stockpile and fully automate the house so that they could do things like ‘grab a snack whenever they wanted’ or ‘take a shower when I was napping’. In theory that had made our little home harder to cloak, but in practice it had only required that I cast a trivially stronger cloak and jam enough power into it to sustain it for longer than we planned to be out in the wastelands. Two years seemed sufficient and far, far longer than we could afford to spend, especially since it looked like two months might be vastly more time than I had left.

“Should and shouldn’t are decisions for you to make,” Diyas said. “I can tell you what the consequence of those decisions might be though. Or, I could have. While all of you have done a wonderful job assembling my missing fragments, there are still many unaccounted for, an overwhelming portion of which I’m certain are lost forever.”

“She’s still more familiar with the process than either of us though,” I said. 

“Familiar enough to say this won’t push Insight directly into godhood?” Reason asked. “A Blessed’d relationship is with a god after all, isn’t it?”

“They were,” Diyas said.

“Were?” Reason asked.

“I am no longer what I once was,” Diyas said. “And yet, my blessing still joins my Blessed to my domains.”

“And so what would a blessing from Insight join me to?” Reason said.

“Malgenia collected a lot of domains during the Sunfall, though I’m sure you can guess their overall theme,” I said. I’d been considering the question of what blessing to give Reason and have come up with the brilliant answer of ‘let her decide’.

“The Death Neoteric? No, no, can’t say I have any idea what sort of domains she might have been interested in,” Reason said with a roll of her eyes.

“Which brings up the next question,” I asked, “if we do go through with this, is there anything in Malgenia’s repertoire that you’d even want to be saddled with?” Which was my real concern. Carrying Malgenia’s power wasn’t something I had a tremendous amount of choice about, but it didn’t have to be like that for Reason.

“It would need to be more than an office she was willing to endure,” Diyas said. “The relationship between a Blessed and their god is forged upon a shared communion through the domain. If the domain isn’t one which is fully compatible with the Blessed then the blessing will wither or never be received in the first place.”

“And that’s how it is with you and Insight?” Reason asked, looking to either of us for answers.

“I don’t know,” I said.

“I do, and yes, I was able to give her my blessing because she burned with life when I met her, and our bound has remained unsevered despite the weight of the death domains she carries because she has chosen life at every turn its been offered to her, no matter the cost the choices have entailed.”

“I mean, what else was I going to do?” I said, feeling extremely unworthy of the implied praise in Diyas’ words.

“What Malgenia did,” she said. “As you’ve said, you had reasons which spurred you onwards in your fight against her, but what ultimately decided that battle was that Malgenia chose oblivion over the pain of continuing on.”

“So I would need to find something I was willing to fight for no matter the pain involved in doing so?” Reason asked.

“Not exactly,” Diyas said. “In the cauldron of the Assumption Ritual, Malgenia and Insight’s futures were pitted against each other. There are, or were, many domains which are not defined by conflict or suffering. The Blessed of Daytime Slumber, for instance, tended to lead by their examples rather than any verbose arguments or great rhetoric, and certainly not through any battles and by overcoming great challenges. 

“I don’t suppose that’s one of the domains Malgenia grabbed is it?” Reason asked.

“Oddly, yes, she did catch a fragment of that. Her collection is a bit more eclectic than you might imagine, it’s just predominantly themed around her favored interests. The question for you though is do you think afternoon napping is a core enough part of your being that you could forge a blessing bond with me through it?”

Reason considered that for a moment and then sighed in defeat.

“I haven’t taken a nap during the day since I was five. That’s probably not the level of connection I’d need for a comfortable domain like that is it?”

Ah, Reason, how I love thee and they self-awareness. Diyas chuckled a bit too before saying, “No, you’d want something a little more present in your life than that I’d afraid.”

“That’s the other problem we have though, isn’t it?” Reason asked. “I’m not alive. Not really. I didn’t manage to do what Insight did. I gave up too. Just like Malgenia.”

“Nope,” I said, because I’d seen this objection coming. “Not like Malgenia at all. In my case, Diyas helped me meet Malgenia on a somewhat even playing field. At the heart of the Assumption Ritual we were both a part of the power she’d gathered and neither of us was. She had all her experience, sure, but experience only goes so far. In your case, you were faced with someone who was supposed to love you, someone you’d been taught to love and honor all your life, and someone who had you at the most extreme of power imbalances. You never gave up because you never had the chance to. The Assumption Ritual isn’t supposed to be a battle, not really, it’s supposed to be a feast for Malgenia and no one like fighting with their food.”

“Not true on a few points there my Blessed,” Diyas said. “First, in the world that was, there were some who very much enjoyed fighting with their food. The world was vast and strange in those days such as you can no longer imagine. That quibble aside however, you are also wrong about Reason’s Assumption. It’s true it wasn’t a battle. But Reason held on nonetheless. Its why she is here today. If she was truly dead, she would be quiet as all the dead are to the living.”

“What are you saying? I’m still alive?” Reason asked.

“What you are is unprecedented from before the Sunfall,” Diyas said. “You and the others stand on the border of my domain, not fully within it, nor quite lost to it either. You live in many important senses, not the least of which being that its possible for us to converse, but what shape and boundaries that life holds even I can’t say, and I suspect that would be true even were I restored to my previous grandeur and glory.”

“There’s a lot to consider there then,” Reason said. “But one other issue remains with your plan Insight; even if we could find the right domain and I could become a Blessed, and even if that didn’t push you over into godhood; we dispatched two groups. How would I alone be enough to protect them both?”

“Oh, that’s easy, you wouldn’t be,” I said.

Reason scowled at me, and rightly so. It wasn’t fair to tease her, but I had so very few chances I really had to take advantage of the ones that were available.

“Responsibiliy and Beauty will be fine,” I said. “They’re heading to Mt. Gloria, which has more than a few Blessed of its own these days.”

“And if something happens to them in the Wasteland while they’re traveling there?” Reason asked.

“You needn’t worry about that,” Meluna said, stepping from the shadows right on queue. “One of my god’s Blessed is traveling with them and Theia is quite adept at cloaking herself and others.”

“How long have you been here?” Reason asked, glaring at me with fully justified suspicions.

“Only a moment, after decades and decades of the world resting in silence, there is suddenly a great many things in need to doing. I didn’t want to miss this at all though.” Meluna nodded at me with an amused and somewhat chilling smile.

I really had to fight not to like her too much.

I am so broken.

“You’ve spoken with her?” Reason asked, clearly wondering why I hadn’t spoke with her first.

“I spoke with Diyas,” I said. “Who in turn spoke with Night, who I presume brought Meluna in? And Theia too?”

“Just me. Night tries to remain as quiet as possible. Makes it easier to avoid attention.”

And that was all she said about that and all she needed to. I wasn’t thinking even one thought about what we needed to avoid the attention of, or the five words I was never going to ever say.

“So do you think this will work then?” Reason asked but Meluna shrugged.

“It’s never been done before, and by rights should never have been possible for a mortal, but then by rights this world shouldn’t be possible so my curiosity is well and truly roused. Fear not though, in the worst case, your passing with be swift, painless, and silent.”

I looked to Reason to assure her that her passing would be none of those things because whatever it took I would not allow that to happen. Strangely that didn’t seem to reassure her at all.

“We are still left with finding a domain that might even vaguely fit me though,” Reason said, her voice sounding half filled with hope and half with resistance.

So I played my last card to tip the scales.

“I believe there is one in Malgenia’s portfolio which might fit that bill,” I said, offering her a single spark in the palm of my hand. “How would you like to be the Blessed of Research?”