“I must confess I rather look forward to the day when all these irksome enemies are where they’re supposed to be.”

“What’s that? Oh. Enemies? Do we have enemies?”

“Yes, Helgon. Many and all of dubious quality.”

“Is not that a preferable state High Accessor Vaingloth? Or, would you prefer our enemies, um, whoever they might be, to be of sterling quality? Only the best foes to test ourselves against? Yes, I supposed to could see the value in that. Does seem like a lot of bother though. Wouldn’t it be simpler to just kill them all?”

“Yes Helgon. That is exactly my point.”

“I’m afraid I don’t see it.”

“Don’t see what.”

“Your point. If you’d like our enemies to be dead, why haven’t you killed them already. We are planning on killing more than a few people with the Grand Plan of Ascension, are we not?”

“No one else is calling it that Helgon, and yes, yes we are, which will be the proper time to put our enemies in the ground, since it will be too late for anyone to notice.”

“What if they’re Dwarves?”

“Dwarves? Why would…no, no do not say it.”

“I mean, putting a Dwarf in the ground would hardly trouble them would it? I gather they rather enjoy being underground.”

“I…you…where is Dyrena. I must have at least a minute of intelligent conversation or one of us will suffer an aneurysm and I cannot for the life of me say who I would prefer that to be.”

– High Accessor’s Vaingloth attempting to steer High Accessor Helgon into premature homicide so as to weaken Helgon’s position pre-Sunfall.

There’s a unique frustration that comes from having ten million questions you want to ask coupled with being so overwhelmed that forming even simple sentences was a challenge.

Fortunately Xalaria and the others who’d been waiting for us were more intent on shepherding us to safety underneath the Low City than they were in answering or asking questions.

This is more developed than I’d expected, Draconia said, her voice warmer and dearer than I’d ever allowed it to be. It was tempting to immediately cast myself back into unity we’d had when we flew from the Garden but I could feel how much we both needed me to stay ‘me’ and not just a tiny part of her.

It’s been a few generations, Umbrielle said, give them time and you’ll find people of all species can be rather industrious.

My surprise stems less from what the people here have put together and more from Sasarai’s tolerance of their industriousness, Draconia said. These buildings are more defensible than any he created before the Sunfall.

“The more defense the residents provide for themselves, the less effort he needs to expend in keeping away the spirits of the wastelands,” Xalaria said, which wasn’t entirely surprising. She wore the mantle of her blessing from the God of Battle so openly that it was impossible to miss her divine connection. That she’d bothered to listen in to our chatter was a touch more unexpected but then if she wasn’t the observant sort, I’m not sure how she would have known where to find us.

Unless the tiny bird-person or the giant green skinned man was responsible? They hadn’t introduced themselves, largely because we were moving at such a brisk pace that there hadn’t been time, but I could feel the giant carried a blessing related to growing things and the bird-person carried…something else? 

Secrets, Draconia said, speaking to me alone. They carry the Blessing of Secrets, an old ally of mine, though with less overlap between our domains than many seemed to think.

I considered that for a moment and saw what she meant. Secrets can certainly be one layer of protection for something that’s treasured, but secrets are flimsy, dangerous things and some treasures cannot be kept in secret. What Draconia protected was guarded by more than obfuscation and shadows.

Not that shadows don’t serve their purpose too, Draconia said to me. Our world would have been lost entirely without Night’s shadows to hide us away in secret.

Xalaria had led us down into a basement, and then through a dried up sewer system to, of all things, a gilded staircase.

“When did anyone have time to build this?” I asked, marveling at the gold foil not for its value but for oddity of its placement on a staircase leading down from the sewers of all places.

“Before the Sunfall,” Fulgrox said. His blessing was from the God of the Harvest and while he appeared to be a giant to me, I learned that he was simply a tall and stout orc which, somehow, my studies of the ‘Fallen World’ had failed to ever mention as a species of people who’d existed once upon a time, must less persisted into the present day.

“The Betrayers didn’t build their own cities,” Theia said. “They’re more into destroying and stealing.”

“They didn’t even bother with rebuilding,” Fulgrox said. “All the work you saw above ground? The people of the Low City put everything there back together. Created new fields and everything. I’m guessing the same was true for your people into the walls?”

That wasn’t what I’d been taught but I found myself questioning the Garden’s history Sasarai had sold us. Had the ‘Holy Tree’ really called forth fields and orchards aplenty inside the walls to provide for us when the rest of world grew barren? If it could do that why were so many people tasked with the tending and upkeep of the fields and orchards?

“I don’t know,” I said. “They told us the Holy Tree gave us everything we have, but the only miracles I ever saw from it were ones the people offered to it.”

It sounded stupid and obvious when I said it like that, and I felt like the world’s most clueless idiot for not seeing past Sasaria’s lies the first time I heard them, or the twentieth, or the thousandth. 

“The most difficult things to see are the ones which everyone agrees aren’t there,” Kalkit, the Blessed of Secrets Crowkin said.

Which, sure, I should have been easier on myself. When everyone tells you something from the time words first started making sense, it’s hard to consider that they might all have been lying.

But they were.

Or passing on a lie, which was worse since it meant I couldn’t even hate them properly. My parents, my family, my teachers? They were all victims of the society Sasarai had built even when they were the ones who made up that society. 

Down the golden staircase we went as I wrestled with thoughts like that, and with who I’d been. 

I’ll never be that person again.

Would you want to be? If you could? Draconia asked. If you’re memory of these days could be washed away and you could go back to the life you’d known, would you?

Lose my memories? I asked and answered her question in three words.

Draconia laughed. I knew I chose well.

Sorry it took me so long to see it.

I’m grateful it was so soon. I’d thought it might take your whole life.

If I’d been discovered, it might have.

You were never in as much physical danger as you imagined, Draconia said. You are mine after all, but while I can protect you from physical harm, your emotions are your own and I have seen how deeply today’s events would hurt you.

It’s not so much today’s events as what they tell me about all the events that led up to them. All the times I was lied to. All the times I lied to myself. All the times I called you a demon.

I found that last one delightful if I’m being honest. It’s rare that I’ve had a connection with anyone who didn’t worship me. It was nice, at times, to be asked to be no more than your demon.

I think…I started to say and asked myself if what I was about to say was really true. Turning it over in my head, I found that, oddly, it was. I think sometimes I liked being ‘possessed’. It made me feel special.

Special?

Well, I had it all twisted around, but I had to be better than some other people because I had an actual ‘demon’ possessing me and I wasn’t doing the things they did. I mean, I had an excuse to be ‘bad’ but I was still being faithful and good and just the most perfect dupe ever.

That sounded so good right up until the end there.

Yeah, sorry. I’m just flip flopping all over the place.

And what would you expect of someone who’d step away from the only life they’d known and was faced with a world they’d been told didn’t and couldn’t exist?

I didn’t have answer to that. 

And in that moment, I saw that I didn’t need one. I was going to be a mess. I was going to better than I’d been before. I was going to be both of those at once and either them at any given moment.

But I’d have her with me through all of it.

Together, we stepped through the ornate archway at the bottom of the gilded stairs.

Chaos abounded. People of more shapes and sizes and colors than I could have imagined were thronging around a lighted platform in a dark tunnel.

They have a transit system! Draconia asked, apparently knowing what it was we were looking at.

Yes. It’s quite new, Umbrielle said.

“Yay! We might actually survive till tomorrow,” Theia said, following Xalaria’s lead through the crowd without hesitation. “I wasn’t sure you all would be able to get this up and running in time.”

“You came back with twice the haul we were hoping for, providing you a clean getaway is the least we could do,”  Fulgrox said.

“A clean getaway to where?” I asked but my question was lost in the din of the crowd. It was easily to see the value of traveling underground, but I was pretty sure they were underestimating Sasarai’s willingness to wreck widescale destruction to get back what I’d taken from him.

Oh.

Right.

They didn’t know what I’d taken from him. All they knew was that Theia had come back with a new Blessed in tow. They couldn’t sense the contents of my hoard. No one could.

“This will give us a headstart but we’re still going to be pursued,” I said.

“That’s why everyone else is here,” Kalkit said. “Anyone who wants to work against your old master is evacuating with us.”

“Won’t that slow us down?” I asked. I couldn’t begrudge anyone from trying to escape Sasarai’s rule, but fleeing with them, at the pace of the slowest among them seemed like I’d be inviting trouble right into the midst of the people most interested in avoiding it.

“Oh, we’re not going to be walking,” Theia said with a broad smile as the sound of rushing wind grew closer.

How wind was blowing underground didn’t make sense until I saw a creature burst from the tunnel, racing in front of us and bury its head down the other tunnel.

A creature made of metal.

A creature that was, in fact, a machine of some kind.

A creature that people began piling into.

So, not a creature at all.

“What…?” was all I was able to say.

“Let’s get onboard,” Theia said. “Xalaria’s got a private car for us. We can talk there.”

I nodded because at least some of those words made sense and following Theia seemed a lot safer than lingering in the depths of a city that shouldn’t exist.

The ‘private car’ Theia led me too was a room where Xalaria, Fulgrox, Kalkit and couple of other people were waiting on tall backed bench seats which were facing each other. I was just able to take the seat Theia directed me to when I felt the car lurch and begin accelerating as fast as the wind.

“Where is this taking us?” I asked, thinking of all the lost corners of the world and the horrors that lurked in them.

“The one place a Neoteric won’t risk going,” Xalaria said.

“The domain of another Neoteric,” Theia said.

“Separate populations seem like such a bother. What benefit could that possibly bring you?”

“I have explained this Dyrena.”

“High Accessor Dyrena. If you’re going to insist on titles, then you would be wise to remember mine while my patience lasts.”

“I…our titles are important when others are around.”

“Yes. Our titles are important. Especially the ones we are to claim.”

“Indeed. And that is why I will maintain multiple populations. It’s a safeguard you see.”

“Humor me and explain what it is I am meant to see, High Accessor Sasarai.”

“The population which will be restricted within the Prime Garden can be isolated from contact with the other remaining city. Without outside contact if will be the work of no more than a generation to set boundaries within their minds to ensure there are no thoughts of rebellion. With no external influences their devotion to my ‘Divine Tree’ construction will be unwavering and unshakable.”

“And the secondary population?”

“As we have agreed, contact between our cities will be valuable if properly controlled. We will each have access to miracles which will be more costly for the rest, and production capacity of goods unique to our peoples. The secondary population is meant to serve that need. The faith they hold won’t be as potent as my prime people but it will be useful enough for day-to-day tasks.”

“And should they rebel?”

“Then they will be eliminated and I will restock their number with the least useful members of the prime population.”

– High Accessors Dyrena and Sasarai engaging in a discourse which revealed to Dyrena the frailty of Sasarai’s proposed system and showed Sasarai that Dyrena needed to be the first of the Neoterics to fall.

For a place people thought was completely secure, there were an awful lot of paths out of the Garden. The big ones, the ones all Sylvans know about are the ones that run under the Thicket Wall. Those are the fiercest point of our defenses. Idiots like my brother Kam were always eager to be called up by the Draft so they’d have a chance to go and win fame and fortune fighting “the horrors” that waited “Below the Roots”.

It was true that people who were drafted didn’t always make it back and for the longest time I’d imagined the horrors which had been waiting for them down in the darkness.

With Draconia’s blessing I could sense a lot more than I ever had before though, and what lay “beneath the roots”? It wasn’t alien to the Garden. All I felt below us was Sasarai’s power, the same as what permeated the air around us and the sky above.

Whatever monsters my people fought down there, the First Tender knew about them and held dominion over them the same as he did for everyone in the Garden.

So that route was closed to us.

And the Thicket Wall was, as far as I knew, as impenetrable as I’d been told it was.

So what did that leave?

“Okay. You’re turn to hold on,” I said to Theia, after recovering from the our through the shadows. 

