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

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

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

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

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

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

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

They were mine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

But sometimes there isn’t one.

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

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

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

No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’m…

That was exactly what I was saying.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I stopped and shot her a look of challenge.

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

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

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

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

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

Draconia was notably silent on the subject.

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

And she definitely wasn’t laughing at me silently.

No. Why would she be?

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Wait, what happened?” Theia said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What lights?”

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

“Dead from what? From some lights?”

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

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

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

“All that from a peek?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why had I never asked that?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Even while it was mine.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The ideas they carry on the other hand though.

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

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

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

But she’d failed.

That was what she wanted to me to see.

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

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

She couldn’t protect me.

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

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

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

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

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

It was ludicrous. Idiotic. 

And true.

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

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

But I had cast it out.

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

And it had glimpsed me as well.

I’d been afraid my whole life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And Umbrielle?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

I stared at Theia. 

“A mouse?”

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

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

“And we kind of owe her the world.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And what is our reward to be?”

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

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

Except, it wasn’t empty was it?

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

Wouldn’t they?

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

Or had they just never talked about it to me?

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

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

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

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

MY demon. MY god. Mine.

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

I just needed to understand why.

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

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

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

Oh, there is plenty of that, Umbrielle said. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Most treasures I kept were hidden.

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

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

Everything that was truly valued, Draconia said.

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

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

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

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

I failed, Draconia said which Umbrielle huffed at.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“And they stole some of it?”

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

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

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

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

“It made the gods targets.”

“Targets for what?”

For the Beast.

For the End of All Things.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Lives in a dead world.”

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

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

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

And in one sense it was.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But they weren’t.

They were alive. Not gems but living beacons.

Living and bound.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

One, Umbrielle said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Or it had been.

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

Assuming there the tree even was something divine.

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

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

Holy Mazana is large.

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

DO NOT BESMIRCH MY CHOSEN ONE.

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

I hoped she never would again.

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

But that wasn’t what she wanted.

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

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

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

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

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

Theia laughed.

At me.

Which was rude.

And mean. And I wanted hit her.

Until she spoke.

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

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

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

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

“Should I just ask you all this then?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Yes Teacher!”

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

“Yes Teacher!”

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

“Pray to the Holy Tree.”

“Confess our sins.”

“Do penance.”

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

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

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

I don’t know.

I should have fought her.

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

No backsliding now. Please.

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

My intruder didn’t fight me though.

She was the one who chuckled.

And then laughed in my face.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Maybe this was Divine Mazana’s will?

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

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

Burn it to the ground.

Burn everything.

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

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

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

Ashes on one hand.

And on the other?

The unknown.

No.

The future. My future.

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

But I wouldn’t be there to see it.

I would be at peace.

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

And what would I have?

Nothing.

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

The future was mine.

Mine.

No matter how long I’d been lied to.

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

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

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

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

They were both me!

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

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

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

Those weren’t the questions I needed answers to.

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

Are you mine? I asked without words.

Am I? came my demon’s answer.

My demon.

Mine.

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

Never be able to deny her.

I wasn’t a good Sylvan.

And I wasn’t possessed.

I was the possessor.

And what did I possess?

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

My goddess’s strength.

YES!

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

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

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

As you are mine.

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

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

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

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

And my intruder?

She was positively gleeful.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Okay, now that does sound like you.

Brat.

Demon.

Flirt.

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

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

“You can hear them too?” I asked.

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

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

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

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

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

A lot of approaching footsteps.

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

The step grew closer and I knew who they were.

The Tenders. Four of them.

And at least a squad of conscripts.

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

Well, maybe any problem.

Fire burns a whole lot of things after all.

You’re only Blessing?

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

Oh Draconia, none of us are.

Almost none of us.

You know of her? You can sense her?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We should be cloaked from them, Umbrielle said.

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

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

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

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

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

And then she hugged me.

And then we vanished.

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

“But teacher, what could attack Holy Mazana?”

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

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

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

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

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

“I wanna fight the Impure!”

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

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

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

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

“I purified this morning,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

Did I smell impure?

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

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

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

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

“Looking for you.”

Which was not what the answer was supposed to be.

“Me?”

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

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

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

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

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

Right?

