“Do you ever wonder, Vitor, how our world will end?”

“I believe we’ve lain rather meticulous plans so that we can be sure of exactly how the world will end.  Wait, have we missed something? What are the dead saying Malgenia?”

“Nothing, nothing. The restful spirits remain as restful as ever and the restless ones natter on about whatever little issues which keep them clinging to this world.”

“Thank…well, not the gods I suppose. Thank you, yes, that seems appropriate in this regards. You had me worried that somehow one of those beyond the veil had caught wind of what we’re doing and was poised to spoiler the entire endeavor, not to mention our immediate futures.”

“Really there is no veil, you know this. I’ve told you multiple times now I’m sure.”

“And I accept that is true for you, dear sister. The rest of us, you might have noticed, cannot negotiate the division between the living and the dead with quite the ease you possess.”

“As if any of you have ever bothered to try.”

“But you shall always be there for us to turn to and even your modesty must admit that no one will ever be your equal in that regards.”

“Always? Oh I don’t think it will be always.”

“Of course it will be, that’s the point of all this. Once we claim dominion over this world, we will be the ones with the power to reign over it eternally which the gods have kept hoarded for themselves.”

“They have.”

“So you see there is nothing to worry about. Once they fall and this world is put out of its misery, we shall rise and forge one to chart a course to eternity from.”

“Because we’ll have the power of the gods.”

“Yes, exactly. Their power and, for you, the power of all the departed. Where we shall collect the grace which today goes to waste to do with as we please.”

“The power which grants the gods eternal life.”

“Indeed!”

“And you see no potential issues with this?”

“We have foreseen all of the potential issues. We have plans for every failure case. Whatever unforeseen events may rear their ugly heads, the gods will fall and we shall rise in triumph.”

– Malgenia confirming that her brother was only capable of looking towards the immediate future, and might be missing the larger issues she could foresee.

There’s a thing about asking someone to do the impossible. Most people, to be fair the sensible ones, will inform you by some means that your request is beyond them. Others, let’s call them the more energetic sorts, will agree immediately despite have no idea whatsoever what is being requested of them.

Responsibility chose neither approach.

Instead she leaned in and engaged with the idea just as I had hoped she would.

“And how exactly am I to give you back your mortality?” she asked, her eyes locked onto me. That she was at last unconcerned about the god sitting on the bench with her was probably a good sign too since she would have to work with Diyas a lot in the coming weeks.

“You’re going to fight me,” I said, supremely confident that she would find the prospect as delightful as I did.

“No.” 

That was not the answer she was supposed to give.

“No? No what?” I asked.

“No, I won’t fight you,” she said.

Which..

What…?

We always fought!

She’d stabbed me! We had to fight!

“Why? You hate me! You have to fight me!” Did I sound a spoiled five year old? Shut up. That’s your answer.

Oddly, Responsibility looked surprised at my outburst.

“Hate you? I’ve never hated you. I love you,” she said, which, sure, whatever.

“Yes, yes, and I love you too. All the Deaths love each other. I don’t need love though. I need someone who can break what I’ve become.”

“And what is that?” Responsibility asked, somehow the far less flustered of the two of us.

How was that possibility. She’d been falling apart in shock like a minute earlier. How could she move to ‘calm and reasonable’ so quickly?

Oh she’s still falling apart, Beauty said privately to me and the other spirits in our little group.

Yeah, she’s dealing with all the things we’ve dropped on her by not dealing with them, and I can’t blame her, Inhibition said.

It’s not the definition of healthy but then I don’t think any of us can claim to be in the same kingdom as healthy when it comes to things like this, Reason said.

“I’m not sure Insight is capable of fully answering that question,” Diyas said in response to Responsibility. “I believe what you are seeing is Malgenia’s power which is now very much Insight’s in all senses save for its origin. Insight, who is perhaps failing to explain herself fully enough, since you are correct and an attempt to overcome Malgenia’s power with the gifts you now possess would be an exercise is not only futility but annihilation.”

“Oh give me some credit! I would not annihilate her! I don’t even want to win!” Other, smarter Blesseds, since technically I was also the Blessed of Life, probably would have spent at least a half second or so processing their god’s words.

Not me though!

Nope.

Open mouth, spew thoughts out.

On the positive side though, it did give my god a chuckle, and amusing the goddess of life had to count for something, right?

It does. It always does, she said.

“Why don’t you explain a little better then,” Responsibility said.

I wanted to punch her.

Why we she always so much better than me!

I love how stupid she is, Beauty said and I scowled at her. 

She was right, but that didn’t mean I had to like it.

She’s not right, Inhibition said, meaning Beauty though it took me a second to get that. You’re not stupid and Responsibility isn’t better than you. You both are just under what people in Malgenia’s time might have called a mountain of stress.

Thanks, I said, to Inhibition specifically, and tried to suppress the mental grumbling that went with it.

“Okay. Let me start over there,” I said and gathered my thoughts.

I’d spent so long thinking about this though that I had no idea where to start for a moment.

“I’m not Malgenia.” It wasn’t the best beginning, but I felt it was important. “I’m not but I have all the power she ever collected. And some of her memories. And the powers she had well before the Sunfall. And I watched her for my whole life, the same as all of us did.”

“Not all of us,” Responsibility said. “There was a reason she choose you for the last Assumption. There are definitely Deaths who aren’t as tuned in to Malgenia as you were.”

“Fair. Though I think what drew her to me might have been Diyas’ presence or the Blessing she’d given me.”

“Can we go back to that later, because I don’t understand that either.”

“Sure.”

“So you’re not Malgenia, but you have all of the pieces of her that you’d need to become a near perfect copy of her if you wanted to.”

“Yes, which means I am absolutely capable of being the same monster she was. Maybe even worse because I know what its like to not be her.”

“And that scares you?” Responsibility’s comforting tone was not what I’d been expecting, but I didn’t mind it.

“I wish it did. At first, yes, but the longer I have these powers, the more I wonder about them. And the longer I have Malgenia’s memories, the more I want to poke around in them.”

“And that’s a bad thing because?”

“Once you see the things she’s done, you can’t unseen them. And the more that you see, the more numb you grow to it. I’m….”

I did not want to give voice to that thought because I knew it was far more true than I wanted to admit.

“She thinks she’s becoming like Malgenia, she thinks she’s going to flirt with unforgivable things and with no one to stop her and no consequences there’ll be nothing to stop her from descending into the same depths Malgenia plumbed,” Beauty said and bonked the side of her head against mine.

“Yes. I understand,” Responsibility said without flinching away from me at all. “So exactly what can I do to help with that?”

“When I said ‘fight me’ I meant it, but ‘me’, not ‘Malgenia’.”

“You and Malgenia’s power are inseparable though, are you not?” Responsibility leaned back and steepled her hands in front of her face. She always did that when she was thinking seriously about something, which sparked an erg of hope in me.

“At the moment, yes. Sort of,” I said. “Technically I could sever myself from her powers, and I think even her memories and basic abilities, but that would unless everything she has stored up and obliterate the word. So, obviously, we’re not doing that.”

“Obviously. If you want to destroy the world, my presence or absence would be immaterial.”

“There is a moment when I can be separated from Malgenia’s powers though,” I said. “I know because its when I destroyed her.”

“During an Assumption,” Responsibility said, guessing the answer because she is, as I’ve mentioned, smarter than me.

She’s not, and I will smack you if you need me to help remind you of that, Beauty offered.

Hey! I wasn’t saying I was stupid that time, I was just acknowledging that Responsibility is brilliant.

Then say that, Beauty said. No one gets to beat you up, not even you yourself.

“During an Assumption,” I confirmed. “How it’s supposed to work is that we, the Deaths who are partaking in the ritual present our world and supernatural gifts to Malgenia, laying them before her and opening ourselves to receive an infusion of her divinity in the process.”

“But instead she devours us?”

“In a manner of speaking. What the ritual really does is create a state of communion between Malgenia and the Death into which Malgenia pours not a drop of her divinity but an ocean of it. Far more than we can handle, enough so that when she reclaims it, because it is still her divinity, not ours, she’s able to claim our mortality along with it. Some of her divinity is lost in the process, it’s what kept Beauty, Inhibition, Reason and the rest around after they were consumed. That’s an intentional feature of the ritual though since having too much divine grace within her is what was constantly pushing Malgenia  towards tipping over into full godhood, which would then get her consumed by the Beast of the End of All Things.”

“So, let me get this straight then,” Responsibility said. “You want me to be the next Assumption candidate, we perform the ritual and then, while the communion is open between us, we fight? What would that bring us? Would one of two of us wind up in the same state you’re in now?”

“That’s one possibility,” I said. “But I think we can do better than that. You and I specifically. Because you hate me. If we begin the Assumption ritual, establish a communion and then fight with all we’ve got, then within the Assumption the one who wins will be able to claim Malgenia’s power, but if they let the loser live too, that power will be shared between them. Neither of us will be as powerful as Malgenia was, and we’d have each other to keep us in check.”

“So you would go into the Assumption and chose to lose it, putting yourself in my hands when you think I hate you?” Responsibility asked.

“Not exactly. If I go into planning to lose, Malgenia power won’t come with me. I need to fight for real, and you need to as well.”

“What if we destroy each other in the process?”

“Malgenia’s power will fall to whoever is destroyed last or destroyed less and it will be more than enough to restore the victor to full.”

“So I could wind up in your state, or I could wind up dead and you’ll still be trapped like this?”

“Possibly? Yes. Practically though I don’t think so. If you’re willing to destroy me, you’ll definitely be able to win, and then it’ll be up to you what happens next.” Was I trust my arch-rival with my life? Yes. Did I have much to lose if she decided she didn’t want to share power? Nope. Either way I wasn’t going to become a monster.

“There’s only one small problem with that,” Responsibility said, rising from her seat.

I thought she was going to leave (I have no idea why, it just seemed like a thing she would do) but instead she knelt down in front of where I was sitting.

And placed her hands on either side of my head.

And gave me a surprisingly deep and passionate kiss.