She’d managed to carry me back from the Silent Archive to a perch on one of “Holy” Mazana’s limbs that was blocked from view by a dense curtain of leaves. The leaves had turned out to be exactly what I’d needed. An inheritance I’d been felt entirely justified in claiming after all the prayers and devotion I’d offered to the false god the First Tender had inflicted on us.

Except for one small problem, the perch Theia had brought us too would be have been wonderful to hide away in and spend a week or more talking about all the things I still didn’t understand.

Unfortunately, the tree started moving.

“What’s that?” Theia asked, her senses almost certainly picking up the shifts in divine power the accompanied the trees surge into mobility.

“That’s our sign to leave,” I said. Running away had been scary. Right up until that moment. As an unimaginably large reservoir of grace began to swirl in the tree, I couldn’t imagine anything I wanted to do more than flee.

Theia agreed. Without a single word of disagreement, she took two steps towards and pulled herself close to me.

This was how we’d traveled through the shadows, but in this case we didn’t try to leave the Garden via the shadow paths. Sasarai knew them too and had closed them the moment he noticed the divine fragments were missing. Umbrielle had been sure he would and we’d all sense the moment she’d been proven correct.

Which was why I’d wanted the leaves.

They carried the same grace as “Holy Mazana” did but they were mine now. 

Holding Theia close in my arms, I took the step I’d dreaded for so long.

My last step in the Garden.

The perch she’d found was a high one, so we had plenty of time to fall.

Wind whistled past us but it was drowned out.

Around me a beast of talons and teeth, scales and wings roared as I gave myself into Draconia’s keeping.

Where we’d plunged downwards, the rush of air turned, catching in the wings I’d known for so long were waiting for me.

I was a Devout Daughter no more.

I was an Aspirant of the Holy Tree no more.

I was a Sylvan no more.

The creature I’d become was horrifying and I couldn’t have been happier.

Fire burned through my veins.

It filled my lungs like the sweetest of air.

The attack came with no warning, and held no mercy. I had offended little Sasarai beyond reasons.

But he’d offended us far more.

The distance between Draconia and I shrank to the width of a leaf.

We would not fall.

Little Sasarai had his little tricks and power aplenty to back them up.

But we knew Tricksters.

And we knew some tricks ourselves.

The blast of power from the Overrated Shrub slammed into the leaves we carried in our fist.

Our leaves.

Our power.

But still a part of the silly shrub.

And Holy Mazana, Guardian of the Garden, Deity of the Sylvans, and Last Light in the Broken World, the thing I’d spent my entire life striving to worship with all my heart despite the doubts that assailed me?

It burned.

My roar became a terrible, terrible gale of laughter.

Silly little Sasarai. Always so easily overconfident.

The poor little fool had been so enraged that he’d held nothing back. His blast had been thrown directly from the Holy Tree within no thought or concern for defense.

Who could attack him after all?

He’d felled the gods.

He’d held us captive for decades.

He was so sure nothing could touch him and hadn’t we come like timid thieves in the night?

He’d forgotten.

The Night wasn’t his ally.

All the power he’d cast at us?

He’d never guessed he was casting at his precious little shrub.

The screams from below were instantaneous.

My roar had roused everyone who was out and the shadow I cast as I soared above them had sewn confusing. The sight of the tree erupting in flames though?

Existential Horror.

The Garden lost its mind.

Belief which had stood for lifetimes was drowned in terror and I felt the shock of it explode through the currents of Sasarai’s power which permeated everything around us.

And that bought us the window we needed.

The fire in me called to burn down the Thicket Wall too. It was an abomination strangling the souls of every Sylvan entrapped within it but they weren’t mine.

Not yet.

Also, for all the damage our trick had done, it was only enough for a moment’s reprieve, and that moment called for flight, far and fast.

With Theia clinging to the me, I gained altitude and moment both, slicing through the air with a borrowed mastery of the skies eagerly given from one of the fragments in my hoard. For   so many years, I’d mistaken the winds that carried us were a gift from Mazana, but as I called on the “blessing” the Holy Tree had “given” me, I could feel the truth at last.

The Holy Tree gave us nothing.

My proficiency with the winds, and with healing magics? Those were my own gifts. Ones I’d given to tree because I’d been told that everything good I possessed I owed to the parasite god Sasarai had us enslaved to.

I didn’t have the strength or the time to burn down the Thicket Wall but my rage and need for vengeance was answered by a far vaster need from Draconia and as we sailed above the wall, fire streamed from our jaw reduce the nearest part of the wall to ash and setting the impenetrable vegetation beyond that aflame with pure orange fires.

And beyond the flames?

With new eyes, I at last saw what I’d feared since I first met Draconia, the emptiness beyond the Thicket Wall. The desolation I was bound for. The doom of my life.

But of course it wasn’t empty at all.

Below the wall, ten thousand sparks lit the night, revealing the metropolis which sprawled below the mountain Sasarai’s tree stood at the summit of.

And on the horizon? A distant but clear glow and warmth.

There was no way I could feel the warmth of the sun which lay beyond the horizon from where I was, but it was warm and comforting nonetheless. The Desolation and the Emptiness I’d always be threatened with did exist, but far away there was proof that the world wasn’t lost, that somehow the broken had been mended.

“There,” Theia shouted over the wind. “Put us down there. We can hide in the city with the other Blessed.”

Is that wise? I asked, speaking as Draconia and Umbrielle did since I wasn’t used to forming words with my maw yet and Draconia and I were linked so closely together that I wasn’t actually quite sure where I ended and she began anymore.

“If we fly into the wastelands now he’ll be able to keep track of us. We’ll be the only divine things out there.”

Not the only, Umbrielle said. But we will be recognizable.

Aren’t we inviting calamity on the lower city if we hide there?

Not if we don’t stay there long, Umbrielle said. You felt the crack too didn’t you?

I’m not sure I’ve ever felt anything more satisfying.

I feel like I should take offense at that, Umbrielle’s tone was mocking, which seemed odd given the seriousness of the situation before us, but served to remind me that she and Draconia had a different perspective on even something as the single most dramatic point in my life to date.

If we survive this, perhaps I will give you a century or two to try to upstage that moment, Draconia’s offer was also in jest. Mostly. There were undercurrents of real desire though to though and I had to wonder what exactly their history might have entailed.

That was a something to pursue another time though and since everyone else seemed to be in agreement, I descended towards the courtyard Theia had pointed me at, shrinking and changing back to my normal form fast enough that no one seemed to notice our arrival.

“I can’t believe you got us out there!” Theia said and kissed me.

It wasn’t a passionate thing. Or a romantic thing. She was simply that excited to still be alive.

I was excited too.

My knees for example had finished their transformation from dragon form through their normal Sylvan nature and continued on straight to jello.

“We lived!” I agreed. “We lived! We lived” I’d flopped down onto the ground and found myself staring at my hands, which were shaking from the waves of disbelief that poured over me.

“You did more than live,” a woman of organic and mechanical parts said. “You won.”

Which, coming from the God of Battle was rather heartening to hear.

“We’re going to disrupt the very balance of life.”

“That is rather the point, given that the current balance is decidedly not in our favor.”

“I don’t mean with just the divine. I mean with everything. I know we’re going to preserve our own peoples but so much else will be lost.”

“If you feel there is anything of value, you’re free to include it in your city.”

“Birds. Fish. Bugs?”

“What of them? I plan to have an aviary for viewing and aquariums will provide most of the food my people will require. As for bugs, good riddance I say.”

“And what will your fish eat?”

“Other fish of course.”

“And what will those fish eat?”

“Other smaller fish? We need not work all that out you know. The miracles we will be able to work will easily be able to bridge any small gaps in the systems we create.”

“Yes, but so much will be lost.”

“Perhaps, but nothing that we care about.”

– High Accessor Helgon and Vaingloth planning their cities before the Sunfall

We’d just stolen the First Tender’s entire stash of divine fragments, so I couldn’t blame Theia for looking around in wonder at where they’d gotten to.

“What do you mean you sent them to your hoard? Where is that?”

“It’s safe,” I said, since I really wasn’t sure how to answer the question more clearly than that. “They’re safe so long as I hold them.”

She’s correct on that, Draconia confirmed for me.

She is, but she’s leaving out an important detail. Umbrielle’s tone held the same trepidation that I saw in Theia’s eyes.

“What aren’t you telling me,” she asked.

“Nothing! They’re safe! Really!”

Yes. No one may steal a treasure guarded by one of Draconia’s Chosen, Umbrielle said which was reassuring because that was exactly what I’d felt when I called on Draconia’s gift.

How had I known that I could do that? I hadn’t. Knowing something requires understanding it. I’d simply wanted to protect the fragments and I’d felt how to do it in response.

There is however a fairly simple method for Sasarai to reclaim his lost treasures, Umbrielle said and I saw understanding light up in Theia’s eyes before I worked out what Umbrielle was referring to.

“He can kill you,” Theia said. “If you’re dead, you’re not guarding anything anymore.”

“Well, yeah, but I’m not planning to give him the opportunity,” I said.

“He’s going to track you down past the ends of the world for this,” Theia said. “He has too. We’ve taken too much from him for anything else to be possible.”

“Have we?” I asked. “Becuase there’s a lot more that we can take from him.”

“Like what? This is the core of his power. These were what let him call for the miracles he’s been relying on for hundreds of years.”

“They made it easier for him. Draconia and Umbrielle said that. He can work miracles with the grace he has stored up in the Holy Tree. It’ll just be harder.” I was understanding my plan as I explained it, and was happy to hear that it was sounding reasonable so far.

“Does he seem like the sort of guy whose happy taking the harder approach to things?” Theia asked and I had to wonder how she knew about the First Tender at all. As far as I knew, he never left the Garden.

That gave me a moment’s pause.

“As far as I knew”? How far did that extend really? I certainly didn’t know where the First Tender was at all times. I don’t think anyone did. 

But the Thicket Walls were so high that nothing could get over them/

Right?

The question of “what about under them” sprang immediately to mind and I pictured the stately First Tender crawling through the tunnels beneath the Divine Tree. 

It seemed unlikely.

On the other hand though, would someone who’d stolen the powers of the gods build himself a prison he’d be locked in for all eternity?

Maybe. There were certainly people who stayed inside their homes all the time and preferred it like that.

The First Tender didn’t seem to be one of them though. We saw him out and about often enough, for all the big ceremonies and even some of the smaller ones. He always seemed to like being among his people, so I couldn’t picture him hiding away forever. Not if there was more to the world than what I’d been taught.

“He can chase us, but what are his chances of finding us? Night keeps the whole world hidden, and outside the Garden he won’t be on familiar ground anymore.”

She has a point. If we can leave this place, Sasarai will have a harder time drawing on his little shrub, Draconia said, and I could feel her eagerness to leave.

A harder time does not mean it would be impossible for him, and, as we are now, we could not withstand him even if he found us on the other side of the world from his reservoir of power. Umbrielle didn’t sound happy about that, merely resigned to it.

“There’s one place, or one sort of place, he couldn’t catch us,” Theia said, sounded decidedly unhappy with the idea she had in mind.

He can travel anywhere in the world, Umbrielle said, dismissing Theia’s claim, but I caught on to what Theia was thinking.

“There are places he can travel, but he won’t be able to call on his powers. Or if he does, he definitely won’t be the one to catch us,” I said with a nod to Theia. She was right. This was a terrible idea, but it would work. For sure. Right up until it didn’t.

A city of one of the other Neoteric Lords, Draconia whispered. You mean to hide us there. Where Sasaria won’t dare use his powers.

“He won’t dare expose us there either,” I said. “If we hide with one of the other Neoterics and he lets them discover that we’re there, they would definitely kill me and take the fragments for themselves, right?”

Without question, Umbrielle said.

