Monthly Archives: October 2025

Fledgling Gods – Forging Faith – Ch 6

“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.

Fledgling Gods – Forging Faith – Ch 5

“And when your wall fails to keep out the undesirables?”

“It won’t.”

“You mean to say that your plan, in it’s entirety, which is meant to last forever and protect you against all manner of divine fragments, shattered spirits, and, presumably whatever scavengers manage to scrape together an existence outside our domains is to simply ‘not fail’? That’s really the beginning and end of your preparations?”

“Yes, though not how you are supposing.”

“Well then enlighten me if you would be so kind my dear Sasirai?”

“Certainly. Ask me this question though; given that the gods themselves are not proof against destruction, what defense can withstand any conceivable assault?”

“One which considers every possibly avenue of attack and plans for them all?”

“And this is your plan, in it’s entirety? To simply be so brilliant in the limited time we have that eternity itself cannot overmatch your cleverness?”

“We must each play to our strengths.”

“Oh, I am very much playing to my strengths. You see my wall will never fail because the Thickets aren’t the true wall which will defend me. They can be bypassed, or burned, or torn down, though it will take a rather monumental force to manage that. Enough that the divine fragments, and shattered spirits, and scavengers will probably believe them to be impenetrable enough to not even warrant an attempt at breeching them.”

“And for those who choose not to believe that.”

“Then they will find my people waiting for them. My loyal, faithful, and entirely expendable people.”

– High Accessors Vaingloth and Sasirai reviewing their plans for the defense of the Last Cities.

I ate my breakfast with a smile of relief. (Fake). Food at last! (I wasn’t paying attention and had no idea what it was) We could all agree that we were starving after that joyful assembly! (I was too full of worry to have any room in my stomach at all).

“Be home early tonight, we will need help preparing for your brother’s celebration” my mother said as I finished the last of the…I guess it was bread?…on my plate and rose to do my part of the clean up work after breakfast. 

Everyone was in a hurry and rushing through the chores which had been delayed by the gathering at the Roothall. That didn’t mean the work was sloppy though. My mother passed back every plate which wasn’t cleaned to a new shine since our period of judgment had started the moment we returned home and any impurity would be weighed heavily against us.

Not that there were any Tender Acolytes around inspecting the quality of our chores.

Why would there be? They didn’t weren’t actually measuring us for purity. All they cared about was finding an intruder they wouldn’t even tell us about.

I nodded and offered an unreserved and cheerful ‘yes mother!’ even as I felt my muscles turning to jelly and breakfast making a solid attempt at a return trip. 

It wasn’t Kam’s fault I was terrified and weak and sick. I had a responsibility to do my part for his celebration, so I would be there. If I couldn’t manage that everyone would be angry enough that they’d toss me over the Thicket without any need to notice I was possessed.

Here, my demon said and my nausea subsided. I’m not going to do anything about the worry. Not that she couldn’t, I noticed, she wouldn’t. That’s right. Wouldn’t. You’re enough of a mess, and I’ve never been a delicate touch with things like minds.

I couldn’t thank a demon. 

But I still felt grateful.

She wasn’t wrong that I was a wreck and keeping that hidden was probably only possible because people were so distracted by the upcoming festival.

Normally I would have had almost a half hour after breakfast for prayer, purification, and proper dressing. That wouldn’t have been enough for me to put myself together, not after a night without sleep, but it would have been something.

The five minutes I had to put on my Ministerial Apprentice robes and say the bare minimum of prayers not only failed to let me catch my breath, they drained what little energy sitting down for breakfast had given me.

My robes had to be perfect, as usual, and I couldn’t run to make up the lost time, both because I was too tired to manage even a jog and, more importantly, because Ministerial Apprentices were expected to behave with demure decorum at all times.

That’s quite convenient. For someone.

I knew that! Damn demon! Did she think I was stupid?

I couldn’t help it. Anger broke the serene rictus I’d held my face masked in. 

I wanted to cry so bad I felt tears welling up in the corner of my eyes and snapped them shut.

One foot in front of another.

Breath.

Go slack.

Rebuild expression.

Rebuild posture.

Keep walking.

Open eyes.

Smile.

Everything was wonderful

I was safe.

I was among the faithful.

I knew what was expected of me, and what I needed to do.

I was a good Sylvan.

I was a faithful Daughter of the Garden

I was untroubled and clean of mind and body, ready to give all that I am and all I could be to Holy Mazana from which all life and grace flows.

It wasn’t a prayer. It wasn’t structured or devout.

But that didn’t matter.

If I gave myself to it, if I believed, then I could make it real.

And if I could make it real, I could live.

And I wanted to live.

They wouldn’t take that from me.

No one saw that. You’re still safe.

My fatigue lessened (unnaturally, thanks Demon). My worry diminished (or at least it didn’t shatter me, but the lessening wasn’t unnatural, thanks weird brain juices). I continued on (because what else could I do?).

By the time I got to the Ministry of Piety, I’d regained…well if not my composure, at least enough numbness to put my usual mask back on.

My demon wanted to say something. I could feel…I don’t know…concern? Something. But she was quiet. 

Best to not provoke the mess of a girl you were possessing when she was so close to falling apart I guess.

You’re not falling apart.

My demons words weren’t a reassurance. They were almost a threat? Or a promise?

I pushed them aside and stepped into the Ministry to find the line assembling for my first class. I was late enough that I wound up third from last, when I was usually the second out of the twenty four girls I took classes with.

In quiet submittal, we filed down the hall when our instructor arrived, past all the younger children who were doing the preliminary work to be able to test into the Ministry.

I’d passed those tests years ago.

Despite being possessed.

Which probably should have told me something.

More blasphemy? I was too tired to scold myself about it.

I’ll remind you later.

Good. Good. Having a source of personal torment was great for remaining faithful it seemed.

You are not as incorrect as you imagine there.

Our instructor rapped on his lectern.

Apparently we’d arrived in class and I’d taken my seat.

“Many gifts have been granted to you by Holy Mazana though you are as yet unworthy of them. Let us offer a prayer of our unending gratitude that we may make ourselves a pleasing receptacle for Holy Mazana’s grace and wisdom.”

I was not a natural singer, but, even tired as I was, I raised my voice high in song along with my fellow students. 

The prayer was brief but it spoke to things I could still believe in. My unworthiness. The feeling of calm serenity that was gifted to us when we exercised the gifts Holy Mazana had granted us. Our pledge to strive for ever greater purity no matter how debased we were.

By the time the song was done, my mind was centered and my body was balanced enough that I was ready for the test which followed.

It wasn’t a surprise, despite there having been no announcement of a test today. Most of our classes were tests, either implicit ones where the instructors were watching for signs that our grasp on Mazana’s gifts were flawed, or the explicit ones were we were called upon to demonstrate the techniques for the coming lecture.

Failure in the explicit tests came in two varieties. For those who performed the new and untaught technique close to correctly, there was acceptance. For those who displayed a lack of the fundamentals the techniques were based on, there was dismissal.

Like many of the other girls, I feared dismissal because we had all grown old enough to be clothed as Aspirant Brides if the Ministry judged it had no need of us.

Some girls preferred that of course. They either knew who would select them as brides and were agreeable to the arrangement, or they held so little aptitude for the gifts Mazana bestowed on us that they didn’t see a point in struggling with the Ministry tests and being flunked out early.

I’d opted for the Ministry path for several reasons, one of which being that I found working on the gifts I’d been given soothing. It brought me closer to the serenity of Mazana’s light than anything else. (I’d also watched each season’s crop of husbands since I’d come of age and there really hadn’t been any winners in their ranks in years).