“I meant it when I said that I love you.”

“Vitor, do we really need the others?”

“Need them for what Malgenia?”

“Exactly! I’ll go see them now!”

“No! No! Wait, apologies sister, I was distracted there. Let’s try this again; what, specifically, are you referring to?”

“The others, Vaingloth, Sasarai, Helgon and the whole lot of them. I was just thinking wouldn’t we be able to end the world without them? I mean you’re talented, I’m talented. We could just do all this on our own couldn’t we?”

“They’ve asked you to write another report didn’t they?”

“No. I mean yes. But do we really need them?”

“We do dear sister. Weren’t you just saying that Dyrena helped you with one of the wards you were working on? They all have areas of speciality where they excel beyond us.”

“But we don’t need them.”

“Okay, which one of them, exactly, do you think we don’t we need?”

“Any of them!”

“Even Dyrena?”

“No. She’s fine. She can stay.”

“What about Helgon? His automatons have been helpful haven’t they?”

“They’re cold and pointless, but, yes, they’ve been okay.”

“Then whom among them would be the first to go?”

“I don’t know. All the rest of them. We don’t need Kurst do we? What has he ever done for us?”

“Aside from visit you yesterday? If I remember correctly I was busy with Helgon or I would have joined that meeting. What was it you two spoke about?”

“What else? Contracts.”

“That it was Kurst does. Let me guess, he asked for your input, written input, on how the non-aggression contracts could be formulated such that long term Necromantic effects were covered as well?”

“He’s a jerk.”

“Yes he is. And also a fool. He seems to think that his little bindings would be able to hold sway over you as you are now. Imagine the surprise he’s in after our ascendance should he ever give you cause to show him where the limits of his little contracts fall short.”

“Oh. Oh yes. That could be a delight!”

– Malgenia and Vitor plotting what would become the second death of a Neoteric Lord.

I’d expected Responsibility to be shattered by awe. Quaking in her slippers. Ghostly pale. Trembling head to toe. 

I had been the first time I’d met Diyas and it seemed only fair that Responsibility should have the same, full experience that I’d received.

Instead she simply waved to my goddess.

“Oh, hello,” she added and moved over a bit so that Inhibition and Reason shuffled as well making space for Diyas to sit beside them if she wanted to.

“Once upon a time, I’m guessing no one would have sat down in the presence of a god?” Beauty said without rising from beside me.”

“No. Once upon a time, appearing like this would only have been possible at a moment of Divine Revelation, and those come only when a mortal is ready to receive them.” Diyas took the offered seat and slumped against the backrest as though she was embodiment of laziness rather than the Avatar of Life.

“How are you able to appear like this now then?” Responsibility asked, when the question should have been how Responsibility herself was so calm about meeting an actual deity!

I was about to burst out with those exact words when the answer hit me. 

Or answers.

First, Responsibility wasn’t calm. She was fried. Hitting her with “Malgenia’s gone and your greatest rival is wearing her body” pretty much broke her ability to react to absurd, world-altering revelations. 

Second, apart from her initial proclamation to establish who and what she was, Diyas was not wearing her Divine Essence as a “Mantle of Awe”. Diyas looking casual and relaxed was perfectly intentional, and thinking for a moment (which, honestly, how often do any of us bother with that?) was enough to show me why. We didn’t need Responsibility awed. We needed her on our side of her own volition. Forcing her to do what we wanted, even if that coercion was subtle and divine in nature would strip away any chance of success.

“I’m not what I once was,” Diyas said. “Still a god, despite the rumors of our death to the contrary, though there’s some truth to those as well.”

“So you are or are not a god then?” Responsibility asked with the simple curiosity of someone who knew what they were seeing wasn’t, couldn’t be, real and so didn’t actually matter enough to be worried about.

“She’s a piece of herself,” I said since gods needed to be careful of explaining themselves too much. 

From the hints Diyas had given me, they were sort of like ideas, only more independent. The problem was if they said something about themselves, it was all too possible for that to become true, or worse, the only truth. In that sense, I was the less malleable of the two of us, though changing who Diyas was hadn’t been something an apocalypse had been capable of doing so I was pretty sure I had some of the nuance wrong there.

“Quite a lot of pieces in fact,” Reason said. 

“We’ve spent most of the time since Insight freed us finding as many of Diyas’ other pieces as we could,” Inhibition said.

“Pieces?” Responsibility was coming dangerously close to believing what was right in front of her.

“The Sunfall happened,” I said, offering it as a reassurance that not everything we learned was a lie. “Malgenia, Vitor and the other Neoteric Lords – there were twelve of them, not nine by the way – they stole the grace they were supposed to be sending to the gods and summoned the End of All Things. It attacked the gods first, and almost all of them were destroyed fighting it. Or, why do we ‘destroyed’ or ‘killed’? Wouldn’t ‘broken’ be more accurate?”

“Not necessarily,” Diyas said, and, like always, offered no further information.

Was it because we were all clever little beasts and could figure it out for ourselves?

Yes. Let’s go with that. Diyas shared with me alone.

“The battle against the Beast changed them,” Beauty said. “The gods we have now are fundamentally different from what they were before.”

“Ah. True. They’re grounded in this world rather than existing solely on the divine plane,” Reason said.

“I don’t recall mentioning that?” Diyas said.

“You didn’t have to oh Divine One. We are clever little beasts after all,” I said. 

One should always and at every opportunity, tease one’s god.

Yes. Clearly the wisest course of action, Diyas quipped to me alone (I think?)

I was being completely sincere on that though! 

I am fully aware of that, Diyas said. Without smiting me, I would like to point out.

“I have to confess, I’m still lost,” Responsibility said. “Am I actually dead? Is this a special hell you’ve put me in? Oh no! No! Insight! No more lying. Malgenia killed me and dumped my soul into your keeping didn’t she!?”

“Responsibility. I need you to look at me, look directly into my eyes, and try to make the claim that I am smart enough to come up with ANY of this? Go ahead. Try. I dare you.”

I leaned forward and regarded her with as honest and open an expression as I knew how to make. I had the advantage of having zero to hide from her at this point.

Can I mention how good that felt? How after two years of pretending to be the worst monster in the world who I’d love more than my own blood, I was finally, FINALLY, able to drop the damn act and talk to someone who I could not only trust but who would not worship me in the slightest?

I mean, yes, I had the other Deaths, and Diyas. None of them were in the ‘worship Insight’ camp, but we were bound so close together that I sometimes lost a sense of where I ended and where they began.

Responsibility though? She was wholly and completely her own creature. Not only capable but also entirely willing to stab me when the need arose.

Was it weird that I wanted Clarity here just so we could fight over her again?

Yeah. That’s weird.

Whatever.

“Oh frozen hells, you’re not kidding,” Responsibility said and glanced over at Diyas again, taking the god in a bit more completely this time.

“Haven’t been this whole time,” I said. “Need to stab me again?”

It was an honest offer but not the stress valve I’d hoped it would be.

“Okay, no, wait, no, you said you needed me. Why? Why in all this would you need me? Me of all the Deaths?” Responsibility said, looking from Beauty sitting beside me to Inhibition and Reason sitting beside her.

“Do you want the short form or the full explanation?” I asked.

“Both,” she said, breathing in a long, controlled inhalations and exhalations to center herself.

“The short form is that we’re all stuck in a cycle. Malgenia eating the Deaths that were raised for her was entirely of her own volition, at least at first, but if I choose to not continue that trend, the whole world dies. I don’t mean the people on it. I mean the base physical materials of the world. All of it. Gone. With you though, maybe we can fix that.”

“I think I am going to need the long form,” Responsibility said and glanced back at Diyas as though to make sure the god hadn’t just been a hallucination.

“The Neoteric Lords are all ‘immortal’. It’s a limited form of immortality – they’re not unkillable, they’ve proven that on three separate occasions already, but their lives are essentially unlimited. Disease, poison, most kind of wounds, even a lot of spells just simply don’t affect them. I pulled some of that from Malgenia’s scattered memories and some of it from her notes so I’m pretty sure it’s universally true for the other Neoterics. Malgenia herself was a special case though.”

“Can we come back to the Malgenia’s memories part of things?”

“Definitely. We’ll get there pretty soon in fact. As I was saying though, the other Neoteric Lords all harvest the grace their people generate for them. The surviving ones have various individual schemes which augment that, but for all practical purposes they have the power to exist for as long as they want to.”

“Malgenia’s not weaker than them though. We’ve seen how Vitor treats her.”

“You’ve seen it. I’ll wager you a weeks worth of suppers that about half the Deaths haven’t paid enough attention to see anything about Vitor except what we’re told to see.”

“Fair. Also, do you still need supper?”

“Sadly no. Malgenia’s form of immortality is different from the rest. Where they all have a population they keep, she only had us Deaths, and our grace wasn’t useful for her.”

“But I…we, we were so devout! What are the other peoples like?”

“Far less devout, but first there’s far too few of us to sustain a Neoteric Lord, and second, Malgenia couldn’t use our grace because her essence was almost perfectly death-aligned. The other needed to gather power over centuries to masquerade as the gods they can pretend to be today. Malgenia didn’t need to do that because when the Sunfall happened, she was the one who absorbed all the energy from the deaths that followed.”

“Why would she need us then? We couldn’t be anymore than the tiniest of drops compared to everyone and everything that died?”

“You would be surprised. Every life is holds worlds of possibility,” Diyas said. “Balancing eternities was something even we deities found challenging.”

“Also, we had something Malgenia couldn’t get from any of the dead things she laid claim to,” I said. “We lived. We were, or are for you, a part of this world. Malgenia absorbed so much power, and she was so strong in Necromancy before the Sunfall that she was always teetering on the edge of an actual divine Ascension.”

“I thought she had become the God of Death?”

“She could have, but that would have destroyed her. Remember, they summoned the Beast of the End of All Things? It’s still there, prowling the Divine Realms. Malgenia didn’t need us to extend her life. She’d kind of never had a life. She needed to take our lives to keep her mortal enough to exist here.”

