“Successor? No I’ve never considered who my successor will be. You are aware that we will be immortal do you not Dyrena?”

“Need I point out that the gods are immortal as well, Vaingloth? Or that our entire scheme hinges on the assumption that said status is not an irrevocable one?”

“Pah. All the more reason to have no successors available.”

“You would have your vision fall to ruin when you do? But what of your special people? The ones you will shepherd into our new age?”

“I detect more than a hint of sarcasm in your question, Dyrena.”

“Why Vaingloth? When have I ever been sarcastic? Surely not about this enterprise. Why it shall place us into a new and eternal golden age will it not.”

“The eternal gold age shall be our eternal golden age. We will be its masters and, unlike the foolish deities we must contend with, we shall not allow for conditions which might unseat us, having learned from the openings we will use.”

“Perhaps. That is the structure of the scheme I suppose. But I must also question what should happen if we were to grow tired out of our positions? At some point, however far in the future that might be, certainly we will have done all that we care to do. Best I think to have an idea for how a transition of power might be arranged, lest we be caught cobbling something together when our interest in this world has waned to its utmost nadir.”

“Best not to, I assure you. Constructing an avenue by which our powers may be inherited will do nothing but provide an incentive for those who stand to gain that inheritance to hasten it’s coming.”

“But certainly if we attempt to hold our power close forever, there will be those who nibble away at it, or find the fragments we leave laying around to use against us?”

“I, for one, will be leaving none of my fragments in reach of anyone save myself.”

“We shall need to certain Draconia is among the first defeated then if you intend to assemble a hoard of your own.”

“I have Sasarai working on that as we speak.”

“Intriguing. Shall I offer to review his Sacred Geometeries?”

“No, I’m sure…okay, I can’t say that. Yes, please do. We’ve all seen his work before.”

– Dyrena convincing Vaingloth and, indirectly, the other Neoterics of the value of creating secret hoards for the divine fragments they meant to harvest.

Mt. Gloria looked weird. A sprawling city laid out around a mountain wasn’t so different from the Garden but the almost complete lack of anything growing was just unnatural. How were people supposed to live without space to grown food?

The former Lord had specialized farm areas built beneath ground and then piped in light and heat to them, Umbrielle said.

“That seems like a lot of work when he just could have…” I started to say and then ran into a limit to my thoughts of having grown up in the Garden.

What could he had done without his own Mazana to provide light and heat?

“It’s worse than you’re thinking,” Theia said. “Whatever you have to say to Little, I’d suggest not mentioning ‘Kindling’ to her.”

“Why?”

“That’s what Vaingloth used the people of Mt. Gloria for,” Theia said. 

“Wait, he burned up people to heat the city for people? How? That could never work?”

He wasn’t burning them to heat the city. He had a portal to the plane of Fire for that. He claimed he was burning people to keep the portal open when he was just using that as a means to harvest their grace, Umbrielle said.

Hmm, similar to what Sasarai does in the Roots, though a bit more direct, Draconia said.

Somehow the death of nearly everyone in the would-that-was had less impact for me. They were too remote, and too numerous, their deaths too unspecific for any of that to evoke more than an intellectual level of revulsion. The idea of lighting people on fire was one my imagination was disturbingly capable of providing imagery for however, and the connection to the deaths in the roots of the Holy Tree made them too real for me to brush aside.

“I’m glad he’s dead,” I said, my stomach fully turned at the thought of how awful the Neoterics could be.

We are as well. An unmistakable voice said as I flew in close enough to be fully illuminated over the city. 

The Sun was speaking to me and her splendor and majesty was nearly overwhelming.

Sola! Draconia was as delighted as I was overwhelmed. How did so much of you survive!

Oh, I very much didn’t, Sola said. What you see now is the result of a lot of work reassembling the bits of me we could find. My Blessed is rather exceptional in that, and so much of this is thanks to her.

“Can we meet her?” I asked. “I think I may have set some things in motion that are going to impact, uh, well everyone.”

Things? Such as? Sola asked.

“I claimed all of the divine fragments the First Tender, err, Sasarai held as my own,” I said. “He’s going to be coming for the ones that are here, and so are the others.”

You…you took little Sasarai’s stolen fragments from him? Without him knowing? Oh! OH! And you’re the Blessed of Draconia, so he can’t….

I wasn’t aware that the Sun was capable of breaking down into gales of crippling laughter. She tried to speak a few more times but wasn’t able to get any words past the fit of giggles that gripped her.

“We should probably head to the castle,” Theia said.

I nodded, which she could at least feel if not see directly. It made sense that we’d find the Sun Queen in the highest room of the palace after all.

And there again I was mislead by my time in the Garden.

We landed on the highest open terrace I could find only to discover that the Sun Queen was not in residence. I had to shift back to my Sylvan form in order to fit on the balcony that had seemed the most promising spot, which left Theia clinging to me until she was sure of her footing. The temptation to switch back to dragon form was oddly strong but I pushed it aside. As…comfortable as that might have been, we had work to do, and danger to warn about.

“You’re here to see Little?” the fox woman who spoke appeared in a rush of wind which could not have been coincidental. 

“Hiya Zeph,” Theia said. “Meet our newest Blessed. Jilly, Blessed of Guardians and Treasures, meet Zeph Foxwind, Honor Guard to the Sun.”

I noticed an important distinction in the introduction there. Zeph wasn’t the Honor Guard to the Sun Queen. She was an Honor Guard of the Sun itself.

I had no idea what a Foxwind was, but Draconia’s gifts to my sense were telling me in no uncertain terms that the woman I was looking at was not of the same mortal stock as the rest of us.

“A pleasure to meet you Blessed Jilya. You seem to have amused my mistress greatly, but I imagine your haste stems from a more pressing source?” For all the speed with which she’d joined us, Zeph was remarkably calm and unhurried in her speech.

“It does,” I said. “Would I be able to speak to the Sun Queen? I think she needs to hear what we’ve done and discovered as soon as possible.”

“The who?” Zeph asked.

“Oh, I’m sorry Jilya,” Theia said. “Little doesn’t go by any titles like that.”

It was Zeph’s turn to be amused, though unlike Sola, she constrained her mirth to a wry little smile.

“No, no,” Zeph said. “I’ll be happy to take you to the Sun Queen. She is going to be delighted with that title.”

“Um, I’m sorry, I just thought…” I wasn’t sure what I thought. Except that of course anyone in charge of a city must have some suitable grandiose title to go along with it. 

Damn you Sasarai. 

Clearly the heaviest of his many crimes, Draconia said.

You too? I asked, affronted at the betrayal from my own god. Affronted and, of course, comforted. If Draconia was willing to joke about something then it couldn’t be that serious.

I can ask her to return to the palace? Sola said, having regained control of herself.

“I can get her,” Zeph said.

Or you could all remember that I can hear you as well, Little said, her voice distant but not impossibly so. I can head back in a few minutes, let me just wrap up the discussion I’m having with the builders here or they’ll be stuck for days.

“Why don’t we come to you?” I suggested.

That would be ideal if you could, Little said. There’s a prayer group that I wanted to check in on and I think they would be delighted to meet a new Blessed.

“I know where that is,” Zeph said. “We can meet you there.”

“We should walk,” Theia said. “This is the first city Jilya’s had a chance to really see.”

“I think we need to hurry,” I said, feeling the impending approach of the Neoterics like a new doom about to collide with the world.

“We will, but I think I know what you’re looking for now, and walking the city is going to be something we need to do to find it.”

I was about to argue when I stopped to consider who Theia was blessed by.

As the Blessed of Night, or even just a specific aspect of Night, also known as the god who saved the world by hiding it from a power beyond even divine might, Theia should have been able to sense where our quarry lay as a simple part of her domain.

Kalkit as well, as the Blessed of Secrets, should have known of its existence the moment they received their first gifts.

So how had I worked it out?

Well, my god is better than theirs.

I’m not supposed to approve of that sort of thinking, Draconia said in an approving tone.

To be fair, I couldn’t sense what we needed to find, but I knew we could find it somewhere in Mt Gloria.

And Theia’s words made sense. Even letting Little know what I’d discovered wasn’t going to change the need to explore until we proved out my hypothesis.

“Lead on!” I said, falling into step behind Zeph.

Theia took up a position beside me and bumped my shoulder with hers.

“Bet you didn’t think you’d wind up here when you started looking for me?”

“I didn’t know here existed, so, yes, that’s a safe bet,” I said.

“No. I meant working together,” she said and bumped me again.

I almost stopped at that, the whiplash of recalling what I’d been thinking and feeling almost snapping my brain.

“I wouldn’t be here without you.” I think I whispered the words.

“Looking for an apology?” Theia asked, her voice light with a hint of challenge in it.

“What? No. I mean I wouldn’t be alive if it wasn’t for you,” I said, a new idea running through my head.

Dyrena had left plans in place to guide the course the world would take when she “left”.

I know Helgon was convinced she was dead, and that might be true, at least for some definitions of ‘dead’. Given that he was dead and yet still quite chatty and involved in the world’s current affairs, I wasn’t convinced that death meant quite the same thing to them as it did to the rest of us.

The important thing though was that Dyrena’s plans for the world had to include responses to someone doing what I had done. That it had been possible for me meant it was inevitable that someone would have managed it eventually.

But I’d only been in a position to take Sasarai’s divine fragment collection because Theia had been with me. 

And for as good at hiding as I was, I’d also been moving closer and closer into Sasarai’s orbit with my training and my insistence on being a pure and perfect member of Mazana’s clergy. I’d been wildly successful in hiding my Blessed state but the moment Sasarai had been given reason to really pay attention to me, I would have died then and there.

And Theia had saved me from that.

No. She’d done more than save me. 