“Today’s test will be one of sight and perception,” the instructor explained. “With Holy Mazana’s blessing, our eyes can look beyond the mundane and glimpse the sublime glories of the heavens and the profane depredations of the hells. Through these glimpses we can understand where corruption lies and spy those who have been led astray.”

Should that have worried me? Better question, was I capable of worrying any more than I already was? Answer to question the second, no. Answer to question the first, also no.

In theory, if anyone could do what the instructor was requesting we do, I would have been instantly revealed and dead moments later. Since I was still painfully alive though I knew that Mazana’s gift of sight was for a different sort of corruption than the kind which afflicted me.

Mazana’s blessed sight revealed rot and fungal infection and other physical maladies. The claims of it revealing spiritual issues were possibly true, but only the First Tender or maybe a saint had a close enough connection to the Holy Light to reveal that sort of thing.

“Who will demonstrate the Blessed Eyes technique?” the instructor asked and swept the class with his gaze until, of course, because I am cursed, he landed on me. “Jilya. Rise and come show the class how the Blessed Eyes are invoked.”

Only invoked? 

Huh.

He was going easy on us.

Almost like he actually wanted to teach us something?

Like a good Daughter of the Garden would have, I rose immediately, made no complaint, showed no signs of discomfort, and went to the front of the class to stand in the Blessed Circle.

There were a lot of ‘Blessed’ things in the ministry. And a lot of ‘Holy’ things. And a lot of ‘Divine’, and ‘Sacred’, and so on things. In the case of the ‘Blessed Circles” though the term always seemed well warranted to me.

Asking untrained people to call on gifts they had, at best, dubious control over would have been perilous in the extreme without the ability of Blessed Circles to limit to scale and scope of the manifestations of those gifts.

I’d been afraid long, long ago that in using an unknown gift I might call my Demon out into bodily form, but the Blessed Circles had ensured that never happened, and so had earned a great deal of trust from me.

The slight tingle I felt as I stepped into the circle confirmed it was alive and once again I placed my trust in it.

Only for that trust to be betrayed.

My call for the unfamiliar gift of sight rose to Holy Mazana along with my song, clear and bright.

What descended and filled my eyes was neither though.

Mazana didn’t bless me with sight.

Instead darkness poured into me and the whole world went black.

Fledgling Gods – Forging Faith – Ch 4

“Rituals. Rituals are the lifeline by which we are led to the future. In their repetition, we strive ever closer to perfection. In our acceptance of them, we cultivate the humility to accept the greater wisdom of the Holy Tree and its speaker the First Tender into our hearts. Though we be flawed and sinful creatures, through their divine grace are we redeemed and made worthy of the lives they gift us and sustain through all the days we are allotted.”

– from the Children’s Catechism as taught to all young Sylvan as they prepare for their First Confirmation.

I wanted to fight to bring Kam back.

Which.

Wow.

Kam? Really? I mean, he was an annoying brat at the best of times.

And fighting the Tender Acolytes?

I wasn’t just tired. I’d gone insane.

Kam being selected for a special duty? That was an incredible honor! Our lives, our hopes, our every desire, Holy Mazana was due all of that and more. 

I was a daughter of the Garden. I wasn’t a good Sylvan, but rebelling against the Tenders? No. Absolutely not. I was not that lost. I would never be that lost!

“You will be able serve as well, sister,” the Tender Acolyte said.

I froze, a spike of ice spearing my heart as I forced my feature to show none of the panic that gripped me.

The Acolyte had seen my turmoil when they called Kam out from the line and I’d been impossibly lucky that they’d mistaken it for jealousy of Kam’s holy opportunity.

Idiots.

You’re not wrong about that.

I cast my eyes down and gave a solid nod to acknowledge that I had heard and accepted the truth of the Acolytes words.

Well, one of those wasn’t a lie I guess.

I kept my head firmly down and my face alight with the glory of having been spoken to by a Tender Acolyte. I’d been so lucky, to be graced with even a few words from one of them, and a promise at that! That I could be useful!

Those thoughts don’t taste terribly good do they?

They had to. I couldn’t be doing this. Not here. Not now. They were looking for someone and we could not let them find me.

We?

I, I couldn’t let them find me. My demon wasn’t going to help with that.

Silence? She wasn’t going to torment me further?

I exhaled a long, slow breath.

Of course she wasn’t. If I was found out, she would be too. Or maybe it was just that if I was tossed over the Thicket, she wouldn’t be able to torment me for very long afterwards.

The silence took on the quality of a huff of disapproval, but no words broke the sanctity of my thoughts.

That lasted until we reached the Roothall and found our seats, happily near the center of congregation.

When I was little, being in the center had been both terrible and wonderful. Terrible, because I always wanted to be closer to be able to see what was going on, and, if I was really lucky, be one of the ones selected to take part in whatever ceremony we were celebrating. Wonderful because it was so easy to feel Holy Mazana’s grace when I was surrounded by so many people united in song and prayer.

They promised us that union with the Divine Tree would lift our souls and carry us to the bliss of Mazana’s heavenly embrace, and in those celebrations I caught glimpses of that heaven. Everyone united in joy and purpose. An overflowing of love and clear sense of being part of something so much greater than our own tiny lives. 

Faith’s reward wasn’t immortality, it was to look on the beauty of creation and understand that we are a part of that beauty.

That was then though.

Before I became impure.

Sitting in the mid-section of the congregation was still terrible and wonderful, but the terror came from the pressing mass of people around me, denying me escape, or respite, or time alone to process my thoughts where I didn’t have to control every twitch of every muscle. The wonder, which held far less strength than it used to, came from the fact that the people around me were as much camouflage as peril. Any of them might notice something was wrong with me, but none of them did, or ever would, I believed, because none of them noticed me. 

I’d made myself the epitome of ordinary and in doing so ensured that I’d become something like a walking blindspot. I wasn’t seen because I wasn’t worth seeing.

Instead, at least in the Roothall, all eyes were on the pulpit, all ears tuned for what the Tender Acolyte who stood behind it was about to say.

I couldn’t look to see what my mother and father were doing. I couldn’t look to confirm how anyone was handling Kam’s loss. Were they ecstatic to have one of our own chosen for a special duty? Was mother secretly upset to have lost her favorite son? Was father concerned about the circumstances which required an unofficial draft? I didn’t know and I couldn’t know. I had to be lost in prayer. Just like all the others daughters of the Garden. Our role was always to pray, unless we were given other instructions.

So I prayed, or at least pretended to. It was hard to muster the proper piety when my imagination was tearing off in a hundred different directions though.

Before I could get far on formulating any of the questions which had arisen, the last of the families had gathered, taken their seats, and the Tender Acolyte began to speak.

“Welcome and good morning, Holy Children.”

So, the typical greeting. It relaxed people. Nothing too bad was coming.

“We have been called to attendance this day by the duty and obedience owed to Divine Mazana.”

No extra announcements. Just right to the point. Half the crowd breath a sigh of relief since that meant we’d be able to get back to our breakfasts sometime before lunch rolled around. The other half were put on edge again though since getting right to the point suggested something serious was afoot.

Guess which half I was in?

“A Divine Decree has been issued for a Festival of Purification!”

He sounded excited, so the congregation became excited.

“In one week’s time, all families shall come before the Holy Tree, proffer their love and devotion and receive a special blessing based on their purity and sanctity as a worshipping collective.”

So we were going to be judged by the worst member of each family. Great.

“Only your behaviors during the purification week will just counted for or against you. Already a Special Task Force has been assembled to search for impurities outside of your direct control, and at the end of the Festival they shall be rewarded with a special service held by the First Tender where he will dispense Mazana’s wisdom and allow them to ask the questions closest to their hearts.”

I had to look up at that to see if the Acolyte was being serious.