“But you said she’s gone now. Why do you need me?”

“Because someone needs to give me back my mortality.”

“Vitor, I must ask, has your sister been like that her whole life?”

“Like what Helgon?”

“Well, dead.”

“She’s not dead Helgon. You spoke with her yesterday.”

“Yes. That was when I confirmed her, umm, state.”

“Her state? Helgon, you are aware that we have actual work to be doing here are you not?”

“Oh I am, I am. I was simply curious. It’s not often that one sees a dead woman walking around after all. Or, is she a woman?”

“Yes Helgon. My sister is a woman. She has been since the day she was born and, so far as I am aware, has embraced that designation whole heartedly.”

“A woman since she was born? Wouldn’t she have been a child when she was born? I mean, I suppose it was up to her, but I would have thought appearing as a full grown woman might have given away the illusion rather quickly.”

“You know Vaingloth tried to warn me about this. I hate to give him any credit, but in this at least, he was correct.”

“Correct about what? Your sister being odd for being a woman from birth.”

“She will kill me if I let that stand. But it’s like talking to a rock.”

“Is there a talking rock here? You seem to be distracted.”

“No, sorry Helgon. Not distracted. Just considering enlisting my sister’s aid with certain necromantic procedures.”

“Quite understandable. Being dead like she is certainly provides her with a fluency with the Divine Words needed for our necromantic rituals which none of us can match.”

“Oh why today. Why any day. Helgon, my dear compatriot. Please explain why you believe my sister to be dead. In your explanation consider the fact that dead people do not, as a rule, walk around and talk, as you yourself have personally witnessed her doing.”

“But she doesn’t. Didn’t you know? What we see and interact with, that’s a construct. We had to take some readings of our Elemental Affinities last week. Here, look at the results for Malgenia. She is nearly pure Death aligned. There are undead with more traces of life than she has.”

– High Accessors Helgon and Vitor discovering that their Aetheric Sensors have limitations they were unaware of, whereas Malgenia might not.

She stabbed me. It was a reflex, and it left me on knees crying an unmitigated flood of tears.

Responsibility had stabbed me. With the special blade from her arm sheath. The one she’d stabbed me with the first time.

I was so, so happy.

Also laughing.

Which, you know, I can see in hindsight was not the most comforting reaction I could have had.

Not to make excuses for you, or any of us, Beauty said, but this has all been a lot more than we should have been capable of dealing with.

And to her credit, Responsibility, didn’t run away, Inhibition said.

Responsibility, of course, could not hear them. The other Deaths who proceeded me were speaking only in my head.

We could change that, but maybe talk to her first, Reason suggested.

I dried my eyes.

Empty heavens I loved her.

Stabbing me right away!

So perfect.

My second favorite Death, despite her perfection, was having a rough time it turned out though.

“My Lady! My Lady! No! Wait. What have I…”

I raised my left index finger to quiet, if not entirely calm her.

“What you always do when I piss you off, Responsibility.” I drew the blade out of my heart. Damn that had been a good shot. She really was talented. “And what I very much needed you to do.”

“I don’t…no…I don’t…”

Was she overwhelmed? Of course. Malgenia was the foundation the lives of the girls raised as her “Deaths of whatever” were built upon. My revelation was going to force her to recontextualize everything she’d ever been told and everything she believed. That was not a fun process, and it took so much longer than felt at all reasonable.

We’re still working on it too you know, but it gets more manageable, Beauty said.

“Come here. There is a lot we need to talk about,” I said and with a wave grew two park benches up from the dead and thorny vines around us. 

I could have left the benches covered in thorns – Malgenia’s body didn’t care about them anymore than it had cared about the stab wound – but I made them cushiony and smooth. Responsibility was having a bad enough day. She did not need any minor torture to go along with it.

Taking her by the hand – again not a thing Malgenia ever did with us – I directed her to one bench while I took the one opposite her.

“I can think of a thousand questions that are storming around in your mind,” I said. “Let me answer some of the quick ones. First, this is not a test of your faith. Second, you can trust me exactly as much as you ever have, which is to say not at all and entirely, and I believe you can tell which situations each of those apply to. Lastly, I cannot say I will do you no harm, because I clearly already have. What I can say is that I will honor your choices and that you do not need to fear me.”

“Because fear does not save us from what we cannot change or resist,” Responsibility said, eyes downcast. It was a mantra we learned as children when we woke with night terrors. I’m not sure who the mantra ever helped, I suspect no one, but it did teach us not to bother our instructors at night and to hide those emotions away as tightly as we could.

“Because I need you,” I said, wishing I had Malgenia was still around so I could throttle her a bit more.

“Why?” she managed to whisper the word through the tears that were threatening to flood down her face.

“Because I’m an abomination and I need your help to stop this cycle we’re all caught in,” I said, offering the simplest explanation I could think of.

You didn’t need to call yourself an abomination, Insight said.

Technically you’re an aberration, Reason added, ever-so-helpfully. We all are. 

“You can’t be Insight,” Responsibility said. “Insight descended. She’s a demigod now.”

Yeah.

That’s what I was supposed to be.

Or that’s what we’d been promised.

And Responsibility couldn’t look at me, so I breathed in and called two things to mind; who I used to be and the divine power Malgenia carried.

“Responsibility. Look at me,” I said, wearing the form of my old body once more.

“No. No…this has to be a trick.”

“I wish it was. I wanted so much to a queen of the underworld. But that’s not what Malgenia needed me for.”

“It’s not what she needed any of us for,” Beauty said, no longer speaking only in my head but instead drawing on Malgenia’s power to appear as the ghostly image of  the girl she’d been in life.

Clarity was prettier of course.

It’s not a competition, Beauty said, sharing that one with only me.

“Not everything she told us was a lie…” Inhibition said, manifesting on the bench beside Responsibility.

“But most of it was,” Reason said, manifesting on Responsibility’s other side. “What we knew of her, what we our destiny was supposed to be, what really happened in the Sunfall…”

“Almost none of it was the truth,” I said.

“How?” Responsibility asked.

“How could she? Easily. She had power beyond measure and had never had to face any consequences for the harm she inflicted.”

“No. How could we not have known? This can’t be…we would, someone would…”

“You did. I did too, but a lot later than you.” I wasn’t trying to be reassuring, which was good because my words didn’t seem to comfort Responsibility at all.

“No. NO! I was faithful. I was…”

“You questioned. You watched and you evaluated. You, more than any of the others, actually thought about what we were doing.”

“That’s not true. Clarity is a lot smarter than I am.”

“Well, of course. I mean, that’s Clarity. She’s…Clarity.”

That, surprisingly, earned me a chuckle from her.

“You sound just like her,” Responsibility said.

“Clarity? I have never sounded half as smart as Clarity and you know it!” I said it on reflex and it was the least Malgenia thing I could have said, so, terrible for my disguise, but I think exactly what I needed in that moment.

Yes, yes, you’re brilliant, we all know, Reason chided me privately.

“Empty heavens but you really do. And you look like her too. Insight, is it really…?”

“Yes blockhead. It’s really me. Want me to drown you again?”

That bought me a look of shocked recognition. When the Deaths had little squabbles like that one of our unspoken yet ironclad rules was that we kept it to ourselves. Our instructors were kept out of it as completely as we could and Malgenia was absolutely not allowed to hear even a whisper of our conflicts.

“Okay. This is too much,” Responsibility said.

“I get that. Trust me. It’s been almost two years and I am still processing all this. Feel free to freak out as much and as long as you want.”

“But the others…?”

“Do you think anyone is going to breath a single question to you demanding answers about what Malgenia took you away in secret to do?”

“But Clarity, she’ll be worried.”

“Thousand hells. Yeah. She will be. Okay. We’ll keep this short then. But you do need time. And you need answers. What do you think, maybe we can limit this to an hour today? Malgenia’s whims could last that long right?”

“You’re asking me?”

“Yes! Seriously when was I ever the smart one of the two of us? I’d bring Clarity in on this to but…”

“No. No, she cannot be part of this.”

“I KNOW! Trust me…I know. I know exactly how messed up this is making you feel, and I don’t want that for her, or any of the others.”

“But it’s okay for me?”

“Yes. No. Yes. I need you. And if this makes you hate me then all the better!”

“I don’t understand any of this. I…I’m going to assume you really are the Death of Insight that I knew, and that the story they told us, that we would descend and become Demigods in the Underworld, Queens under Malgenia’s godly rule, was all lies, but that doesn’t make any of it make any sense at all.”

“Let’s start there then. I’ve learned an awful lot but it’s been the other Deaths here who helped me understand it. And kept me however sane I can claim to still be. Ask us the questions that seem the most important to you and we’ll try to answer them so that it all fits together in your head.”

“Okay. Fine. Let’s begin with them, you all, that is. What are you?”

“We’re the part of who we were that Malgenia didn’t consume,” Reason said.

“You could call us Soulforms. I think that’s the technical term she had for us,” Inhibition said.

“We’re bound into the construct of Malgenia’s power,” Beauty said. “She consumed our bodies and our lives, but our memories, our spirits, and our souls weren’t anything she needed.”

“We should have fallen down into her underworld with all the other souls of the dead she has trapped there, but we wound up getting caught in the web of her power,” Inhibition said.

“The other Deaths she’s consumed over the years are trapped here too but most of them are lost in a kind of slumber,” Reason said.

“Just like we were,” Inhibition said.

“Until she came along,” Beauty said, sitting down beside me and throwing a ghostly arm over my shoulders.

“Yeah. I was able to wake them up because we’d met and they knew me,” I said.

“But how were you able to do that? Shouldn’t you be dead too?” Responsibility asked.

“Oh, I’m not like them at all,” I said. “When Malgenia tried to consume me to extend her life again, I had a surprise ready for her.”

“THAT WOULD BE ME,” Diyas said, the dead vines of Malgenia’s Garden surging with life as my god made the kind of entrance that only an incarnate deity can.

“You want me to make Life Shielding charms Vaingloth? Whatever for?”