I was finally who I really was because of her.

But it hadn’t been her idea to be where she was.

She’d been sent there.

That did stop me.

“Theia,” I asked. “Who are you working for?”

“So the plan is that we will all harvest the fragments of the deities with temples nearest to our sanctuary cities?”

“Yes Helgon, that is what we’ve been discussing for the last hour and a half.”

“My apologies Vaingloth, I have been working on a theorem to predict the distribution of divine fragments and it seems that proximity to a temple will have less than a three percent impact on the scatter radius of fragments under all but the most extreme of edge cases. In fact, if you look here, you’ll see that the greatest correlation in fragment distribution is…”

“Helgon, we all acknowledge that you received top marks in Aetherodynamics and Transubstantiation Processes…”

“Not to mention Grace Fluidity and Philosophical Remanifestation Continuum Calculus!”

“Yes. Yes, we are ALL aware of your credentials. In this SPECIFIC case however, the research we commissioned clearly shows that the divine essences will seek to ground themselves out in the most aligned temples to the domains involved.”

“Well that’s just foolish, the research is clearly wrong. Who did we have working on it?”

“The Sightbound Sages of Skysden.”

“How sad. Their standards have clearly slipped. Did we pay them much? Can we get a refund is so?”

“No, we can’t…what makes you think you know more than an academy of Enlightened Sages?”

“Well, because they’re wrong, clearly.”

“They are wrong because you have a theory?”

“No. I have a theorem.”

“That you cobbled together in an hour while we in a discussion?”

“It was an hour and a half you said, and I must confess I wasn’t paying much attention.”

“Helgon, we do not have time for this. We have a study, backed by data, and the testimony of learned men with ten times the experience you possess.”

“You’d think they wouldn’t have made a mistake like that then. Did someone perhaps pay them to bias the study? I mean, if you wish, certainly found your cities in proximity to the great Temples, I just thought we might arrive at an imbalanced equilibrium between us if we were to neglect considerations regarding the Blessed of the Gods, which is where any remaining shards will be making their homes.”

– The High Accessors being convinced to ensure that the Blessed are preserved beyond the Sunfall.

I wasn’t leaving my brother behind. I mean, yes, I was flying away from Helgon’s city as fast as Draconia’s wings could carry me, but, importantly, Kam was still mine.

Hey, my dearest brother! Can you hear me?

“What the hell?” Kam was speaking aloud, I could tell that even though I was only hearing his voice because he was thinking his words as well.

How did I know I could read Kam’s mind? I didn’t. And I couldn’t. I could just give him my words, and listen for the ones he wanted to give me. I couldn’t know what he was really thinking about anything and I very much did not want to. The connection we shared was amazing, thanks to Draconia’s gifts, but being privy to whatever random nonsense was bouncing around his head sounded like an excellent method for driving both of us insane.

I need to get to Mt Gloria, pretty much immediately, I said, trusting that the increasing distance between us was only physical and would do nothing to diminish my words.

“Wait, what?” He was confused, which, sure, that was a sensible reaction. 

Remember how I pulled you out of the First Tender’s execution room? Same idea, but this is just words.

“Oh, yeah, that makes sense. Okay, so you’re going to Mt. Gloria. Do you need to see Mom and Dad?” 

“No. They don’t want me anymore and that’s fine.” It was not fine. “No, I need to see Little.”

“Theia’s asking why you’re going to Mt. Gloria. Oh and Xalaria doesn’t look happy.”

Can you relay this for me then, tell them that there are plans in motion that the other Neoterics are going to notice really soon and we need to get ahead of them while there’s still time.”

“Okay, sure.” The fact that he seemed to understand what I was saying felt deceptive. I had the strong suspicion that he was simply accepting what I was saying and happy to pass along whatever I told him. 

Would he have questioned me if I said something completely ridiculous? Maybe? Probably not though. I think his response to all of belief falling apart, was to shrug and decide that if it didn’t effect him in the moment, then it wasn’t worth caring about.

Or maybe that was just how I wanted to be?

“They’re asking what plans you’re talking about?” Kam said and then added “Oh and Theia’s asking if you want her to go with you?”

That would have been great but I’m pretty far away already. Draconia’s no slouch when it comes to flying.

There were dangers in the world, quite a lot of what Sasarai had told us about the wastelands were true. Draconia could sense that so clearly that even I was picking up the shades of spirits that hungered for whatever they could take from us. Turning back might have sheltered us from them, but I couldn’t be sure how quickly the window that I saw would close, especially with Sasarai hellbent on reclaiming the powers I’d claimed from him.

“Umm, she wants to know if its dark where you are?” Kam asked.

The sky above me held no luminous branches, no leaves with even the barest comforting glow. I’d read of the stars which once graced the night sky but only empty shadows remained where they’d once shone. 

Far off in the distance though, there was light.

A still living sun.

My guidepost and goal.

It’s so dark I don’t think even a Neoteric could see me up here, I said, fairly certain they’d have other means of locating me. I beat my wings faster, placing my hope in sheer speed to deliver me beyond their immediate grasp.

I wasn’t fast enough to escape someone catching me though.

Wisely, I didn’t roll or kick when I felt a pair of arm locked around my neck.

Was this your idea or hers? Umbrielle asked Draconia.

Entirely hers, Draconia said with no small bit of satisfaction drowning her words.

And you, of course, did all you could to dissuade her and convince of a more reasonable course of action? Umbrielle wasn’t asking a question because she very clearly already knew the answer.

This IS the reasonable course of action, I said and added, Thanks for coming though.

Have I ever given the impression that I like missing out on the fun? Theia asked.

This may not be fun. This may be pretty awful in fact. I said, all-to-easily imagining how badly things could go if the Sun Queen of Mt. Gloria didn’t believe me, or if she even questioned me long enough for Sasarai to strike.

All the more reason not to miss out, Theia said. With her clutched tight to my back, I could sense some of the emotions radiating off her.

Excitement. Concern. Irritation.

It would have been nice to be able to discern where those were directed by my senses weren’t quite that good, and Draconia’s domains didn’t include much in terms of emotional analysis.

How did you get here? I asked instead, guessing that was a safer subject to broach.

You’ve seen me step through shadows, she said, a questioning note in her voice as to why I would even need to have asked in the first place.

I thought you had limited range with that?

I do, but distance is dependent on a lot things. 

“Xalaria is asking what you’re doing,” Kam said and then amended his statement. “Sorry, she’s asking for exactly what you’re doing. Also, I’m supposed to tell you that we’re heading towards the trains and we’ll be in Mt. Gloria as soon as the fast line can get us there.”

Make sure Xalaria keeps you with them, I said. You’re the only one who can communicate between us at the moment.

“Yes! I’ve got a job!” That he sounded legitimately delighted about that was both endearing and idiotic. “Oh, Xalaria still wants to know what you’re doing. Exactly what you’re doing.”

Is Helgon with you?

“Yeah, should he be?” Kam asked.

I can travel outside my city now, at least along these rail lines, but my capabilities are rather limited here, Helgon said, speaking in the same silent space the gods and the Blessed used.

Which was chilling.

Oh, don’t worry, I can only do this because I’m with your brother, Helgon said. The others have no connection to you or him, so they have no presence here.

What about Sasarai? We were both part of the Garden since we were born, I asked.

Oh Sasarai could easily use one his divine fragments to…oh dear, he seems to have misplaced those hasn’t he? Such a shame. I mean all that power and no means to focus it beyond his own silly little skills, which always ran more towards compulsions and personal enhancement than I ever thought was sensible. Did he even once listen to me in that regards though? No, no I assure you he did not.

I felt the chill within me begin to thaw. It was at least a little amusing that I’d managed to take from Sasarai the things that would have prevented me from taking things from him. Given that he was nothing like a worthy Guardian however, that felt so properly within our domain that neither Draconia nor I held even the slightest of regrets.

Could you explain to the others what you told me, I asked.

I would be delighted to, though I must confess I am far from certain what I said which led you to flee my presence to quickly?

I didn’t…No Helgon, I wasn’t running from you I’m running towards what you spoke about.

But we were speaking of Dyrena and I can assure you she is not to be found at Mt. Gloria. She is not to be found anywhere on this world I am sad to say.

Part of me shared his sorrow at her loss. Despite having never met her, and very much despite her playing a key role in the destruction of the old world, I regretted that I’d never get to meet a woman who was not only held in such fond regard more than a century after her passing, but also a woman who seemed to be very likely the reason there still was a world and people upon it, rather than the emptiness of oblivion from a failed attempt at usurping divine power.

Another part of me was delighted by Helgon’s words though.

If even someone as close to Dyrena as he’d been couldn’t see what I had, then maybe there was some hope that the other Neoterics, aside from Sasarai, weren’t hot on our heels.

They would be of course.

If I was right, we were about to wake up every Neoteric in the world.

The fact that such an awakening would be best described as ‘apocalyptic’ was only tempered by the landscape below me already having been ravaged by a world ending apocalypse. 

Things were going to get bad, but there were a lot of places where ‘bad’ would be noticeable in the slightest.

Explain this to them then, I said. Tell them of Dyrena’s vision for the world she desired.

I would be glad to but I don’t see how that will answer our Blessed of Battle’s questions or allow her to plan for the disruptions which I gather will result from your present course of actions.

Just go ahead and let them know, I asked. I wanted to see if they independently came to the same conclusion I did. And let me know what Kalkit says okay?

I waited a few moments before Theia spoke up.

Care to kill me in while we wait?

I will but let’s see what the others take on it is, I said, the waiting driving me a little nuts.

Kalkit says, and I quote, ‘That’s not possible’, end quote, Helgon said and added. The others are not sure what you or Kalkit are referring to.