A service lead by the First Tender? For a simple cleaning duty? And they were allowed to speak to him?

From the congregation a chorus of pleased gasps rose up signaling to the uncertain members that this was a good thing.

Except it wasn’t.

A service with the First Tender was a far greater reward than a group organized to sweep up the unused areas of the Garden deserved.

Which meant they were going to be responsible for something far more important than sweeping.

Like, for example, finding a graceful intruder who’d somehow, impossibly, made it through the Thicket Walls.

Or the people she was with?

I’d been thinking she’d come alone, but how likely was that? Getting through the Thicket was impossible. Flying over it, or digging under it should have been impossible too, but what was impossible for any one person, might be doable if enough other people worked at it.

Images of an invasion flashed past my eyes.

Had my greed for keeping my own life doomed us all? We knew exactly what was outside the walls. Dead things. And broken ones. The residue of a destroyed world. Those who weren’t worthy of the Garden’s safety and the Holy Tree’s sheltering light.

We, the Children of the Garden were stronger and more righteous than anyone outside our walls and they hated us for that. It was why no one survived being thrown over the walls. It was why Holy Mazana had grown the walls in the first place. 

Together we could fight them, but the walls were a big part of that. If the monsters beyond the walls had learned to pass through them, blood, Sylvan blood, would run in the streets and if our faith wavered in the face of such an assault, the Holy Tree would burn.

That was the monsters’ true goal after all. For as much as they hated us, their fanatical devotion to Mazana’s destruction was legendary.

Legendary, of, or relating to a story passed down from the past.

Yes. Because we’d known that for as long as there’d been a Garden.

Or as long as the First Tender has been telling you that was how things were.

Blasphemy. To question the First Tender’s teachings was blasphemy.

So I had to reject her.

I should have rejected the demon’s assertion automatically. She was a demon. Nothing she said could be believed.

And yet?

To truly reject its words though, I had confess. If I truly believed that there was a threat to the Garden, no, worse, a threat to Holy Mazana, I had to confess.

I had to.

I had to.

I started gathering my courage.

It was time. I had to explain what I’d seen. I had to do everything I could to make sure the Holy Tree was safe.

Even if that meant sacrificing myself.

It was what was expected of us.

Our lives were given to us to serve the Holy Tree.

The highest duty we could fulfill was to die in its defense.

Countless Saints had done the same, and even the lowliest of us could rise and become a Saint too.

I wanted to live but I knew the Holy Tree was more important than I was.

Than anyone was.

I waited for my demon to taunt me. To poke at the corners of my argument.

To call me a hypocrite.

But she was waiting. 

Patiently.

Hopefully?

Was she a trial sent to test me? To see if I could find a path back to purity and the Holy Tree’s divine graces?

I am no test.

Wounded pride? I felt like I’d insulted my demon.

What else would be new?

My confession. That would be new.

I looked inside for the courage to do what I knew was right. What I had to do.

The Tender Acolyte was droning on about purity, and the value of the Tree’s blessing, and blah, blah, blah stuff they’d told us a thousand times already.

Why couldn’t he have just given us an hour of mediation? If he would have just shut up I would have been able to work up the nerve to rise and confess what I knew.

Blasphemy?

My demon wasn’t supposed to be the one asking me that.

But I was weak.

Much too weak.

I couldn’t rise.

I couldn’t do what was right.

I was too afraid. 

I didn’t want to die.

I didn’t want my family to be cast down because of me.

I was too weak, and scared, and not a good daughter of the Garden at all.

Or, and I know coming from me this won’t be something you can accept, but consider if you will this question; can you not act because you can’t do the right thing, or because you aren’t sure what the right thing is?

But I knew what the right thing to do was.

I’d been told what was right all my life.

Questioning that was a sin.

So why didn’t it feel like a sin?

I needed to talk to someone.

But it couldn’t be my father or mother.

Or Kam.

And certainly not the Tender Acolytes.

I didn’t want to even think the next words that came to my mind.

The intruder.

She was the one I needed to talk to.

I needed her to confess that she’d come to destroy the Holy Tree.

Then I could act. Then I would know for sure. Then my sacrifice would have meaning.

Fledgling Gods – Forging Faith – Ch 3

“Plants? You intend to protect your city with plants?”

“Not plants my dear Vaingloth. Thickets.”

“Which are plants are they not?”

“The ones you maybe familiar with? Yes. The ones which I will grow will be a bit more…divine in nature shall we say.”

“Ah, planning ahead. Good. Should you fail to capture your principal target though won’t you be in some additional peril?”

“Oh, it matters not who I can ensnare, any sort of divine energies will serve as the Thicket’s foundation. It’s true supports will be far stronger than the foolish deities we will overthrow.”

– High Accessors Vaingloth and Sasirai comparing notes on their planned domains prior to the Sunfall

So clearly, after the intruder’s departure, I went back to bed, fell instantly asleep and woke refreshed and unbothered in the morning. Also the Holy Tree is a tiny shrub, the Thicket Walls are soft and paper thin, and the Tender Acolytes are very forgiving of people just enjoying a lazy, sleepy morning whenever they feel like.

By the time Mazana’s glow began to rise after the long hours of the night, I wished nothing more than all of that could be true. Wishes, especially impure ones, never come true though. Instead, I was a wreck. A complete and total, sleepless disaster. Summoning every ounce of faith and piety I had, I willed my limbs to lift my dead tired body up and puppeted myself around, being certain to work all the little muscles in my face so that I would look as bright and quietly cheerful as always. 

Mazana’s gifts helped a bit with that. The bump I’d taken to the back of my head hadn’t been anything significant, but I’d healed it anyways just in case it made me flinch at a bad time or something. I didn’t need anyone questioning how I’d hurt my head if it came to light that we’d had an intruder. My healing took a bit of the edge off my fatigue too, but I knew I was going to need to pay that back at some point. Fortunately, I’d been hiding what I was for so long, that being quiet and going through the motions of the faithful so as not to attract attention had become an almost autonomous response.

Hiding my fears had too, which proved to be capable of hiding all the new ones I’d come up with while I spent the long, dark hours driving myself nearly mad with worry.

What if the intruder made good on her promise…no, threat, it definitely wasn’t a promise, promises were things held between people, and I absolutely did not want to see her again.

Which was probably why I had spent hours imagining nothing but that.

Was she going to show up in the prayer chamber again for the morning celebration?

Was she going to show up even earlier in the cleansing chamber? Naked and defenseless was not at all how I wanted to face an adversary, even though I hadn’t exactly been armed and armored when I’d run into her the last time.

She did not interrupt my purification ritual though. 

Nor was she waiting for me in the prayer chamber.

My father was though.

“Blessed morning Jilya,” he said without rising from his obeisance or turning to see that it was me.

“Blessed morning Beloved Father,” I said. Beloved was of course true, since all parents are beloved but I’d wondered for the longest while if he would have preferred a different appellation. Perhaps ‘Dear Father’ or ‘Cherished Father’ or, and this would be sacrilege though I suspected also the most appreciated, “Dad”.

I pushed that thought aside with greater force than usual. I was too tired still to trust myself with dancing anywhere near sacrilege.

It would do you so much good though, my demon said.

She’d been oddly quiet throughout the long night, and to my very great credit I didn’t jump or flinch in the slightest at her renewed presence..

I was thinking, she said. That was an interesting encounter we had last night.

Speaking to a demon was punishable by death. It had to be or the impurity could spread and if our impurity infected the Holy Tree than it would die and so would everyone.

Pfff, we’ve spoken for years now and that overgrown shrub is doing just fine.

That my demon was unimpressed with Holy Mazana spoke to the envy and spite common to all demons.

I suppose the passive aggression is better than those droning, monotonous prayers.