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

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

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

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

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

And my mind nearly snapped.

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

Which meant she had to come from somewhere.

Somewhere that was Not The Garden.

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

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

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

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

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

Not to all of us.

Not all this time.

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

The.

What?

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

Far off in the distance.

Sorry. You needed the warning.

People were coming.

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

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

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

Then I started singing.

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

And to the liar who had to practice alone.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Why?” my intruder asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But…no.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I was silent.

There were easy, obvious questions I could ask.

Should ask.

Things like “who are you talking to”.

Take your time.

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

“The Blessed?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Have you given any consideration to the eventuality of rebellion?”

“That seems more like a problem you would encounter in your ‘Mount Gloria’. Or have you reconsidered my suggestion of organizing your servants into a worshipful mass?”

“Oh, my people will worship me. Me and not some silly overgrown plant. But rituals? Holy days? Structured observances? Mandatory public appearances? Ugh. No. Far too much work, far too little reward.”

“But the grace we can collect…!”

“I assure you, there are other, far less bothersome methods of extracting grace from a population.”

“Perhaps, but without their love you will always be in danger of the rebellion you are asking me about.”

“Love does not last, but fear? Fear can live on forever.”

“And you think fear will prevent them from turning against you?”

“Not in the slightest. They will all be against me. I will simply assure that they are set against each other even more strongly. That is a stratagem which will be closed to you should you desire their love however.”

“And should that fear fail and they find the courage to turn against you?”

“Visiting destruction on the occasional overly brave fool is a delight I look forward to with some glee.”

“Whereas I will not even need to lift a finger to destroy those who lose their faith in me. My people will strike them down for me and sing my praises as they do.”

– High Accessors Vaingloth and Sisarai discussing minor population maintenance issues prior to the Sunfall

The Garden isn’t a small place. In a sense it was the size of the whole world, given that the rest of the world was a sterile wasteland of death and despair.

Or at least that was what I’d been taught.

The things beyond the Thicket Wall were supposed to be the shattered pieces of the spirits of the Old World, remnants of the failure of the dead gods. By doctrine, they were near mindless machines of malice and destruction. If we could see over the Thicket Walls, we were told that all we would bear witness to was endless despair.

I’d never questioned that.

I’d also never questioned the idea that the Garden was beset by enemies from all sides, including below. Certainly, the enemies had to be real because they killed the defenders who were drafted with agonizing regularity.

So, who were they?

Not just broken spirits randomly lashing out at anyone who came close.

The veterans had plenty of stories of facing enemy troops, and the sorts of daring maneuvers each side pulled against the other (well, ‘daring’ for our forces, ‘underhanded’ for the enemies, because of course they were the hateful aggressors and we were the valiant defenders of the Holy Tree).

In not one of the stories though, and definitely in none of the doctrines, had our enemies ever been depicted as capable of speech.

They weren’t people.

They were monsters.

Which raised a question that filled my mind as I stalked back towards my home.

You just noticed that ‘your Intruder’ talked to you, didn’t you?

I’m not stupid.

What do you think the odds are that you’ll remember that?

Demons are never helpful.

I waited a moment on that thought, but of course no demonic help was forthcoming. She couldn’t find my Intruder for me.

Be very grateful of that.

My capacity for gratitude was as severely diminished as my capacity for rational thought.

Which might have been why I changed course.

I’d been heading home because that was the last place I’d seen my quarry, but she clearly wasn’t there.

Searching the entire Garden wasn’t an option since, as I’d noted, the Garden is impossibly large.

Also, people were already searching for her. 

Lots of people. 

Maybe the Tenders had focused the search in Blueshine. Maybe someone in the borough had caught sight of my Intruder, briefly, and the Tenders had narrowed their search so they wouldn’t alarm the entire Garden.

But that wasn’t how things worked.

Alarming everyone was absolutely their first course of action in most situations.

The True Sight spell they’d tried to teach us was proof of that. It was obviously a dangerous tool that they’d rushed to put in our hands at a time that could not have been coincidental with my Intruder showing up.

That the Tenders were keeping things far quieter than usual screamed that they were afraid of something.

But what could they be afraid of?

Holy Mazana hadn’t abandoned them.

Wait, had it?