Ask them what is hanging over Mt. Gloria at the moment.

A sun? Oh. OH! The shock in Helgon’s voice was palpable and his next words came in no more than a whisper.

She’s still here.

“It’s not so bad Helgon.”

“They killed you. It’s exactly that bad.”

“It’s not so unexpected then.”

“Speak for yourself. I didn’t expect this at all.”

“Oh, please. We spoke of this. I told you this would happen.”

“But not to you.”

“Yes to me. To me first, to me most certainly.”

“It shouldn’t have.”

“Do you think so? Do you think after what we did, what we allowed to happen, we somehow deserve better?”

“The rest of us? No, certainly not. But you did.”

“Helgon, dearest Helgon, I bear more responsibility for what occurred than you ever could.”

“But it was my theorems, my formulae, my machinery, they were the foundation for all of this. And they turned those on you.”

“Do you think so? Do you think after the long hours we’ve spent together, I was unaware of the reach of your contrivances? That I somehow missed the peril and potential they encompassed?”

“No. No of course not. But does that mean…?”

“That this is all a trick? I am afraid not my dear Helgon. Or at least not one from which I will return to this world from.”

“But you are here, now, can’t you remain? Just a little longer?”

“Tarrying is not for me. There is more that awaits me, so much more than we’d ever guessed. I am unbound from the concerns I once carried. Mostly.”

“Mostly?”

“One or two ties remain, but, alas, that which calls me onward has a gravity which will not be denied. And should I try, I fear I would do terrible harm.”

“We’ve already done terrible harm, what’s a tiny bit more?”

“What we wrought has changed the world, but life remains and hope persists. Where I to return…”

“And when my time comes?”

“We are not the same. The shape of my existence is not the shape of yours. Perhaps you will follow as well, or perhaps you shall have the time and solitude you have always craved. That will be for you to say.”

“I should never want so much time or so little of your company.”

– Helgon and Dyrena’s “last” goodbye, apart from the laughter which remained to tease Helgon and keep him company through a century of empty nights.

I could easily imagine why a Neoteric Lord might want to die. The sheer guilt they had to feel, assuming any feelings remained to them, had to be overwhelming. That wasn’t what Helgon was telling me though. His friend Dyrena had not chosen to die because of the regret she felt for her actions.

“It’s not your plan. It’s hers.” I wasn’t asking a question, though I didn’t know for certain that my statement was true.

“I think she would have enjoyed meeting you,” Helgon said. “I also suspect she would deny that the plan you speak of was solely hers. She would go on and on about how no scheme or work which involved others, especially posthumously, should ever fully be attributed to its initial architect.”

“But she was the one who set the current course of events in motion?” I felt like I could just glimpse the shape of what the Neoteric Lord Dyrena’s plan had been. 

A grand scheme to support and develop those who had every reason to destroy the Lords who’d destroyed her.

Revenge was a motive which featured in a lot of performances of tales from the old world. The First Tender encouraged that since it reinforced his narrative that we, the Chosen Survivors, were due our vengeance against the immoral masses whose profanity had led to the destruction of the old world. We were the oppressed ones. We were the ones who’d been made to suffer. We were the ones with a unique moral position, and the right to demand vengeance against those who’d wrong us.

That wasn’t Dyrena. It couldn’t be. Anyone who could weave a plan that would hang together a century or more after their death, would have to have seen that death coming far before hand (which Helgon seemed to think was possible) and therefor would have been able to form an even better scheme to prevent it and punish those responsible first.

She hadn’t.

She’d allowed for her own death for some reason, and set in motion a plan that was going to undo her fellow Neoteric Lords when they’d grown sloppy enough to miss the machinations which were moving against them.

“While I remain endlessly impressed by her prowess, I feel I must temper your expectations somewhat,” Helgon said. “Dyrena’s ‘plans’ were rarely as specific as you might imagine. As you say, she set certain events in motion. She also established caches of resource and ensured that weaknesses of the other Neoterics were recorded for those who chose to act against them. She did not, as a rule, provide specific instructions or dictates for those who effected her desires though.”

“Caches of resources?” I asked. It wasn’t the most important thing Helgon had said, or the most surprising, but it was something I could see an immediate use for, and something the others might not be fully aware of.

“Nothing so grand as weapons to outfit an army, I’m afraid,” Helgon said. “Dyrena saw little use for those. Far more often she would squirrel away a small trove of books. Or perhaps a single jewel which might have value when it was needed most. She had remarkable foresight for gathering things of actual value.”

“And you know where these caches are?” I felt a tension rising in my nerves the was powerful enough to lift me onto the tips of my toes. 

“Only ones which had long since been looted,” Helgon said, wandering over to one of the pieces of wall art which turned out to be a rather stylized map of the old world.

Country names and borders I’d never heard before were illuminated as he swept his ghostly hand past them.

“I know of a dozen places on each continent where she left troves which have helped those who stumbled on them over the decades. They rarely contained what seemed to be most needed but I can’t recall them ever failing to be useful.”

“Useful for what?” I asked, trying to grasp what Dyrena’s true aim was, since revenge was simply too small a goal.

“Preservation, usually. Only the very desperate tend to locate one of her troves.”

“Desperate to escape one of the other Neoterics?”

“Not universally. Some of the ones I know of had already escaped their local Neoteric, though that is the minority by far.”

“And you?”

“There was no cache left behind for me,” Helgon said, his voice going softer and slower with each word.

“What about ones left for those fleeing from you?” I asked.

He turned to look at me, confused for a moment, before a small smile slip his lips and he shook his head.

“No one ever needed to escape me,” he said.

“Because they all died with your city before they could?” I asked, knowing that couldn’t have been right.

“I believe my fellow Neoteric imagined that to be the case. It’s likely why they thought I wouldn’t strike against them, for fear of ‘injuring my people’.”

From the inflection he put on naming ‘his people’ I understood what he was really saying.

“You didn’t have any people? Wait, you didn’t save anyone from the Sunfall?” I asked, processing what the would have meant for those who’d lived in his city at the time.

“There were those who suspected that as well,” he said. “Of course I didn’t let them check. Our domains are sacrosanct by treaty and by the divine power of our rule.”

“What would they have found if they had checked? What did you do?” There was some missing element to what was going on, some part of the Dyrena’s plan which Helgon had been privy to which was crucial but it eluded me.

“I did just what Dyrena knew I would. Just what she argued had to be done.”

“Which was!?”

“Nothing which can be spoken of. Not yet.” Helgon wasn’t being a jerk simply for the sake of being annoying. 

But he was enjoying being cryptic.

Which was definitely annoying.

“We could mess up her plans, and yours,” I said. “Without even meaning to. In fact we’re almost certain to! If we don’t know what’s you’re doing, what you’ve done, and we know you were a part of the whole Sunfall thing, we almost have to, don’t we?”

“If you could undo what we did with the overthrow of the gods, you cannot imagine how I would rejoice, much less how she would have,” Helgon said. “If I might offer some advice though, destruction is far simpler than creation, and creation is often far simpler than restoration. As much as I miss the days of yore now that they are lost to me, bringing back what was will never be the wisest path.”

“Because restoring what was would mean restoring a world set to destroy itself all over again.”

“A quote from the philosopher Valshama? Apparently Sasarai supplied a surprisingly more thorough education than I would have credited him with providing!” 

“Valsha-who? No, I wasn’t quoting anyone. That just made sense.”

“Huh. You would be surprised at the company you could keep with that sort of ‘sense’,” Helgon said. 

“Not with Dyrena it seems. I can’t see what her goal was, or what her plan would be leading us to?”

Having him simply tell me didn’t seem right. In part it would mean trusting him, which I wasn’t entirely sure we could afford to do. For as nice as he seemed, and despite the help he’d already provided us against Sasarai, there was still the possibility that he held plans which wouldn’t be to our benefit. I couldn’t see that, but then neither the gods nor the people of his time had seen that he was part of a cabal which would destroy their world, so staying wary while accepting the help that we clearly needed seemed like the wisest course of action I could choose under the circumstances. 

Also, it just felt better to figure things out my own. I’d been praised enough as being a good student, that valuing myself for my intelligence seemed to have stuck in my personality somewhere, even with the mound of data that suggested I was a complete idiot for worshipping Sasarai as I had.

“I can help you there, but I am certain I cannot provide a definitive answer for you,” Helgon said. “Don’t mistake me, at this juncture I would enjoy nothing more than assisting you in whatever course you might take against Sasarai and the others. Unlike Dyrena, my delight at the prospect of their downfall is more than enough to allow me to linger on here. That said, I can do no more than provide assistance to you because I do not trust that I understand the full extent of her plans myself.”

“She didn’t talk about them with you? Not even hints?”

“Oh, no, no, we spoke of our goals and plan quite extensively. The problem isn’t that she didn’t tell me her plans, its that she told me so many of them and spoke at length of the value of them all that I am quite sure she managed to obfuscate what she actually intended far beyond my ability to determine which she eventually chose to implement and which she chose to forego.”

“Could she have just done them all?”

“She was a singular genius, so perhaps I shouldn’t rule that out, but had she brought to life all the dreams she spoke of, we would be sitting in a very different world.”

“Tell me about that then,” I said, grasping at whatever threads I could.

“Dyrena’s world? Hers would have been an unfallen realm. Different from the world before, with power stripped away from people like myself and her and most certainty from the other would-be Neoteric Lords. In place of an eternal night, we would live beneath a life giving sun and stars which listened to the wishes made upon them. Old feuds would have been forgiven, and ancient sins accounted for. I thought she meant to make a world of love and brotherhood, but she laughed at that too. ‘People will always be people’ she’d said. She didn’t wish to deny them that, merely give us the vision to see each other as flawed but still worthy of redemption, should we choose we it.”

