“Our Lady has been gone for quite a long time, I hope she is doing well?”

“Of course she is doing well Pity, Our Lady Malgenia is supreme and foremost even amongst the Neoteric Lords.”

“Of course. Still though…”

“It has been over a year since she had appeared before us.”

“Yes, what will happen with the little ones?”

“The Overseers will raise them as Malgenia instructed.”

“But what about their names? Only our Lady can bestow a name to those who are taken into her service.”

“She must have accounted for that. Perhaps the ones who will have waited the longest will be gifted with the best names?”

“Do you think so Foresight? Could that be what she’s doing?”

“Searching for new names? I doubt she would need a year and a half to spend on an endeavor like that. I doubt she would even need an afternoon. She is our Lady after all.”

“Yes. Yes. Of course. But what could take so much of her time?”

“I am sure it is not for us to say, though I have heard whispers.”

“Whispers? Of our Lady?”

“No. Of her brother.”

“Vitor? Who cares about Vitor?”

“Hush! He is a Neoteric Lord as well, and you know our Lady is fond of him.”

“Is she? His visits always seemed to annoy her, even more so right before she left.”

“Yes. Left and took Responsibility and Clarity with her. You know I have wondered, do you think both of them have been granted an Assumption?”

“Would she have granted a double Assumption to them? Were they special in some manner?”

“Not that I am aware of, though our Lady of course sees more than we do.”

“Of course. And will reign eternal. The lies of her being slain are so foolish.”

“Where did you hear such blasphemy?”

“A servant of Vitor’s. This was over a year ago though, several months after she left us. Before we were sealed in here, away from all that. I have never doubted our Lady I will have you know however! I think Vitor’s people are simply vile little things, which is probably why he left them.”

“I shall have to interrogate one the next time I see them.”

“For that the Overseers would need to allow us to rise up from the Grand Mausoleum. We’ve been locked in here so long all sorts of terrible thoughts are breeding among the Deaths.”

 “We are safe here, and here we shall endure until our Lady comes to…what’s the commotion over there? Wait, is the main door opening? Has someone arrived!”

– The Death of Pity and the Death of Foresight on the day when Malgenia’s hidden vault was at last discovered and opened.

Privacy was not something I could just magic up for us. My poor house had been pretty thoroughly wrecked and while the last intact study room was sufficient as a refuge for Responsibility, Clarity and I, we needed a somewhat larger space for our current group to work in.

So Diyas grew us a church.

“Do you mind if I make a few alterations?” Draconia asked, pausing at the threshold of the cathedral of vines and flowers and living wooden beams and buttresses.

“So long as you allow people other then us to eventually gain entrance,” Diyas said.

I’d forgotten for a moment what Draconia’s primary domain was, but the gargoyles which rose to adorn nearly every inch of the cathedral’s roofline reminded me that we would be rather well guarded inside.

“All may enter,” Draconia said. “Though those will ill-intent towards those within will find themselves somewhat poorly accommodated.”

“And those who remain outside will perceive nothing of what goes on inside?” Clarity asked.

“Divine eyes, or Blessed ones, can pierce the veil, but those inside will be aware of the scrutiny,” Umbrielle said, joining us with Theia, which brought buzzing tingle to my fingertips at all of the divinity we had gathered so precariously close together.

Don’t worry, our power largely rests in our domains, even if we were to fall here, the world would be in no danger, Diyas whispered to me.

Oh! Is that part of how your existence has changed? Responsibility asked.

Which…

Okay…

What?

Are you Blessed now too? I asked mentally, intending to whisper it to Responsibility, but it reached more than just her.

In a sense, Clarity said.

They do not bear my Blessing as you did, but it is through you Deaths that Life returned to this world and so you will always be my Beloved.

I’d felt the bond I had with Diyas reforge itself, but I hadn’t questioned what form the new bond might take. It had been enough that it was there.

She’s not just talking about you three, if you’re curious, Beauty said and hearing her voice was the most surprising of them all.

I had to pause at the door and take a moment to just breathe as people filed in past me.

Beauty, Inhibition, and Reason were still with me? Why would that matter? I mean it wasn’t like they were 97% of my sanity for the last few years? Sure, they’d been the only ones who were there with me from the day when I killed the woman I’d worshipped and shattered every last piece of my whole life. Why would that make them important? Why was I unraveling at the thought that I hadn’t lost them either?

“Insight needs a quick rest break, Responsibility’s going to help her with that, but we can get started without her,” Clarity said as Responsibility did, indeed, sweep me away from cathedral and back to house.

“I’m fine,” I lied. “I can help.”

“Nope,” Responsibility said. “Nope to all of that.”

“I can help!”

“Good. Then you can help me,” Responsibility said, steering me upstairs through the growing collection of Deaths who were migrating back into the house and forming into larger groups.

“What happened?” I asked Responsibility, turning to look her over to see if I’d missed anything.

I was looking for blood, or a missing body part. 

I don’t know why, the destruction we’d touched on was far more thorough than that.