I stopped and glanced up at the divine tree that was our sole sky.

I’d blasphemed against my deity, and I could feel the terror and the regret that was waiting for when I had a single instant to consider my actions, but my heart hadn’t abandoned the Holy Tree.

Only it’s minions.

Was god responsible for those?

Or were we supposed to listen to what the First Tender had taught us and work out for ourselves when people were falling short of the grace we’d been taught to cultivate?

I was pretty certain that was not how it was intended to work.

Wisdom and proper judgment were a gift given to us by those who were closer to Holy Mazana. If we thought we knew better than they did, then we were guilty of the sin of Hubris.

The same sin which destroyed the Old World.

I knew I was damned. I knew I wasn’t a good Sylvan. Even thinking the thoughts I was proved that.

Inside though a little spark of the fires of damnation still burned.

And the memory of saving Pulia lingered.

Who I had been was desperately trying to hold me back.

Desperately trying to bring me back to my senses.

Desperately trying to save my life, the life I’d spent so long defending.

I loved her. That girl I’d been.

She’d worked so hard. 

She’d endured so much.

I couldn’t throw away what I had. Not after all she’d invested in it.

“Sister, are you well?” The Tender had been walking past and should have continued, but something had given me away.

“I am blessed to stand in the light of Holy Mazana,” I said, injecting the kind of quiet cheer into my voice that was expected from a devout and faithful aspiring minister.

“What brings you to this place?” the Tender asked, his voice all concern, and his motives clouded.

“My class was released early after a mishap during our instruction. I was going to return home, but I did not wish to place a burden on my household. I thought to find a secluded place for prayer so that I could commune with Holy Mazana and understand how I might serve better when we are called on again tomorrow.”

It was a good lie, and I delivered it without a break or a pause.

Since it was what I was supposed to say, and since the Tender would be able to verify it later if he chose, he didn’t question it further.

“The Red Bark chapel is approved for silent prayer until nightfall,” he said and gestured in the direction of the chapel which I’d clearly already been walking towards.

“Yes Tender. Thank you Tender. If I may ask, is there a chapel approved for song? Our instruction today required an invocation.” I didn’t need to say any more than that. In fact I didn’t dare to. I didn’t need to explain that trying to think of a place where I could sing was why I’d stopped along the road. I also didn’t need to explain to him why I would be looking to practice a skill my class had clearly failed at. A lifetime of subterfuge had taught me that the best lies were the briefest and fewest ones.

“The Grey Deeps chapel will be empty for the next few hours, but you should go to the Red Bark chapel.” It didn’t have to be phrased as an order to be an order.

He was going to check in at the Red Bark chapel later. If he remembered. Either I would be there, or there would be word of me having been there, or he would know I’d been lying.

The smart move would have been to go to the Red Bark chapel, wait a couple of hours, and then leave to continue my search.

I couldn’t be sure I had a couple of hours though.

It felt like I didn’t even have a couple of minutes, but I knew that couldn’t be true I had to will that not to be true. 

I had time.

Not a lot of time. 

But some.

I put my thoughts together as well as I could as I walked to the Red Bark chapel.

And then kept assembling them into something adjacent to a plan as I walked right on by the Red Bark chapel and continued on to the Grey Deeps.

I’d been to the Grey Deeps chapel before. It was where the Blueshine borough celebrated its Renewal Day remembrances, and I’d sung in all of them since I was old enough to join the choir.

Seeing it again, empty and quiet, brought back memories of comfort and safety. The Renewal Day celebrations had been wonderful as a child, mostly for the treats admittedly. Later on though I’d understood the emphasis on remembering those who’d come before us, and had appreciated how the crowd of people kept attention away from me.

Alone in the chapel, those memories swirled around me and seeped in to give the “old me” added weight. The temptation to turn away from all the madness and crawl back into the life I’d worked so hard to build seemed so reasonable, and so right. 

My mother had made me a new tunic for each of the choirs I’d sung in. Could I walk away from that? My family had been so proud of my singing. Could I leave behind the love of everyone I knew? I’d felt like a part of something so much bigger than myself as part of the choir. Could I turn away from everyone who’d sung with me. Everyone who’d supported me?

