“Have you ever thought how all that we’re going to build might end Vitor?”

“I believe the point is that it won’t Malgenia. We are poised to seize eternity and unlike the foolish gods who were born with this world, we will not accept whatever scraps of fortune random chance casts down in our path.”

“We’re quite sure of that then? That our eternities will last forever? We know eternities don’t need to, look at the gods after all.”

“None of us would be doing this if we thought it was going to end in failure. Not even Helgon I imagine, despite how annoying he’s been in picking apart my research.”

“And if we should grow bored?”

“Do you imagine you shall ever run out of questions about your domains? Or that people might deny you the amusement of dying in all sorts of different manners?”

“No. No, I shouldn’t think so. I do wonder about the others though. Their papers hold so little vitality to them. I don’t see anything that could sustain their interest down uncountable years.”

“We all find our joy in different things Malgenia. Should the others come to the end of theirs, then perhaps they will instead become part of your joy?”

“Will they? Will you?”

“Oh I shall never tire of our new position sister. Or do you find my work without vitality as well?”

“It doesn’t fascinate me, but I suppose it shouldn’t. I just wonder where your interest will turn once you’ve ‘enhanced and improved’ the species under your care as far as they can be changed without becoming a danger to our Lordly selves?”

“That is the trick of it you see, each species I improve will be no more than a tool to understand how we may be improved as well. We shall never be in danger from them as it is the process of refinement and ascension I will study and for that apex organisms are of little use.”

“That suggests you will need a continuous source of new species to play with, yet we will be eliminating the vast majority of the species which are presently available will we not?”

“We shall, and good riddance to them. The flawed and haphazardly constructed people we see inhabiting the world today are little better than chaotic muck. True, from that chaos the occasional geniuses may emerge thanks to random chance, but for proper research a more stable and predictable substrate is required.”

“You plan to make your own species? How?”

“What can be refined can be corrupted just as easily. Once I have pushed a species as far as a battery of tests requires, I shall break them down and start anew. Certainly from that corruption many useless specimens will be produced but with eternity before us, the process only needs to result in success once in a while.”

“And the others? The failures?”

“Subjects who fail my needs I expect should fit yours quite well.”

– High Accessor Vitor managing to placate Malgenia into continuing the cabal’s plans while also cementing his belief that plans to deal with his sister was absolutely required.

I was becoming a god. That was inevitable. And I was dragging Responsibility and Clarity with me. 

Should I have rejected them? Could I have saved them if I had? Was there another path we could have walked? My answers, in reverse order were; not really, sadly no, and absolutely not.

I’m glad you’ve figured that out, Clarity said as the mountain of Malgenia’s power overwhelmed the three of us and our worlds began to crack and shatter around us.

“Now! Do it now, her aether is…” Tallgrim’s last words were reasonable ones under the circumstances. I could have let him finish speaking I suppose, but he’d interrupted quite a lot of people’s lives with the Sunfall, so it seemed only fitting to return the favor.

The bands Vitor had wrapped me in were impressive. Quite capable of holding me even in a fully divine form. Even the addition of Clarity and Responsibility wouldn’t have been enough to sever them. Best of all, because they were made explicitly for Malgenia, they were also proof against her control over the domains of death. Vitor had thought of, and prepared for, everything.

Well, everything except me.

And my shadow.

You know, the fragment of the beast I’d made friends with? The one that could dissolve anything and everything in the world? The one that had let me step through the Neoteric’s High Wards like they weren’t even there? Yeah, Vitor hadn’t, and couldn’t have, planned for that. 

I’d lost a part of myself to the Beast Fragment he’d sicced on me – because of course it had been him – his confession had all but confirmed it and the fact that no one else knew Malgenia’s anti-Beast wards as well as he did meant he was really the only one who could have removed them.

Would Malgenia have been disappointed? Approving? Amused? I thought I felt echoes of all three but I had the whole problem of becoming a god who was about to be devoured to distract me from that, so I didn’t worry about it.

Opening my eyes, I rose from the floating vivisection platform Vitor had conjured slipping free of the bonds with as much effort as tossing aside my bedsheets in the morning.

Okay, a lot less effort than that. Getting up in the morning is hard.

I could have enjoyed their gasps of surprise, or Vitor’s look of crushing existential dread but I was on a fairly tight frame before the world was completely obliterated so I flashed them all a sharp grin and got to work.

Tallgrim was the first to go in part because he was the first to react. He hadn’t completed his warning and I felt him reaching for his stored power. 

All of it.

Yeah, they were just that terrified of Malgenia. Which was silly. She didn’t really have any interest in wiping them out. They were the only real diversions for her in a world which held the threat of eternal boredom. Also, when, if ever, she moved against them, she would have made a game of it. Really drawn out the terror and suffering to make sure she squeezed the maximum amount of ‘fun’ out of the experience, since it was one she would only get to enjoy a handful or so of times before she ran out of Neoterics.

Against Malgenia, they would have had plenty of time to raise their defenses and fight back, and she would have loved it.

I was not as interested in playing around.