Prayers which I was supposed to be silently offering to Mazana rather than allowing myself to be distracted by the evil I’d been cursed with.

Honestly, she didn’t seem to be evil to me. Distracting, certainly, but if she’d bourne you any malice, she could have done quite a bit of damage and still escaped cleanly I imagine.

That was not a thought I needed to revisit, not after spending so long imagining a variety of different horrible outcomes to my encounter with the graceful catgirl, or worse what might have happened if I hadn’t confronted the intruder.

I also did not need to admit that my demon seemed to be right. She could have been far more violent but she’d chosen to be gentle. When she’d held me, it had been to stop any hostilities between us.

I shuddered at the thought. She’d been close enough to lick me! Well, my palm, which I’d shoved over her mouth. But still. How was Mazana not lighting me on fire for my sins and impurity?

Yes, yes, how indeed?

I redoubled my efforts at prayer which drew an exasperated sigh from my demon. Prayer had held her at bay for years though, and it had kept me pure enough to avoid being thrown beyond the Thicket, so, demonstrably, prayer had a lot going for it.

I could feel my demon’s immense irritation, though, oddly, it didn’t feel like it was directed at me.

I stumbled, mentally, and tried to pick up the prayer I’d been on before I’d allowed myself to be distracted. Maybe it was the fatigue but I wasn’t able to remember where I’d been in it, the memory of words blended together with the thousands of times I’d said them before.

So I started over. No one was going to complain if I spent a little longer on Morning Prayers than normal. It was encouraged that we perform them well, and I’d often given three silent recitations to ensure that. If I only got through two today, no one would notice or even be aware of it.

Not even your overly worshipped shrub.

Her blasphemy shouldn’t have been comforting, but it was such an expected part of my life after all the time I’d been with her that it sort of was?

Helps you not think more about your new friend.

Which, seriously, that was evil. One minute of peace from worrying about the intruder suddenly popping back up to kill me was too much to ask for I guess?

You’re not worried about her popping up to kill you.

All she needed to do was show up and say ‘hi’ to me in front of anyone else, and I was dead, whether she intended to kill me or not.

That’s still not what you’re worried about though.

Before I had a chance to form a proper response to that, my mother entered the payer chamber and tapped my father on the back.

“A special convocation has been called for today,” she whispered to him, loudly enough that Kam, me, and the rest of the family could hear her. “When you are done, tell everyone else.”

“When is the convocation scheduled for?” my father whispered back, again loudly enough for the rest of us to hear.

“Now. They want us to report to the Blueshine Roothall as soon as prayers are done.” My mother sounded agitated though it was hard to tell if that was because we were likely to be late, since we lived at the far end of the Blueshine Roots, or if it was because surprise Convocations rarely were held for anything good.

“No breakfast?” Kam asked at full voice, casting aside the pretense that the whispered conversation had not been intended for us all to hear.

“And no supper if you get called to the Draft early,” my mother said, exposing at least one source of her concern.

A draft call wasn’t usually cause for a special convocation. The troops which guarded Holy Mazana’s root systems from attacks below needed steady replenishment but the steadiness made the replacement drafts somewhat predictable. If the underdwellers had launched a major offensive though?

That wasn’t why they were calling a Convocation.

I knew that and it sent a chill radiating out from my belly.

Probably for the best we weren’t having breakfast.

Or, yeah, definitely for the best! I could claim any sleepiness was from a lack of food! Or I wouldn’t even have to claim it, people would just assume!

I crouched down behind that thought and it sheltered me from my worries about as well as a single blade of grass would have.

They’re not going to catch you. If they knew enough to catch you, they wouldn’t need to call a convocation.

Demons are not supposed to be comforting.

They are not.

So that left me confused and worried.

%#$@!

I couldn’t understand what my demon said, but I knew it wasn’t nice.

“C’mon, let’s not get stuck in the bad seats,” Kam said, committing the blasphemy of nudging me while I was ‘in the middle of prayer’. 

I didn’t bite his foot. I am not a good Sylvan, but I am practiced at being civilized.

In my role of Devout Daughter, I spent another minute ‘finishing up my prayers’. This was by no measure intended to annoy and vex my brother. Annoyance and vexations were merely a happy by-product of keeping up a solid ruse.

“So, early Draft do you think?” he asked as the greater familial unit marched in single file towards the Roothall.

There was no escaping being near him since the two of us were the closest in age among our siblings and cousins. We were probably also the closest in terms of him using me as a shield from his misdeeds coming home to roost, and my feeling a modicum of relief at knowing that of all the people in our family, Kam would never, ever pay enough attention to me to figure out how wrong I was. 

“You’ve got a year still,” I whispered back. I could have ignored him, but that would have led to more questions and more notice from our aunts and uncles. 

“Yeah, but if it’s a big draft they’d take me early right?”

Why he wanted to get drafted early wasn’t a mystery. According to doctrine, those who were called upon to defend Holy Mazana’s depths were given honor and renown for all their days. In Kam’s case however, it was that they were also given first choice of brides and held tremendous social prestige over those who hadn’t served.

He’d shared his visions of his future after his term of service was up, with the only details that changed being exactly which girl had currently caught his fancy that he would pick first (leaving aside the fact that by the time his service was up, they would all have been long since married off) and exactly how many rooms his estate would have (leaving aside the fact that he would likely be given one of the barracks estates an earlier draftee had ‘vacated’ to make his retirement possible).

“If it was that urgent, they would have just drafted you right away,” I said. It wasn’t that I loved to spoil his dreams. It wasn’t even that I didn’t want him to be drafted (though I didn’t, the big idiot deserved better than to die in the service of…)

You’re starting to get it! my demon cheered.

I clamped my jaw shut hard.

I had to be unbelievably tired if I’d put together a thought as blasphemous as that.

A moment later some even more blasphemous words came battering at the back of my teeth when we were stopped and Kam was pulled from our procession.

“Come on, you’re on special duty,” a Tender Acolyte said to him, as they took my big brother away, probably forever.

Fledgling Gods – Forging Faith – Ch 2

“The Sun has fallen, but the Eternal Night shall not claim us! The Holy Tree has awakened and its name is Mazana, Blessed and Divine and capable of sheltering those who are faithful where our fallen gods have failed to do so. Believe in Mazana and believe in me, the Holy Tree’s humble messenger and your new Lord.”

– The First Tender’s speech to the populace of the Seventh Garden as a Neoteric Lord, the day he called the Thicket Walls forth to keep out the spirits of the shattered world.

I can be quiet. I had a lot of practice at it since people tended to prefer that I not call any attention to myself unless they needed me for something. My demon said I was annoyed by that, but she never mentioned how grateful I was too.

Knowing how to be quiet meant that people didn’t look too closely at me. It meant they didn’t see the signs that I was possessed. It meant they left me alone.

It also meant that I had time to observe the odd intruder who was lurking outside the apartments, alcoves, and dens which made up my family’s estate.

She was graceful. That was the first thing that struck me. When we dance, Sylvan’s are light and flowing and move with the winds, but it takes effort and practice for that to look coordinated and purposeful. The intruder didn’t have the lightness of a dancer, but her movements were flowing and quick, without any of the effort dancing always seemed to require.

Her ears were as long as mine, but softer and tufted. Her limbs were about as long and her proportions similar but not quite the same as my own. 

What most caught my eyes though were hers. She glanced over towards me and the last flickers from the Holy Tree were reflected like golden fire in her eyes which were rimmed by the pitch black fur which covered her.

At first I thought that fur was all she was wearing but the lack of fuzziness around her chest, arms and legs suggested she was simply clothed in matte black and skin tight clothes.

She turned as I watched and sniffed the air.

So, she was searching for something?

At my family’s estate?