In fact, Sasarai will do everything in his power to conceal your theft. The moment the other betrayers learn of his weakness they won’t hesitate to betray him as well.

“Seven is such a better number than eight, isn’t it?” Theia said. 

“And six is pretty than seven,” I said, it being all too easy to follow the line of reasoning the Neoteric’s subscribed to.

Having just lost one of their number, the prospect of the balance shifting again would send them all scrambling, Umbrielle said. If there is one thing which unites our betrayers, it is ruthless greed. Give them the sense that a watershed moment has arrived and they will turn ravenous in their hunger to consume all they can and be the last Neoteric standing.

“Huh. You know, when you put it like that…” 

“Yeah. That occurred to me too,” Theia said. “Just one little problem.”

“If we purposefully put them at each others throats, we’re going to be the first ones they wipe out.” I didn’t have to guess at that. Even as limited as my experiences had been I had a sense of how ruthless people worked. I’d seen “upstanding” and “virtuous” Sylvan’s cut down (verbally) close friends and loved ones when positions of prominence in a congregation opened up. For people who’d dared to desecrate the gods themselves? I was pretty sure the “cutting down” would be swift and entirely literal.

“So, maybe that’s our backup plan then?” It seemed like I reasonable option if we were caught dead to rights anyways. There was only one additional problem with it I could see. “Assuming there is an ‘our’ to this?”

Because, really, why should there be? Theia could escape on her own pretty easily. I knew the odds against me were absurd, and if “we” were doomed, then why should she face the wrath of someone who’d managed to kill all the gods and then spend the last two centuries getting more powerful than that?

“You thinking of giving up on me? Probably a smart move all things considered,” she said, with the sort of nonchalance that told me I’d said something very wrong.

“No. What? No. I mean you don’t have to…I’m confused,” I said. Because I am nothing if not supremely eloquent. “Why are you helping me?”

“Helping you? How I am helping you? You’re helping me. This is my mission we’re doing here,” she said, looking as confused as I felt.

“Your mission? This is my life!”

“Yeah! That I seem to be ruining!”

“Ruining? What? How? Are you…” I took a breath. This was getting ridiculous, even for me. “Okay. Stop. I think we’ve got some very different ideas of what’s happening here, and we are running out of time. Let’s just hit the important bits. I’ve got the divine fragments. You had planned to take them to find more people who they were drawn to right?”

“Right,” Theia confirmed, thankfully not adding any clarifications that would have given us anything further to argue over.

“So, that means we can work together, that we will work together until we’ve got some resolution to this?” I had no idea what resolution we could possibly find, but the idea of being stuck with Theia for the foreseeable future didn’t seem all that terrible.

“If you change your mind about that, you need to give me the fragments,” she said.

“I thought you couldn’t hide them all?”

“Maybe. If this gets to be too much for you though, if you need to come back here for your family, or because Sasarai makes you an offer you can’t refuse, you’ve got to promise to give me the fragments. He can’t…”

I held a finger to stop her.

“The divine prisons are mine. MINE. I am their guardian and they are my treasure. The divine fragments within them belong to no one. I don’t know what Night’s blessing is like but my blessing is more than power and communion. My blessing comes with duty. Sasarai gets the prisons back from me by only one means. ”

I felt a shadow of Draconia’s power manifesting around me.

We’re not quite ready to pit ourselves against Sasarai, Draconia said. Though, believe me, I understand the temptation all too well.

I understood how impossible the challenge would be, how much vaster he was than both Draconia and I, even with his constellation of deities beyond his reach. Draconia had studied him since the Sunfall and the picture she shared was beyond daunting.

And that was fine.

If he wanted his gods back, he would have to destroy me and I would fight him with the full knowledge of that in mind. Maybe I couldn’t win, but I would hurt him as terribly as I could. He would destroy me but not without being diminished, and I would make certain that his wounds were all too visible to his fellow Neoterics.

“Then it sounds like we’re both in this to the end then…partner,” Theia said and extended her hand.

I wasn’t sure what the gesture meant, until Draconia shared a memory with me of people shaking hands as a sign of agreement and camaraderie.

“Partners,” I said, clasping her surprisingly warm hand in mine.

Theia gave me a small smile at that and started to say something but caught herself and changed to, “So, our next step is going to figure out how to get out of here.”

“How did you get in?” I asked and then shook my head. “No! Don’t tell me. The First Tender’s not getting the gods back unless he kills me but if I’m captured he’ll know spells to draw out the things I know, and I don’t want to risk any of your secrets.”

Theia chuckled at that.

“You are definitely not what I expected.”

“That makes two of us. I’m not what I expected either,” I said, feeling like my old life had crumbled to leaf dust already. “In fact, maybe that’s exactly what we need.”

“What do you mean?”

“Can you get us back to the surface? I think I know exactly how to get us out of here.”

“We are bound by our perceptions. What we cannot see of the world,  and as we cannot see we cannot interact with, cannot command or plan for, and cannot take advantage of. There are so many things which pass us by, things which we will never be aware we have missed, things which in turn control us, and dictate the course of our lives, leaving as at the mercy of forces far greater than we can ever be.”

– an except from the pre-Sunfall philosopher High Accessor Aukmetle’s treatise on “The Role of the Divine”.

“Accessor Aukmetle was once regarded as a deeply insightful scholar and his books on philosophy found favor with a great many people who, apparently, had never encountered the concept of ‘imagination’. This seems to be a particular disease which is prevalent among those of high station who believe they achieved their positions solely through their own efforts.”

– from the foreword to “The Role of the Divine” in its annotated reprinting as part of a collection of “Early Ventures into Philosophy”.

I was making a terrible, unforgivable mistake. And I intended to make it as deeply and thoroughly as I could.

“Seriously, if we take all of them, I have no idea how we’re going to get out of here,” Theia said. “Night’s blessing let’s me hide myself really well, but hiding other people is harder, and hiding this many gods? I’d need to be Night herself to do that I think.”

I did not stop pulling the gem-like stars from the walls. I couldn’t. 

They were mine.

I had spent so many damned years fighting against ‘the demon’ within me. As it turns out, when you stop fighting against the grace of who you truly want to be, there’s a tiny bit of euphoria that comes with it. 

I should urge caution here, Draconia said, again speaking only to me. Claiming all of these divine prisons as ours will have serious repercussions.

Yes. I could feel a wave of terror ready to crash over me from the fallout of what I was doing. Against that wave however stood the twin blessings, entirely mortal in origin, of “I’ve been afraid for so long I am not capable of caring anymore” and “this is right and I will kill or die to defend it” which together rose higher than even the great and terrible Thicket Wall.

I would rather you not die, Draconia said. I’ve rather enjoyed being your demon all these years. Also if we could avoid killing, that would be preferable for your sake.

But what if there are people who need to die? Because there were several people I could think of, most with the title “Tender” in some form or other, who very definitely needed to shown the exit from this world.

Killing is a tool and tools have their use. It is easy when one has an effective tool however to see it as the solution to each problem you encounter, and easier to lose sight of the unpleasant consequences which follow. Even in defense of what is ours, we’re best served if we can find a better path forward.

But sometimes there isn’t one.

Sometimes there isn’t, but many other times it will seem as though there is not, which is why we always look for the better path.

But what if the ‘better path’ lets them hurt us again? Isn’t that just weakness to let the wicked live to be a problem tomorrow when we could have fixed things today? I hesitated reaching for the next divine prison. Could I commit myself to this if I had to leave myself defenseless as well?

Whose voice do you hear those words in? Draconia asked. Who taught you that mercy was weakness?

No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m…

That was exactly what I was saying.

Exactly what I’d been taught, not in so many words, but by all the stories that hailed our victories over the creatures below the roots, and how Holy Mazana destroyed the broken spirits who dared threaten us.

“That’s still far, far too many for us to take,” Theia said.

She was right. I was going to get us all killed. I was going to get my family killed. I was going to wreck everything and accomplish nothing.

You may, Draconia said. No one, divinity or mortal, can be certain of what the future holds. Doing what we’re doing now is obviously perilous. It will place a vastly powerful foe against us. One I cannot match in battle. It will turn your entire society against us. Everything you’ve known, everything you’ve worked towards, all changed, all probably lost.

Hearing it pronounced like that was sobering. The mania of indulging in my divinely aligned urges faded away. What I was doing, claiming the role of protector to the divine fragments, it went deeper than a triumphant moment of rebellion. I was setting my feet on a path I couldn’t turn back from. 

I stood in an undecided moment still. I knew where my heart lay, but no one else did. I could slink back to my old life. I could reach within and pull forth the mask I’d worn for so long. I could pretend I was still a creature of unquestioning faith. I could be safe, and could plan my next steps for when the time was right, when it would be safe.

I could do all of that, but I can’t can I? I wasn’t asking Draconia. I already knew.

You can, she insisted. Never deny yourself the ability to choose, never hide behind a certainty of belief.

I can’t because I’ve already chosen, I said, and felt a calm seep through me that did more than hold back the wave of terror. It drained the terror away.

This was the right this to do. That didn’t mean it was safe. That didn’t mean people would agree with me. 

“We have to take them all,” I said, in answer to Theia who’d been watching my silent struggle. “This is the only chance we’ll have to rescue any of them. If we only take one or two, the rest will be taken into the First Tender’s personal custody. He’ll probably jam them into the heart of the Divine Tree or somewhere else impossible to get to.”

“Draconia said he doesn’t come here much though?” Theia didn’t look confused so much as grasping onto the hope that her plan could still be salvaged.

He doesn’t, but he will when he feels his power being diminished, Draconia said.

Was that what he did when you were taken? Umbrielle asked.

I wasn’t taken, Draconia said. I’m still here. Jilya carried forth my Blessing, but she didn’t claim me as her own until today.

“And so now he knows, or will know, as soon as he tries to call on the domain of the gods we’re rescuing,” I said. The pieces had been falling into place for a while but as we talked I say ever more clearly how I hadn’t had a choice.

Not in the sense that I couldn’t have done anything else, but with every “I had no choice” there’s always an unspoken “if”. In this case it was “I had no choice if I wanted to being able to stand who I was”. Draconia was right. I could have chosen to abandon the divine fragments. I could have snuck back to my old life. I could have betrayed everything I understood myself to be. What I couldn’t do was any of that and live with myself afterwards. 

I’d tried hating myself for years and, shockingly, that hadn’t done anything for me at all.

Dying won’t do much for you either, Draconia said.

I’m mortal. Dying isn’t a question for us. How we live is though.

The calm I felt wasn’t resignation. I hadn’t given up. I’d simply accepted who I wanted to be, and without the fear that had been holding me back, ideas I’d never let myself consider played out to form plans that I am certain no other Sylvan in history would have dared to consider.

Or, to be fair, been capable of pulling off.

I mean, I was Blessed. That did come with some advantages.

“Okay then. We’re taking them all,” Theia said and began pulling divine prisons off the walls with me. “You know I can safely say, this is not at all how I expected our next meeting to go.”

“Oh? Really? How did you think we would meet?” I asked, surprised because I’m an idiot, that she had been thinking about meeting me again at all.

“Less pleasantly,” she said. “I thought we were going to throw down that first night and then we got interrupted, so I thought you’d want to go for a second round when we met again.”

She sounded neither unhappy with the prospect of that nor unhappy that it hadn’t come to pass.

“That interruption almost got me in a lot of trouble,” I said. “I kept hoping the next time we met I’d be able to get my old life back, but, well, that didn’t exactly turn out as planned.”

“Sorry about that. I’ve kind of got a gift for finding trouble,” Theia said, jumping up to snatch one of the gem prisons that was mounted the highest.

Not a divine gift, Umbrielle said. She came up with that one all on her own.

“No apologies needed,” I said. “I prefer this trouble to my old life.”

“How bad were things?” Theia asked, pausing in her collection.

“What do you mean?” I asked, knowing exactly what she meant.