“It may have escaped your notice Helgon, but one of our number is excessively adept at the necromantic arts. It seems worthwhile to design some protections from those arts. Perhaps so that the rest of us might be more capable of assisting her, let us say. Something we would only be capable of if we were able to tolerate the environments in which she performs her more sophisticated workings.”

“Would we? I mean, certainly I could imagine it being unpleasant to be exposed to any stray energies she has during her more esoteric casting – assuming she performs documented experiments at all that is – do you know if she follows the Sandust-Hillver Experimental Standards or the Grishak Standards – if she’s a Grishak follower it will be a nightmare to reconcile her results with Insikir’s. He is so adamantly Sandust, with the High Rationalization modifications too. Really, we should speak to them all about adopting the Generalized Faolin approach for reporting. It would save us so much time and make interpolation between the various coordinate spaces they reference so much less prone to error. Uhm, what we speaking of?”

“Life shielding charms.”

“Oh, and why would we need those?”

“Because for the moment we are still very mortal.”

“Well, yes, but we’re hardly likely to be meddling with deep necromantic research now are we? That’s what we have Malgenia for, and, really, do you see any of us holding a candle to her mastery? Why I believe I could train in her arts for the rest of my lifetime and still not arrive at where she is presently, much less where she would be by then.”

“Of course. She is our specialist, but even specialists can require assistance, and we should be ready to provide it should her tasks require more time than we have allotted. This is not an endeavor which we can allow to stray outside out our deadlines after all.”

“Oh! Is that all. Well, I am pleased to say you have no worries there. She’s already completed her assigned duties. She’s currently working on some related projects.”

“I see. That’s a bit worrisome. And what might these related projects be?”

“It’s rather technical I’m afraid. I can’t claim to exactly follow what she was describing. It sounded very exciting though. Something about a form of necromancy capable of affecting even immortal targets. I imagine she means to make the technique available if any gods remain that we need to dispatch, or something like that.”

– High Accessor’s Helgon and Vaingloth discussing why there was little to no point trying to devise defenses against their necromantic co-conspirator.

I could have kissed her. Hell, I probably should have kissed her.

She hated me! She was willing to try killing me!

Responsibility was the absolute best.

First time you, or maybe anyone, has ever formed that thought. Beauty was being sarcastic because that is what she does. That I love her for it annoys her even more, which, obviously, makes it all the better.

“Who am I?” I asked, failing to suppress even a single jot of my delight and intrigue.

Would Malgenia have reacted with either emotion? I couldn’t say. Probably. I think just the sheer novelty of the situation would have delighted her for at least a few moments.

Then she probably would have killed Responsibility.

Or made her High Lady of the Deaths (not that such a position existed, but Malgenia’s whims were often a bit more extreme than other people’s).

Me though? I couldn’t help but drink in the anger I saw in Responsibilities eyes. 

Again, kissing. Would have been appropriate.

Not appreciated.

Not at all.

But she deserved some kind of reward.

Sadly, as Malgenia, the rewards I had available to bestow, especially on one of the Deaths all fell squarely in the ‘dreadful’ category.

So instead I gifted her some more words.

What? It was better than a knife through the chest! I was improving see!

Yes, yes, definitely an improvement, Inhibition said with a faintly amused air.

“Who do you imagine I might be?” I asked.

“I do not know. But you do not seem to be yourself. Has someone delivered a toxin to you?” Notably, she did not release the fire she’d gathered into her hands. 

Assaulting Malgenia was an absurdity at best. Her flames would be smothered the moment she thought of releasing it at me, and we both knew it, but then – huh – maybe that wasn’t her aim? Was she thinking to destroy one of Malgenia’s artworks to gain at least a sliver of pre-emptive revenge? Good thought if so! That was something she might actually be able to accomplish!

I glanced around Malgenia’s Garden. There was no one else present in it who could be hurt. No surprise there, the air was perfectly toxic. I didn’t require protection from it because Malgenia breathed it as easily as any other vaporous substance. Responsibility would have literally melted in an instant but she wasn’t under my auspice, and Malgenia’s grace was just as capable of preserving life as it was of ending it. That she rarely chose the preservation aspect was a character failing I was glad she’d possessed. Destroying her might have been impossible without it.

“Many people gift me with toxins,” I said, entirely truthfully. Novel toxins were one of the more popular gifts the other Neoterics traded to Malgenia for her assistance on the various projects they still chose to coordinate on.

“One of them has…has changed you. Can’t you feel it?” She wanted the old Malgenia back. Or rather part of her thought she did. I was too well aware of the feeling to miss the signs of bargaining and denial that raged behind her eyes.

“Have they now? And what might they have done to me?” I asked. It would have been so amazingly, agonizingly simpler to just tell her the truth directly, but the denial and bargaining she was still trapped in? She very much needed to work through that on her own if we were going to work together.

And I needed her.

I needed her so much.

The longer we talked, the longer she refused to wilt before me, the more certain I became that none of the other Deaths would be as capable of breaking the cycle Malgenia had trapped us in.

All cycles break, Diyas said. Some of them however taking a rather aggravating amount of time to do so. We are fortunate Responsibility was at hand, though an uncertain future could easily have yielded another to shoulder the burden she took on with you.

“Your divinity. That’s what they’ve taken from you. Or damaged? Or hidden?” Responsibility said. “You approached us without it today. While you sat with Clarity and let her sketch you, it was diminished. I watched her sketch you and the essence she captured could have been the essence of no more than a lowly Death. Even now, sheltered as I am by your grace, you do not shine with the Terror and Majesty you always share with us!”

Oh course I didn’t. I very specifically needed you not to be afraid of me you silly ninny…is not what I said to her.

I think she picked up on the sentiment anyways though, Reason said.

I considered, for a petty and cruel moment, unfurling Malgenia’s full aura as a counterargument to Responsibilities point but that would have been entirely self-defeating.

“Come see my latest blossoms,” I said, turning from her without addressing her claim directly.

Would she figure out that she was right? Probably. Would she understand what that meant, and what the real cause was? Maybe if she’d had her own divine fragment to guide her, but on her own it was a tiny bit more than I could expect her to piece together.

Hence the need to lead her onwards gently.

Malgenia’s Garden would feature well in nearly anyone’s nightmares. I hadn’t added anything new to it because I objected to turning living things into unliving and undying artwork. 

At least I think Malgenia regarded what she did as artwork.

I’d torn down the worst of the “blossoms” after I’d laid the groundwork of explaining to Vitor how bored I was with the Garden’s contents and how I ‘longed to work in a new medium’.

Vitor had, wisely, not enquired as to what, or more specifically who, that ‘new medium’ might be made from, and hadn’t objected at all when I’d lain to rest the undying specimens that I could figure out how to release with the memories I was able to pull from Malgenia’s shattered remains. 

Bones were, if not a more tasteful base to work from, at the very least incapable of screaming, or sensing anything at all.

The “blossoms” I led Responsibility to were indeed the latest work I’d put together – a chain of figures worked together from the bones the Garden held and ones I’d been gifted when I mentioned what my latest project was. 

The figures were ones no one but me would ever see or recognize, I’d thought. Images of myself, and Beauty, and Inhibition, and Reason, and so many other holding hands as they danced ever forwards from a past shrouded by the living thorny flowers which overgrew them more and more towards my figure, the latest in the chain, around whom no flowers grew at all.

I’d hoped for a gasp of recognition, but that was expecting a bit too much really.

For one, my sculpting wasn’t the best in any medium, and bones in particular were not optimal for expressing individual traits and distinctions. Especially since I had refused to shape them into smooth flowing curves with Malgenia’s powers. Spikey and sharp, each figure stood with jagged edges all around and hands clasped together in desperation more than tenderness.

None looked like the graceful, adoring Deaths any of us had been in life, with my figure the least of all since, where the others were polished white, I’d made sure to cover my boney incarnation with dirt and ash. 

The others had all been sinned against. I, on the other hand, had committed a sin unthinkable to any Death before me.

What you did was not a sin, Diyas said.

What I did was necessary, it may even have been just, and I would do it again and worse if I had to, but I cannot forget that is was the most evil thing that I could do to Malgenia, because if I do, I could do it again when there might be any other possibility at all.

Diyas’ silence was profound, not because I’d offended her but because I was right, and that’s not something mortals can usually claim when speaking to a god, or even the fragment of one.

Diyas wasn’t the only one who was silent though.

Responsibility had followed me just like she was supposed to, she’d observed my sculpture just like she was supposed to, and she understood the message I left in it, just like she was supposed to.

I didn’t turn to look at her.

I didn’t need to.

Instead I gave her my back. A clear and open target. Not one she was willing to take just yet, but it was part of the message too.

“This…,” she tried to say and paused. 

I knew where she was. I could feel the emotions radiating off her. She understood the message the figures shrieked, but she very much did not want to hear it. To put any of her thoughts into words was impossible. It might make them real, and that could shatter her world.

A whisper of mercy blew across my heart and I thought of playing the sculpture off as one of Malgenia’s whims. The message could as easily be a joke as a depiction of the truth. Malgenia’s humor ran to both dark and odd places. If I wanted to I could let the usual mask of madness Malgenia wore hide away all the terrible things that were racing through Responsibility’s mind. I could unveil a fraction of Malgenia’s divine aura and reassure my second favorite Death that all was still well in her world, and that the whole day had been a delightful little diversion designed to satisfy some unknowable craving of one whose cravings were unpredictable at the best of times.

I didn’t choose mercy though.

I needed Responsibility.

And so I asked her a question which would confirm her deepest dread.

“Tell me, what do you see, my Dearest Responsibility?”

She was silent.

And I waited.

She paled.

And I waited.

And I was rewarded.

“Insight…” Responsibility’s voice was a strangled whisper. Malgenia never called us her “Dearest”.

But I did.

“What I don’t understand Vitor is why we should be concerned about our physical forms. We’re going to possess the powers of the gods themselves are we not? What point or purpose would there be in things like ‘expanding the lifting capacity of our skeletal structures by ten and a half percent’?”