And wasn’t that what demons did? Led you astray. Made you ungrateful for all the blessings you’d been given. Turned you away from the trust and love that had been freely shared with you.

Except that it hadn’t been free.

The tunics had been a coin paid in service to my mother’s prestige among her friends. My family’s pride hadn’t been in me but rather in the glory they could claim for being a part of a ‘prosperous house’. 

And feeling a part of something bigger?

The choir was a perfect reflection of my life. If I was a part of something bigger it was because I performed as I’d been instructed to. The words we sang weren’t my words, and I wasn’t the one who chose the notes or the tempo. The only role I was allowed to play, the only role that held a place for me in the choir, or in life, was The One Who Surrenders. 

The One Who Is What Someone Else Desires That She Be.

I sat down on one of benches at the back of the chapel. I could sing, or I could scream, cry or break out in hysterical laughter. I was free to rage or go mad and no one would hear or know. It was the perfect spot to put myself together and choose my future with a clear head.

If I’d been alone.

“You are a puzzle.” The speaker was behind me, hidden in the shadows at the back of the chapel, but I didn’t need to turn around to see that.

Or to know who was talking to me.

No one else sounded like my Intruder did.

“They told me you would be the first to let the hunters know where I’d been. But you didn’t.” She walked towards me as she spoke.

“They told me that you might hunt me yourself. Which it seems you did.” She stalked down the aisle beside me and I caught sight of that strange, fluid grace she moved with.

“They told me that you would make yourself bait for a trap, and that all you would do, no, all you could do, was to lure me to my destruction.” She walked down the row of the benches in front of me and stopped so she could sit opposite from me, facing me with her golden eyes.

“But that’s not what you’ve done, is it?” she asked, her eyes searching from something in mine.

“No. It isn’t,” I said.

It wasn’t hard. I’d made my choice.

“Our hands are not our own. Our hands are the hands which serve Holy Mazana.”

“All glory to Holy Mazana. May our hands perform your divine work.”

“Our tongues are not our own. Our tongues are the tongues which give voice to Holy Mazna.”

“All glory to Holy Mazana. May our tongues speak only your divine words.”

“Our eyes are not our own. Our eyes are the eyes which watch the world for Holy Mazana.”

“All glory to Holy Mazana. May our eyes keep watch for your enemies, always and everywhere, till Garden’s End.”

“Till Garden’s End. Amen.”

– The Recitation of Unity spoken at every service to the “divine tree”.

I wasn’t sure what I’d reached out to and I didn’t care what dark power I’d opened myself to. Not in that moment. What was happening to Pulia, my classmate who should have been my role model, was an abomination. It wasn’t just that it shouldn’t be happening. It should have been impossible. It shouldn’t ever have been a part of this or any other world. It was wrong, and the power that I’d called into myself through rage and fear was more than happy to destroy it.

The power took the form of flames, because what else could it be, and the flame was merciless.

It was gleeful.

It raged and hated with an abandon that pushed the entire class away.

Against the power of the Holy Tree it should have been nothing more than a dying candle spark. I should have been nothing more. Just a flickering, insignificant wisp, powerless to even be noticed by something so vast and eternal and godly.

But that wasn’t the story the flame told itself.

The flame didn’t care about how weak it was. It simply burned.

For all the roaring madness at the heart of it though, it didn’t burn out of control. It wasn’t wanton destruction. It had a purpose and a focus. Its searing heat devoured the vines and branches which were breaking Pulia. Its maw of blistering fire opened wide and tore the warped projection of Holy Mazana first into pieces and then into ash.

But it never touched Pulia.

The flames were rage against what was being done to her. To injure her further was unthinkable.

It felt like we baked under the glare of the flames heat for hours but in real time I’m sure it was less than a minute before they subsided leaving Pulia fractured and crumpled on the ground but free at last.

Once again, someone with more sense than me – Delia, I had at least enough awareness this time to notice who it was – commanded us, “She’s free! Healing! Now!”

That was all that almost two dozen Aspiring Ministers needed. We knew how to heal. We were good at it. And Pulia was one of us.

The damage she’d sustained was considerable, but the restorative power that over twenty healers can bring to bear when we do not care about exhausting ourselves was frankly as frightening as the flames had been.