But we didn’t have anything special to find? No one in the Garden did. 

Or no one except the First Tender.

And the Tender Acolytes.

But they were special. Blessed by the Holy Tree and burdened with duties the rest of us were spared from by the their humble mission.

 The intruder caught some scent that intrigued her.

Which worried me.

She was heading towards our prayer chamber. There was nothing and no one in there.

Or there shouldn’t be.

Had my father left his cradle for a round of additional prayers? I knew he had trouble sleeping sometimes. I did too, and had tried prayer to win back the peaceful dreams which were eluding me, only to be discovered when he’d crept into the prayer chamber as well and made obeisance to our effigy of the tree beside me.

It had been our silent secret. By writ and mandate, the night was for sleeping, but neither of us believed that prayer would give offense to Mazana.

Maybe that was what had taught me the value of remaining silent in place of confessing my transgressions. Maybe it had saved my life.

I slipped out of my nook and crept after the intruder. I had no idea what I would, or even could, do to her, but if my father was in the prayer chamber I wasn’t going to let her ambush him.

Why assume she was hostile? Because she had to be. Everything else, everything from outside the Thicket Walls were dead, broken things which hungered to scour the last of the living away because they had nothing but unending jealousy that we’d been saved and they hadn’t been pure enough.

Why  this graceful, fluffy intruder would specifically be jealous of my father was a far stranger question, but I’d stumbled onto a demon when I’d only been looking to commune more deeply with Mazana, so I couldn’t really be surprised that the world didn’t make sense sometimes.

She reached the chamber and sniffed the air again, only to come up short. I had to flatten myself against the dining room’s outer wall to avoid her gaze when she turned to look behind her. 

For a moment I didn’t think I’d been quick enough but then I heard her open the door to the prayer chamber and move inside.

Was following her a wise idea?

Is there a benefit to answering silly questions like that?

Did I follow her anyways?

Do I seem like the sort of person who was sensible enough to go back to bed and let whatever was happening be someone else’s problem?

The actual idiocy of what I was doing slammed into me as I crept past the threshold and into the prayer chamber.

Idiocy, in this case, involved being tackled from above by a night black furry body.

Yeah, I don’t think so, my demon said and hurled the intruder away with a strength I was pretty sure I did not possess.

The intruder was not phased by that at all.

By the time she hit the opposite wall of the room twenty feet away, she had flipped to land with her feet on the wall and her body coiled and ready to spring back.

Brilliant gold eyes illuminated a feral smile as she hung on the wall for a timeless instant and then launched herself back at me.

That’s not…my demon had time say be a hand caught me around the throat and drove into the wall behind me.

Violence, I discovered, is not fun!

Also, as a bonus lesson, I learned that I was terrible at it.

The knock to the back of my head scrambled my thoughts enough that all I heard was my demon finish her thought with ‘…good. That’s not good.’. 

Thanks so much demon. I could tell it wasn’t good all on my own.

What I couldn’t do was respond with any coherency or speed, which meant the intruder was able to pin my left arm to the wall with her right hand, and position her left knee up against my abdomen to hold my body in place too.

Then she sniffed me.

“There’s what I’m looking for.” Her voice was a whisper which made my blood run cold.

Why had I thought she would be after my father, or anything else when the strangest thing on our estate was me?

“But you’re not her?” the intruder said, her whisper turning confused and vaguely annoyed. “What is going on here? Where’s her blessing? What have you done with her?”

“What are you talking about?” I whispered back. It wasn’t hard, she was holding me by the throat but she wasn’t exerting any more force than was needed to keep me in place and with the feel of her claws at the side of my neck, not much force was required to convince me to stay right where I was.

“Not screaming. That’s good. Surprising, but good,” the intruder said, speaking to herself and no one else as far as I could tell.

She had a point though. One good scream and I could have everyone in the estate awake in a heartbeat.

And they would come.

All together we’d be able to drive off the intruder too.

But did I want that? No. No I did not. Because the moment the intruder was discovered, people would start looking for what was out of place. And if they found me with the intruder? They’d want to be sure I was okay. They’d want to test that I was still pure. That I hadn’t been part of this desecration of the Garden.

And they would find out exactly what I was.

So, no, I didn’t scream.

I had other options.

I’m no good at violence, but I did have Mazana’s gifts.

In my free hand, wind gathered at my command.

“Wait, what?” the intruder asked right as I released the wind in a silent burst of force to propel her away.

It was a tricky gift to use like that, but you don’t spend years being a diligent and dutiful daughter of the Holy Tree without having something to practice on and get good at.

“Ugh, now it’s gone, and wrong,” the intruder said. “What is that.”

“You shouldn’t have snuck into the garden, serpent,” I said, misquoting scripture but with the same fiery vehemence as the First Tender used when he spoke of those who’d been lost in the Sunfall and what remained of them.

“Serpent? I am not a serpent!” the intruder was still whispering but her indignation was louder than her words. “You’re the serpent, or you were. Now you just smell like offal.”

The air around me did not smell like offal. I did not smell like offal. The air and I were both scented with the honeysuckle which grew among Holy Mazana’s branches.

“Who are. What are you doing here?” I hoped the answer to either or both of those questions would provide the answer to the more important one of how to get her out of the prayer chamber, our estates, and the Garden as a whole.

Predictably that was not the case.

“Looking for you,” she said. “Or you’re my next stepping stone I guess. Why are you here though, you not like the rest of them?”

There were a lot of scary things she could have said.

But that was the scariest.

“What do you mean?” I should have whispered that. I was glad I hadn’t screamed it.

“I mean…,” she said as she cut through the winds I cast at her, “that you’re special.”

“No, I’m not.” It wasn’t the best counterargument. I knew that. I just didn’t have a better one.

“You’ve got something in you beautiful. Something no one else here does. Something that can show me where I need to go next.”

Hmm, curious, my demon said when what I was thinking was ‘do I kill her?’

“I like that look in your eyes,” the intruder said and stepped towards me.

Could I kill her? I had to kill her, right? She knew. And the others would capture her. It was inevitable.

And then she would talk.

They would make her talk.

The only way I could keep her from talking was to kill her.

It wasn’t even wrong, was it?

She was from outside the Thicket Wall.

She was dead and evil and I was going to die if I didn’t kill her.

That stupid smile she was wearing was not helping. She was enjoying this. I ought to kill her just for that.

“So how about we drop the act then,” she said and closed the distance between us again. 

Whatever she’d intended to say next was cutoff by the sound of someone stirring in the dining room.

I’m sure my eyes went as wide as hers did, though hers might have been because I clamped my hand over her mouth. Sure she could have killed me, but ‘could have’ was different enough from ‘absolutely would have’ which would have been the result if anyone else found me so I was willing to take the risk.

“Be quiet.” It was a command, whispered with the force of a hammer, which, happily, was enough to compel obedience.

There was a clank of a plate and the ting of a utensil.

Kam.

We hadn’t been overheard.

My oblivious brother was hungry and had snuck out to raid the food stores. Like he always did and always got away with.

How he didn’t hear my breathing or the crashing thumps of my heart, I have no idea, but as a slow, agonizing minute dragged on I heard him assemble whatever bedtime meal he’d decided on and finally, finally leave the dining room via the door that was closer to his sleeping nook.

“Interesting,” the intruder said, pushing my hand away from her mouth when I sagged in relief.

Yes. Very, my demon said.

“And now you smell wonderful again.” 

I had no idea how to react to that and even less how to react when she licked my palm!

“Eww, something’s still off though,” she said  and hopped backwards away from me. “Tell you what beautiful, I’m going to go figure this out, and I’ll see you later.”

I had to stop her.

For myself.

For my family.

For the Garden.

But I didn’t.