“Truly Helgon? You, of all people, do not see the value of expanding the capacity of physical forms?”

“I am afraid, in this instance, I do not. Were you speaking of the sort of increased capacity an automaton is capable to achieving then, yes, of course there might be value, though even there I see that being more of a useful pursuit with the aim of distribution amongst our populaces.”

“And we will not be sharing any of these augmentations beyond this conclave.”

“I am suggesting nothing of the sort Vaingloth. Where Helgon’s experimentation is focused on creating more useful servitors…”

“It is not. I said our populations. Not slaves.”

“We shall be gods to them. What practical difference would there be?”

“Our people are one of our treasures Vitor. If you see them only as slaves then you value them far too lightly.”

“We are not discussing that again. We have already agreed, we may do as we wish with our ‘populations’ with the caveat that they are not to be gifted with any qualities which might allow them to pose a meaningful challenge to us.”

“Is that not exactly what Helgon has specifically pledged to do?”

“It is not Vitor. My people will not be able to rise up against us. Any design I implement will be denied their own divine sparks. Should I even attempt such an endeavor, the safeguards Vaingloth, Kurst, and Insikir have proposed would warn the rest of you with plenty of time for you to contest their creation.”

“Your proposal, on the other hand Vitor, we do not see a means to control as readily.”

“It will not require oversight or control if it’s distribution is limited to our ranks alone. As for Helgon’s claim that it is only a minor improvement, I direct you to Hashel’s corroborating report. The mere ‘ten percent’ improvement is on a per soul-annum basis.”

“Meaning…”

“Meaning that we will be harnessing the power of quite a few souls over quite a few years. The increase basis is nearly irrelevant compared to the maximum sustainable upgrade capacity.”

“You don’t seem to have finished the calculation there.”

“No Helgon, I did. That space is empty because there is no limit.”

– High Accessor Vitor making a case for the other to-be-Neoteric Lords to hand him the keys to their physical forms and capabilities.

You didn’t tell Malgenia that she couldn’t have something. Or that she was wrong. It was a rather fundamental lesson for Malgenia’s Deaths, so much so that it was never directly taught to us. We all absorbed it readily on our own. Or at least all of us who lasted more than a day or two in her service figured that out.

Responsibility knew that. 

She’d been one of Malgenia’s Deaths for longer than I had (by a month), so I knew she was just as terribly aware of how important it was not to disagree with our Neoteric Lord.

And yet there she stood.

Telling me “no”.

And meeting my gaze with a proud defiance which could only be answered with the sort of casual and effortless destruction none save Malgenia could bring?

I should be furious with her.

I’d made plans!

I needed her!

She was making a mess of everything! Just like she always did!

Malgenia wouldn’t have shown more the barest flicker of irritation though and so I should have had to hide my anger completely.

Except for one tiny little thing.

I couldn’t have been happier with her!

And hiding delight, it turned out, was a bit beyond me.

“I am sorry My Lady,” Responsibility said, casting her eyes downward as the happiness I felt lit Malgenia’s eyes and tugged at the corner of Malgenia’s lips.

“No you’re not,” I said, which in hindsight probably sounded a lot more threatening than I’d meant it to.

“That’s a lie,” Beauty said.

“I don’t think it is,” Inhibition said. “She finds it funny now, but at the time I believe she was too caught up in the moment to considering torturing Responsibility like that.”

“Of course I didn’t want to torture her,” I said, “she was proving she was exactly what I needed!”

“The first is not precluded by the second,” Reason said. “You two do have a rather unique relationship after all.”

I refused to grace that with a response, turning my attention to my new favorite Death.

“Which would make Clarity what then?” Beauty asked.

Turning my attention to my new second-favorite Death.

“My Lady?” Responsibility asked, probably surprised that I hadn’t already struck her down.

“Am I now?” I asked.

“Always!” she said, without thought or hesitation.

Which sucked.

That was not what I needed.

“Come with me,” I said. We had to be somewhere a lot more secure than one of my buildings in a city that I controlled if we were going to continue the conversation I needed us to have.

I turned and started walking towards the nearest spot I can think of which fit that description, Malgenia’s bedroom, hoping against hope as I did so that she would refuse me again.

Sadly, she didn’t.

She didn’t even ask where we were going, and I felt my bubbly grin drooping into a frown.

How had I gotten her to fight me in the past? 

Punching her in the face had a host of problems.

Drowning her would have faced similar ones.

Even something simple like jabbing her with a fork when she was sleeping, or throwing knives at her were definitely out of bounds (though to be fair, I’d only ever thrown knives back at her in the past, being the first to throw a knife would have been a novel tactic to employ).

No, if she was going to fight me, it needed to come from her.

Which wasn’t totally out of the question. Our confrontations had started off with her stabbing me after all. It hadn’t been a bad stabbing, just a minor puncture wound into my right lung, but it had set the tone for our relationship which followed. 

I’m pretty sure I mentioned that I loved her? That was true of all the Deaths of course. We were all united by the devotion we shared to Malgenia. However, if you place a group of children together in an environment where almost any sort of injury could be repaired via our proctors healing magics and couple that with the oversight of a Neoteric Lord who found casual bloodletting amusing at best and unnoticeable at worst, the culture produced among the Deaths proved to be rather more violent than the ones we read about in our histories.

Responsibility had been special though. She’d always taken extra care to express her displeasure with me, and I had answered in kind.

Especially when she was taking too much of Clarity’s time.

We didn’t have an official division of either our custody of Clarity or how much of her attention we were entitled to. It wasn’t the sort of thing I think either of us were capable of evaluating rationally.

“I’m not even going to tease you about that,” Beauty said. “We were all there, and I don’t think any of us did any better.”

“I don’t recall being that much in love with any one person?” Inhibition said.

“That’s because we were all in love with you, you silly goose,” Reason said.

Thinking about Clarity soured my mood even further. It wasn’t just that I missed her. I missed fighting over her too.

And yes, I know exactly how stupid that sounds.

“Wasn’t going to say a thing,” Beauty said.

“My Lady, where are we going?” Responsibility asked.

And my grin returned!

No one asked Malgenia to explain herself. Either she chose to speak to you or you didn’t need to know.

But there was my Responsibility, making the meekest of requests! She was doing so much better than anyone else would have!

“You are thinking dangerous thoughts all of a sudden,” Reason warned me, sensing the hope that had started blooming within me.

“Yep,” I said, my pulsing quickening as I stepped close to the edge of an abyss I knew it was inevitable I would one day cast myself into.

“Good,” Beauty said,

“About time,” Inhibition agreed.

It’s not often a good sign when the voices in your head give up on counseling restraint. Fortunately our gods can always provide us with the sort of wisdom that would take lifetimes to develop.

I am with you, always, Diyas said. And if you would dare the razor’s edge now then allow me to say, I am more than done with waiting too!

Manic zeal is, to be quite clear, a terrible mindset to make decisions in. To be fair to my god however, she had been waiting lifetimes for payback against the Neoterics, and to be fair to my sister Deaths, none of us were the Death of Patience nor the Death of Caution, so our susceptibility to the allure of a mad, zealful idea was limited at best.

“I would show you my Garden my Dear Responsibility,” I said, turning partially to meet her gaze.

Responsibility’s normal skin tone is a radiant light brown. Watching her go as pale as Malgenia did, I am sorry to report, merely amplify my glee.

I am a terrible person.

But then I wouldn’t be where I was if I wasn’t.

So I was glad I was terrible.

But Responsibility probably didn’t deserve that.

I’d have to let her stab me a few times more.

She deserved it and I did too.

“Y-y-yo-you–your….” That she’d lost the capacity for coherent speech wasn’t surprising. We all knew about Malgenia’s Garden. It was her personal workspace. Even her brother wouldn’t bother her in there. It was literally a holy site to her power and her power was death.

“I am sorry My Lady, truly sorry,” Responsibility said. “May I explain myself?”

“No,” I said. “Not here.”

I expected her to wilt at that.

I would have.

“No. You didn’t,” Beauty said.

Responsibility didn’t either. She drew in a calming breath, squared her shoulders, and fell into step behind me without further complaint.

I needed her to complain though. I needed her to fight and push back and to hate me. 

And she did.

She was walking into Malgenia’s garden, but that was only because I’d given her no other possibility. Her defiance was limited to choosing how she met her fate, she couldn’t change what her fate would be.

Or that was what she had to be thinking.

We couldn’t oppose Malgenia, we could only choose how whether to die loving her or to accept the resentment we felt.

That was what she’d taught us since we were capable of forming words and thoughts.

It was a lie that took a lot of work to ensure we believed it fully.

And it hadn’t quite worked on Responsibility.

Not anymore than it had worked on me.

The real trick was going to be getting her to see that.

You’d think that would be easy.

She believed I was Malgenia.

All I had to do was just tell her right? Just explain everything and she’d have to accept what I was saying. Surely!

Maybe. Or maybe that would shatter what little resiliency her psyche had.

Malgenia’s Deaths were not the most well-adjusted of individuals, and I knew Responsibility. She’d built her identity of being one of the world’s nascent demi-gods just as much as I had. Take that away and all sorts of madness could arise.

Heck she might even decide to obliterate her promised Neoteric god.

It wouldn’t be an unprecedented act after what I’d done.

I mulled over that as we walked in silence to Malgenia’s Garden and thought I’d found an answer, or at least an approach to take, as I waved aside the divine wards and led Responsibility into the abattoir that was one of Malgenia’s favorite places in the world.

All I had to do was…

“Who are you?” Responsibility demanded as the wards fell back in place, isolating us from everyone else.

In her hands killing fires had blossomed and in her eyes was the most beloved hatred I could have ever hoped to see!

“It’s just a test. A simple one. All the kids have to take it. It’ll help us teachers know how special you are so we can teach you how to be the best you can be.”

“I already know what I’m going good at.”

“Malgenia put that frog down and take this seriously.”

“Okay.”

“What? Why did you pick up a dead frog?”

“I didn’t.”

“Do not lie to me I see it there right in front of you!”

“I’m not lying. It wasn’t dead when I picked it up.”

