“You have spent quite a while preparing for today haven’t you my dear Death of Insight?”

“I have my lady.”

“You’ve read the scriptures?”

“I have my lady.”

“You have practiced the steps of the dance?”

“I have my lady.”

“I suppose we are ready to begin then, unless you have any last questions?”

“No my lady. Well, except, I was wondering how much of that was actually necessary?”

“Necessary Insight?”

“Yes. I mean, I have studied the scriptures you gave me, and I know I can perform the steps of the dance as you’ve directed, but I can’t seem to follow how they go together. Or the words of the song either? On their own, each is certainly beautiful, but I can’t see the mystical connectivity between them.”

“That would be because there is none of course!”

“There’s none? But I thought they were critical elements of the ritual? I’ve been practicing them for a month now. I thought they would help me understand the ritual better.”

“No, no not at all. Your place in the ritual doesn’t require understanding. Merely acceptance.”

“But the Deaths have all accepted being a part of this ritual haven’t they? It’s the greatest honor we can be bestowed?”

“It is. And they have. Eventually.”

“Eventually? Did some of them not love you enough?”

“Love? I cannot say. Love is not something which can be measured and weighed, so judging if love is enough, or true, or exists at all is a troublesome question. The Assumption Ritual is not about love however. It is about continuity. It is about acceptance and finality. It is about building a future from the bones of the past, as all futures should be built.”

“The bones of the past? I don’t…that wasn’t in the scriptures…”

“And it never can be. You are the only one I can speak of it to.”

“Me? Why?”

“Because the Ritual has begun already.”

“But I haven’t danced yet. Or sung! I didn’t recite any of the…”

“None of that is needed. The dancing is to give you a moment of serenity. The singing is to amuse me. The recitation is a test, and I don’t think you would pass it. None of the others ever have.”

“Test? What were you testing for?”

“That’s the wrong question.”

“The others did not ascend.”

“They did not.”

“You’re going to kill me.”

“I am. I already have, more or less.”

“And build the future through my death. Build a future of death.”

“Perhaps you would have passed after all.”

– Malgenia and Death of Insight as the struggle of their assumption ritual began.

Good news! I wasn’t tuning into a god anymore.

Bad news! I knew who was!

Worst possible news – Malgenia.

Just Malgenia.

Just her.

I…

I didn’t have Diyas with me.

I didn’t have her power to call on.

Looking around in the empty darkness of the Assumption Ritual, bereft of light, of strength, of hope, I didn’t have…

I didn’t have…anything?

Oh. 

OH!

Oh that was an idea that was even worse that Malgenia.

Is it? Clarity asked.

Cause we are certainly onboard with it! Responsibility said.

Five words.

I still had five words, and if Malgenia knew about them then she would have already obliterated me.

She, however, was a tiny bit more focused on her traitorous brother than me, her traitorous quasi-daughter.

“Since the womb Vitor? Really?” she said, and Vitor took a step back (metaphorically).

“Does it matter Malgenia?” he asked. “Was that the confession you’d been hoping for all this time?”

“Not at all. I just find the idea delightful! Was I so puissant as a embryo that you feared me even then? Did I kill your favorite bit of placental lining? Tell me, please, how much of a horror was I? You know how I enjoy hearing stories about myself!”

“But you’re the storyteller here, aren’t you?” Vitor asked, and I could feel him gathering in the power of the dead Neoterics. 

I probably should have fought him for that, but even with Responsibility and Clarity’s help there was simply far too much power for any of us to begin to handle. The five us could have drank until we exploded and still drowned in an ocean of the power that remained.

Our world was done.

Jilya’s trick had been brilliant but there weren’t enough people in the world to become Blessed and hold the power we’d loosed.

“A storyteller or a story?” Malgenia asked, and looked at me at last.

“My lady,” I said offering her a small bow.

I should have felt afraid. Paralyzing fear was the single most rational response to gaining Malgenia’s attention, but I felt only peace.

“Who are you talking to?” Vitor asked.

“The one who destroyed me,” Malgenia said, turning back to her brother.

“There’s no one there,” Vitor said. “And what do you mean destroyed?”

“My last Assumption Ritual.” Her back was to me but I could feel Malgenia smile, could sense each muscle shifting in her face. I’d played her for so long, and held her fractured memories for so long that I knew her down to her bones.

“In the Wastelands? Were you performing it when the Beast Fragment attacked?” Poor Vitor, he was either going to die confused, or suffer the far worse fate of understanding exactly what he’d done and failed to do.

“Before that,” Malgenia said. “Years before that. Didn’t you miss me? Didn’t you miss being afraid?”

“Your fear never left him,” Responsibility said. “Even after you were gone.”

“Just like your love never left us,” Clarity said. 

“What? But…” Vitor looked between Malgenia and Responsibility as though each was disappearing the moment he looked away from them.