Pulia wasn’t just restored to health. We raised her up in a column of verdant light, pouring so much rejuvenation into her that she literally glowed for a moment.

And then we brought her down to rest.

Delia was there to hold Pulia as Pulia descended and we turned from invoking our gifts to fussing over our formerly injured classmate to make sure we didn’t need to hit her with even more healing.

We did not. She was fine.

Well, except for the part where she was sobbing uncontrollably into Delia’s shoulder.

We’d healed her body. She was in perfect health, probably better than when she’d walked into class in fact.

Healing a body and healing a mind are very different things though. Magic could restore bones and muscle, could close wounds and restore lost blood. Taking away memories however? If there was magic for that, our instructors had never breathed a whisper of it and Holy Mazana had never gifted any of us with anything even vaguely in that domain.

One of the few wise choices they ever made.

Thanking my demon was impossible. Demons didn’t want our thanks, only our destruction.

But I was still grateful. I shouldn’t have been. Using that power had definitely damned me. But I was already damned, and it had saved Pulia, so…

So I didn’t care. 

It was worth it.

Even thinking that made my stomach tumble end over end.

“We should get back to our seats,” Delia said. “Instructor Garvas will be back with assistance soon and will want to see us in proper order.”

Of course. Of course. Put the mask back on. Be good. Be composed. Everything was okay. We didn’t have to be a problem at all.

I watched as a sea of expression shifted from shock and concern mixed with relief to silent, inoffensive, placidity. It was easy to do. Well, easy for me. I’d spent a lot of time working on my mask. It was simpler to put on that my night linens were.

How did the others manage it so well though? None of them had a lifetime of practice at hiding who they were? Right?

Not an easy thing to talk with someone about.

But why would anyone have needed to hide like me unless they were possessed too?

Did you learn to hide your emotions the moment we met?

Or had I been practicing that already…

Had that been what I’d been taught to do my whole life?

I cast my eyes down, like many of my classmates were doing, adopting a demeanor of prayerful introspection and calm, as ideas I’d always discounted loomed large enough to cast a shadow on all of my memories.

Had I ever known my classmates at all?

Did I know anyone at all?

I’d been focused on making sure no one knew me. Dedicated to carefully monitoring my behavior and reactions. Had I failed to notice the women around me doing the same thing?

An image of my father flashed through my mind. Sitting in prayer. Or was it “prayer”. Did I have any real idea what his thoughts centered on while we were praying together?

My mother seemed so clearly who she presented herself to be. She was so consistent in her demands that we be ‘good Sylvans’ and in her unwavering faith in the Holy Tree and the Tenders.

But she’d had so much longer to practice than I had.

Were they possessed like me? No. I knew when and how I messed up and I’d never seen them make those kinds of mistakes. And it was ridiculously unlikely that they’d have run into a demon like I had. 

They didn’t need to be possessed though. All they needed to be was afraid. Or ‘devout’. We were taught to ‘love and fear’ Holy Mazana and that always seemed strange to me. What was there to fear in the Divine Tree when we loved it and it loved us? It cherished and nurtured us. It kept us safe from the enemies beyond the Thicket Wall. It was what kept our fears at bay, it was what we prayed to for deliverance from all evils. Our devotion was supposed to be based on love.

It was because of our love that we gave our bodies, our hearts, and our lives to the Holy Tree, so that we could be judged a pure and worthy and given shelter under Holy Mazana’s boughs.

Always with the love though, there was fear.

Fear that we wouldn’t be able to give enough. Fear that what was offered would be deemed worthless. Fear that something we did would reveal us as impure to everyone.

Long before I became demon possessed, I’d known that fear. That if I was a bad Sylvan, if I disagreed, or asked to many questions, or failed to be what other people wanted that I would be denied a place in society. Shunned and cast out. 

Being tossed over the Thicket Wall was a physical representation of that but even people who hadn’t committed an offense worthy of that punishment could face others turning away. Could lose the very conditional respect which separated those who had a future and would live well from those who would be at best barely tolerated and even then only if they found some means to be useful to their betters.

My musings on the possible hypocrisy of our entire society was cut short by the return of our instructor, more than a few minutes later, with several other instructors in tow.