“So it just happened to die in your hands? Did you squeeze it really hard?”

“No. I just touched it.”

“Frogs don’t just die from being touched.”

“Not when other people touch them.”

“You’re saying you can kill frogs with your touch.”

“No.”

“Then what are you saying?”

“I can kill anything.”

“You are not one of the Blessed of Death, Malgenia.”

“I know.”

“Death blessings are very special. Only very responsible people are given them. You can’t pretend to have something like that. People will be very upset.”

“I’m not pretending. I don’t need a Blessing.”

“Then how did you kill that frog.”

“I asked it to die.”

“What? Why?”

“Because that’s what makes me special. Do you want to see?”

– Death Touch Malgenia’s last conversation with her Elementary studies teacher.

When I was one her Deaths, I’d always thought Malgenia had a supremely subtle wit. So many of the things she said which were earth-shatteringly momentous to us would be couched in the most understated of quips. What I learned later, after she was gone, was that she hadn’t been subtle or witty, she simply didn’t care and couldn’t be bothered to engage with any of us as though we really mattered at all.

Don’t get me wrong. She was also delighted with us and she did cherish us. It was just that she cherished us not for who we were but rather the sort of things she would learn from our deaths. We were delicious and delectable presents she would get to open only once, and the more she knew us in life, the more fascinating she would find our passing. At least to a point.

Which had puzzled me from the moment I found that lurking in her memories. 

Malgenia was gone, saving her hadn’t been an option even if I’d been misguided enough to attempt it. What I had that remained of her were fragments and puzzle pieces, which was much the same state she’d left the gods in, except for the part where she was ultimately a mortal woman and finite in a manner the gods had never been.

Where a god like Diyas was still capable of thought and speech and personhood, what was left of Malgenia had lost all of those things. Her will, her vital force, her awareness, none of those were left in the pieces of her which haunted the dark corners of my mind. 

I could see bits of her past and could hear echoes of her thoughts, but there were questions she would never be able to answer. Questions like “why, after almost an entire world had died, was she still searching for new revelations in anyone’s deaths, much less the deaths of those who’d sworn their hearts and minds to her?”

In a sense that had been my greatest gift to her. She was at last beyond the veil she had always wished to peer though but which her position as a Neoteric Lord would have forever denied her. It was my curse upon her that what had passed beyond the veil could no longer understand the gift she’d been granted, nor why she’d striven to reach it for so long.

Someday I would see her again. I wasn’t immortal and I had no desire to become so. Would I forgive her then? I had no idea. I definitely wasn’t ready to yet, but I’d loved her once so clearly I was fool enough to do almost anything.

 “She’s spending a lot of time not doing what she came here to do. Do you think we should let her continue?” Inhibition asked.

“If she didn’t spend ninety percent of her time in her head, we would get lonely,” Beauty said, which wasn’t why I let myself get lost in my thoughts so much. It was just so much nicer to think about things than to actually do them.

This isn’t something you need to rush, Diyas whispered to me. If you’re not ready yet, then let yourself take the time you need.

I can’t, I said, speaking only to her. Vitor will start to suspect if I don’t choose a candidate soon.

Vitor thinks his sister is mad. Erratic behavior will provoke his annoyance, but not his suspicion. Diyas was right about that. I knew it. But I also knew I had to act sooner than later.

Why?

Why?

Because I am afraid to.

Communion is an act of faith. Sharing what is true about ourselves, even when that truth doesn’t do us credit. It’s a dangerous thing to have faith in other people. Malgenia proved that the communion we offer can be twisted against us to the most horrible of ends.

But with my god? For as willing as I am to push back on her, that communion, that honesty had to underlay everything else about our relationship.

Because I’m afraid to do this, I said. I’m afraid to become what she was, and I know if I let myself give into that fear, I’m going to collapse into a ball so tiny and dense that I’ll never be able to do anything but run away from all the things I saw her do. All the things I could do.

Pushing forward for yourself may be what you need, I ask only that you listen and give yourself the grace you give to me.

You’re a god.

And you are my Blessed. The Blessed of Healing. Accept that you need healing as much as anyone does.

Isn’t that a miracle you can just give me?

All healing is miraculous, but some takes longer, and some will only happen if you let it.

Someday, maybe in some other world, things will be that simple.

I didn’t say that Diyas. Arguing with one’s god was occasionally productive but I knew down into Malgenia’s bones that it would not be in this case.

“So are you going to tell her today?” Inhibition asked. She wasn’t referring to Diyas. She was talking about Death of Responsibility, whom I had been studiously avoiding staring at.

Sometimes Malgenia’s airy disconnection from reality was quite handy. Avoiding Responsibility though was something I could only do for so long.

“What would you wish be done with the illustration you are making of me,” I asked Death of Clarity.

What?

I couldn’t just walk up to Responsibility and drag her away. Malgenia always moved in languid circuitous circles around every idea and whim she had. At least when it was convenient for her, so who was I to pass up a similar convenience.

“It will not be worthy of you My Lady,” Clarity said, her eyes downcast and affixed on the sketch pad in front of her.

“It only matters that it be worthy of you,” I said, as though there was any doubt it would would be.

We’d studied historical artists a few years earlier. Our instructor had broken down the techniques of the great masters of the unfallen world and had shown us the masterpieces which Malgenia retained for her personal viewing pleasure. I’m not going to say that each and every one of them were talentless hacks by comparison to Clarity, but I would have flushed every one of their great works down a sewer drain before I would have given up one of Clarity’s hastiest sketches. 

“May my hands reflect as much of your glory as they can hold,” Clarity said, notably not answering my question, because we weren’t really meant to give direct answers to Malgenia when a show of deference and devotion could be made instead.

Had Malgenia ever gotten tired of that? I hadn’t seen memories to suggest either alternative but I had to imagine she had. I’d been listening to statements like that for less than a hundredth of the time she had and I was already sick of them.

“Be honest, you were sick of statements like that even before they were directed at you,” Reason said and I couldn’t argue with her, though I would have done so without reservation when I was living my own life.

“Your hands are a delight and a gift beyond measure,” I said. “They will never fail you.”

It was a very Malgenia sort of thing to say, which I dearly hoped would cover up the true ardor which lay behind the words.

“Show me the image when it is fully rendered,” I said. “You need not wait for me. This is your invitation.”

Meaning Clarity was free to seek me out whenever she felt she’d completed the piece she was working on. Which she wouldn’t do despite how much I wished she would. Malgenia’s presence was a dire aura to be held within. We all craved its touch but it was so intense, even spread among all her Deaths, that we couldn’t bear it for long. The prospect of facing it alone daunted almost all of us, and while Clarity was many wonderful things, a glory seeker was not one of them.

I rose from the seat I’d taken on one of the tree roots to pose for Clarity’s drawing and moved to inspect both the arboretum and the passions I’d commanded the Deaths to pursue.

Many of the Deaths were reading. Filling our heads with knowledge wasn’t a universal pursuit among the Deaths but was a predominant pastime for many of them. Of the remainder, most of the rest were engaged in various physical endeavors; complicated games of hunter and prey, distance running, wrestling, and the ever-popular magical duels. In truth most of the Deaths who were reading were studying topics which would enhance their arcane repertoires, but more than a few were ready for more practical tests of their capabilities.

Responsibility was not one of them though. She was part of the small group of Deaths who pursued their passion through meditation.

I’d asked Responsibility about that once, since I had never found meditation to do anything except leave me with nothing to quiet the storm of voices in my head (and that was before there had been literal other voices sharing the space with me). Her response had baffled me then and continued to baffle me.

“We don’t look for silence and stillness in meditation. We look for action and resolve and where peace ends.”

I tried punching her in the face a week after that while she was meditating and that had not been a brilliant idea. I mean, I got the hit in but just the one. It was a month an half before the last of the bruises faded away. Apparently helping her find where peace ended was not what she had been looking for.

Part of me was entertained by the idea of greeting her like that again, but the rest of me found the idea revolting. Hitting her when she was free to hit me back was one thing. Hitting her as Malgenia was so wrong it was nauseating.

So I did something even worse to her.

“Hello my Death, will you walk with me?” I asked her. She wasn’t mine of course, but Malgenia rarely addressed us by our given names.

“Me My Lady?” she asked, eyes snapping open and a flicker of abject surprise rippling across her face.

“Hmm, yes, I do believe so,” I said, as though I was tasting the idea to see if it remained palatable.

“Of course My Lady,” she said rising to her feet so quickly she nearly cracker her head on an overhanging branch. 

I began walking, leading us away from the other Deaths, much to their nervously repressed dismay. We were all terrified of Malgenia appearing but her departures were far worse. The absent sun leaving our lives to wallow in the darkness of her absence.

Responsibility kept up with me, walking two paces behind me as an unthinking show of deference. The arboretum wasn’t large, according to Malgenia’s definition of large, but we were still able to wind among it’s trees for a quarter of an hour before we came to one of the many fountain features where water summoned across the planes was piped in to sustain life on our dead world.

I spent a few minutes at the fountain, swirling my fingers across it’s surface lightly and tuning out the Deaths in my head before turning to Responsibility, who I’d left waiting pensively behind me.

“Oh. Yes, you. I believe you are ready.” It was the same speech Malgenia had given to me and I had the rest of it burned into my mind, ready to go with perfect inflection and timing, except for the unthinkable occurrence which transpired.

Responsibility interrupted me.

“I am so sorry My Lady,” she said, standing firm, and defiant, and completely terrified. “But I am not.”

“We should be considered the quality of the departed populations in the areas we will affirm our control over.”

“The quality? Tallgrim we have already discussed population size, species mixture, and the residual degree of devotion which can be extracted by each of us given our alignment with the regions we control. What other quality would you have us consider?”

“I believe Tallgrim is speaking of the piety the dead souls which will infuse our domains. He’s, would it be fair to say ‘concerned’, or perhaps expectant?”

“Expectant of what? The dead will be dead.”

“Yes but they will…”

“They won’t Tallgrim.”