“You’ve been going in and out, and that makes sense. It sounds like most of this stuff is brand new to you and there’s a lot that has to be a big shock. It looks like you’re embracing it though and I’ve never seen anyone turn around on what they believe in that quickly.”

Her concerns there were easy to see. Was I suffering from some sort of breakdown? Was I going to breakdown further? Or worse, was I just saying what everyone wanted to hear so I could betray them later? 

“I had a good life. For someone else. My ‘good’ life though was killing me. I know I’ve been given a lot of gifts, but the most of them came at a cost I couldn’t really pay. Not forever. And not anymore. Today, when I saw the ‘Holy Tree’ almost destroy a girl, I was finally able to see a price of obedience that I should have seen for years now. That wasn’t the turning point though. You were.”

“Me? What did I do? Apart from invade your house and kick you butt that is.”

I stopped and shot her a look of challenge.

“I don’t recall my butt being touched at all.” It was meant to be an objection. I think.

“We’ll have to see if that can be arranged then.” Was she flirting with me? I had no idea. I’d heard of it being something people did, but not, you know, to me.

She probably just wanted the rematch she’d talked about.

“Yes we will,” I said, since seeing her in action had been more educational that a month of schooling. 

She raised an eyebrow as though I’d been flirting back. But I hadn’t been. I was just agreeing with her.

Draconia was notably silent on the subject.

Not ‘she didn’t have anything to say’. She specifically was making no comment.

And she definitely wasn’t laughing at me silently.

No. Why would she be?

“So, how do we survive the next ten minutes then?” Theia asked, prying the last of the divine prisons loose from the wall.

“Can you take us back to the chapel?” I asked.

“Not with all the divine fragments,” she said.

“What divine fragments?” I asked as innocently as I could.

“What do you mean ‘what divine fragments’, the ones we piled up right…okay where did they go?” Theia asked.

Oh, he is definitely going to kill you, Umbrielle said.

“Wait, what happened?” Theia said.

“I claimed them. They’re mine. So I sent them to my hoard.”

“What I don’t get is why we’re here? The Thicket Wall’s impregnable. Nothing’s ever gotten through it and nothing’s ever going to. So what’s the point of having us here, keeping a watch out? I mean we can’t even look over the wall. If something was coming, we wouldn’t know until it busted through the wall and then what are we supposed to do?”

“You want us to have to look at what’s on the other side of the wall?”

“No, I mean, well, maybe? There’s just a big pile of nothing out there right?”

“Nothing living. That’s not the same thing as nothing at all. There are things out there you never want to see. Things that can burrow into your brain just by looking at you.”

“Where’d you hear that? How would anyone know?”

“Remember Cursus? He told me. Said he was on duty one day and the top of the wall needed to be inspected, so they hauled him and another guy named Falfo up to the top. Cursus said he took a peek over the top, but Falfo? Falfo just looked out bold as you please. Cursus said he went all quiet when he saw the lights.”

“What lights?”

“The lights of the things eyes. It had to be. Anyways Falfo and Cursus come down and the next day Falfo is out sick. No one knew what was wrong with him, and they didn’t have long to figure it out because the next day he was dead.”

“Dead from what? From some lights?”

“From the things out there. They got into him. Made him impure.”

“What about Cursus. You said he peeked too.”

“Yeah. He got transferred after Falfo died. I heard he got killed down in the root tunnels by one of the critters they fight, but one of the guys down there said the creature who got him singled Cursus out like the creature knew he was going to be there.”

“All that from a peek?”

“Yeah, what can you do? It’s a dangerous world out there.”

– Wall Guards Garl and Faneyen unknowingly propagating carefully planted falsehoods on the night when Jilya first left the Garden.

Theia told me the story of “Little Hands Can Do Great Things” and I was forced to accept that either I had gone insane, or the world had. It was easier to accept that I was the one who’d snapped, but the more I listened, the more I was forced to believe that the world had simply lost all sense and rationality.

“She killed one of the architects of the Sunfall? And she’s a Ratkin? And they’re not extinct? And she BROUGHT THE SUN BACK!?”

Oddly, it wasn’t the last one that was giving me the most trouble. I was hung up on the idea that one of the extinct peoples, the ones too impure to survive into the world the ‘Holy Tree’ preserved for all the good Sylvans, had somehow been around this whole time.

You have noticed Theia though, Draconia said, just to me, because she is a kind and benevolent god and willing to refrain from pointing out how cataclysmically stupid I was being.

To be fair though, my problem with the existence of Ratkins, and apparently a wide variety of other species surviving was how it made so much more sense than the alternative I and everyone I knew had just accepted for my whole life.

We were ‘pure’? We were ‘special’? Seriously? That was all it took? Didn’t anyone else ever question how convenient that was? Didn’t anyone ever wonder why, if we were so ‘special’ and ‘pure’ and ‘sheltered by the Holy Tree’s grace’, there was so much misery in everyone’s lives?

I’d lived in fear for years for my own special reasons, but it had made me notice how many other people were afraid too. That hadn’t helped me at all of course. I’d assumed that if ‘good’ and ‘pure’ people needed to be that fearful of their negligible trespasses then my own had to demand an even vaster amount of terror.

Why had no one ever asked who was really benefitting from a doctrine that kept all of us terrified of being judged and found wanting?

Why had I never asked that?

Does it matter that you didn’t ask the question before, or does it matter that you’re asking it now?

“The stuff Little did, she didn’t do along,” Theia said. “I’ve met some of the people who were there, the ones who helped her, other Blessed, like us.”

“Like you, you mean? Or are there other Sylvan out there too?” I don’t know why that was important. Somehow the idea that Theia was unique, a miracle of grace made flesh, seemed easier to believe than a world that could hold two women like her, much less a whole population of Theias.

“Yeah. Lots. Well, lots for the kind of cities we have now,” Theia said.

Once your people numbered in the hundreds of millions, Umbrielle said. There remain less than a one percent of that.

That’s was their plan, Draconia said. Each of the High Accessors who betrayed us took domain over a population of their choice. Sasarai always loved the idea of ‘harmony through racial purity’, and with our stolen power, he was able to make it a reality.

“I’ve always wondered why they didn’t save more though?” Theia said. “Not out of the goodness of their hearts or anything, but wouldn’t more worshippers mean more grace and more divine power for them?”

Only if they could lay claim to it all. It the population under their control became larger than they could maintain their dominance over, the grace they’d stolen could easily leak away and empower others, Umbrielle said.

You two and the others like you are proof of that, Draconia said. Our domains lie quiet, for the most part. As fragments of what we once were, we do not and cannot call on them as once we did, but they are still out there, as battered and diminished by the attacks of the Beast as we are, but so long as reality holds, they remain ready to receive the prayers you make merely by living. Those prayers call our domains, call us, back from the edge of oblivion we are always sliding towards. They are our anchor to this world and that which drives us onwards, and the stronger they become they more active they are.

“I’ve heard this one before,” Theia said, “so before they get too confusing. They don’t mean active in the ‘has plans’ or ‘talks to you’ sense. They mean it like the wind blowing. More energy in the air, the harder the wind blows. It doesn’t have a plan, it just becomes more of a present force in the world.”

“And that leads to people becoming Blessed?” I could follow what they were saying but what it all meant was a bit beyond me still.

It’s one of the requirements, Draconia said. Without grace to empower us, we may represent our domains but we’re powerless to act for them or make use of them. After the Sunfall, I could have called on those close to my domain and Blessed them, but it would have been a blessing in name only. I had nothing to share with them.

“But you’ve recovered since then?” I couldn’t imagine any Sylvan worshipping any of the old gods, or any of the old gods being particularly interested in what any living Sylvan’s might have to offer.

Yes. Sasarai, the First Tender, saw to that. Draconia did not seem pleased with that. As insensate lumps we were doubtless more convenient and manipulable, but also far too disconnected from our domains to provide him any benefit.

And there’s always the danger of a god in that situation dying, Umbrielle said, though her tone was more unconcerned than I’d have expected.

“I thought the gods were immortal?” I asked.

Most did up until the coming of the Beast, Draconia said. Then it became very fashionable to believe we had all died, but had that been the case the world would have died as well and then been renewed as well when we were reborn.

Divine immortality is more a matter of categorization, Umbrielle said. The personas we wear can reach an end, for many different reasons, but unless reality is rewritten to exclude us, our divinity will rise again as the need for us grows.

Our faces are usually different, and the collection of domains we manage can change but nothing is forgotten. There was more to it than that. Draconia was summarizing for my benefit but it was enough for me to understand that we needed to take the kind of action that might get us all killed.

“You said you could only hide a couple of the fragments?” I asked, looking at Theia, who I was pretty sure could read my intent clearly.

Two at best. One would be far safer, Umbrielle said.

“And none would be the safest of all,” Theia said. “But we’re not here to be safe, are we?”

“No. We’re not,” I said and rose up to pull one of the glittering stars from the wall.

Touching the vessel of a god should have been a profound experience. The divinity of the coursing river Breakwater in the palm of my hand. I knew whose prison I held just from the touch but that was all. I felt no connection with Ullos, the god of the river, and wasn’t charged with any holy spark from the contact between us. His prison held him too fast, even while it was within my hand.

Even while it was mine.

A connection formed at last. I hadn’t claimed the god as my own. I’d claimed the jeweled fragment which held him in a sort of dread slumber. It was a treasure beyond measure in my broken world and I had claimed it.

I could have freed Ullos then. Shattered the prison and released him into the world. Unprotected. Without nourishment. The First Tender had done that with more than a few divine fragments. Ones too small to be of any use to him. Ones he could delight in watching die because he’d laid enough claim to their domains that he didn’t need to fear their reawakening.

Or I could have been kinder. I could have called on Ullos’ power, I could have claimed them all and called on all their powers. I’d been blessed by Draconia but none of the fragments would have refused to lend me aid if we my cause was the destruction of the First Tender.

I am not a good Sylvan and that was more tempting than I can ever admit to anyone, but its not what I did.

What I did was simpler. I claimed them. I added them to my hoard. Mine to hold, mine to guard, mine to carry onto a brighter day.

I plucked two more off the walls, Janlee Goddess of the Western Winds and Hoblos, God of Tended Fires. They were mine as well and in the back of my mind I felt as much as heard Draconia chuckling.

This is not wise, Umbrielle said. Sasarai will notice this.

Yes he will. Draconia wasn’t afraid. She was eager.

You are not recovered enough yet for a war with him.

You’re right. I’m not. I may never be. That was a disturbing though. It didn’t dissuade me from pulling two more fragments from the walls though.

Then why would you risk all that you are? This isn’t the time for rash action. Yes, he took something from you. I know it wasn’t in you to tolerate that, but you have had centuries to learn.

Do you want to know what those centuries taught me, what I learned down all the long years I waited in my prison as a slave and a puppet to the whims of the person who destroyed us all? Would you like to explore the depths of what those years showed me?

Survival. Those years had to have taught you how to survive.

Yes. They taught me what I could survive. And they showed me what it cost others to survive as well. You did us all the greatest of services, but you didn’t have to endure what we have endured, and do you know what we required to endure through the centuries you speak of?

“Hope,” I said. We were not going to abandon any of the divine fragments. They were ours and the hope they’d carried would be denied no longer.

“Though our world be burnt and humbled, we remain. We who may still walk in the light. We who have been glorified by the holiest of holies! We the Chosen and the Pure! Children of this new Garden. Where once I was your High Accessor, now I am simply one of you. The first to tend to our guardian, Holy Mazana. The first to offer succor and guidance in the name of the one divinity who did not abandon us. Who did not fail. Who did not betray both duty and responsibility when the night came crashing down around us, and in whose radiant goodness we shall surely dwell for all the days to come so long as our hearts remain pure and true and filled with love for the Divine Tree.”