He looked stunned to find the class in order (Pulia had managed to compose herself and was seated with her head bowed in ‘deepest prayer’). The other instructors looked both relieved and incredulous, as though seeing our calm serenity made a lie of whatever report they’d heard.

“What happened here?” our instructor asked, looking at the Blessed Circle where he’d probably been expecting to find a girl torn to pieces by the ministry’s newest piece of divine vegetation. 

He hadn’t indicated which of us should answer, so we all dutifully waited to be called on specifically.

Or, the other girls probably did that.

I was wracking my brain for anything I could say other than “I burned a manifestation of the Holy Tree to ash when you ran away like a coward”.

“Delia. Recount.” Why he chose her I couldn’t say for sure but it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d looked up and made eye contact with him.

“There was a miscast of the True Vision gift. After you left to bring assistance, we moved to use our healing gifts to buy time. Holy Mazana intervened and sent us a gift of Fire which countered the miscast True Vision spell and allowed us to restore the damage which had been sustained with our combined healing gifts. With the crisis past, we returned to our assigned seats and have prayed for guidance while we awaited your return.”

That…that was such a better story than any of the ones I’d been cooking up.

Even better the whole class seemed to be complete agreement with Delia.

It wasn’t that one of us (me) had summoned fire to destroy a spell of nightmare that “Holy Mazana” had granted to Pulia. No, of course not. The casting of the spell had been what was wrong and Holy Mazana had intervened to save us.

Huh. And you’re not buying into that? Will wonders never cease. Maybe “sooner” actually is coming.

 I would be saying a bajillion prayer tonight to make up for today, but for the moment I wasn’t going to care what sort of blasphemies my mind was embracing.

Good.

Which it wasn’t, but for the time being I wasn’t going to argue that.

We’d saved Pulia, and if my being a bad Sylvan had been responsible then…

Then I had no idea what that meant.

“Yes, well, in light of mistakes like these, it seems that none of you are not ready to share in this aspect of Holy Mazana’s grace. You are all dismissed for the day. Leave here and spend the day in prayer and purification so that tomorrow you might be worthy to bear the burden of seeing what must be seen.”

It took us all a moment to understand that we were being given the day off.

It was weird. It was unsettling. It was unprecedented.

Normally if we failed a test (and they didn’t simply expel the failures), they confined us to the ministry’s chapel where we were supervised for at least a few hours of silent prayer. Or a few hours of exaltant hymns (until our voices gave out). 

Letting us go though? Home? Where was the punitive bite to that?

Unsurprisingly, no one waited around to find out.

In calm and orderly formation, we rose and left the classroom, exiting exactly as we would have at the end of the day.

But this time we had hours and hours open to us.

Time without any greater restriction on how we spent it than to seek a greater oneness with Holy Mazana.

The other girls peeled off, heading towards their homes, but I knew what was need to bring me oneness with my deity.

Prayer wasn’t going to help and meditation was waste of time.

I needed action.

I needed to find my Intruder.

“You’ve chosen the Sylvans as your primary peoples? The plantlings?”

“They are not plants, but yes. Quite lovely aren’t they?”

“Weren’t you the one chidding me about picking beautiful people for my city?”

“I most certainly was not. You, I hasten to remind you, claimed to be selecting for beauty and then you picked all of the most hideous specimens put before you, one right after another. That is what I was chiding you for.”

“Trust me my Most Honorable Sisarai, the people I have selected are very much the most beautiful, though it is also true that beauty is very much in the eye of the beholder.”

“Perhaps, but even you must behold how splendid my Sylvans are?”

“Splendid dupes perhaps. Tell me, don’t you expect it will grow tiresome having them fawning all over you for eternity?”

“I can not imagine why it would? As the newly arisen gods of this world, fawning admires will be a cornerstone to continuing our ascension.”

“Right up until the turn on you.”

“Oh, my Sylvans shall never turn on me. After all they won’t be worshipping me directly. All their grace shall be directed towards the Holy Tree. I will merely remain a humble Accessor, though that title must fall away.”

“A false god makes for a clever receptacle I must admit. What if they should decide to burn it though?”

“If it comes to that then I of course will be the only leading the procession, torch in hand. Then we shall plant a new tree, a better tree, and the cycle will begin all over again.”