She was out the door we’d both come through in a blink, and I didn’t do anything to stop her. I was stuck on a thought.

Had her last words been a threat, or a promise?

Fledgling Gods – Forging Faith – Ch 1

“The tree is life, the tree is shelter, the tree sustains and nourishes us and I need to get the hell away from it or burn it to ash.”

– Ki-song Calm, the First Apostate against Mazana, the Tree of All Life following the Sunfall.

I am not a good Sylvan. Good Sylvans give thanks and praise to Holy Mazana each morning as its leaves and branches turn to the radiant hues decided for the day. At mid-day, as the colors blend together, good Sylvans raise their voices in ecstatic prayer, and each night as the day’s colors fade away, good Sylvans fall silent for the hour of contemplation of our Sacred Duty and Unity.

So did I not speak the words of praise in the morning? Of course not. My lips formed the same chants as all the good Sylvans. Otherwise they might have known.

Did I fail to pray at midday? Never. My prayers were sung so sweetly people had called me blessed since I was a child. I had to sing high and sweet and perfect or they might have known.

And as the night crept down and Holy Mazana grew as dark as the world beyond our thicket walls? Silence had never been a problem for me. Silence was the easiest thing in the world to hide in. No one would ever know I wasn’t a good Sylvan in the silence.

They couldn’t. Because if anyone knew I wasn’t a good and righteous little plant girl they might discover that I was something far worse.

“Jilya? Sis? Come on, the last leaf went dark a while ago, you can rise any time now,” my brother Kam said and nudged me from my prayers with a foot in the ribs. “Or did you fall asleep?”

It wasn’t true that the ‘last leaf’ had gone dark. Holy Mazana never let “all” of its leaves go dark. Even at the darkest hours of night there were still some bits of the Great Tree which gave off a bit of light. Not enough to work by of course. The divine mandate and purpose for nighttime was that we would sleep then and wake refreshed for the following day to perform the duties which awaited us.

“I’ve never fallen asleep.” Which was true. “That’s you’re failing.” Which was also true.

Kam could be forgiven for falling asleep once in a while though. Boys were meant to be little problems once in a while. That was why they were sent to the militia training Kam was a year away from. To forge that unruliness into the sort of discipline and strength that could never be drawn from someone like me.

You call yourselves plantlings, but you never consider that plants don’t separate into the categories you assign yourselves, my demon said, taunting me like she always did.

Good Sylvan are many things, but possessed is not one of them.

Not that you’re actually plants. You’d think the whole ‘bleeding’ and ‘walking around’ would be a clue there, but then maybe it’s just your brains that are made of rotten cabbage.

Shut up! I try not to talk back to my demon. Interacting with any supernatural entities imperils every one of us, and, more importantly, while I’m stuck listening to the demon, it never listens to me.

Well now that’s not true. I listen to you all the time. I’m here to help you after all.

Demons do not help anyone.

 You really like saying that don’t you. I mean, you know it’s untrue, as I’ve proven time and again, but you’re just won’t give it up.

Prayers to Holy Mazana are not guaranteed to drive demons away, or at least my prayers aren’t, but they were enough to buy me a few moment’s peace after the demon huffed at me and said, “Typical. If you’re going to be like that, we can talk later.”

I want to say I’d never talked to the demon.

I want to say I’d gone and confessed my sins the moment I heard the demon’s voice echoing within me.

I want to say a lot of things, but silence has been so much safer and, I suspected, always would be.

Mazana’s Garden is the only home left to the Sylvans. Once our world was a bright and vibrant place, but people, other people, sinned so deeply that everything was cast into death and darkness.

Everything except the Garden. Alone in all the world, the Sylvan people were pure enough and devout enough to claim their place in Mazana’s Garden, to be sheltered by its light, nurtured by its winds, and slaked by the waters of its roots. 

Around the Garden, the First Tender grew the Thicket Walls, which kept out the broken and dead spirits which were all that remained of the fallen world outside Mazana’s light. So long as they stood, nothing evil could ever creep in and threaten the purity of the Last People.

Why we should be the ‘Last People’ was something I’d never understood. If the world was dead, then why not bring more of it under Mazana’s light? 

That was the sort of curiosity that led to poking around in dangerous places. Forbidden ones.  Places where demons waited to possess anyone stupid enough to touch things because how could a pretty thing be dangerous?

My demon laughed at that and I schooled the annoyance away from my expression.

When I looked mad or upset people asked questions and any of my honest answers to them could have proven that I wasn’t pure anymore.

I could feel the demon itching to respond to my thoughts, but she stayed quiet. She had a vested interest in my lies after all. The moment I was discovered, I would be cast out, as in literally thrown bodily over the Thicket Walls.

Some people survived the fall. No one survived long afterwards though.

Some parts of the scriptures which were taught to us seemed too fantastical to be true, but no one doubted the fact that darkness had swallowed the word, or that there were things in the darkness which hungered for our destruction.

That our faith was our shield was manifestly true as well, confirmed by the sheer fact of our existence, and the blessings the First Tender shared with us.

To be discovered as impure wouldn’t destroy only me though. Everyone I knew would be tainted by association, and my family…my family’s penance would be severe. I wouldn’t survive my punishment. They might live through theirs but I would probably be the one who was better off in the end.

It was with those happy thoughts that I left our family’s prayer bower and climbed to my sleeping nook. Whoever had been on linens duty had left me a clean sleeping shift so I slipped out of my day clothes, folded them, said the Prayer of Cleansing, and deposited them in the collection bin before saying an abbreviated Prayer of Thanks and donning the simple linen nightwear. 

No one could hear my prayers, so I could easily have skipped them. The words had no meaning to me any more and I’d long since lost the belief that Holy Mazana could hear them. Maybe from other people? Ones who hadn’t strayed outside it’s light?

Or maybe it could hear them and it held them back from the First Tender.

Maybe it was giving me time to fix the mistake I’d made, to become pure again.

That thought had been my lifeline for years. That there was a method, or a practice, or something I could do which would absolve me of not just the demon, but the doubt in my heart which had drawn it to me.

Because that’s what was really wrong with me.

Oh, the demon possession would definitely get me killed the moment someone found out about it, but my real sin, the real proof that I was broken was that I’d doubted Holy Mazana, and I’d doubted the First Tender. 

I’d had to see the dead world for myself. I couldn’t imagine that we were alone. It felt…it just felt wrong. Like somewhere beyond the dark horizon, there had to be someone else left in the world. 

Maybe they weren’t as pure as we were. Maybe they didn’t belong in the Garden. Maybe the First Tender hadn’t shepherded them into Holy Mazana’s light because their lack of faith would have led us to the same ruin which befell them.

But I hadn’t been able to believe that.

There was more out there. More people. More places. More beauty.

And I’d wanted it.

There was something missing in me. Some goodness, or grace, or inherent worth that everyone else in the Garden possessed, and I’d been so desperate to fill it that I’d destroyed myself in my foolishness. 

I curled up in my nook and tried to push those thoughts and memories away. Mercifully, my demon remained quiet, but my traitorous heart failed to follow the demon’s lead.

What had I been attempting to find all those years ago when I slipped out of my nook, and ventured down among the Mazana’s roots? I remember telling myself that I was looking for a deeper connection with the holy tree, but had I been? Or had I known even then that my connection with Mazana was flawed at best and so had been looking for something older, and deeper, and far more terrible?

It would almost have been comforting to imagine the latter was the case. If I could be dark and evil, then maybe I could be dangerous enough to survive beyond Mazana’s light.

But that wasn’t me. For all that I wasn’t a good Sylvan, I still wanted to be.