– From the first speech of the High Accessor Sasarai as he donned the mantle of First Tender

Just hearing some words shouldn’t have chilled my soul. Even words spoken by the gods shouldn’t have conveyed the enormity of horror that Draconia and Umbrielle naming the architect of their destruction had.

“Who…who…what…?” I stammered out the words trying to form a meaningful question and failing as images of a dark beyond the sky, a hunger insatiable even if it consumed everything, and malice beyond rage swallowed my thoughts.

“Are you okay?” Theia asked, reaching over from where she was sitting guide me down to a more stable position on the floor beside her.

I shared perhaps a bit too much there, Draconia said.

“Maybe don’t then?” Theia said in slow, deliberate syllables.

It’s too late. She’s seen our adversary. Umbrielle’s regret did not fill me with hope that the violent heaving I felt was going to get better.

“Yeah, so have I, but it wasn’t this bad. What did you do to her?” Theia sounding angry on my behalf was nice if not particularly helpful.

What I shared with you was akin to an artist’s sketch, Umbrielle said. I believe Draconia was caught up in a memory.

“Yeah. That thing. It’s. It’s Not Mine.” Words are just puffs of air? Little vibrations we make which have no weight and less force. They can’t change anything.

The ideas they carry on the other hand though.

I felt the horror Draconia had known, and far worse than that, the attention of the Beast, burrowing into my soul but with those words I cast it out. The Beast had no place in my life. No place in my reality. It was not something would ever be a part of me, or something that I would never let take anything that was mine.

I felt scales forming over me again as I reached deep into Draconia’s blessing.

The fire was there. The power was there. She was there.

But she’d failed.

That was what she wanted to me to see.

Even with all her power, in its purest, most unfettered form, she’d failed.

She wasn’t a refuge for me from the Beast.

She couldn’t protect me.

If gods could weep, this was what it felt like. To be defined by something, to be given ultimate responsibility and unlimited authority, and to still not be enough. To watch a world being shattered and broken and know that you were supposed to be its great defender and were helpless to save anyone.

I sat with that in silence for I don’t know how long.

You can’t defend me, I said at last, speaking only to Draconia.

Not from that, not even were I made fully whole again, she said, her words calm but her voice holding the sorrow of centuries.

Then maybe it’s my job to protect you, I said.

It was ludicrous. Idiotic. 

And true.

I’d stumbled my way into the words, but when I spoke them to her, I knew they were the truth.

Was I more powerful than a god? No. Could I strike down the Beast that still lurked out beyond the curtain of night which had enveloped the world? No. 

But I had cast it out.

In naming the End of All Things to me, and sharing her memory of it, Draconia had done more than show me her own destruction, I’d glimpsed the Beast, not just as it was then, but as it had become.

And it had glimpsed me as well.

I’d been afraid my whole life.

I’d lived in terror for so long of being ‘thrown over the Thicket Wall’, of being impure, of being destroyed for what I was.

And the Beast wanted me to know fear? Hah. Too late! Far too late.

Fear was my oldest friend. And if the Beast thought it was going to use fear to take my new friends away from me? The ones who were accepting me as I was?

Then we were going to have words, the Beast and I.

I welcome your resolve, but that is not a fight which any of us wish. Night has given us respite, and we are still in dire need of more.

“You feeling a bit better?” Theia asked. At some point she’d moved to sit opposite me and had, I think, been watching my blank eyed expression for at least a few minutes.

“I think so,” I said, shaking my head clear. “Thanks. Tell me more though, what is this place, really?” 

You’d think asking for more information after what the answer to my last question had done to me was the last thing I’d want but, nope, I was hungrier than ever to understand the truths behind all the lies I’d been told.

Theia paused for a moment, having, I guessed, a private conversation with Umbrielle before nodding and turning back to me.

“It’s a prison,” she said. “See all those lights? They’re all fragments of gods, like Draconia is.”

“And Umbrielle?” I asked.

I am a small piece of my full self, but Night remains. Umbrielle spoken delicately, though the delicacy was more for Draconia’s benefit than mine.

Night, the God of Night that is, she was the cleverest of us, Draconia said, waving aside Umbrielle’s offered delicacy with her tone.

Far from that, Umbrielle said, the Twins of Invention and Investigation would roast us both if they heard you say that.

If they were present to hear my words, then I would accept theirs, Draconia said. As they are not, and as your greater self is the one who saved us, I stand by that claim.

“I’m not clear on what happened to you, the gods I mean? Are there ones that were destroyed and others that weren’t?” That seemed like the most reasonable interpretation of what they were saying but with something like the Beast in play I didn’t think ‘reasonable’ was necessarily the right tool to work with.

You’ve seen what we fought, Draconia said. There were no gods who were spared, none of us who didn’t struggle against it. We all rose, and all but one of us fell. What fell were fragments though, tiny pieces of what we once were after the Beast devoured so much of what we had been.

“What does that mean though? You’re still gods aren’t you?”

We are. I am. The miracles which once flowed through us? The stewardship of our domains? Those are lost. This is our world no longer. It is held by those who usurped our role. The masters of this broken place.

They style themselves ‘Neoteric Lords’, Umbrielle said. And they are they ones who called the Beast here.

“Why? Why would…” But I didn’t need to finish asking that question. Not when the First Tender had been there my whole life. This was the world he wanted. The one where he was in control of everything, and all obeyed his will. “But, wait, you said ‘they’? There are others like the First Tender?”

“Yeah. Lots of them,” Theia said. “Used to be, what, twelve, and now they’re down to eight, right?”

“Eight? Eight people like the First Tender? Do they all call themselves the ‘First’ Tender? Are there eight other ‘divine trees’ too?” 

The thought of there being eight times as many people in thrall to an abomination like the First Tender was nauseating but that was in line with how the rest of the day was going, so no real surprise there.

“Nope. Each one has their own weird little thing going on. No other trees either. That seems to be Sasarai’s idea of a good time,” Theia said.

“How do the other people survive then? You said there were broken spirits and worse out in the wastelands right?”

“There are. People can deal with them though. Usually. It’s dangerous but not like the Neoterics are. The things in the wasteland stay there because if the Neoterics catch them, getting stuffed into a place like this is about the best thing that can happen to them.”

“Why even have a place like this though?” I looked around and for how horrible it was, I couldn’t help but see the beauty in it too. “If the gods are just fragments, why bother keeping them locked up?”

Through us they can access our domains more easily, Draconia said. With this many fragments, the First Tender is as close to a true god as anything as solid as a mortal can become. 

He even has the grace from his people’s worship to power him, both those within and beyond your Thicket Wall.

“But, we, they, don’t worship the First Tender. All our worship was supposed to be directed to the Holy Tree?”

There is only so much grace any one mortal can hold. Your people are right to call Sasarai’s overgrown shrub divine, but not at all in the sense they mean it, Umbrielle said. The tree was grown from the bodies of the fallen and the faith they once carried. Its is a vessel for grace which the First Tender can draw from at will, without needing to risk attracting the Beast’s attention by shining so brightly that the I can’t conceal him.

“Wait, yeah, why is she concealing him? I get that hiding us was the only thing that could save us, but why save them?” I asked.

“She didn’t have a choice. If the Beast sees anyone here, it’s going to come back and eat everyone,” Theia said. “Yeah, I asked that too. It kind of sucks.”

“There’s got to be something we can do about him, him and all the others though, isn’t there?” Burn the Holy Tree down seemed like a great start, but the problems that would cause were obvious enough even I knew it was a terrible idea.

“Well, the plan had been to sneak in here, find a divine fragment or two and spirit them away so that we could look for someone who the fragments would Bless. If we just so happened to frame one of the other Neoteric for the loss, right after a Neoteric had just died, then maybe we’d get them fighting each other and we’d get the total down to seven or six or so.”

“I like the idea of them fighting each other but what do you mean one of them just died?” I had a hard time picturing someone like the First Tender, who was, as far as I knew, functionally immortal, ever dying, and if it had been recent then something was changing.

“Remember how I said there were eight Neoterics? Yeah, up until a little while ago there’d been nine of them. The first three, twelve though ten we’ll call them, those all got killed off by the others. Either the rest got smart at that point or the first three were just the unpopular ones, because the nine stayed nine for a long time.”

“And then one of them got on the other’s bad side?” 

“Nope. One of them pissed off the wrong mouse.”

I stared at Theia. 

“A mouse?”

“Well, okay, a Ratkin. She, uh, she’s kind of special,” Theia said.

She is the Blessed of Sola, God of the Sun, the first of us to rise and the last of us to fall.

“And we kind of owe her the world.”

“My lord High Accessor, we have the Chamber of Divine Reflection ready for tomorrow’s unveiling.”

“Excellent work Jakern. And the crew? How many did you need to conscript to finish the task on time?”

“There were only four of us in total lord. We’ve worked round the clock but it was worth it.”

“Around the clock? I don’t see the others here though.”

“I sent them home once the work was completed lord. None of us have slept in the last three days.”

“I see. That’s someone what inconvenient. I wished to present your rewards to you as a group but I supposed the others will need to wait.”

“My apologies lord. I can recall them, if you desire.”

“No, no. There’ll be time to see to them tomorrow. It will even be a good test of loyalty I suppose. They were instructed to speak of this chamber to absolutely no one, correct?”

“Yes Lord Sasarai. We have told our families that we were tasked with working on a Holy Mystery and that we could not reveal anything about the work we were doing.”

“So there are those who know of this place obliquely then? I suppose that couldn’t be helped. It’s not likely that the important details have spread beyond their immediate families. It will be a bother to include them as well, but hardly a challenging one.”

“Our families will receive your promised reward as well lord?”

“Yes. I believe I will need to arrange that.”

“And what is our reward to be?”

– the last words of Scribe Jakern, creator of the Silent Archive

The thought that I was going to save the world was laughable. I knew what I’d done. I knew what I’d chosen. There was an extremely high likelihood that I wasn’t going to be able to saved myself, much less the rest of my family or even the Garden. Doing anything that could even affect the whole world, broken, dead and empty as it was was simply inconceivable to me.

Except, it wasn’t empty was it?

I mean Theia came from somewhere. If I was willing to believe her, it sounded like that somewhere was just over the Thicket Wall, despite how impossible that seemed. We had people guarding the wall. They would have seen if there was a whole other city out there.

Wouldn’t they?

And if people knew the First Tender was lying to us, how could they not have ever talked about it?

Or had they just never talked about it to me?

That thought made me feel very alone. I’d lived my whole life obeying the dictates of my faith. The faith I’d been given. The one everyone had told me was true and proper and required to be a good person. To be accepted.

The one time I’d gone against that, the only time I’d let curiosity lead me rather than blind obedience I’d fallen into what I thought was mortal sin. I’d thought my breech of the rules had come at the expense of my soul. That in becoming possessed by a demon I’d forfeited all rights to solace and community and grace.

But the grace they’d offered had been a shackle and the community had never been one that could have accepted me as I was, even before I became ‘possessed’. 

I had to laugh, if there was any solace to be found, it lay in my demon.

MY demon. MY god. Mine.

That part was so important. So fundamental. Draconia was mine. That I understood that, that it was true from the moment I’d laid eyes on the beautiful sparkle of hers on the wall of the Silent Archive, that was where our bond had begun.

I just needed to understand why.

“I can’t save the world. It’s…it’s beyond saving isn’t it?” And it wasn’t mine. It belonged to other people. To monsters like the thing that wore the First Tender’s skin.

“The old world? Oh absolutely.” Theia said. “That’s not the world we’re trying to save though.”

“What’s to save in this one?” Ripples of anger washed over me but I caught myself as I heard the words escape me. I wasn’t angry at Theia. She’d given me a gift beyond measure in being the final push that broke me free from the bonds which had held me back for so long. “I mean that literally,” I amended, hoping to show that this was yet another area where I just didn’t know enough. “I’ve been told my whole life that the Garden was all there was. But I’m guessing that’s wrong? That what’s out there isn’t all fractured, life stealing spirits and lifeless wastelands.”