Beneath us the swirl of power was accelerating, just as it had when I’d fought Malgenia the first time.

Then it had been only her power, and it had still been overwhelming. Though everything was impenetrable, unknowable darkness around us, the light was coming, and it was going to be so much more painful than any of us could bear.

“And he never noticed? Should I feel insulted? That someone else could inspire the same terror as I did? I don’t know.”

“Your fear lives in us too,” Responsibility said.

“And always will,” Clarity said.

“And for that you have my love,” Malgenia said. “For what else can I offer to my legacy.”

“You’re not going to have a legacy,” Vitor said. “The only future this world has is through me. I am the last of the Neoteric Lords. I alone can hold and control this power. I alone have found perfection and absolute perfection will be MINE!”

He moved first.

And a vortex of light exploded around us.

The Assumption Ritual must, eventually, come down to a struggle.

Vitor didn’t understand our Assumption Ritual though.

And he didn’t understand what we’d truly unleashed.

He was right that if he’d been able to claim the power flowing around us, he could have reached perfection, or any other state he desired. It would have lasted a span of time too short to be measured within our universe, but he would have attained it.

If he’d been able to claim the power.

What he missed was that our Assumption Ritual wasn’t one designed for people to struggle against one another.

It was a small change, but in initiating the struggle, he’d chosen the wrong parameters, to fight against us, when, maybe, if he’d cooperated we would have had the strength to at least save ourselves from the power we’d captured in the ritual.

Amusingly though, it wasn’t the ritual that killed him.

It was Malgenia.

“My apologies brother. I should have given you this peace in the womb it seems.”

And he was dead.

Because that was Malgenia’s power. Even a Neoteric Lord with all of the power he could possibly draw on could not save himself from her. She chose for him to be dead, and so he was.

How had I survived?

Diyas had chosen for me to live.

Diyas who I was no longer bound to or Blessed by.

Diyas who I had to save, along with everyone else.

They’d never forgive me, and Night was DEFINITELY going to murder me, but there was an fairly obvious upside to all that.

“And what peace do you need Malgenia?” I asked, releasing my grip on Responsibility and Clarity’s hands.

“You know, once I might have said the peace of the grave, but thanks to you I know that isn’t true.” She turned to face me, and only me.

The light around us was too bright to see, but we didn’t have eyes anymore.

We only had ourselves and the power was closing into burn all that away.

In her ritual, the Death who was sacrificed opened a portal to carry that power away to the domains of the dead. In the ritual she and I fought in, that power had burned and shredded us. I was supposed to die before that could happen, but Diyas had kept me in the fight, and I’d been willing to hold on and endure more than Malgenia had. In the end, she’d been torn apart by the vortex and her death had carried the excess grace she’d built up with her to the domains of the dead.

With Vitor’s destruction, we had the rift to the domains of death that was needed to complete the ritual, but even if we did, the world would end.

And that was what Malgenia wanted.

“That was why you won, you know?” she asked.

“I do. You wanted to know what death was like for yourself.”

“And do you know what I found?”

“I haven’t been that curious yet,” I said, offering her a smile as the vortex tightened to the point where we were within an arm’s length of each other.

“It was peaceful,” she said. “And broken.”

“Because of the Neoterics,” I said. I didn’t have her memories anymore, but I knew her and I knew them.

“In killing everything, we broke everything, can you imagine?” she asked and her hands up to me, palms raised.

To touch her was to die.

And Diyas wasn’t here to bring me back, over and over again.

“I don’t have to,” I said. “I’ve seen it. And I know how to fix it.”

“You’re going to fight me again? Undo the deaths I and the others caused?” She leaned in close, the attention that was her eyes sparkling with delight.

“That would make things so much worse,” I said. “And it’s not what you made me for, is it?”

“Didn’t I make you as a sacrifice? To be the food my eternity consumed?” she asked and her hand reached up, hovering a hairsbreath away from my face.

The vortex had us pressed so tightly together than I couldn’t have slipped a finger through the space that separated us.

Within me, I felt Responsibility and Clarity, the three of us joined as one by our version of the Assumption Ritual.

“Did you? Or do you think I can pass the test now?” I asked her and pressed toward her.

“You should fear me. My fear lived on even after I was gone,” she said.

“I don’t. I don’t hate you anymore either. Not with what you’ve done for us.”

“And what do you think I did for you?”

“Not for me. For us. All of us. You gathered all of the fragments of the gods of death. You preserved the concept of death, when the other Neoterics wanted to eliminate it entirely. They were always going to have to go through you to achieve they perfect eternities, and you stood before them and kept them all mortal until we could arrive.”

“I didn’t do that for you.”

“That’s not how you’re going to be remembered.” I spoke my words like a curse, as the most serious malediction I could conjure against her. “We’re going to tell your story and make sure the love the Deaths bear for you is shared with everyone else. Your legacy will not be one of fear, or terror. We will make sure you are loved.”