Maybe it was because I’d seen her bloody before. It was a problem she might have that I knew how to address (and, embarrassingly, how to cause as well).

“Everything. Pretty much everything,” she said. “I do have this problem at the moment though that I could use some advice with.”

She nodded to Dignity and Mercy who were discretely leaving the study to guard its door again.

“Your problems are my problems,” I said. “Well, your problems are usually me, but hopefully that’s changed.”

“I am willing to bet that will never change,” Responsibility said.

“What do you mean?” I asked, sensing that she was teasing me but not being entirely willing to trust that.

There was some real problem there too.

And it probably was me.

So, you know, worrisome.

“Are we okay?” Responsibility asked.

“We are a lot better than okay,” I said and tried to prove it with a kiss.

But she held a finger up to block my lips from meeting hers.

“I love you,” she said. “And I know you love me. Are you or I okay though? After everything we’ve been through, do you think either of us can just go on solving the world’s problems as we are?”

I wanted to say “yes”. I had to say “yes” in fact. For all that we’d done, the world was far from “fixed”. It was still a broken mess, even a year in. We had a new start but, from the scraps of conversation I’d overheard among the Deaths, it was clear that we had a ton of things left to figure out. 

Also, there was the tiny point that the gods themselves had shown up on our doorstep, and there was a growing army of Blessed arriving, all of whom were still trying to figure things out.

I had to step up.

I had to…

“No,” I said. “No, we’re not okay.”

“Excuse us,” Beauty said. “You misplaced this one.” She and Inhibition marched Clarity into the room, one hand on each of Clarity’s arms, deposited her inside the door, turned and left.

“I can handle being the voice for the three of us!” Clarity shouted at the closed door.

The closed door she, notably, did not open despite the fact that it was very much not locked.

“I really like being able to talk to them like this,” Responsibility said. “It must have been a such a relief having them with you through all the time you had to pretend to be Malgenia?”

“It was. I…I wouldn’t have made it without them.”

“None of us would have,” Clarity said.

“So shouldn’t we be out there, working with the others. I mean ‘we’re all we’ve got, we’re all we need’ is why we’re still breathing here.” I made zero move to leave the couch, and instead siddled over to make room for Clarity to see between Responsibility and I.

“The other three have that covered for now,” Clarity said. “I guess. I thought I could stand in for you, but apparently…”

“Apparently the other three can tell that you’re in the same shape we are,” Responsibility said. 

“It’s not like they have it any better, though,” I said. “All of the Deaths here took the same hits we did, and heck, even Little and Jilya and the rest, none of them have had an easy time of either. We’re all just broken toys trying to stumble along as best we can now.”

“Not broken,” Clarity said. “And not toys. Not anymore.”

“It’s okay to be broken,” Responsibility said. “I mean I say that and the fear of being unwanted and cast away – by Malgenia of course – flares up in my brain instantly, but that’s got to be wrong.”

“Does it?” I asked, not believing it was any more than Responsibility did, but hungry to hear her words on it, which just had to be better than my own.

“Because of you two,” Clarity said, flopping down between us. “Is it okay for me to be broken? No, obviously, right? If I’m broken, I’m worthless and bad and unfit to be in ‘Our Lady’s service’. But does that mean I would say other people aren’t allowed to be broken? That they’re not worth anything if they are? That sits differently. Can I say, no, you two aren’t allowed to be hurt, you have to be perfect because I love you?”

“Doesn’t that mean that, broken or not, we should be out there? Helping the people who need us?” Their words filled the bits of me that needed to hear them, but I still wanted to make a difference, to…

“You have value too,” Responsibility said. “And before we rush into fixing the rest of the world, maybe we need to look at what it really needs.”

“Isn’t that what the big meeting’s for?” I asked.

“They’re going to talk about how to keep the people of the world from propping up a new set of Neoterics to replace the ones we killed,” Responsibility said. “I think it’s safe to say we, you especially, have some idea what the Neoterics were like and why that would be a terrible idea to let happen again, even if its what a lot of people feel comfortable with. That’s why they all gathered here.”

“And because we’re currently the closest thing to neutral ground between the various Neoteric cities,” Clarity added.

“So, I should be there?”

“That’s what they need, what you need, what the three of us and probably all the rest of the Death’s need, I think, is to be given time to just live,” Responsibility said.

“And grieve,” Clarity added. “As much as we might hate her, we’ve lost Our Lady and the place she held in our lives. We lost everything about the lives we had – and good riddance to them – but it’s a change, a bigger one than any of the living Deaths have ever been through.”

“And the ones we brought back? If we don’t make time for ourselves to figure out how to live, how are we ever going to help them?” Responsibility asked.

“You do have someone to save still Insight, but that someone is you, and trust us, you’re very worth saving,” Clarity said

Outside our window, a hundred flower covered vines grew, and with them came a voiceless nudge from the Life that was waiting for me that my god agreed.

I was loved, more than I could ever know, more than I could ever be grateful for enough, I was loved.