And I saw it.

It wasn’t possible. It couldn’t be possible. Not after all this time..

But…

“I need to go to Mt Gloria.”

“Now?”

“Yes,” I said, my voice dropping as my body began to change and Draconia’s power flooded through me.

With the beat of wings as wide as a building, I rose into the starless sky and with my god flew towards the life giving sun.

“So, tell my Dyrena, what sort of paradise do you plan to create?”

“I won’t be creating a paradise at all Helgon. Quite far from it in fact.”

 “I am not sure I take your meaning. Certainly you can’t mean to organize a hell for your survivors to suffer in, can you? That seems terribly out of character.”

“And what might you imagine my character to be?”

“I should hesitate to say, lest you find the admiration displeasing.”

“Unfounded admiration can be tedious, and in these days I find little admirable anywhere I look.”

“Events do seem to be trending in a more dire direction than our first conversations suggested.”

“Yes. Then it was hypotheticals. Ideas untarnished by confrontation with reality.”

“Would you have us stop then?”

“It is far too late for that. You’ve seen what has happened to the others who raised their voices in opposition. Those who remain in our circle are no longer capable of choosing anything but destruction.”

“Destruction which can be turned to the service of a new creation though, no? Is that not still the goal we all strive towards?”

“In name? Most certainly. It will be a creation designed by those who would see the world burn to light their path to power though, so what can be created but the most exquisite of hells?”

“Not all of us crave power though. Innovation need not only benefit the one who innovates.”

“Perhaps not, but will it benefit any of those sacrificed to see it come to pass?”

“It would not, no more than it can benefit those who die in the senseless conflicts of today.”

“And for you, moral neutrality is achieved by virtue of the mortality of those to be sacrificed. They were going to die anyways, so what does it matter.”

“As you say, we cannot save them, but at least striving towards a future where prosperity can be the domain of all holds some nobility over one where all are designed to suffer.”

“Which is why they will destroy you before overlong. And why they will destroy me first.”

“What other paths are open to us then?”

“Perhaps none, or perhaps one that none have dared walk before.”

– High Accessor Dyrena wavering on the precipice of explaining her master stratagem to Helgon.

I didn’t have a family anymore. They were gone. They weren’t mine. They’d chosen to let me go.

That was what I woke up to banging around in my head.

“Jilya, you okay?” Kam asked, rousing in his chair beside my bed. “If you need more sleep, it’s fine. The ghost guy said to take as long as need. All that healing you did was a lot I guess.”

I looked around the room.

We weren’t in a pod (which was relief), but I had no idea whatsoever where we were (which was not a relief). Notable elements of the room included stacks of books (interesting), wall art in styles I’d never even heard of much less seen before (frightening in some cases, gorgeous in others), and the aroma of recently applied cleaning chemicals. Conspicuously absent however was any sign of my mother or father.

“Where are they? What happened?” I asked.

“Ghost guy, Helgon I think? He’s got them in some lab room he said.” Kam sounded pretty disinterested in something that raised the most piercing of distress cries in my head.

Helgon, one of the Neoteric Lords, destroyer of the world that had been, had my parents in a laboratory?

“What. Is. He. Doing. With. Them.” I felt Draconia’s fire rising within me with each word.

He is not referring to your parents, Draconia said before the misunderstanding lead to a new calamity. Helgon and the other Blessed are in one of his meeting rooms revising their earlier strategy. Your parents have departed with the other refugees from Low Town.

“They left?” I said and amended my question to remove the confusion ambiguity. “Our parents, they left?”

“Oh, yeah. They’re going on to some place called Mt. Gloria. It’s supposed to be safer there.”

“And you stayed?” That made almost no sense at all.

“Uh, yeah, obviously.”

“Why?” I didn’t mean to be rude but, seriously, why would he?

“You were out. Someone needed to look after you.” Kam sounded as confused as I was, leaving me to wonder if we were actually capable of communicating with one another.

Except for the part where he was still mine?

He was?

It surprised me as well, Draconia said. But people are surprising sometimes.

“What about mother? Or father?” I asked, already knowing the answer, absolutely not wanting to hear the answer, and just as absolutely incapable of avoiding it.

“They…uh.” Kam didn’t want to repeat what they’d said. 

Because it would hurt my feelings. 

As though I didn’t already know.

As though I hadn’t heard the hate in their voices for the very idea of sinning against the Holy Tree or the First Tender.

As though I could possibly be unaware of the abomination I had become in their eyes.

“They left me. Did they leave you too?” I asked, the answer to that question somehow even more painful than the answer to the first.

“No. They wanted me to stay with you. They knew you needed someone.”

They did?

“What did they say?” I asked, fairly certain that Kam had misheard or misunderstood them.

“I mean, not much, the train was leaving pretty quickly. A whole bunch of folks wanted to stay and thank you but Helgon kind of shoved them on to the other train and told them they’d see you again in Mt. Gloria once you’d recovered.”

My parents hadn’t been planning on that. I could feel it.

They’d left because they were drowning in confusion and couldn’t bear to see what I’d become. 

But they’d left Kam.

Their precious Kam.

That didn’t make sense.

Sometimes things don’t. As you say, they were lost in confusion, they’re whole world shattered before them. Trust me when I say that can lead to some seemingly inconsistent decisions.

Seemingly? I asked.

That they left says something, that they left your brother says something as well, if those seem contradictory it likely means that the situation is more complex or nuanced than they or you can fully see. Give it time. That may not make anything better, but it will makes things clearer I believe.

Which left me with the question I really did not want to ask myself; did I want things to be clearer? Did I want them to be better.

They’d left me. Even if that was only to make sense of the new life and world before them, could anything, and did I even want anything, to change the fact that they’d left.

If they appeared in the doorway saying ‘oh my daughter, we are so sorry, can’t we just forget it and go back to the family we were’, would I say yes?

No. 

I couldn’t.

The bond we’d had, the one that let me pull them from the scene of their execution, they’d walked away from that and in doing so revealed it to be a lie. A lie I’d believed enough to   work magic through, but one I could never cling to again.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Kam said, reaching over and hugging me.

Hugging me? What? Why?

Oh. I was crying. 

Stupid eyes.

I wanted to push him away. He wasn’t supposed to be nice to me. He was an idiot. And he got everything. And…

And I’d gotten him. He was my only family now.

So I hugged him back and stopped crying.

After a minute or two I stopped crying.

Stupid eyes.

Fortunately I was able to wipe my eyes off on his shirt a moment before the door to the room slid to the left into the wall and Theia leaned in.

“Umbrielle said you were up and wanted me to get you some food. I thought I’d check to see if you were feeling up for it though. Either of you.”

“Oh, I can definitely eat!” Kam said, because of course he could.

I checked in and found my own appetite…missing?

I can sustain you, Draconia said, you’ll enjoy eating more than divine sustenance though.

And with that the fact that I hadn’t eaten since my entire life collapsed came roaring in and out of my as my stomach protested the lengthy fast.

“I think I could start eating the walls here,” I said, unable to hide the embarrassing growl from my guts.

“I don’t know the Sylvan diet, but I can promise that Helgon’s cooks can come up with something you’ll like better than the walls,” Theia said, and leaned back out of door for us to follow her.

Kam trotted along right beside leaving me to bring up the rear as though they were some kind of honor guard clearing a path for me. I wasn’t thrilled with that image but I consoled myself with the knowledge that the only reason Kam was in front of me was because he wanted to get to the promised food first.

“Once you’ve had something to eat, we could use you in the debate room,” Theia said.

“Debate room? I thought Helgon had everyone in lab?”

“Everything here can double as lab space. Or a library annex,” Theia said. “Labs are where people get things done though, and we are definitely not getting anything done.”

“I thought you were setting up new plans?”

“Yeah. So did we,” Theia said and I could feel her eye roll of exasperation despite being behind her. “Our gods aren’t quite able to come to the agreement we’d been hoping though.”

Why anyone is surprised that Battle is hot headed astounds me, Umbrielle said.

Harvest has raised some interesting and compelling points, Draconia said, but I still hate their suggestion that we spend the next century growing a base to work from.

Theia glanced back at me with the clearest of expressions – ‘can you see what I’ve been dealing with’ and I had to wince in acknowledgement. If the main argument was between immediate action and long term plans, I could easily imagine the points each side was making, and could see value in ones which my heart just rebelled against.

I wanted Sasarai dead. He was a threat and his crimes were unforgivable. The sooner he was dead the better.

Sasarai was also immensely powerful though, and part of a delicate web entities who were all capable of annihilating the world again if they saw fit.

“I have no idea how I’ll be able to help there,” I said, a desire to stay as far away from that room as possible rising within me.

“I think they mostly want to see if they can build a consensus from a wider array of gods, or at least their fragments.” Theia said, turning to stroll backwards so she could talk to me directly.

“I thought the gods were dead?” Kam asked.

“They’re not,” I said at the same time Theia said “They are.”

“So I’m right and wrong?” Kam asked.

“Pretty much,” Theia said. “The gods of the Fallen World died, but bits of them are left behind, and are the heirs to the domains the gods had responsibility for. So they’re dead, just not dead like we’ll be someday.”

“Huh, okay, yeah so they’re like Mazana’s leaves then, like not the full god, but a part of it that’s still got that holiness and stuff.”

“That’s…” I started to say not how it worked, but on reflection, it was a lot closer than I’d expected Kam to ge to understanding things, “not precisely right, Mazana’s not a god it turns out – more like a big bucket – but yeah, otherwise I think that’s right, isn’t it?”

I glanced over to Theia for confirmation, but Helgon was the one who answered since he was waiting for us as we stepped into the kitchen 

“For cursory explanation, this is splendid. Completely wrong as well, though that is an artifact of the limitations of our mortal languages which we all must labor under. Fortunately for you, there is a path to greater clarity if you should desire!”