– High Accessors Dyrena and Sisarai comparing notes on the people they intended to save from the Sunfall.

I’d experienced mishaps with invoking Mazana’s gifts before. Pretty much everyone who ever sung for one had. Hit a flat note, sing at too little or too much volume, hesitate for a moment or rush one note into the next, there were so many methods of fumbling a gift and so many forms the backlash could take. 

The good news was that the backlash from a first attempt at invoking a gift was rarely significant or long lasting. Annoying and embarrassing in almost all cases, but never deadly or permanent. With the magic that we called being almost entirely external to ourselves and our ability to draw it in being as weak as it ever would be, most first time invokers were simply incapable of getting themselves into much trouble.

The bad news, because there’s always bad news where I’m concerned, was that the darkness that swallowed my sight was not a backlash. Like I said, I knew backlashes and what happened to me when I called to be gifted with Holy Mazana’s True Sight was not a backlash or a mistake on my part. I knew that but in the instant my vision vanished I knew nothing else at all.

Apologies. That was me.

Why my demon would Take My EYES AWAY was worrisome. Worse than that though, the fact that she could take Mazana’s gift away was terrifying on an existential level.

That ‘gift’ wasn’t what it claimed to be. At all.

But it was from Holy Mazana! Darkness and evil can’t overcome the Divine Tree’s light!

I don’t know why I’d suddenly rediscovered my faith, or maybe I hadn’t ever really lost it. Maybe the little crisis I’d been hit by had just been fatigue-induced stupidity.

Except I wasn’t feeling fatigued anymore.

Thanks to a demonic blessing.

I should reject it. It had to be putting my soul in jeopardy to be benefitting from a demon’s gifts.

You should open your eyes. I’ve been saying that for years, but this time I mean it in a ‘right this second’ sense. 

I did.

I shouldn’t have.

Listening to a demon? That was the definition of the corruption which led to eternal damnation.

But I had to. Because she was right. The whole class would have seen me fumble the invocation. The longer I suffered the backlash, the more they’d understand the depths of my failure. I could have been expelled for that one mishap alone.

I probably should have been tossed out.

I was listening to demons. 

And dreaming about intruders.

And I was going to do something very foolish in regards to the latter of those, I could feel it building inside me already.

But I opened my eyes anyways, blinking out the darkness to find the world bathed in a golden light, every little mundane piece of it shining with a magic that I wanted.

“That was an excellent attempt Jilya,” the instructor said. “You all heard the answer to the notes of the invocation did you not? Had she known the second verse of the song, Holy Mazana’s gift would have settled within her and we would see a her eyes alight with the green glow of the divine.”

I nodded in agreement, as did the rest of the class. That was the response to anything our instructors told us, and came as a pure reflex despite the vast gulf between what he was saying and what I had experienced. Or what I was experiencing.

You can let the blessing go whenever you’re ready.

She was right.

I could.

I didn’t want to though.

The world was gorgeous.

My classmates were ethereal.

Our instructor…

A lifetime of practice kept me from recoiling visibly but it did disrupt my concentration enough that I lost my hold on whatever gift I’d called to myself.

“You may return to your seat Jilya.”

I didn’t want to.

I wanted to stay there and find that gift, damned or not. 

But of course my feet carried me back at the properly decorous pace and I took my seat with an eager smile on my face to show the expected gratitude for having been called on to receive special attention.

Special and unwanted attention.

Attention designed to weed me out when what I wanted…

That wasn’t a safe line of thinking to follow. The instructor hadn’t been trying to weed me out. I was one of the better students in class at new invocation. Not the best, but definitely unlikely to fail badly enough to need any kind of severe correction.

I still didn’t want the attention though, what I wanted was the golden sight gift. The memory of how beautiful the world could be spoke to something in my obviously completely damned soul. How could I never have even caught a glimpse before of what the gift had shown me?

Was I refusing to think about what I’d seen when I looked at the instructor? Yes. Yes I was. Clearly that was a demon’s lie. That someone so blessed by Holy Mazaa could look…could look like that?

No.

I wanted the gift, but I didn’t want that.

Never that.

When you’re ready. And not in quite so much peril.