With an unnecessary gesture, I called my shadow up to cover the room and then I let the shadow of my index finger reach out and tap Tallgrim on the chest.

Covering the room was important so that none of them could get away – at least not without fighting me for it. Insikir tried as my touch on Tallgrim’s chest snuffed Tallgrim like a candle, mid-sentence.

“This isn’t Night’s…” Insikir tried to say, so he died next.

Unlike most of the others, he still had a plethora of divine fragments to draw on, so I needed to exercise care.

I’ve got this one, Responsibility said, materializing behind Insikir and running a finger from the nap of his neck down to the middle of his back.

Did he explode into a shower of gorey chunks? No. Did he convulse and writhe in agony? Also no. He simply died. 

“Death Wards. Now!” Hanshel screamed, notably after he’d raised his own anti-necromantic protections.

“You don’t hold domain over death. We do,” Clarity said, tapping both Hanshel and Wepan on the shoulders, dropping their lifeless bodies to the ground in an undignified heap.

“He did it! It was his idea!” Grosh said, recoiling from three Malgenia’s as he desperately tried to shift our attention to Vitor.

Who then killed Grosh for us.

In a far messier fashion than our somewhat merciful touches had managed.

“Idiot,” Vitor said, shaking his head in disappointment.

He was holding the soul splitting sword Insikir had crafted, but tossed it aside and sighed. “There’s no surviving this. Not for anyone. Shall we watch the world burn together sister?”

I blinked.

He still didn’t know?

Of course he didn’t. Why was that a surprise? My performance as Malgenia had never been that good, but he simply hadn’t cared. She had always been an obstacle to maneuver around or avoid to him.

I wanted to hate him more for that, but there wasn’t time since he wasn’t entirely wrong. With the deaths of five Neoterics more grace was tearing loose from it’s bindings than the world had ever seen before.

“She’s already dead. She has been for years now,”  I said. “Now it’s your turn, so we can save this world.”

Clarity and Responsibility moved in with me, the Assumption Ritual begun in ernest.

Vitor was different than the others though, in part because he was ready for Malgenia to turn on him, and in part because we needed at least one of the Neoterics as a full part of the ritual and he was the last one left.

To say Vitor was unhappy with the prospect of what was in store for him would have been an understatement.

Getting blasted by the full might of a Neoteric Lord was an experience I had hoped to avoid forever, but Vitor had waited just a little bit too long. 

The Neoterics had never been able to stand against the gods themselves, and my loves and I had started leaving behind our mortality the moment Vitor had pulled Diyas away from me. 

With immortal hands, we pulled Vitor into the ritual and into the heart of our power.

I’d been expecting the inner forge of the ritual to be at least vaguely similar to the landscape where I’d struggled against Malgenia, but what awaited us inside this Assumption Ritual was oddly calm instead.

Dark, empty, and calm.

But I wasn’t alone this time.

I hate that you’re here but I am so happy you’re with me, I told Responsibility and Clarity.

We hate that you’re here, but there’s nowhere else any of us would want to be, Responsibility said, threading her fingers through mine, while Clarity did the same with my other hand.

Others? I should probably have interrogated that but we were falling into the tiniest fractions of a second and time was still running out.

“Malgenia? Malgenia! What have you done! This isn’t how it was supposed to end!” Vitor twirled around in the plan of endless darkness, ignoring three women before him.

“She’s not here,” I said. “She’s not anywhere anymore.”

“What?” Vitor stopped swirling and focused at last on Clarity and Responsibility. His gaze refused to rest on me though?

“Malgenia perished in her last Assumption Ritual,” Responsibility said.

“Your fear outlived her, but it’s not going to outlive our world,” Clarity said.

Vitor looked wildly between the two of them, before the customary smug smile drifted across his features.

“That’s where we are isn’t it? You’re trying to use your ritual against me? Trying to confuse me? Did I ever tell you that I duplicated your ritual? I know how this works. I know how you work!” He cackled the sort of relieved laugh that spoke volumes about how little he understood the situation at hand. “You’ve done it! You’ve given me the world! I’m the last Neoteric. I’ve won!”

“And what are we?” I asked, without managing to draw his attention.

No. Something was hiding me. Something that wasn’t ready to be seen yet.

“Empowered fragments. Look at the two of you, did you think you had replaced the missing gods of death? Did you think you were beyond my power? When I have all of the grace the other fools gathered as well?”

He was still looking at Clarity and Responsibility and not seeing me at all, so I punched him. 

I felt a thrill as I hit, even though it was, in theory, a metaphorical punch. We were in a realm of pure power, so our bodies here were abstraction representations of ourselves. That said, beaking Vitor’s metaphorical jaw felt just as good as breaking his real one would have.

And just like if I’d broken his real jaw, he wiped the injury away without a thought.

But he saw me at last as he did.

“Malgenia?” Confusion and fear were the colors of his voice.

Within me hideous laughter rose as memories swirled and came together, pouring out of me to add a fifth presence to struggle.

“Hello Vitor,” Malgenia, the real Malgenia, said.