“Years of study?” I guessed.

“That is always ideal,” Helgon said. “In this case I was considering something more expedient however, to wit, rather than explaining your Blessed state, have you considered asking the myriad of divinities you carry if any of them would share their blessing with him?”

“It is fascinating how effective punishments based around social rejection can be with Sylvans!”

“Yes, Sasarai.”

“I developed an experimental study you see, dividing up a small population into two groups.”

“I am aware of basic methodology Sasarai.”

“Of course you are Dyrena, but you see for the first group I made sure that any misdeeds were met with stern corporal punishments, as I’d intended to utilize originally, and for the second group, I employed those same corporal punishments!”

“That seems rather…”

“On the offenders family members!”

“…in character. Yes, that comes as no surprise at all I suppose.”

“Can you imagine the results.”

“Likely better than you can.”

“Why the second group showed a nineteen percent reduction is doctrinal violations after a single week! This is so wonderful.”

“It is for someone I suppose.”

“I’d had a factor in my population graphs to account for all of the ones I was going to have to sacrifice as an example to keep the others in line. Or rather that the divine tree would exact retribution on. With this I can work with a smaller, more elite population and they’ll be even stricter about adhering to doctrine than planned! Oh thank you so much for the insight into working within the Sylvan social constraints, Dyrena. This is going to yield such a rich bounty!”

“Don’t mention it. Literally. I don’t want my name spoken of in relation to this ‘discovery’ at all.”

– High Accessor Dyrena gaining an understanding that she may have overestimated the intelligence of her co-conspirators.

I’d never been present when a new Blessed was chosen by their deity, arguably not even when I was, since Draconia choosing me and my be aware of that fact were separate by a span measured in years. With Fiddler Jast though it was hard to miss the transition from ‘very much a dying Goblin’ to ‘Blessed of Small Problems’. That the sheer force of his investiture lifted him a good two feet into the air as his flesh reknit and and his bones all snapped back into their proper place was a tiny bit of a give away from the rest of the people in the car too.

“Woah!” Kam said, ever the master of eloquence and clarity.

To be fair to him, my own contribution to the ‘conversation’ was mute silence at first.

Was it like this with me, ever? I asked, sharing my thoughts only with Draconia.

For me? No. Not at all. I rejoiced quite a lot more when you appeared. From how Draconia spoke I was sure she was being serious but I couldn’t imagine how that would be true.

I don’t recall floating, I said.

That came later, Draconia said. In your case, you weren’t at death’s door nor had you been unimaginably imprisoned for the better part of two centuries. I had slightly more cause to rejoice than you did, you see.

And I did. All the years I called her my demon and she didn’t hate me because I had been freedom for her and even if she’d been a demon, she’s been MY demon.

“Thank you,” Fiddler said, or was it Fiddler and Polsguls? “We owe you…”

“Nothing,” I said before an inadvisable promise was made. Anything they owed me would be mine and owning someone’s promise would give me ownership over a piece of them. I’d pushed on that line a lot farther than I was comfortable with to save my family. I was not about claim dominion over a stranger who’d been in no position to refuse what I’d given to him.

No. We do…Polsfuls tried to put in directly, but Draconia shut him down like I had.

Small Problems, it is we who owe you. This offering of a Blessed cannot cover the loss of your peoples, but let is be a first step towards a renewed friendship.

As you would have it Guardian and Treasure, and I felt Polsgul’s presence withdraw to the normal intensity of the divine with the other Blessed.

“Hey, if you can do that again, we got a lot more injured here still,” Kam said.

True to his word, he was applying what first aid he could to a Crowkin whose left wing had been broken.

“I’m okay, this won’t kill me,” Iskil, the Crowkin said. “Help the others.”

“We will,” Fiddler and I said in unintended unison.

I looked to him for confirmation that he was capable of helping the others and he nodded.

“Not with serious wounds, but leave the little stuff to me,” he said.

‘Little’ in this case seemed to mean ‘not within minutes of dying’ and since there’d been a lot of incidental injuries as the assassins tore through the car, that meant there was plenty to keep him busy.

My skills on the other hand were needed for the people who were near death, and, unfortunately, they were not enough.

At least not on my own.

For these, we will need Diyas, Draconia said. She holds the Domain of Healers. You have one of her fragments, call on it if you can.

Calling on Diyas was both either and harder the Polsguls had been. Her power was in my hands before I fully thought about – because I’d followed her path as well, and bore a mundane version of her blessing already in my gifts.

With a need in front of us, the power of the God of Healers was all too happy to send grace coursing through me and help me manipulate it into the forms the injured needed.

I’m sure with each person I healed, there were sighs of relief and a chorus of appreciation, but I heard none of it. Draconia had stood aside to allow Diyas to work through me and my mind swam with a deeper understanding of bodies and their functions. With each person we healed I saw a river of cells, each little one marching around in a cycle of life, carrying every precious things the body needed. I felt issues, blockages, cuts and breaks and understood the ones we could leave for the body to heal itself and which would need a miracle to return to a state where the whole system wouldn’t collapse.

Everyone’s biology was so different, and yet to Diyas we were all barely noticeable variations on the same core template. Even the dead held lessons, though they lay beyond my or Diyas’ ability to restore.

I’m not sure how much time I spent in that strange, twilight state of knowing everything and being nearly divorced from the material world, but when it came to an end it came to an abrupt one.

The domain of healing I’d been wrapping within was yanked away from me, by someone with a greater claim. With Polsguls, I could have fought to prevent the Fiddler’s Blessing, stating my claim and backing it with Draconia’s power, but not so with Diyas.

Someone was already the Blessed of Healing and, while they had done me the courtesy of allowing me to call on Diyas for the injured and the dying around me, once that need was passed, theirs exerted itself.

I wished I could have communicated with them, but while I could feel their strength and purpose in the instant they called Diya’s fragment back to join the other fragments they held, where they were and even who they were was impossible to tell.

“You did good work there but I’m betting you’re…” Theia started to say only to interrupt herself so she could catch me as a toppled over, “…a bit of hand and some food.”

It was ridiculous. I hadn’t been using my own strength. Diyas had done as the real work. Despite that however, I was very definitely not capable of walking or even standing upright on my own. 

I felt consciousness yearning to slip away and my thoughts grew a trifle fuzzy.

Just like Theia.

Mmm.

Warm fuzzy thoughts against a warm fuzzy girl.

I felt my head nod forward and my knees buckle slightly.

“Need a hand? Be easier to carry her together,” Kam said, putting my other arm around his shoulder so I could dangle between the two of them.

“Probably a good idea. I’d hate to just drop her if more assassins show up,” Theia said, in a tone that told me she would probably drop me, kill all of them and still catch me before my head bonked on the floor.

“We should adjourn to my study,” Helgon said, “Or one of them at any rate. We have quite a few more guests than I’ve been used to entertaining lately.”

Helgon was here?

And we weren’t moving anymore?

I think I might have micro-napped for a moment or two.

But where were my parents?

“I’ve sent them on to their own rooms,” Helgon said. “There are some people they need to speak with.”

People? Who? They didn’t know anyone on the train. They couldn’t. 

“Is she going to be okay?” Kam asked. I wondered for a moment why he was concerned about my mother. Had she been hurt when I wasn’t looking?

Despite my fatigue though, a moment later I figured out that he was talking about me.

“I’m fine,” I said, shaking my head to throw away the fatigue that seemed to be piling up on me.

“No you’re not,” Theia said. “You healed thirty seven people without a break.”

“That wasn’t me,” I said. “It was Diyas.”

“Yeah. Using your body,” Theia said. “That kind of thing doesn’t come free.”

“I am honestly surprised you are as undamaged as you seem to be, though I suspect Diyas’s fragment wouldn’t have pushed you to the point of actual injury as that’s contrary to her role,” Helgon said.

“I’m fine. I’m used to healing. I was the best in my class,” I said.

“You were fourth, and you never healed the things you healed back there,” Kam said.

“We all tied for first,” I insisted, as though that was an important distinction, when he was, in fact correct. “I’m fine. What’s up with mother and father?”

“You’re fine? Okay you can walk on your own then right?”

Of course I could. 

That I was hanging helplessly on Theia a moment later as Kam ducked out from under my arm did not mean that he was right and I was wrong.

“One of the restoration pods then I should think,” Helgon said as Kam took my arm and half my weight from a smirking Theia.

“What’s a restoration pod?” I asked, unsure if I should be dreading what awaited me or welcoming it.

“An improved form of bedding,” Helgon said. “Newly refurbished too. I suppose ‘two’ isn’t a plethora of guests too exhausted to stand, but it’s a trend I am prepared for! Or rather, prepared for after the first one.”

“Don’t we need to talk about stuff? Sasarai stuff?” I asked, my fatigue only growing the farther I had to walk.

“We will,” Theia said. “We made out a lot better than any of us ever dreamed, so there’s a whole bunch of plans we need to review and reconsider. Most of them have nothing to do with the Garden or Sasarai though. Don’t worry, we’ll leave all that till you’re conscious again.”

Also, I will attend to the discussion while you recover, Draconia said, Rest in comfort and peace for now.

“Okay,” I said. “But what about my mother and father.”

“They’ll be here when you wake up,” Kam said. “You know them, they’re not going to want to go anywhere until they hear everything about everything.”

I heard him.

And I believed him.

But something told me he wasn’t right.

They were mine. I’d claimed them. That meant I could reach out and feel where they were, and how they were doing. I didn’t want to do that uninvited, but despite the fatigue, I had to know. I had to feel that they were okay. I had to…

They weren’t there.