Oh, there is plenty of that, Umbrielle said. 

“But there’s also other cities, and a lot more to this one than they ever told you, which is weird? Why would they keep that hidden? Why wouldn’t they tell you about the rest of the city so you could feel all smug and superior?” Theia was eyeing me carefully, as though searching for some measure of insincerity or betrayal that might be lurking behind my facade.

That stung a little but could I really blame her? I’d worn a facade for years that had been flawless enough that no one had ever suspected the fact that I was bearing the soul of a god within me. My people skills weren’t that amazing, I’d never learned how to lead or inspire or organize, but I was demonstrably good at deception, so a bit of mistrust was kind of understandable.

The First Tender’s doctrine holds that the Sylvan within the Central Garden were saved due to being especially ‘pure’. It’s a core tenant of their belief system, and one of the implicit threats which binds them to Sasarai’s will.

“Who?” I asked, wondering what new monster was behind all this.

High Accessor Sasarai. The Betrayer. Or one of the Betrayers, Umbrielle said. 

You know him as ‘The First Tender’, Draconia said. He and eleven of his fellow High Accessors were among the highest and most honored of our servants before the world fell.

And they are the ones who brought about it’s destruction. Umbrielle’s anger was a quiet and deceptively calm. As someone who was used to deceiving people about her anger though, I caught a glimpse of its true depth and it was overwhelming.

Centuries of rage all held in careful check, all waiting and building.

Whenever that broke free, I knew I had to be somewhere else. Even somewhere lost in the dead wastelands, even surrounded by fractured spirits, even dead if need be. Anything to not be part of reckoning that she would unleash.

It wasn’t only them, Draconia said, and just as clearly as I’d glimpsed the rage behind Umbrielle’s words, I heard the sorrow and regret in Draconia’s.

“What do you mean?” Theia asked, apparently as surprised by that as I’d been.

We do not bear the blame for their actions. Umbrielle’s tone was defiant and held a note of warning. 

Don’t we? Draconia asked. We were the stewards of this world. When our joyful little tools offered to feed us grace beyond what we’d ever collected before, did we question them? Did we consider what the cost might be?

It wasn’t our place to turn away from the grace offered to us by mortals.

Yes. Not yours. But it should have been mine. What our chief acolytes worked in malice, I overlooked in greed. The fall of the world was mine to prevent.

“Was it though?” Theia asked. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I know the gods were great and all that, but it didn’t sound like any of you had say over what the others did, right? You could have refused all the grace they offered but that wouldn’t have stopped the rest of the gods.”

You are correct We do not rule over anything save our own domains, and while those may intersect and overlap to small degrees, within ourselves we are, or were, absolute. Draconia can no more dictate how things may pass unseen than I can defend that which is valued and loved.

But that’s what you’ve been doing. You’ve been bearing the burden that was supposed to rest on me for all these long years.

No my beautiful one, even my greater self could not defend this world. All I could do is hide it away.

Most treasures I kept were hidden.

But that was not their true defense. Not for things you guarded.

“What did you guard?” I asked, knowing as I did that one of the answers was ‘me’. She’d been guarding me from myself, from those around me, and even from her own desires, since the moment we met.

Everything that was truly valued, Draconia said.

“But wouldn’t that have meant you were everywhere?” I tried to picture an army of Draconias, each one sitting on top of anything anyone cared about.

“She probably was,” Theia said. “It’s how the gods work, or how they used to work anyways. They were present in everyone and everything that was a part of their domain.”

We still are, Draconia said. Or our domains are still present, tattered around the edges though they might be. We ourselves are only the bits that were small enough to survive though.

“Survive what? What happened to you?” I left unsaid the part where I was going to do my best to rival Umbrielle’s rage if I could get my hands on the ones who were responsible.

I failed, Draconia said which Umbrielle huffed at.

She didn’t. No more than any of the rest of us did. This world was ours to defend and nurture and none of managed to prevent its downfall, so don’t listen to her.

“Well, she is my god though.” I was mostly teasing Theia with that given her earlier outburst, but there was some sincerity there too. Draconia had never lied to me, or led me astray even when it would have been childishly easy to manipulate me.

“All the more reason not to listen to her,” Theia said. “Bunch of drama babies the lot of them. Do you want me to tell you what happened?”

Oh, you think you know do you? Umbrielle asked.

“Yeah, it’s not like it’s hard to figure out with how you whinge about it every chance you get,” Theia said and launched into her explanation before Umbrielle or Draconia could defend themselves. “So way back when, the gods used to manage their domains and there were a ton of them. They’re not flesh and blood like we are though, they’re more like ideas with personalities.”

That’s…hmm, not entirely inaccurate I suppose, Draconia said.

“When we mortals started building more complex societies we found that we could, I don’t know, shape the grace we offered to them? Believe in them better? Something like that. That’s why we had a people whose whole role in life was to speak for the gods and lead people for them. They were supposed to teach us and help us live in harmony with the gods.”

“But instead they betrayed the gods? How would you even do that though? Wouldn’t turning against your god just break the link between the two of you?” I could feel the bond I shared Draconia. Either one of us could break it and that I hadn’t in all the years I’d thought she was a demon said something about how well I was able to deceive myself.

“You’d think that, and you’d be right, but it turns out that the High Accessors, the top of the religious orders? They directed the clergy for so many of the gods that they didn’t need a personal connection with any of them. All they needed to do was facilitate the worship for the gods and direct the grace that was generated by the faithful so that each god’s domain received the prayers that were given out by the masses.”

“And they stole some of it?”

“That was my first guess too, but, no, the gods would have noticed someone pilfering from them. Probably yours most of all. The High Accessors knew that, so what they did was feed the gods more grace. They found tools, mostly psychological ones I think, to break people and make them near mind-less worship machines.”

“Wait, how would that work? The gods need us, not just mindless prayers. Right?” The idea of mouthing empty words to Draconia turned my stomach it was so vile.

“Turns out there’s a difference between ‘mindless’ and ‘nearly mindless’. What the High Accessors did probably wasn’t sustainable. I have to imagine they were burning people up, burning up their whole societies, but for what they planned, they didn’t need, or even want, their societies to be whole.”

“That’s just stupid though. What would feeding the gods all that grace even do for them?”

“It made the gods targets.”

“Targets for what?”

For the Beast.

For the End of All Things.

“We need a means by which we can ensure an equitable distribution of power once our plans reach fruition, do you not agree Vaingloth?”

“Will we? I should think not my dear Helgon. We are no great number, and are all of comparable skill and insight. In the shuffle and chaos that will unfold, there is likely to be some small differences which arise in terms of which powers we each can capture and how well we can hold onto them, but those will be minor perturbations at best. On a global scale, it’s unlikely we will even notice or, in fact, truly be able to measure the differences between ourselves with how much greater our powers shall be.”

“But inequalities, Vaingloth, if any there are, well, they may serve to come between us. Those who make out poorly may resent the more fortunate, those who win by fortune what they couldn’t have managed by skill alone may become paranoid at losing their unearned gains.”

“Perhaps, but there will be so many of us, Helgon. Any tiny perturbations in our standing will be insufficient to matter in the face of eleven others who are of similar caliber. No one of us will be able to impose a tyranny on the rest, without being massively overwhelmed.” 

“As I understand it, our rule will be built on tyranny though, will it not.”

“Only the tyranny of gratitude. Our peoples will follow us because we will give to them what they most desire; their continued existence. Those who are opposed to that form of equity will be free to seek out any lives they can.”

“Lives in a dead world.”

“For a time. As our power grows and we master our divinity, life will return. On our terms.”

– High Accessor Helgon and Vaingloth carefully asking each other about their mutual likelihood for betrayal and mayhem.

Vanishing sounds like a quick thing. Like when we travelled from the chapel to the Silent Archive, the journey was over in a blink. 

And in one sense it was.

I don’t know how much time it took Theia to shunt us from the chapel to the archive, but from observing it later, I think her shadow stepping was effectively instantaneous. 

That wasn’t how it felt though.From the moment I closed my eyes to when the flickering lights of the Silent Archive blazed before me it felt like weeks had passed. I had the clearest of possibly memories of clinging to Theia for dear life as something horrid beyond words loomed so large above the horizon that it blotted out everything else in the world.

We’d spent so long bound together by the iron grip of our arms that it felt like a piece of myself was peeling away when she released me and I had to drag my hands back as they reached out for her in the wake of our journey.

“Ugh, okay, yeah, woah, let’s not do that again if we don’t have to,” Theia said, stumbling backwards to rest against one of the walls.

I assure you, we very much had to, Draconia said with a deeper note of anxiety than I could recall hearing in her voice before.

“Are you okay?” I asked, stepping forward to kneel beside Theia as she slid down to a seating position. I made sure to keep my hands to myself, despite the strange ache in them to hold her again.

She will be. That was simply more taxing than she’s used to, Umbrielle said, her lack of concern feeling genuine.

“Nah, it was easy,” Theia said. “This place just has some protections on it though. Took a little bit extra to get in here without breaking them.”

Where are we? I sense…, Umbrielle started to ask before falling silent in wonder.

“Exactly what we were looking for,” Theia said, her voice quiet in wonder as her gaze passed around the small cavern we’d arrived in.

The Silent Archive was a place I’d told myself I was probably never going to return to, ever. After I’d picked up Draconia, I’d imagined coming back hundreds of times. I’d thought that the place where one found a demon had to be the proper place to return it too. Gazing at all the twinkling lights that surrounded us though, I had to shake my head. 

How could I have thought I’d leave this place behind?

How had I forgotten what had drawn me here that first, awful, amazing time?

The Silent Archive is a natural cavern far below Holy Mazana’s roots. It’s walls are adorned with what has to be thousands of magical glyphs drawn in the most intricate and beautiful of patterns, each one interlocking with at least three others.

The soft ambient lighting which radiates from the glyphs is breathtaking but what truly captivated me when I first stumbled into the room was the rainbow constellation of stars affixed to the walls. With older eyes, I expected to see them as the simple gemstones I’d spent years convincing myself they had to be.

But they weren’t.

They were alive. Not gems but living beacons.

Living and bound.

The beauty of the glyphwork was almost enough to disguise the horror of the story the glyphs told.

“Why can I read these?” I ask my eyes following the trace of symbols which screamed “subjugated, defiled, unworthy”.

Because I can, Draconia said. Through my Blessing, I can share with you much of what remains to me.

“How did you know to take us here?” Theia asked. There was a wariness in how she held herself. I’d seen the same thing when my brother received a present for First Blooming Day, one that he’d wanted so desperately and yet had never imagined my mother and father could provide.

“No one is allowed here,” I said. “It was the only place I could think of where there wouldn’t be any Tenders since even they’re not allowed to come in here.”

How did you know of it’s existence? Umbrielle asked. We only surmised that such a shrine might exist. Finding even one of our fragmented host would have been an unimaginable victory.

“And now we’ve found too many.” Theia’s hands were frozen in front of her, reaching towards the nearest wall and the treasure trove of lights it held.

“Too many?” I asked, feeling like I was still far behind everyone else in understanding what was going on.

“We can’t take this many fragments back,” she said. “I could hide one, or maybe two.”

One, Umbrielle said.

“Two on a good day,” Theia insisted. “But not this many. We’d never make it.”

“Make it where? And what are these? I…I never understood. I thought…” I didn’t want to admit what I’d thought. It was horrible. I’d been horrible. For years. I’d called her a demon. I’d refused to acknowledge her in any way. I…

You survived. You protected yourself and in doing so, you protected me, Draconia wasn’t speaking to all of us. Her words were for me alone, but they brought tears to my eyes that everyone saw.

“You seriously don’t know? But…how?” Theia asked. “You’re a Blessed. That…is she broken?”