My options for making that come true had dwindled away other the years though. I’d attended holy festivals with with the fervent hope that being submersed in the joyful cries of true believers might drive out my demon and banish the doubts which had only grown darker over time. I’d taken to attending every prayer service I could and had praised by the Great Tree in song and word and deed. I’d even competed and won the chance to receive a blessing from the First Tender in his role as the Garden’s Neoteric Lord.

That last one, meeting our Neoteric Lord, had been flirting with self destruction, but at the time it had seemed worth it. I’d told myself that I would walk out of my meeting with him cured or I wouldn’t walk out at all. Because surely someone so close to Holy Mazana would sense the evil within me.

But he hadn’t. 

It had been a short ceremony. A simple meeting and a quick anointing, but even so I’d expected him to see what I’d brought before him. I’d expected to burn at his touch on my forehead. I’d expected…I’d expected something.

In the wake of that failure, I’d been forced to confront the reality that if I was going to be free of my demon, I was going to have to be the one who rid myself of it.

If my lack of faith had damned me, then I would redeem myself by casting aside my doubts, stifling the voices inside, and choosing to submit to the pure will of those greater than me.

Unsurprisingly, the thousandth rendition of that declaration did not bring sleep rushing in.

Instead, it left me awake enough to hear the sound of something moving outside my nook.

Good Sylvan’s do not sneak around or hide in the shadows. Everywhere they go, they bear the light of the Holy Tree within them.

I am not, as I’ve mentioned, a ‘Good Sylvan’ though.

As quietly as I had the first night I abandoned my nook, I slipped from my bed and down the trunk where my family’s boughs had been grown. I considered calling on Mazana’s gifts but since it was at least a minor sin to be awake at all so long after the “last leaves” went dark, I decided to play it safe and find out who or what I was dealing with first.

And ‘who or what’ was the question.

Outside my brother’s room, looking for the hatch to lead it inside stood something with skin the color of the night around us clothing a form which was was so close to a Sylvan’s and yet so very different too.

I didn’t know what I was looking at, but I knew it was not one of the ‘Last People’.

Fledgling Gods – Waking the Divine – Ch 45

“It’s not about seeing the light of a new dawn. It’s not about being warm and safe. Sure, we hope for that. Sure, it’s the tangible goal in making all these underground passages, and saving all this knowledge. Why we do this though? Why we work to make space for a better tomorrow? It’s not so that we can see it. Even if what we’re working for arrives lifetimes after ours, even if it never comes, what we do here fulfills its purpose for us right now. In working to make our world better, we create the hope that sustains us. We make ourselves the people we want to be. We believe there is good still left in the world, because we become the good we believe in.”

– from the scribbled notes of a speech given by the Ratkin matriarch ‘Small Voices Can Speak To Us All’, after half the rebels in Mt. Gloria were captured in a raid and carted off to the Fire Portals.

We didn’t have a new sun above Mt. Gloria. The shining ball of light and (literally) blessed warmth which was still captivating people’s attention wasn’t technically the sun, and it wasn’t technically new.

“It’s so comfy though,” Sola said and the New Sun sparkled a little warmer.

“I am so glad it worked out,” I confessed. “After the, uh, problem with the castle, I was worried your new home might be a bit too big.”

“If this was my old ‘home’ as you call it, and it’s not my home, you all are, but if this had been what was called the sun then placing it that close to the city would have been a fairly notable problem.” Sola wasn’t distracted, because, you know, god, but she was definitely multi-tasking; talking to me, connecting with all the people who believed in her at last, and taking in her new…hmm, I suppose ‘temple’ was probably a more accurate term for it.

“The old sun? It’s still out there isn’t it?” I asked, and shifted to a more comfortable position on the rubble of the former castle.

You might think rubble wouldn’t be comfortable to rest on, and for normal rubble you’d be right. Normal buildings however aren’t blasted to a fine sandy mush and then baked to a nice warm consistency. If heaven was getting to lie down on a blanket of fresh baked bread, then I had found heaven.

Of course Sola protecting me from heat and fire meant that my gauge for how warm the flaming ruins of the castle were might have been a teeny bit off. I kind of suspected that was the case, since no one had come by to bother me yet.

That no one had any reason to presume I was still alive might have had something to do with that too.

When I released the accumulated power Vaingloth had stolen from the deaths of people over the course a couple of centuries, it had made a rather big boom. A fairly bright one too, though I had to rely on Sola’s reports for that. According to her, anyone who’d been looking up at the ‘flaming angel in the sky’ (I was technically a messenger of hers I guess) would have been temporarily blinded (lucky them) when a flame as bright as the first moment of creation blossomed above them.

She took care of things from there, using the scattered divine power of her domain, borrowing from other domains, and tapping the grace of those who knew and believed in her. In her hands, the fire I released became something like a tunnel to the true sun? People were going to say that her new temple was the sun, but having an object capable of generating the heat it was putting out for a few billion years hovering in the air above the planet would, according to Sola, cause a few tiny problems like tearing the world apart with gravitational stress and sterilizing it of all life with the seen and unseen light it would be emitting. Not to mention the whole ‘melt everything into a ball of molten slag’ which sounded like it’d be super fun for everyone.

So the actual sun was still where it belonged.

And where it always had been.

What we’d done was more a question of parting the veil which had been erected between our world and Sola’s true temple.

Erected by whom?

“I should be unhappy with you I believe,” the familiar voice of Meluna, the High Priestess of the Night said from rather disturbingly close to me.

“Should you?” I asked, not bothering to move. Meluna seemed to have a knack for confronting me when I wasn’t in the best of shapes, but this time at least I was pretty sure I wasn’t in imminent danger. “Your god has to have been pretty lonely for a while now. I’d think she’d be happy for a little company in the heavens, wouldn’t she?”

“And you considered that before you undertook this scheme?” Meluna asked.

“No. Honestly, I’m not that clever. Thinking about it now though, I’d have to guess that it’s something of a relief to her that she doesn’t have to shoulder the whole burden of protecting the world anymore.” I was making several tenuous guesses there, but they fit together so nicely I couldn’t help myself.

“Not that clever? Oh, you definitely should have been one of ours,” Meluna said. I could hear the wicked smile in her voice and took comfort in the fact that I was at least amusing her.

“I’m happy with the god who picked me,” I said, enjoying the warmth around me as it seeped into my long chilled bones.

“And what do you plan to do for her next?” Meluna asked.

“Whatever she asks, or whatever I think she needs,” I said. “Isn’t that how things are with you and the God of Night?”

“Our arrangement is somewhat unlike yours,” Meluna said. “As you say, we have had to do quite a lot of work to protect this world.”

“Only she could, right?” I asked.

“Your god has told you this?”

“Nope. Worked that out all of my own. Mostly from what you’ve said. Night didn’t die when the other gods did. I know you didn’t tell me that, but I, uh, I could tell.”

“Because you’re as much the Beast of the End as you are the woman you once were.” Meluna pronounced that like the verdict of a court, but I heard a sliver of space to make a closing counter-argument.

“I’m neither the beast, nor entirely who I was. But you already know that. I wouldn’t have reached the Factorum if you’d been unsure about what I was.”

“True enough.”

“And you also know I’m no threat to Night.”

“No threat? Oh I very certainly know that’s not true.” That Meluna sounded appreciative of that claim said that one of us was probably half mad and I could not be sure which one of us that was.

“We’re only here, like all of us, like every living and unliving thing, because of your God. I think you can trust that I’m inclined towards being rather grateful to her for that.”

“And what do you believe you should be grateful for?”

“When the beast was rampaging, when it tore apart the other gods who rose to fight it, your god was only one not to step onto the battlefield, wasn’t she?”

“That sounds rather cowardly. Should I take offense?”

“None is offered, so you’d be stealing offense I guess?”

“Oh you so should have been ours.”