They hadn’t died. They hadn’t been taken.

They just weren’t mine anymore.

They’d cast me out.

“But did you need to make such a mess Sasarai, I mean we are going to be weeks getting this conference room to a point where it’s not mistaken as an abattoir.”

“I’m sorry Helgon, but what exactly would be the point of showing mercy towards those who might have exposed us? Do you think if the slightest hint of what we have planned were to reach divine ears, we would fare any better than this?”

“Well of course we would. Should one deity or another hear of our scheme we’d be reduced to ashes in an instant. Much cleaner than this. I mean, come now, there are splatter stains above the drapes. That’s simply needless.”

“Far from it. These were holy adherents to twelve different faiths. Their durability and regenerative capacity had to be accounted for.”

“Sasarai, there are miracles of healing, there are contingency spells, and there are post-mortem revivification techniques. Not a single one of those requires the dissociation of every bodily cell from every other one to counteract. I mean, come now, a single suppression spell and you could have silenced them all with a cantrip. We’re supposed to be better than…whatever this was.”

“It’s because we are better than they are that this is permissible. Perhaps you’re correct and perhaps you’re not. The important thing is that it is done and that it was done decisively.”

“Perhaps in the future we might attempt to do things correctly as well.”

– the moment when High Accessor Sasarai decided he was going to personally ensure High Accessor Helgon did not enjoy divine status a moment longer than necessary.

We could have hidden. Theia was the Blessed of Night, and Umbrielle was right there with us, giving Theia and the rest of us her full attention.

Even worse for the assassins that Sasarai had sent after us, we had Kalkit with us.

Do you know what assassins rely on? I hadn’t ever thought about, mostly because I thought assassins were a relic of the world that had fallen. We’d learned about them in history as an example of how duplicitous the ancient world’s nations had been. That Sasarai could conjure up a squad of them on command should have come as a surprise, it was decidedly out of character for the First Tender and contrary to every bit of doctrine he’d invented for us. Really though, he’d lost the ability to surprise me the moment I’d understand who Draconia really was.

And that’s why the assassins were doomed the moment they stepped on the train. What they needed most was surprise. Even if Sasarai had given them enough power to simply overwhelm us, a straightforward attack would have been disastrous for him.

Best case, they killed us and none of us got away. The chance that the fight of that magnitude would have escape the notice of the other Neoterics was nonexistent. The fact that I’d escaped from the garden as a roaring dragon wasn’t exactly something that was easy to hide either, but the Draconia, Umbrielle and Helgon seemed to think that the impromptu festival Sasarai had thrown would leave the other Neoterics to chalk up the light show as ‘Sasarai being a weirdo’, or him testing out a new source of faith generation as he’d done many times in the past.

One unexplained oddity wasn’t going to be enough for them to risk moving on, two on the other hand, or one display that he was absolutely not in control any longer? They’d fall all over themselves to claim his power before anyone else could.

The assassins Sasarai sent weren’t going to meet a ‘best case’ scenario (from their perspective though) because Sasarai didn’t know we had a Kalkit and trying to ambush a Blessed of Secrets was the definition of a catastrophically bad idea.

With less than half a minute to plan we didn’t have time for to belabour over elaborate schemes, but with the Blessed of Battle to lead us and forewarning we didn’t exactly need complicated plans either.

The first assassin to strike used a potent paralysis gas as their weapon of choice.

It was a smart move. Lyostine Gas was a readily produced byproduct of the aetheric lighting common in both the Garden and the Low City. Gathering a concentration of it was challenging since there wasn’t much released during a day of manufacturing, but its presence wouldn’t have been noticed since it was odorless and invisible.

Had the gas worked as intended, I would have been paralyzed before I was aware anything was wrong, with Theia likely joining me in helplessness. I don’t think, with her mechanical parts, Xalaria would have been as effected, but since I wasn’t keen on either asking Xalarai to fight alone, or being paralyzed in general, I called on my gift with the winds and blew the gas directly back out of the room.

One assassin down, temporarily, twenty three more to go.

I caught the scent of the other assassins thanks to Draconia’s aid, and have to admit to being more than a little surprised that there were so many of them.  Sasarai, it seemed, was not interested in risking undercommitting his forces to the effort.

The next assassin dropped down from the shadow above my seat, an obsidian blade aimed directly at my heart.

Oddly, that was not the best kill-shot he could have tried for. Sasarai knew the kind of healing gifts I had. If he’d been interested in killing me (and never recovering his divine fragments) he would have instructed them to strike for my brain (which would have been a nice confirmation that I had one given how much I’d seemingly lost my mind with my recent decisions).

Had the assassin gone for a heart strike a day or so earlier, he would have enjoyed a great deal more success. My options for survival would have been ‘have Theia knock him away first’ or ‘Xalaria steps in and block the blow for me’. 

The poor assassin was just a little late for any of that however. As he descended, I looked up and locked my gaze onto his. He was a Sylvan. And a demon, I think. Or at least a pretty nasty ancestor of some kind. What he wasn’t however was used to a Sylvan staring back at him with draconic eyes blazing with glee.

The obsidian blade shattering on my chest probably also came as a surprise.

I mean, when Draconia said she could protect me? Yeah. She was not kidding.

The clawed hand that caught the assassin by the throat and slammed him to the ground wasn’t something he saw coming either, and while it was technically my hand, its strength was very definitely not my own.

The fact that the assassin was battered into unconsciousness on the floor of the car with one sharp move, but not driven through the floor of the train and tossed under the wheels was a shown of supreme restraint on Draconia’s part.

Sure, Xalaria had said “capture them, no killing” but she wasn’t technically the boss of any of us.

That she had a good point was more compelling though, even for someone with Draconia’s level of long suppressed rage. Dead assassins weren’t a tool we could use. Living ones might be useful in convincing Sasarai to turn his thoughts and prayers towards hoping we’d leave him alone.

I wasn’t going to of course, but he didn’t have a Kalkit to tell him that.

Elsewhere in the train car, the others were dealing with the next waves of assassins in the own manner. Xalaria hadn’t bothered to draw a weapon at all. When two assassins materialized in front and behind her, she simply used one to bludgeon the other one. I heard bones crack, but neither one burst like a balloon so I suspected she was holding back too.

Kalkit avoided the assassins that were targeting them via the expedient of hopping on Fulgrox’s shoulder and letting the Blessed of the Harvest convince the assassins that approaching someone that large who was wielding threshing knife was, perhaps not the wisest move they could choose to make.

Theia took the simpler approach of simply not being there. The assassins who appeared in the room knew where she’d been but the strike at someone sitting in her seat did nothing more than ruin the upholstery of the seat back.

That assassin clutched his throat, trying thrash to freedom only to fall limp a few seconds later. We Sylvan consider ourselves kin to the Holy Tree and therefor believe that we grow like plants. We do however require blood, especially that it be delivered to our brains, and unlike a plant if that flow is stopped for even a brief moment, we tend to have issues remaining conscious.

Another assassin lunged out of nowhere, slashing at the spot where Theia had to have been holding the first assassin but a threshing knife pinned him arm through the bicep to the wall. 

It’s not like we were incapable of working together after all.

Another few tried to rush me at once, one appearing mid-leap to knock me through the curtained windows of the train. Theia stopped that one, and Fulgrox caught the next one, smashing him into an assassin he had splayed over a seat back.

The assassin’s strategy wasn’t the most terrible one they could have though and the third one to try found the opening the other two had missed. 

I was tempted to bite him. There was a good chance I could do so without fatal consequences, but Draconia suggested a different course of action.

So I let him knock me off the train.

Like I said, it wasn’t the worst possible strategy for the assassins, since it separated me from the other and let two more pile on as we crashed through the window.

They had made one small mistake though.

The train ran underground through a series of tunnels Helgon had arranged to create to connect several of the cities. Helgon hadn’t bothered digging through solid earth the whole distance though. To the greatest extent possible he’d made use of the nature caverns and pre-existing underground dwelling from before the Sunfall. That meant that when I let the assassins throw me off the train, I’d done so while we were passing through an old dwarven city-cavern the size of the Garden.

Which meant I could fly.

Being outside of the train also freed me in one other way, which I promptly displayed to them.

Breathing fire, as it turns out, is somewhat harder to deliver restrained blows with than threshing knives and unarmed attacks.

To my credit, one did survive!

I mean, they were a bit roasted. But, you know, conjured and enfleshed ancestor spirit. Kinda dead to start with? 

I chalked the drifting ashes of the other two up to at least not leaving mess for anyone else to clean up and soared back into through the broken window.

Unsurprisingly, there were twenty one disabled and/or unconscious assassins to which I add the final one I’d had to catch.

“We won’t have long to question them before Sasarai notices that they’ve been captured,” Xalaria said.

“You will have no time at all,” one of the assassins said, rising to his feet like his limbs were being pulled by invisible strings.

“Sasarai! How lovely to see you again my old comrade,” Helgon said, waving from his seat. “How is that perfectly secret vault working out for you?”

“I knew we should have razzed that city of yours to the ground,” Sasarai hissed from the assassin’s lips.

“Oh, you’re quite welcome to try. Do you know how many defenses are simply going to waste? I mean, please, do try. I’ve been, well I suppose not ‘dying’ to try out some new inventions, but you take my meaning.”

“I believe I do,” Sasarai said. “Which is why this group will not be allowed to reach your domain. Girl, thief, return to me now.”

I took a step forward until my brain caught up with the reflexive obedience that had been drilled into me.

“No.” It was unbelievably hard to say that. For all that I hated him, for all that I hated what he’d done, giving “The First Tender” a simple ‘no’ was one of the hardest things I’d ever done. “Yeah, no, not until I’m ready.”