She is not. She is merely young, Umbrielle said.

“No, not her, I meant the fragment.” Hearing Theia’s irritation with her god seemed…I don’t know. It should have been wrong. Blasphemous. Being angry at Holy Mazana was unthinkable.

Or it had been.

I…Rage didn’t describe what I felt for the Divine Tree. Part of me was still terrified of what I was doing, part of me was terrified I hadn’t done it soon, and part of me, a bone deep part of me, was certain that I hadn’t sinned against Holy Mazana. It had sinned against all of us.

Assuming there the tree even was something divine.

“She’s not broken either,” I said. “I’m just stupid.”

That…that was not the right thing to have said.

Holy Mazana is large.

The presence that rose within with me flared larger than the tree could ever have grown.

DO NOT BESMIRCH MY CHOSEN ONE.

Draconia had never given me a direct, divine order like that.

I hoped she never would again.

The words alone would have flattened me. Had I heard them in her voice at any other time I would have crashed to my knees and begged forgiveness.

But that wasn’t what she wanted.

And her emotions as much as her words resounded in me.

“I’ve been stupid,” I amended, each word slow and measured. “I didn’t know who or what she was. I still don’t. Because I was taught to believe she could only be a demon.”

“But…you’re Blessed?” That Theia was struggling to understand what felt like a rather simple concept told me how very little she, and probably other people outside the Thicket Wall, understood what it meant to be Sylvan. To be one of ‘Holy Mazana’s Chosen’.

“Why don’t we start there,” I said. “We should have a while before anyone thinks to check in here for us. Explain to me what being Blessed means to you. I’m hearing two voices in my head and talking to a woman who, as of last night, I wouldn’t have believed could exist, so assume everything I know is wrong, because that’s…that’s what I’m having to do, and it’s rotting terrifying!”

Had I said that to anyone else, I knew I would have been answered with either disdain at failing to cling to my faith tightly enough or condescension as they dutifully took a frail little child in for more instruction in proper doctrine.

Theia laughed.

At me.

Which was rude.

And mean. And I wanted hit her.

Until she spoke.

“Wow am I not the right person for this,” she said. “I can’t even…I mean, I’m just about the best Chosen that Umbrielle has, but not, you know, the smartest one.”

You’re the smartest Chosen I have here, Umbrielle said with a wry note in her voice that told me she was definitely going to be reminding Theia about this later.

“I hate you,” Theia said, clearly addressing Umbrielle before turning back to me. “Okay, I have no idea what nonsense you’ve been taught but the really simple part of this is that you’ve been chosen as the host for a god. Or a fragment of a god. No offense meant Draconia.”

None taken. My Chosen needs accurate information, and I will not claim to be more than I am.

“Should I just ask you all this then?”

No, Draconia said. You need to hear a mortal recounting, and one from lips you can trust.

“I can trust you. I do trust you. You saved me.” I could have been speaking about a lot of things, but I meant from the day we’d first been joined. Every word she’d spoken, they’d all been nudging me, making me question things. I’d fought each and every one, but I remembered them all, and if they hadn’t blossomed into understanding before now that was because her ideas had been hard at work developing a root system strong enough to find the real me and draw her forth.

I was a bad Sylvan, but I could feel who I wanted to be so clearly at last and that woman felt amazing.

She can speak to you of the realities you face far better than I can. She had lived as a mortal chosen by a god. That is an existence I have never known. One I can only glimpse through you.

“Why would that matter though? I mean, yeah, she’s amazing and all, but you’re my god. Don’t you have all the answer for me?”

Theia laughed again, and this time there was there was a knowing, and mischievous quality to her mirth. Before I could object, she held up a pacifying hand to ward off my anger.

“You are absolutely one of the Blessed,” she said. “Because that’s the first question so many of us have. Oh mighty god who has consecrated my life, will you not tell me the answers to all my questions and guide me with your infallible wisdom.” There was a sing-song quality to her voice that dripped of pure mockery, but not directed solely at me. If anything it felt like she was teasing her past self more than anything.

“Well, isn’t that what the gods are supposed to do?” I asked, trying to imagine what other relationship there could be between god and mortal.

“The gods don’t live our lives for us,” Theia said. “We have value to the gods because our lives, our choices, our mistakes, they’re ours, and that’s why sharing them with the god we chose matters. They’re not here to save the world for us. We’re here to save the world together.”

“We must, at all times, cleave to the teachings of the Holy Tree. Doubt is impurity, doubt is weakness, doubt is the crack in our heart which lets corruption in.”

“Yes Teacher!”

“In the teachings of the Holy Tree is recorded the wisdom which saved us and raised us up from the fallen world to our life under the protection of Divine Mazana’s blessed illumination.”

“Yes Teacher!”

“Should you feel doubt creeping in, should questions and uncertainties assail you, you know what you must do, do you not children?”

“Pray to the Holy Tree.”

“Confess our sins.”

“Do penance.”

“And through the suffering of penance will you find the light of the Holy Tree shining upon you once more.”

– Notes from the First Tender’s classes to the first generation of children born within the Garden.

I expected my intruder to be offended. She was from beyond the Thicket Wall and I knew everything beyond the wall was broken and monstrous. Or I thought I’d known that. Being called broken and monstrous seemed like the sort of thing someone would take offense at. That would have made things really simple. If she’d fought me, I would have…I would have…

I don’t know.

I should have fought her.

I should have raised an alarm and battled against her like all the life in the Garden depended on my victory, but I was so far past that doing that I felt like I’d stepped into someone else’s life.

No backsliding now. Please.

I almost chuckled at that. I couldn’t backslide far enough to return to my life if I was greased head to toe in Glowflower oil.

My intruder didn’t fight me though.

She was the one who chuckled.

And then laughed in my face.

“You’re not kidding are you?” she said said before her laughter got out of control. “You think…you think the wall is the end of the world?”

“Well, no,” I said, lying to avoid admitting how stupid I obviously was.

“What about all the food you eat? Where do you think that comes from?”

“From the Holy Tree?” I mean, the food we ate had to come from the Holy Tree. Where else could it grow?

“Even the meat? Does the tree grow meat bulbs?”

“No. Of course not. The meat comes from the Root Farms.”

“Root Farms? And come on, you don’t have any farm land in here. There’s nowhere your tree could grow anything inside the wall if it wanted to, much less have animals grazing for food.”

“No. The storehouses. The tree creates the food in the…”

I stopped as a question I’d swallowed at four years old belched itself back into the forefront of my mind.

It’s surprising more people don’t ask how the food gets in the storehouses, but then I suppose you’ve been trained to accept miracles as your just due.

“Are you really just figuring this out? I mean…really?” She looked like accepting that I was stupid as I clearly was was inconceivable.

“I…no. What did you come here for? What’s out there? Who are you?”

Was I falling apart? Nah. I’d already fallen apart. Was I losing coherency and spiraling into madness? Nope. I couldn’t be going somewhere I already was. 

I mean, nothing about the day had made sense so far, so losing my mind was clearly just going with the flow. 

Maybe this was Divine Mazana’s will?

Sure, that was it! It was a test. All I had to do to get back in the Holy Tree’s good graces was…was…

The thought of the penance I would be required to perform hit me and I felt sick. Not from fear though, not like I was supposed to. No, doing penance would be a violation. I knew a much better approach than penance.

Burn it to the ground.

Burn everything.

Did nothing made sense? Well ashes would make a whole lot of sense.

What about what’s yours? You’d give all that up too?

There was a gravity to that question that pulled me back together. My demon wasn’t idly chatting. What she had asked was somehow, in that moment, the most important question in the world and I could feel my whole life turning on its fulcrum.

Ashes on one hand.

And on the other?

The unknown.

No.

The future. My future.

I could feel the fire rising in me. I could fracture and let it loose. I could make everything make sense again by burning it all down into a very sensible layer of silt that a new world might spring from.

But I wouldn’t be there to see it.

I would be at peace.

I would be gone, past the madness, past the anxiety I’d carried for so long, past everything.

And what would I have?

Nothing.

No, we weren’t going to throw away everything.

The future was mine.

Mine.

No matter how long I’d been lied to.

No matter what they’d tried to make me into.

No matter what they did, I wasn’t going to let them take what was mine.

Strangely, the anger I felt worked to keep the fire in check.

Because they were both mine. My fire and my anger.

They were both me!

My intruder had been answering me with something like words, but the rush of flame within me had drowned it out.

I wanted to hear her words, but too much else was roaring through me so I held up my hand for her to stop for moment as years upon years of the insanity I’d been living with came crashing down around me.

Had I known this would happen if I confronted her? Had I wanted it to happen?

Those weren’t the questions I needed answers to.

Why she’d come into the Garden? What she planned to do? I didn’t need those answers either, at least not as much as I needed the answer to the one question I’d been avoiding for far, far too long.

Are you mine? I asked without words.

Am I? came my demon’s answer.

My demon.

Mine.

Yes. The word didn’t explode out from me. It exploded inwards, etching each letter onto my soul so indelibly that I would never be able to deny them again.

Never be able to deny her.

I wasn’t a good Sylvan.

And I wasn’t possessed.

I was the possessor.

And what did I possess?

Flame and exaltation leapt from me. My hands twisted into claws and scales slid down my arms as wings flared from my back and strength I’d been crushing with denial since the night when I’d found her ripped through my whole body. My strength. Her strength. 

My goddess’s strength.

YES!

Her relief was so palpable, it drove me to me knees.

I was afraid that was going to take much longer, but still, that was a long time.

You’re really mine? I asked, tears of flame tumbling down my cheeks.

As you are mine.

I fell to my hands and knees and vast wings wrapped around me, sheltering me as they’d always been ready to.

I was losing so much as the ramifications of what I’d chosen shot through me, but what I found in the wreckage of the life I’d known was so much more.

I could feel that even if I didn’t understand it, could sense the critical importance of not just finding the god I carried within me, but the small precious thing that was me. The real me. The me I chose to be.

When I rose again, no claws adorned my hands and no scales shielded my arms. The wings on my back were gone as well, or perhaps it would be better to say they were hidden.

And my intruder?

She was positively gleeful.

“I knew it! I knew it, I knew it!” She danced from one foot to the other, a smile as wide as the sky gleaming on her face.

And then she frowned and turned a bit to say, “Shut up. Okay, yeah, your idea was a good one. I wouldn’t have come if I didn’t think it was though. So there.”

“Umm, who are you….” I started to ask, hoping I hadn’t driven my intruder crazy with the tiny little life shattering revelation I’d been overwhelmed by.

That would be me, a new voice whispered in my ear.

Umbrielle? My god sounded surprised, which was an odd thing for a god to be but then my lessons on the nature and abilities of the gods were demonstrably flawed so who was I to say?

Draconia? I thought, I hoped, is it really you though?

Of course! Who else would I be you silly shadow!

That sounds like you, but the Draconia I know would never have allowed herself to become the trapped by an overgrown shrub.

Why don’t we try fighting like we used to and you’ll see just how much like my old self I still am.

Okay, now that does sound like you.

Brat.

Demon.

Flirt.

Can you blame me? I’ve been missing you for centuries you scaly beast.

“Should we let you two have the chapel to yourselves?” my intruder asked.

“You can hear them too?” I asked.

“Trust me, hearing them isn’t the problem.”

Now, now Theia, Jilya probably needs a moment, and our help.

Umbrielle is right. Can you cloak us? The shrub is stupid but its master is annoyingly adept. I wouldn’t have put off Jilya’s revelation for the world, but he can’t have failed to notice it.

Draconia. Please. You do remember whom you’re speaking to, do you not? I cloaked us the moment we entered the chapel. The only reason Jilya was able to see Theia at all was we’d caught a hint of your presence.

In the distance, I heard the sound of approaching footsteps.

A lot of approaching footsteps.