“I assure you Malgenia with that many souls liberated at once and with no afterlife for them to proceed to? They will, they absolutely will, exert a sizable aetheric influence on our lands.”

“How sizable?”

“Sizable that they might be enough to call a second Plunderer into our existence, Vaingloth.”

“No. They  will not.”

“And you say this why Malegenia?”

“Because Tallgrim’s vision of our future is incomplete.”

“Is it now? Then pray tell us all what I have not accounted for.”

“Why, me of course.”

“As puissant as you are, I believe a world’s death may prove to be more than you can enspell on your own. Is it not likely Tallgrim is correct and you will require the aid from one or all of us to balance the influx out?”

“I shall not.”

“But your people, your city, they would…”

“What people? What city? You all have been busy dividing up the world between us, but have I asked for any principality of my own? Have I shared any plans for the population I will preserve? Do you imagine preservation is something I seek at all?”

“Oh, uh, no. No, I suppose not.”

“Without a city, where will…”

“I shall reside with my brother.”

“You will? But we haven’t…”

“Would any of you feel safe enough not to attack me if I was left on unsupervised on my own?”

“…”

“There is still the matter that holding the dead of the world is beyond anyone, no matter how talented they might be.”

“Yes. That is true Tallgrim. Which is why I shall not be holding any of them. You say there will be no more afterlife, and that is partly true. While you all scavenge the pieces of our dearly departed deities, I will collect the pieces of the underworld. I shall not have a city because I shall not need one. The living I leave to you, and the dead you shall leave to me.”

– High Accessors Tallgrim, Vaingloth, Malgenia, and Vitor at the Neoteric cabal’s meeting where the minor details of the end of the world were debated.

I liked meeting with my Deaths. It wasn’t always easy, but we’d been friends since I was able to form words and pass the first tests our teachers had put before me, so avoiding the Deaths would have been unthinkable. 

Well, most of them.

Death of Clarity was lovely and I would use all of Malgenia power to smite anyone who spoke poorly of her, but Death of Responsibility and I had a bit of a rockier history. I mean, I loved her too, in theory, but that hadn’t stopped either of us from seriously trying to kill the other on a number of occasions.  Certainly we always made up afterwards, but she presented a unique challenge in terms of maintaining the facade that I was our beloved Neoteric Lord and not the girl who’d once submerged Responsibility’s head in a bathtub until Responsibility had passed out. In my defense, I’d thought I’d successfully drowned her and had only discovered my error when she’d woken and hit me with a pipe wrench hard enough to fracture my skull.

How is that a defense?

I’m not sure Insight means for us to take her seriously Beauty.

I ask again, how in the Fallen Heavens was SHE the one Diyas found a bound with?

What? No quips about how broken my brain is? I really shouldn’t have to provide my own punchlines, but thus went the life of an ersatz Neoteric Lord.

If you respond, you know it will just encourage her. Death of Reason wasn’t wrong there, but Beauty clearly knew that I was going to continue as I was, encouragement or no.

“My Lady! You have returned to us!!” Death of Contemplation drew me out of my overcrowded head with her gleeful announcement. She also drew the attention of all of the other Deaths who were presently studying in the Arboretum.

“Lady Malgenia!” they shouted in a chorus I almost joined by reflex.

As a Neoteric Lord, Malgenia had many tasks and responsibilities which demanded her attention and so could only spare fleeting moments for her most precious of daughters.

Or so we’d been told.

In truth, from what I could find in Malgenia’s memories, and what I’d seen demanded of my time on a day-to-day basis, Malgenia could have spent years basking in the undivided attention and adoration of her principal food-sources and had simply chosen not to, despite the bliss it induced in those who’d been selected to serve serve as eventual sacrifices to sustain her existence.

It wasn’t that she felt any guilt or remorse at our eventual fates either. From what I could tell she legitimately was fascinated with each and every one of us. Which wasn’t too surprising. If Malgenia had found any of her Deaths wanting, or even simply uninteresting, Vitor made sure they were ‘decommissioned’ and replaced with a more suitable candidate.

Given the fact that Malgenia’s immortality was rather different from the other Neoteric Lords, I had to concede that Vitor’s actions were at least self-consistent given the complete absence of moral or ethical boundaries required to become a Neoteric Lord.

“Is it to be a test today My Lady?”

“Will we be performing for you My Lady?”

“Shall we feed you My Lady”

“Do you wish us to leave you in peace My Lady?”

“May we tell the others of your arrival My Lady?”

Yeah. That’s how we all spoke. It’s how I would still be speaking if not for the whole thing where Malgenia had killed me.

She says that like it makes her special.

To be fair Beauty, it does. It just doesn’t make anything remotely close to unique.

I continue to question whether we can really call this death. It was an argument Reason had raised several times, and I had to admit it was a convincing one on a theoretical and practical level, but then I remember exactly how awful what Malgenia had done to me was, and what I’d done to her in response and, well, ‘killed’ and ‘dead’ were much simpler and more pleasant terms to describe what had happened, so I was sticking with them.

“You may follow your passions my flowers,” I said, hoping my repetition of Malgenia’s frequent saying was convincing enough.

How could it not be?

Okay, points for Beauty there. The Deaths where highly trained in many arts, but ‘questioning Malgenia in any manner whatsoever’ was decidedly not one of them.

The Deaths in the arboretum nodded, each beaming with earnestly felt glee and scampered back their current projects consumed by excitement at a chance to show off whatever they’d learned since I’d last visited them.

Or at least it had been how it was for me. I was praying to any god fragments who would listen that one or more of the Deaths would be more sensible than I was.

They’re hiding it well if so, Diyas said, which shouldn’t have been comforting but given that she hadn’t ruled out the possibility it meant that some hope remained.

So, who am I going to kill out of this lot? I asked my mental chorus and Diyas.

None of them, we all know that, Beauty answered, because Beauty has made it her job to not let me get away with any dramatics at all.

For which, I was more grateful than I ever let her know.

Pretending to be Malgenia is easy after all the time I spent worshipping her. Easy enough that slipping into her thought patterns seems dangerously likely. What the world specifically did not need was another Malgenia to rise in the place of the one we’d cast down. 

Avoiding her thought patterns is dangerous too though, since it anyone more observant than my Deaths were to notice a significant slip up, they’d start asking uncomfortable questions like ‘who are you really’ and ‘what have you done with my sister’ and ‘would you like to end what little is left of the world or shall I just destroy you utterly like the martyr you were supposed to be’?

You know.

Fun sibling stuff like that.

She really doesn’t want to do this does she? Inhibition asked, which drew a hum of agreement from the other Deaths in my head and silent interest from Diyas.

Okay. No. I don’t. I admitted. 

I’d sunk into ‘Malgenia mode’ because it was what the still-living Deaths expected and because she wouldn’t have taken this seriously.

When she’d picked me out as the next candidate for Assumption, Malgenia hadn’t put me through any special exam, or shown all that much interest in the selection. She’d wandered into our dormitory one day, glanced around and said something like “that one seems especially luminous”. I hadn’t been glowing, or particularly well put together, having been woken up by Death of Literacy dashing into the room two minutes before that, but it hadn’t mattered. From that moment forward my fate had been sealed.

A month of preparation with the others, a month of solitude with Malgenia, and an hour all alone before the ceremony. That had been how my old life had ended and it was the window we would have save the next victim of Malgenia’s hunger for endless life.

Or I could just die myself.

Except you can’t, Reason reminded me unnecessarily.

Because refusing to take another life would expose my deception and would lead to, among other thing, all of the Deaths being ‘decommissioned’. 

Oh, and killing me would unleash the necromantic aether Malgenia had stored up. Which would do more than kill the few people who still remained on our destroyed world. Malgenia had gathered up all the souls who’d died in the Sunfall and all the energy their deaths had released (or rather all the energy which hadn’t been consumed by the Beast). She’d then spent several lifetimes gathering up any deaths the other Neoterics overlooked, which, it turned out, was rather a lot of them. Enough that, without a commensurate amount of life aether to balance it, the physical structure of the world would die if it was all released at once.

So, in theory, I could kill one girl every couple of years, or I could kill the world. 

Great choices right? Definitely a splendid idea to replace the Neoteric Lord who’d been doing the job originally. I wasn’t hating my life choices at all.

“Might I draw you My Lady?” Death of Clarity asked and my attention was firmly removed from spiraling around inside my own head.

“That would be delightful,” I choked out, struggling to make the words sound as unencumbered as I could. It was hard to be around Clarity. I couldn’t touch her. I couldn’t speak to her. Not like I had before. It hurt so much. She’d been a friend when I didn’t deserve one. She was so gentle and she loved us all despite our myriad flaws and foibles.

Malgenia’s Assumption ritual would proceed flawlessly with her, Diyas said and I very nearly burned out our bond in a flash of hatred.

Except I knew what she was really saying. Gods are funny like that. If they mean something, they can make that meaning staggeringly clear if they want to.

Because I love her, I said. Because the prospect of joining together into one life is something both of us would accept.

You wouldn’t even need to consume her soul like Malgenia would have. She could join your chorus, no matter how self aware she was.

Despite how her words sounded, Diyas wasn’t encouraging me to pick Clarity. 

She was reminding me what I needed to fight against. 

The ritual couldn’t proceed as it had. Not again.

We needed a new answer.

The ritual would work too well if it was someone I loved, which meant I knew exactly which of the Deaths I had to pick.

Across the room and behind a lovely pair of stonefruit trees, Death of Responsibility sat, watching me with eyes that were going to hold just a hint of horror before the day was out.

“So tell me sister, what do you really think of Vaingloth’s proposal?”

“Why it’s the most depraved bit of heresy one could imagine is it not brother?”

“Well that all depends I suppose. He never did outright say he intends to betray the gods, did he?”

“But then he did not need to. Not with the bait he offered.”

“Bait tailor-made to your interests I believe?”

“And yours. He seems well versed in our fields of devotion.”

“Worrisome?”

“Highly.”

“So we will deny him.”

“You believe we have that choice?”

“He may own many and more souls, but not ours.”