“That was not a request,” Sasarai said. “Return now or your family’s will feed the roots.”

Far away, I could feel the truth of that. Kam’s panic. My mother’s confusion. My father’s terror. Sasarai was not bargaining and he would not hesitate.

“Treasure house? Why would I need a house for my treasure? I intend to fill my entire city with my treasures!”

“While we shall, of course, be preserving all of things which are dear to us, surely Helgon you must agree that some treasures will be  of a quality superior to all others.”

“Nonsense Sasarai. Any invention, any treatise, any idea whatsoever may lead me to new found wonders and understanding. I can no more prioritize my experiments than a father could choose a favorite child.”

“And should someone wish to steal away one of your children? How will you defend your precious things then if you make no arrangement for their defenses?”

“I feel that one of us is not entirely clear on the aims of our endeavor. It is my understanding that with the transfer of grace away from the conceptual maniforms which we nominally are bound to and serve beneath, we shall be gaining control of a concentration of force which will place us atop the peak of this world’s reality.”

“Yes. We shall be the gods of the new world.”

“Then I fail to see why that alone would not be sufficient protection from petty burglary?”

“Is the power of the gods sufficient to dissuade us from our current course?”

“No. Though to be fair, we are quite likely to fail spectacularly.”

“You’ve been listening to Dyrena too much.”

“She’s remarkably insightful. I don’t know why people have difficulty seeing that.”

“Oh. We don’t. We know exactly how dangerous Dyrena can be.”

“Indeed. It’s one of the few things that gives me hope our scheme will only backfire catastrophically.”

“I will never understand you Helgon.”

“Oh, I’m quite easy to understand Sasarai. I simply don’t see the point is setting up an incredibly well guarded vault, burying it under the repository of my power, filling it with stolen god bits, and then hoping everyone will simply forget its there and never bother me. Let anyone come for what is mine I say. The damn stuff is dangerous enough when I try to handle it, if they can survive, I might learn something. That let’s me not worry at all about the stories people might tell of a secret stash of wonders.”

– High Accessor’s Helgon and Sasarai’s disagreement which lead to the subsequent murder of the Silent Archives construction crew in an effort to prevent stories of its existence from spreading.

So, we were dead. I’d known that was what would happen the moment I tossed my old life aside. Learning that the only hope the First Tender had to survive was to kill us though, brought into sharp focus the fact that the accumulated power of several gods was about to be brought to bear on ending my life.

“It’s not all that bad,” Helgon said. “Take it from someone who’s dead, it’s an interesting sort of existence in its own way.”

“No offense, but I don’t think the rest of us get to be whatever is it you are,” Theia said.

“Of course not. You’ll be whoever it is you are without the burdens of the life you have now. No one else could be me. That’d be absurd. Who would I be then?”

“I think what she means is that when normal people die, they’re just gone. No one gets to linger on like you seem to be able to.” I don’t know what I was translating an idea that everyone probably already understood. Maybe because it felt good to reach for whatever shreds of clarity I could.

“Do…do you think your “normal people’?” Helgon asked.

“Blessed don’t hang around either,” Theia said. “We’re not immortal.”

“Of course not, you can’t be, that would defeat the whole purpose of the blessing.” Helgon was looking back and forth between the two of us, with side glances at the other Blessed as though we were children who no one had ever given even the most basic of doctrinal education.

“Before we get into that, we need to form our plans,” Xalaria said. “Sasarai will be already be moving against us. It won’t take him long to find the rail line or to follow it to us. Helgon, how defensible is your citadel.”

“Not at all,” Helgon said. “Please note as a reference that my fellow Neoterics had no trouble in waging their assault on me when they decided it was time to reduce our number by one more.”

“I’m not speaking about holding out against the eight remaining Neoterics. I’m only concerned about Sasarai and the forces he can send at us,” Xalarai said.

“Oh, you needn’t worry about him,” Helgon said. “Not at the moment at least.”

“You believe he will hesitate? About something this critical to his continued existence?” Xalaria asked, her expression shouting how idiotic a course of action that would be.

“Sasarai does not know who he’s dealing with, but he’ll be able to imagine a great deal,” Helgon said. “He’ll know for example that it had to be a Blessed of Night who stole his divine fragments – kudos on that young lady,” he nodded towards Theia, who shook her head.

“Wasn’t me. I couldn’t have taken more than two of them without drawing attention before I got out of the city,” she said, gesturing over to me.

“Yes. That’s what earns you the kudos,” Helgon said. “You see, your presence there will have left traces Sasarai can detect. He’ll know a Blessed of Night was there in his silly little vault. But he will also know the limits of what a Blessed of Night can do. For you to abscond with all of his fragments you would need to be old. Older than he is in point of fact.”

“Blessed don’t live that long, do they?” Theia asked.

“If they were normal people they certainly couldn’t.” The sparkle in Helgon’s ghostly eyes had to be simple mirth, not some hidden knowledge. “That all on its own will give Sasarai pause. A Blessed of Night that old is impossible. We would have sensed someone like that’s presence. Any of the Neoterics would be sure of that. Or rather we would be sure if it was the Blessed of anyone except for Night. With what Night has done for this world, our understanding of her capabilities has been, shall we say broadened.”

“He’s going to be paralyzed,” I said, knowing the fear that had to be creeping through the First Tenders heart.

“Yes. Exactly. Imagine discovering after centuries of being secure in your omnipotence that there was someone you couldn’t see and couldn’t predict who finally decided to move against you.”

“That will make him unpredictable. He may lash out in any direction,” Xalaria said.

“No,” I said, daring to contradict the God of Battle only because I felt like I’d spent a lifetime understanding where Sasarai was in that moment. “He can’t lash out at all. The other Neoterics? Remember? He’s in the worst possible state right now because he still has hold of everything he ever wanted but one wrong move and he’ll lose it all. He needs to keep things exactly as they are, any slip up and over the wall he’ll go.”

“Over the wall?” Fulgrox asked.

“Sorry, personal metaphor,” I said. “If he lets on what’s happened, or even hints at it too much, the other Neoterics annihilate him.  If he leaves the Garden, that would be screaming something was wrong. If he sends a troops out, that screams it too. He needs to at us without using any of his power to do so.”

“Not us,” Theia said. “You. I mean, sure he definitely wants to kill me too, but you’re the one who has all his fragments. If I get captured it’s no big deal to anyone but me. If you get captured though…”

“If Jilya is captured and she can be made to tell him where the fragments are, then all of this will be for nothing,” Xalaria said.

“That’s something I’m not sure I follow,” Fulgrox said. “You said you took all the divine fragments, but where did you hide them? I mean, you were still in Sasarai’s domain then right? What’s to stop him from just finding their hiding spot and writing you off  as something to deal with later?”

“They’re not in the Garden anymore,” I said. “They’re in me. They’re mine.”

“So, you swallowed them?” Folgrox asked.

I couldn’t fault him. I’d claimed them and tucked them away into my hoard as an almost reflexive action, with very little conscious awareness of how I was doing what I was, only that I needed to do it and so it happened.

“Not swallowed,” Helgon said. “They’re stored, I believe, in Jilya’s conceptual realm.”

“Her…what?” Fulgrox asked.

“It would take eleven years of coursework to properly explain, or perhaps only six in your case, since you seem to have solid grasp of several fundamentals already. The simple, and inaccurate, explanation is that the conceptual plane the gods formerly resided on is not an external dimension to the world. Within each of us, there is a conceptual realm.”

“Like a mindscape?” Theia asked.

“Yes, and absolutely no.” As an instructor Helgon was about as useful as many of the ones I’d studied under so I did what I always did; shrugged and kept listening. “The conceptual realm isn’t our thoughts and daydreams. Those are a separate thing. Think of it more like the projection of who and what you are into a dimension of information. That’s more or less backward from what’s happening, but as I said, this is the simple version.”

“And this conceptual space is somewhere real or just imaginary?” Xalaria ask, revealing that she was as lost as I was.

“Yes,” Helgon answered, which I would have punched him for, but, you know, ghost.

“I think the important thing is that Sasarai can’t just cut her open and pull the fragments out, right?” Fulgrox asked.

“Exactly. In fact, cutting her open would rather ruin his chances of his ever getting them back at all.” Helgon seemed delighted that Fulgrox had followed his explanation.

“What would happen if he cut her open anyways?” Theia asked.

“I expect she would die,” Helgon said.

“And the fragments?” Xalaria asked, apparently unconcerned by that prospect.

“They would drift through the remains of her conceptual space I imagine. In time, when someone synchronized enough with either who Jilya had been or was ripe to receive a blessing the divine fragments would return to the world through them.”

“And Sasarai would never be able to predict when or to whom that would happen, would he?” Xalarai asked.

“You’re not killing Jilya,” Theia said. She was joking. Mostly. I think.

“Of course not,” Xalarai said. “But it’s an option she will want to be aware of.”

“Thanks, but I’ve spent a lot of effort surviving this long. I don’t think I want to hand Sasarai that particular victory over me, even if it would be a hollow one for him.”

“Even distasteful options are valuable to be aware of,” Xalaria said. “There are fates far worse than death, and circumstances where victory may already be lost but actions yet remain to us.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I said, planning to keep it in my mind as far away as conceivably possible from any plans I was going to put together.

“It sounds like we have some time to work out what we’re going to do then?” Theia said.

“We don’t,”  Kalkit said. “There are assassins on the train. They’ll be here in twenty seconds.”

We all stared at Kalkit.

Xalarai was on her feet first, followed almost instantly by Theia.

I, on the other hand, reacted with the stunned, motionless silence that I’d spent years practicing.

Don’t worry. We’re going to be fine.