Umbrielle, my dearest, most hated, most beloved Umbrielle, exactly how certain are you that your shadows could have hidden a True Blessing. My only True Blessing, I must point out, in centuries and the only one which I am presently maintaining.

The step grew closer and I knew who they were.

The Tenders. Four of them.

And at least a squad of conscripts.

Muscle power and magic enough to solve any problem within the grove.

Well, maybe any problem.

Fire burns a whole lot of things after all.

You’re only Blessing?

I am…I was lost. I am not what I once was.

Oh Draconia, none of us are.

Almost none of us.

You know of her? You can sense her?

My bones are the bones of the world. My blood is the blood of life. I am the Treasure and the Guardian. I am…I lost. I lost and she stepped in to protect us all. You stepped in.

I’ve only ever been a part of my greater self, Umbrielle said and I felt an impression of her ‘greater self’ that stretched out wider than the sky. 

Well, now I’m only a fragment of my true self as well, a tarnished treasure at best.

“No.” Anger snapped the word out of me. “You’re not tarnished. You’re mine and no one gets to abuse you. Ever.”

Ah, blossoming faith, Umbrielle said. Always so fierce.

“Oh yeah, I definitely sounded like that,” Theia, my intruder, said, meaning precisely none of the words she spoke.

You express your faith in your own manner. I find it charming, Umbrielle said.

“I’m going to need some explanations, a lot of explanations,” I said as the marching steps grew much too close for comfort. “But we need to leave. Now.”

“Aww, I was wondering if we were going to get to fight again,” Theia said.

“We will in about thirty seconds if we’re not out of here.”

“Ooo!” she said, gazing at me hungrily only to stop as her ears twitched up. “Oh, yeah, you’re right, we need to be elsewhere.”

We should be cloaked from them, Umbrielle said.

We should have been safe from them two centuries ago. Let’s not make the same mistake of underestimating them again, shall we?

“Do you know a better hiding spot?” Theia asked, stepping back close to me.

I wracked my brain for a moment trying to think of one, which was challenging since we were already at one of the safest places I’d been able to think of.

“Wait, yeah, I do know of a place no one will be at now. I don’t think we can get there though,” I said, trying to picture even the most unreasonable route that might get us to safety.

“That’s not a problem. Just hold it in your mind and hold onto me.”

And then she hugged me.

And then we vanished.

“In all things, we look first to the defense of the sacred tree. This is why the Thicket Wall has no gates or other weak points, much as we must eliminate the weak points within and among us.”

“But teacher, what could attack Holy Mazana?”

“Our enemies are debased mockeries of life, but without constant maintenance, even the most resilient of defenses can grow weak and frail. Ever and anon those beyond the Thicket Wall pressed against it and burrow below, seeking any ingress they can find or manufacture.”

“They’re really stupid aren’t they? I mean if they get in here the Holy Mazana will just be like ‘Die!’ and they’ll all die, right?”

“Indeed. The sacred tree’s prowess is unmatched and uncontestable. For everything there is a price though. Were the sacred tree to interfere, it would mean that we had failed in our duty. Become impure in our dedication, and what happens to the impure?”

“They’re tossed over the wall!” “They’re chopped up and chucked outside!” “They get sent away”

“Yes. We cast out the impure because where we receive the gifts of the sacred tree and nourish it with our love and devotion, the impure take and take and only give back sickness and disease.”

“I wanna fight the Impure!”

“And someday you will. When you are old enough to be called to service, you will stand as the sacred tree’s first bulwark with your faith and your purity as the truest of shields.”

– an except from Children’s Lessons for Boys, as delivered by the First Tender.

Golden eyes were locked onto my own and it felt like I could fall into them forever.

“You smell different,” my intruder said, searching for Holy Mazana only knew what in my features. “Better.”

“I purified this morning,” I said.

Because that was reasonable. Words hadn’t totally escaped me and I was fully in control of the situation.

“Hmm, no, not like that. You’re…something else?”

“No I’m not,” I lied. “There’s just something wrong with your nose.”

Could people smell the bad decisions I’d been making?

Could they tell I’d broken faith with…with everything?

Did I smell impure?

My expression slipped out of my control for a moment as the soul crushing horror of everyone being able to see what I was pounded my head with hammer blow after hammer blow.

“Rude,” my intruder said, and twisted her head to side to look at me from a different angle. “I said you smelled better now.”

“I don’t…listen, how I smell doesn’t matter. What are you doing here?”

There! I’d gotten a question out. The question!

“Looking for you.”

Which was not what the answer was supposed to be.

“Me?”

“Well, sort of. I didn’t think I was going to find anyone like me in here, but what is life if not a big old basket of surprises, right?”

“Uh, I’m not like you at all,” I said, the words instinctively leaping from my lips with zero input or consideration from my brain.

“Few people are, I’m a hard act to measure up to.” And then she struck a pose! 

“No. I mean, you’re not supposed to be here! If anyone finds you they’ll kill you, or worse, toss you over the Thicket Wall!”

Why that would be worse for someone who clearly was not Sylvan and therefor clearly had no place in the Garden wasn’t something I gave any consideration to, it was just the most horrible fate possible.

Right?

From my intruder’s confused expression, it was possible that wasn’t quite as certain as I’d been led to believe though.

“Don’t worry beautiful, I can land on my feet. I’m real talented like that.”

“Land on your…?” It was my turn to be confused. “You’ll be eaten.”

“Eaten? By what?” Her confusion looked to be, impossibly, as deep as my own.

“The things. The monsters. You know the…” I stopped.

And my mind nearly snapped.

My intruder wasn’t a native of the Garden. There’d never been a Sylvan ever who looked like her.

Which meant she had to come from somewhere.

Somewhere that was Not The Garden.

But I’d been told that all of the ‘Not The Garden’ places were filled with death monsters and despair beasts.

Girls with golden eyes who looked like they were my age and had about a thousand times the self confidence could not survive in places that were filled with death monsters and despair beasts.

“Where are you from,” I asked. I already knew the answer but I had to hear it. 

I didn’t want to. In fact, I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t process the words I knew she was about to speak. 

They couldn’t have been lying about THAT to us.

Not to all of us.

Not all this time.

“Goldflower Borough, Low Town,” she said, searching even more intently. “In the Third Wall.”

The.

What?

“Third…?” I started to ask what that could possibly mean, when I heard voices in the distance.

Far off in the distance.

Sorry. You needed the warning.

People were coming.

I was hearing people walking to the Chapel from much farther away than should have been possible.

“Much farther away” however was still far too close.

Without an instants hesitation for thought or panic, I reached forward, grabbed my intruder and hauled her onto the seat beside me as I rose to block her from view by anyone coming in the door.

Then I started singing.

Glory to the Holy Tree. Glory to the Pure and Faithful. Glory and Glory and Glory to Our Garden and All It’s Righteous Children!

And to the liar who had to practice alone.

It wasn’t hard to put a warble into the song to make it sound like I was practicing and needed the space to myself.

Over my song I heard the footsteps come to a halt before they reached the door.

Which clearly wasn’t possible. I should have drowned that out with my singing.

Please, do give me more more credit than that. Even your silly shrub could manage a gift that properly sharpened your senses.

I wanted to say I couldn’t be hearing what I was because I would never willingly use a demon’s gift, but even I wasn’t that stupid. If it meant staying undiscovered, I would happily accept the ability to hear trouble coming before it got to me, and offer a silent thank you to whomever or whatever provided me the chance to continue living.

If I had a heart, I believe I would be having a heart attack now.

I sang a few more verses, repeating myself as though I was practicing desperately to get the song right. The desperation part was real enough to be convincing it seemed since the conversation between the approaching people resumed as their footsteps retreated from the chapel without venturing inside at all.

“Thank the roots!” I gasped as soon as they were far enough away that they wouldn’t hear my song stop.

My intruder was sitting beside me, staring at me like I’d turned into something at once horrifying and fascinating.

“You’re strong than you look,” she said, making no move to get away or to attack me.

“Sorry,” I said, remembering that I’d grabbed her and plopped her down pretty rudely.

“No. No, that was interesting. I…hmm, and your smell. It was complex. What did you do there?” she asked, her whole body still and her eyes focused on me to the exclusion of all else.

“I sang something like the song they tried to teach us today,” I said. Why I was answering her questions, I had no idea. I was the one who needed answers, but losing control of the conversation made it like the rest of my life, which had apparently spun completely out of my control at some point.

“Why?” my intruder asked.

“I didn’t want anyone to come in here,” I said. “If they thought I was practicing alone, most people would leave the chapel for me to work on worshipping properly.”

“But, hmm, how can I explain this.” She looked away from me, searching for words in a manner which felt very familiar to me in that moment. “When you sang, what I’ve been calling a ‘bad smell’ came back but it was subtle. If you had my Blessing, you’d probably experience it in some other manner but, for me, foul magics, or corrupted divine power, those smell bad.”

“Foul magic? I wasn’t working any magic though,” I said, drifting right back into the confusion zone.

“Magic’s not always intentional. That song you sang though? There was magic in it. Ugly magic.”

“It was just a song of praise. Everyone sings them.” Though, to be fair, I did sing them well enough to be in the choir for Blueshine, and this wasn’t the first time someone had called my voice ‘magical’, though usually it was just people being nice or flattering.

“You were praising the big tree though right?” she asked.

“Of course.” Praising ourselves was a sin worthy of public humiliation.

“Okay, that explains why it smelled bad then. The thing is though, you also smelled really good too. Like actual Divine Blessing good.”

“I have a few of Holy Mazana’s gifts, but I wasn’t using any then,” I said.

I wasn’t using Holy Mazana’s gifts but…

Go ahead and complete that thought whenever you like, I’ll be here waiting.

But…no.

“The tree? Yeah, no, anything you get from the tree is corrupted as hell. It all comes from one of them.” She rose to look me eye to eye and then leaned in slightly closer to give me a sniff. “You…sorry, I know the smell thing doesn’t mean anything to you. I can sense, if that sounds better, something old from you.”

I was tempted to say ‘I’m no older than you’, but that wasn’t what she was talking about.

“Not something bad. Not the corrupted stuff that’s all over this place. This is something real. Something, I don’t know I haven’t smelled..sensed anything like it, but I think it might be related to what I’m here for.”

Oh look, a thought that wasn’t the one I wanted to avoid! I jumped all over that!

“What are you here for? This is so dangerous.”

“It wasn’t my idea,” she said and then added to no one in particular. “No, this was all your idea. I was just the idiot who volunteered. Hey, don’t blame Kalkit. Sure we listened to him, but can you blame us?”

I was silent.

There were easy, obvious questions I could ask.

Should ask.

Things like “who are you talking to”.

Take your time.

“Sorry,” my intruder said, shaking her head. “It can be distracting to be one of the Blessed.”

“The Blessed?”

I was not a good Sylvan. I had been possessed by a demon for years. My life was a shattered window hanging together for a moment before the wind of literally anyone’s awareness brushed against me. There was no version of the world in which I was ‘blessed’.

“It’s a whole thing,” my intruder said. “Turns out if you make the mistake of having a bit of faith and being a good match, you can become the home for a god, or a piece of one usually.”

“The gods are dead though. They failed the world.” Again my mouth opened and spit out words which had been driven into me since I could understand that syllables had meaning.

“Dead? Yeah. Sorta. Most of them. Their gods though, so in addition to being colossal pains in the ass, they’re also kind of a part of us, the Blessed and the rest. So if we’re here, then so are they.”

“But…wait…I don’t understand. If the gods still existed, they would be monsters wouldn’t they? I mean, everything beyond the Thicket Wall is broken isn’t it?”

“Beautiful, this whole world is broken. You, me, everybody. That’s why I’m here. See my God? She’s been protecting us, all of  us, and I think she’d like to take a break sometime before the end of eternity, so it’s our job to start putting things back together.”