Demon promises. Doctrine says they’re lies. Always lies.

So why was I sure this one wasn’t?

You’re going to figure out the answer to that any day now. I’ve been telling myself that for years, but I still believe it.

Class had moved on to teaching the full formula for the invocation of Holy Mazana’s True Sight, but the details were complex enough that even my classmates, who hadn’t lost focus for a few minutes like I had, probably weren’t going to be able to keep it all straight.

“Let us see how well you all are following to this point,” the instructor said after several more confusing minutes. He started scanning classroom looking for another victim…no, I couldn’t think like that, ‘volunteer’ was the right term because we’d all chosen to be here. Anything that was asked of us we’d already agreed to when we chose this path.

Someday. Someday soon.

She sounded so tired. As though I was terribly wrong about something. Which was ridiculous. She was the demon. It was listening to her that was wrong!

“Pulia,” the instructor said, choosing a girl thankfully nowhere near me. 

 Pulia wasn’t going to have a problem with the exercise. Unlike me, she was as pure and dutiful as we were all supposed to be. We’d never talked much. We weren’t meant to talk since we were supposed to be listening, at least most of the time. On the few occasions where we’d studied together though, I’d been impressed with how peaceful she was, and how quick her grasp of the subject matter had been. 

There’s wasn’t much sense of competition between my classmates and I largely because we were all perfectly capable of failing on our own. While the tests we were put to were often harsh and difficult, there was never a limit to the number of people who could pass them. 

Or at least not an official one. Many tests over the years had seemed unequal in their application, with the students the instructors disliked being the primary ones to be tested to be their destruction.

Pulia had never been one of those students and if our instructor was calling on her, it was because he wanted to be sure the gift’s invocation was performed properly since no one else was likely to have followed his directions as closely or well as Pulia had.

She took her spot in the center of the Blessed Circle I’d stood in and raised her voice in much the same song I had.

For a too-fleeting instant, the memory of how she’d looked in the Golden Vision came back to me and my breath caught in my throat.

I’d been impressed with her talent for a while. How had I missed just how beautiful she was though?

I’m sorry.

My demon wasn’t apologizing for denying me the knowledge of Pulia’s beauty.

You are the only one I can protect.

I…I couldn’t make sense of that. Protect? Me?

Pulia’s scream cut right through my confusion though.

Flowers sprouted from her. Glowing with holy light.

They were followed by vines and then branches.

At all angles.

Angles a body should never have been twisted into.

But they didn’t kill her.

They weren’t that kind.

As the flowers bloomed open, each revealed a lidless, searching eye inside, and as each opened, Pulia’s scream rose, her song shattered and abandoned.

This was not a backlash either.

Not even for someone as talented as Pulia.

The instructor saw that.

But the flash of horror in his eyes bore no element of surprise.

He’d known.

I felt fire rising in my chest.

He’d known this could happen.

My skin began to sizzle.

We can’t…

Now was not the time to listen to a demon.

I didn’t growl.

Not audibly.

The instructor’s gaze nonetheless snapped to the rest of his class and then back to Pulia.

More branches stretched her out, pulling muscles and bones into agony.

And he fled.

Turned and ran from the classroom.

Without a word, without a sound.

For a moment the only thing I could hear was the sound of bone snapping.

“We need to help her.” 

I wasn’t the one who said it. I’m not a good Sylvan. One of my classmates was though. Or all of them, since we all leapt from our seats to fly to Pulia’s side.

Reflexively, no one touched her.

All of us knew the price of breaking the Blessed Circle.

It was the only thing keeping us safe from the horror that was happening to Pulia.

“Healing. We can share a healing gift with her,” one of my other classmates suggested.

A glimpse of memory hit me again. She was as beautiful as Pulia was. They all were.

All of them so brave (I was always afraid).

All of them willing to sacrifice themselves (I only wanted to live).

All of them at peace with what was right (And I was so, so very wrong).

But so was this.

I held out my hand with the rest and called on our gifts.

Pulia wasn’t going to die.

We wouldn’t let her.

She was mine.

Flame roared and for an instant all I saw was red and gold.

And all I felt was power.

So long dormant.

So long unclaimed.

So long to the girl I’d once been.

But if this was damnation, then it was glorious.