That was too little to go on for me to relax, except when your god explicitly tells you that you’ll be okay, it turns out to be a lot easier to relax than I’d expected. I even let a little smile play across my lips as I felt Draconia’s power flowing into my limbs.

I’d never been much of a fighter.

That was not true of her though.

“They say that the true strength of a person lies in the friends they hold dear and who will support them in their hour of need. Do we have any of those Dyrena?”

“Why we have each other do we not my dear Helgon? All twelves of us, united in common purpose, daring to dream the undreamable that we may have our heart’s desires, and destined to rule over the world as a council of wise and harmonious elders to lead the people into a brighter tomorrow.”

“While that is an answer, I feel as though I need to restate my question.”

– High Accessor’s Helgon and Dyrena refusing to acknowledge that they’ve both acknowledged that they’re doomed.

What was worse than the devil you knew? The devil you didn’t. I’d heard that saying as a kid but though it was irrelevant. All the devils were dead after all.

Then I learned what the First Tender was.

As the “train” hurtled through (hopefully) barren tunnels and brought me ever closer to a devil I’d never heard of the day before, I found I was oddly free of panic. Largely I think that was because the devil I didn’t know had arranged to get me away from the the devil who knew me all too well.

“Are we far away enough that we can talk freely?” Fulgrox asked. He was seated next to me since he needed a bit more than one seat and I needed a bit less.

“Yes, though Helgon can hear us,” Kalkit said.

“I can speak with you as well, if you like?” a ghostly person appeared in the aisle between the seats we’d chosen.

I assumed they were using a simple projection spell like the First Tender used on holy days when he needed to speak to all of the assemblies at once. The more I looked at him though the more the expanded senses Draconia blessed me with told me that, no, he wasn’t a projection, he was literally a ghost.

“Take a seat,” Xalaria said. “This will save us from having this conversation twice.”

“I’ve never found that I’m able to have the same conversation twice,” Helgon said. “Especially not with new people. Hello my dear, you must be one of Sasaria’s special people?”

“That’s what he always told us, but he also said we were the only people left in the world, so I’m not sure how special we really were to him,” I said. I don’t know why I wanted to dispel the notion that I was anything important. Maybe it was just that I didn’t want to be anyone important because of my connection to a hateful jerk like Sasarai “the First Tender”.

“If you weren’t before, you are now,” Xalaria said. “You know what you carry already do you not?”

“Not what, who,” I said. Demon or no, Draconia had never been a ‘what’ to me.

“Yes, a good bond there, and an old one too,” Helgon said, eyeing me with a dissecting gaze. “How ever did you escape the notice of my old…well calling him a friend would be a stretch, we never liked each other much at all as I recall, let’s say coworker, yes how did you escape my old coworker Sasarai’s notice as long as you did? I thought he was at least vaguely observant. Most of the others were.”

“Wait, what do you mean ‘escaped his notice’? Didn’t you gain your blessing today?” Fulgrox asked.

“In a sense, I supposed I did?” I certainly hadn’t treated my relationship with Draconia as a blessing the whole rest of the time we’d been together.

Perhaps not, but you kept the both of us safe, do you’ll notice I’m not complaining.

“Which is it.” Xalaria didn’t strike me as the sort of who appreciated ambiguity, even when it was more accurate than the simple response her question demanded.

“Jilya had her blessing when I found her,” Theia said, taking the burden of answering and explaining off my shoulders. “People seem to be pretty locked down there though from what I saw, so I don’t think she had any cause to use it before I showed up and messed up her day.”

Freed me more like it. I didn’t share that with anyone but Theia caught me eye and gave a small nod of understanding.

“And how did you come by that blessing?” Helgon asked. “I expect Sasarai was guarding his fragments rather tightly.”

“He’d hidden them in a shrine deep below his tree,” Theia said. “Jilya knew how to get there.”

“I stumbled into it when I was a kid,” I said. “There was a small maintenance tunnel that went to it that had been sealed off. But the seals were, uh, kind of weak. And I was curious.”

“So you, what? Wandered into the most important room in a Neoterics entire domain and spirited one of his legendarily rare divine fragments away without him noticing?” It wasn’t that Xalaria didn’t believe me, it was that when she put it like that even I found my story a little lacking.

She had a little help, Draconia said. And she didn’t spirit me away.

“But if she didn’t have your fragment, then how…?” Fulgrox tried to ask.

How did she use my gifts? Easily. She didn’t, Draconia’s answer seemed to make even less sense to them than mine had.

“But, how?” Fulgrox asked. “Being Blessed isn’t a thing you can just turn off.”

“You can’t,” Kalkit said. “But there are means to hide it.”

“Really?” Helgon drew the word out into at least three syllables. “Oh, oh that’s just perfect.”

It was weird to see a ghost convulsing with laughter and I wasn’t the only one who thought so.

“What am I missing here?” Theia asked.

“I believe our friend is amused by the fact that the theology Sasarai inflicted on Jilya was directly responsible for his inability to detect what she had done,” Kalkit said.

“And, oh it’s so much better than that,” Helgon said, recovering partially from his laughter. “She never would have been able to truly rescue the divine fragments if she hadn’t formed so long standing a bond with her god. Sasarai not only precipitated his own downfall, his grand little ‘perfect society’ made a perfect incubator for it as well.”

“That’s a stroke of good fortune for us all then,” Xalaria said before a puzzled look crossed her face. “Wait, divine fragments? You left other Blessed behind?”

“Nope. Not a one,” Theia said.

“Then what…?” Xalaria looked from Theia to me and back to Theia.

“You should be the one to tell them,” Theia said with a small wave of her hand towards me.

“I’m curious how the ghost knows?” I said, disturbed by the idea that my hoard might not be as hidden as I’d thought it was.

“Deduction, nothing more,” Helgon said. “When you know someone as long as I’ve known Sasarai, you can tell a lot about their life by the little things they do.”

“Little things like?” I asked, sensing the understatement in what Helgon was saying.

“He’s throwing a festival. Quite a big one. Fireworks, light shows, quite the pageant.” Helgon wore a delighted smile but for a moment I couldn’t understand any of what he was saying.

What did the First Tender have to celebrate?

Why wasn’t he raging?

I’d stolen a huge amount of power from him, he should have been livid beyond words.

If I was him I would have…

Oh.

I would have hidden everything that had happened.

I would have done my utmost to make sure no one could guess that anything meaningful had changed at all.

I would have been so afraid that the people around me would destroy me the moment they senses my weakness that I would have projected as much normalcy as I possible could have.

I had hidden everything, I had kept people from guessing the changes in me, and I’d projected perfect normalcy. I had to laugh too. At last I had proof that I was the Child of the Garden than I had always wished to be, and of course it came after I understood what a terrible fate that was.

“You understand! So delightful!” Helgon said.

“Understand what?” Fulgrox asked.

“He’s hiding,” I said. “He’s desperately scared and so he’s hiding what happened behind as much pomp and ceremony as he can throw at it.”

“I’m pretty sure he can have whatever parades and parties he want and no one is going to forget that they saw a dragon set their precious tree on fire,” Theia said.

“They won’t forget. But they will believe. Whatever story he comes up with. No matter how ridiculous it is. All he has to do is feed them something to explain what they saw and that will become the only truth they can live with.” The anger I felt at that wasn’t new. I’d stuff it down so many times, told myself that it was ‘the evil of my doubt chewing away at the virtue of my faith’, and I’d believed it, or forced myself to believe it no matter how painfully it had twisted my sense of who I was.

“That seems like an awful lot of worry for losing a divine fragment, even a powerful one,” Fulgrox said. “Wouldn’t it be easier to just not make a big deal out of it?”

“Hard not to make a big deal out of everyone seeing their living god-tree go up in flames,” Theia said.

“She’s right,” Xalaria said. “For the Neoterics, especially at this juncture, even the appearance of weakness is something they have to guard against. They’ve been telling themselves that Vaingloth was a fool and that he wasn’t beaten but rather got himself killed. They’re all afraid to move on Mount Gloria because they suspect it’s been trapped by one of the others, or that Vaingloth might be less dead than it seems. Even the loss of a single divine fragment would be enough to tip Sasarai’s position into dangerous territory.”

I looked over at Theia, who was suppressing a gleeful little smile. She nodded at me to fill them in.

“And what sort of territory, just as a hypothetical exercise, would the loss of all of the divine fragments that he’d collected mean?” I asked.

No one in the train car made the mistake of thinking I was asking a hypothetical question. None of them seemed to be able to accept that for a moment however.

Except for Kalkit, who was studiously grooming himself and seemingly unconcerned with the conversation’s direction.

“The loss of several divine fragments would place Sasarai in a position where he could be certain the other Neoterics would come for him,” Xalaria said slowly. “The loss of all of his divine fragments would remove any cause he had for constraint whatsoever. Please tell us how many fragments he retains.”

“None. Not a single one.” I’d been concerned that he could have hidden some of them elsewhere, or perhaps had a few on his person when we raided the Shrine, but as I’d claimed them, I’d learned to feel their presence clearly.

Sasarai had no divine fragments left under his control at all.

He was still fantastically dangerous of course. The divine fragments were a key to power, but they were not powerful in and of themselves. Not for someone like Sasaria who they never would have chosen to grant their blessings to.

Sasarai had all the divine force he’d stolen and all the grace his worshipful people had generated for generations all safely locked up in the Holy Tree. He was far from helpless.

But he was still afraid of the other Neoterics, which, in turn, left me terrified of what they were capable of doing.

“He should be moving to destroy us immediately,” Xalaria said. “With all the forces he can command.”

“That’s not what he’s doing,” Kalkit said. “And he’s right. It wouldn’t save him. He only has one hope. He has to make sure none of the other Neoterics find out the truth. Not until he can kill us all.”

“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.