“Not our souls, but perhaps our hearts? I saw the gleam in your eye when he hypothesized about a world bereft of divine limitations. Tell me, did you start plotting your first experiments the moment he broached the idea or have you waited until now to allow ideas to start percolating before your mind’s eye?”

“As though the prospect of death on so grand a scale failed to capture your attention.”

“A whole world, or as close as matters, and then an eternity of liberating souls and doing with them as I pleased? Do you know why he came to us?”

“Because he must bring the other High Accessors on board or his plan will die stillborn in the womb of his mind as he dies on a pyre of divine retribution?”

“Not at all. In fact, he will not approach many other High Accessors. A score, or perhaps only a dozen if he is properly paranoid. No, we were specially selected.”

“And why would that be dear sister?”

“Because if I had caught of wind of this and he had failed to include me, I would have killed everyone else involved.”

“You would have contested with a dozen other High Accessors?”

“No. Of course not. I wouldn’t have risked a contest. I simply would have killed them.”

– High Accessors Vitor and Malgenia deciding to join Vaingloth’s cabal to overthrow the gods.

My people love me and I wish to all the absent gods that they wouldn’t.

That’s not a wish that I’m supposed to have. Not when “my” city was purpose built to provide me with an adoring populace I can slaughter at will. I’m supposed to be blissfully content. Should I show signs of not being perfectly blissful or perfectly content people begin to worry. Important people. People who are afraid I would kill them in an instant despite the tiny, inconvenient little fact that the moment they discovered why I was neither blissful, nor content, any one of them would end me before I could form a single thought.

That is but one of the many problems with being a Neoteric Lord it turns out.

To be fair, many people would take exception to that complaint, and they would be entirely correct in their opinion of my complaints validity. Neoteric Lords live with comfort and security undreamt of nearly anyone in the history of the world. They are inviolate and supremely sovereign. Eternal forces able to sculpt the remains of a dead world into whatever form them desire.

So why then, you might wonder, am I trapped in a charnel house of deranged martyrs who are subject to my every whim? 

Because of all the Neoteric Lords, my hands are the bloodiest.

“She’s being dramatic again,” Death of Beauty said, her voice firmly inside my head though she wasn’t making any attempt to pitch me over the edge of the balcony I was perched on.

“Thank you for the update. I imagine she’s also breathing too, and perhaps it is dark outside?” Death of Inhibition said from the other side of my Very Private Very Personal Sanctum. She wasn’t really there of course – but projecting outside the confines of my head kept us all as close to sanity as we could claim to be.

“I’m not being dramatic! I’m speaking the unvarnished truth, these hands have killed a lot of people!” I said, dramatically and with dire and overwrought emphasis.

“Yes but they weren’t exactly yours when they were tearing hearts from test subjects or vivisecting the living were they?” Beauty asked. “Any more than they were mine when she decided that she lacked an understanding of how the Broken Spirits destroy the mortals they encounter.”

“Don’t try to take her crimes onto yourself Death of Insight, you don’t want to get into a misery competition with the rest of us,” Death of Reason said. “I promise you I will win.”

I liked Reason. She had a unique gift for making me feel completely terrified of what she might do despite the fact that she was as much a ghost as any of the rest of us.

Oh, you’re ghosts now? I suppose that puts you beyond the bounds of my blessing. I guess I will begin drifting in the aetheric tides until a new Blessed emerges to carry my essence.

That was Diyas.

My god.

Holder of the domains of Healing and Life.

And even more of a drama hound than I am.

“It’s such a waste that one of us couldn’t carry you instead”, Beauty said.

“Indeed, but it does mean we are spared a whole host of unpleasantries,” Inhibition said.

“What could be worse than being trapped with our eternally teenaged sister?” Beauty asked.

“Pick any moment from before we met her,” Reason said.

“Or, most likely, any moment from the next five minutes,” Inhibition said.

“Wait, what’s in the next five minutes?” I asked. My head was pretty full, what with there being a half dozen or so of Malgenia’s other sacrifices living in there, not to mention almost all of a fairly major god.

Only ‘fairly major’?

Would you prefer I describe you as the most powerful and expansive and amazing deity to every hold dominion over the world? 

Ick, no. 

I didn’t think so. So let me stick with ‘fairly major’. I’ve already thrown off the programming to worship one overly powerful person in my life, I don’t think I can truly be in communion with you if I let myself fall back into that sort of worship again.

I do so enjoy our chats. I’ve never had a mortal worship me best by not worshipping me at all. I think I’ll keep you.

With that spiritual crisis averted, I turned my thoughts back to Death of Inhibition’s oblique warning. My attempt to wrack my brain for the memory of what fate might be impeding for me was interrupted by said fate hitting my door with a few perfunctory knocks before strolling into my Personal and Private Sanctum with the sort of distracted nonchalance that only one person in the world was capable of possessing.

My brother.

Or, her brother really.

“Vitor, isn’t the sky a lovely shade today?”

“It’s the same shade it’s been for centuries now Malgenia,” he said without looking up from the papers he was carrying.

“Of course it is. That’s what makes its lovely.”

I wasn’t crazy. 

Okay, that might be stretching the truth a bit.

I wasn’t the sort of crazy I was portraying myself to be. 

I was Malgenia’s sort of…well crazy isn’t the right term for it. She was perfectly in control of her mental faculties, she simply chose to present herself as being more detached from reality than she truly was. 

As best as I could tell from rummaging around in her old memories, it was a defense mechanism. She was mostly just bored and enjoyed the discomfort her adopted persona inspired in people. That her brother and fellow Neoteric Lord had grown used to her oddness meant that I was locked into being odd as well, at least for as long as I wanted him to think Malgenia was still the one driving around her body.

“You have another Assumption coming up next year don’t you?” Vitor asked, ignoring me exactly and precisely as I hoped he would.

“Do I?” I asked. I absolutely did, and I absolutely had no intention of going through with it, but that wasn’t why Malgenia would have said what I did.

Where the impending Assumption represented a murder I was willing to kill to prevent committing (yes, I know), for Malgenia it was a triviality of almost no importance.

I mean, true, Assumptions were the means by which she maintained her immortality, and she did spend years picking out the most properly worshipful of her hand grown crop of acolytes, but the death of just one person? Far beneath the notice of the Death Touch Neoteric Lord.

“Have you picked one yet?” Vitor asked, still buried in his reports.

What was so important that he couldn’t spare a glance at his own sister? Well, I was dying to know, but showing any of that would have changed me to simply “dying” so Malgenia’s distant disinterest remained firmly in place.

“Does it matter?” I asked, slumping against the balcony’s railing as though the effort of asking the question had completely exhausted me.

I knew my Malgenia performance was convincing by the low growl of frustration it drew from Vitor and the fact that he finally looked up from his reports at me.

“Is it…yes, it’s important! You know you need to make sure there’s a compatible Death to draw on. If one of those little leeches isn’t willing to accept you…”

“If one of my flowers refuses me, I will simply take another, and another, and another. It was delightful to see them fall like that, one after the other.” Was I putting on too much of a performance? Was I giving away my real feelings for Malgenia by exaggerating how awful she was?

No.

Not in the slightest.

If anything I probably needed to be more terrible, but there was limits to what I could manage even as a deception.

Vitor groaned at my performance, having expected something of the sort before he even knocked I was sure.

“Your ‘flowers’ are not easy to create you know.”

“Am I not the most lovable of the Lords?” Even Malgenia would have drenched those words in sarcasm so I didn’t hold back either.

“No.” Vitor didn’t elaborate. He didn’t need to. We were both monsters and we both knew it.

Ahem? Care to rephrase that? Diyas wasn’t asking a question or making a suggestion. She really didn’t like it when I blurred the line between what I’d done and what Malgenia had been responsible for.

Which was, I had to admit, smart.

“See, she’s not always overly dramatic,” Reason said.

“Give her time,” Beauty said, reserving judgment.

“So you need me to pick a flower to pluck,” I asked, distracting myself from the chorus in my head and mollifying Vitor, to a degree. “What sort of flower should it be.”

“I don’t care. Just pick a compatible one. One compatible one. We don’t want a repeat of your last misadventure.”

“Why I thought it was a delightful diversion,” I said and exerted heroic effort to resist vomiting on the floor from the intensity of the lie.

“Three flowers gone, and you barely functional for a month afterwards? That was delightful to you?” Vitor asked, genuinely annoyed I thought. “Mal, we almost lost you there. You cannot take this as something frivolous. Assumptions are the foundation of your eternal life. Need I stress the ‘eternal’ part? One close call like that in two centuries is one more than we can afford. This next Assumption and all the ones that follow from now on need to be simple and easy.”

“And fun?” I asked, perking up. Malgenia was a role I’d studied for years and so her mood shifts were as easy to simulate as they were to predict.

I’d loved that about her once.

Sort of shame my change of heart on the matter had been what one might call dramatic.

I felt the collective groan from my mental chorus, Diyas included, and let the smile at that beam out towards Vitor.

He was in a difficult spot. On the one hand, refusing Malgenia a chance at “fun” was going to produce a cranky Malgenia, and literally no one, mortal, Neoteric, or god wanted that. On the other hand, allowing Malgenia her “fun” was likely to produce the exact sort of results Vitor had excellent reasons to strive to avoid.

“Provisionally,” he replied, choosing the path of tact and greatest safety.

And then he fled.

A few centuries, it seemed, were capable of imbuing wisdom even into someone thick headed enough to become a Neoteric Lord.

With his departure though I was left with a challenge.

“Finding someone else to be even more absurdly dramatic too?” Beauty asked.

“Finally putting together a plan for how we can escape before Vitor inevitably figures out that none of us are the sister he’s known for centuries?” Inhibition asked.

“It certainly won’t be exploring the nigh bottomless reservoir of power Malgenia left us with access to,” Reason said, smug only because she was absolutely correct.

“No. Vitor was right,” I said, which disgusted them as much as it disgusted me. “I need to pick the next girl who’s going to die for me, and then I need to somehow convince her not to.”