“Maybe. I do like how your god works. Not fighting wasn’t cowardice. It was smart. While the other gods held off the beast and kept it distracted, she hid our world, cloaking us as only darkness can. The beast didn’t stop because it ran out of things to devour, it stopped because it thought it had run out of things to devour, and that’s because your god played to her strength and sheltered us when no one else could.”

That the God of Night’s actions also plunged us into centuries of cold and in a lightless, lifeless waste wasn’t the epitome of wonderfulness, but with the circumstances she’d been under I could not fault her in the slightest.

“Would you believe there are even Neoterics who have not worked that out?” Meluna asked.

“They can’t possibly be…” I stopped, thinking of just how far up his own ego Vaingloth had crawled. “I’m sorry, I was about to say something very stupid. Do continue please.”

That bought me an honest laugh from Meluna.

“Officially, I am here to offer our congratulations and to welcome the back the sun,” Meluna said. “I am not supposed to add ‘it took you long enough you old slacker’. I am under specific instructions not to convey that in fact.”

“I will make sure Sola does not receive that message then,” I said, completely aware that everything I heard, Sola could hear too.

Thankfully whatever ancient divine rivalry there was between the sun and the night was not rekindled by the friendly jibe.

“Also, I told a few people that I might be able to locate you, if it happened that you were still alive, and they seem to be arriving just about…now.”

I knew she’d vanished. Couldn’t see her go, but if I knew anything about Meluna it was that she had a love for dramatic gestures which I would never come close to equaling (and I’d risen on wings of flame to put a new sun in the sky, so I felt that was saying something).

“Over there!” Lucky’s voice called out from pretty far away. “I see something moving in the flames. It could be her.”

“Bring the water buckets up,” Smiles called out next. He was probably standing beside her and from the sound of it so where a bunch of other people.

“I’m fine,” I said. “Just gimme a second. It’s really comfy here.”

“The buildings still on fire. It’s not safe in there. Let us come get you!” Lucky sounded worried for me. Which was mean of me, so I struggled up to a sitting position and found I was in better shape than I’d expected. 

Granted my measuring stick for how bad I could feel was a lot longer than it used to be, but, hazarding another guess, I decided I was probably in one, more or less, unbroken piece.

It was a day of surprises for everyone!

“We’re going to try to put out a bit of the flames so we can reach you,” Oolgo said, his deep Bugbear voice loud enough to blow the flames out (okay, it wasn’t) and let me figure out right where they were (not especially difficult).

I was about to tell them they didn’t need to worry. For one there wasn’t much building left. For another the fires that still burned weren’t going to be put out by water, or anything else. And lastly, I could make it out on my own. With a little tripping and stumbling, sure, but that was going to be my life so I kinda had to get used to it.

Except I didn’t. 

As I went to start moving, I felt the softest, most luscious furred head nuzzle up beside me. Before I had a chance to squeal in glee, MB had lifted me up in its jaw and tossed me on its back.

I knew it could have leapt straight out of the fires, but instead it strode gracefully through them.

Showing off.

Which, I mean, I could claim I wouldn’t have done the same were I in its place, but as mentioned, I am a bad liar.

I felt the moment we exited the flames as a pleasant heat dropping away. The city was far warmer than it had been but bathing in flames was a special delight only I got to enjoy it seemed. Happily though, I at least wasn’t cold anymore.

“Was that you?” Lucky asked. She was probably pointing up at the New Sun. Or maybe she was gesturing to the powdered ruins of the castle? It didn’t matter, the same answer was true for both.

“Nope. This is all of us,” I said. It sounded cool and humble, mostly because I’d been rehearsing it to sound like that but, if it worked at all, it was because it was the absolute literal truth. Everything that had happened, had been because there were a whole lot more people working to make it come about than just me.

“There she is,” Xalaria said said. “Told you she’d be fine.”

“To be fair, you said she’d be fine if anyone would be,” Fulgrox said. “And there don’t seem to be a lot of other people who are fine around here.”

“Fine dust perhaps,” Kilkat said.

“Not just dust,” I said. “Ashes. These are the ashes of those who’ve gone before. It’s their last gift to us. I know we’re all tired, but let’s see about making sure everyone get some so that none of us will ever be cold or lost in the dark again.”

And that’s how we began.

With the threat of the Neoterics on the horizon, and the threat of the Beast of the End hanging above us, we got to work on rebuilding our world.

Together.

Fledgling Gods – Waking the Divine – Ch 44

“If we didn’t ration the heat, there wouldn’t be enough to go around.”

“But there’s not enough. Mr. Walker upstairs froze last night.”

“Well, he was old. It’s what happens. He wasn’t doing much work so he wasn’t keeping himself warm.”

“He was sick. He couldn’t work. He couldn’t even get out of bed.”

“So that was probably what got him then. He was old and sick. Was probably going to die anyways. Giving him heat from the rest of us wouldn’t have done any good, and we’d have just had less.”

“But the castle always has heat. And a lot of it! You saw, didn’t you? Last night, after curfew? When the whole city was dark? There were lights on all over there!”

“That’s just how it is. Work hard and maybe you’ll make it to the castle someday too.”

– a conversation had in My Gloria roughly seven hundred and fifty thousand variations since the Sunfall.

The castle was just as I’d always imagined it to be.

Which is to say it was warm.

What? There wasn’t a lot more I could say about it, apart from ‘oh yeah, it also stunk of blazing wood’, which, to be fair, had not been something I’d imagined. Without being able to see things, I had to imagine the gilded pillars wreathed in flames with their gold sloughed off and pooling at their bases. I’m sure Vaingloth would have been delighted by that. 

Which made was another price to pay for plotting his downfall as thoroughly as I had. If I’d left him broken and alive somewhere, he could have been forced to watch as everything he built was torn down and taken away from him. 

Sure, his end hadn’t been pleasant or quick, but the finality of it meant that he at least got to be at peace, which was a little unfair even if it was probably worth the tradeoff for me to be able to sleep without one eye open for the rest of my life.

That the flaming pillars weren’t going to be holding up the floors above them forever would have been more of a worry if I could see them, but for what I had in mind, I only needed them to hold up for a little bit longer. The burning stairs were also an issue, or they would have been if Zeph and I weren’t blessed by the sun which, notably, finds mortal flames amusingly chilly at best.

Were they actually chilly that might have been the explanation for the shudder that went through Zeph as we reached what I guessed was the first landing.

“Something wrong?” I asked, when what I should have said was “what awful thing did we just run across?”

“It’s nothing,” Zeph said. “Just a bad memory.”

There’s a pelt in a case on the wall, Sola said, only to me I think. It belonged to one of my other Fox Winds, long ago.

Okay, so maybe it was good that Vaingloth was dead and had suffered horribly. 

I didn’t pause when Zeph led us onwards. I didn’t want to linger near anything that hurt her like that. I did reflect for a moment though on it.

The rage I felt for Vaingloth was never going to leave me.

Even if I forgot everything he’d done to me and mine, there were so many other people he’d hurt that there would always be new atrocities to stoke a hunger to see him hurt more.

And that wasn’t going to do me any good.

I had a job to do and losing myself in the desire to destroy Vaingloth’s stuff was not only going to cause me a lot of pain, it could pretty easy leave Mt. Gloria a smoking and lifeless ruin.

Was I exaggerating there?

No. Sadly I was not.

See, mortals are not meant to hold the sort of power I’d taken from the fire portal.

Nor are they meant to contain the key that portal within themselves.

Vaingloth, for all his claims of divinity, acknowledged that reality and had left the bulk of the power he’d converted the populace into stored safely away outside himself.

I hadn’t known just how much power that was when I’d been setting up my plan, and, to be honest, I might have reconsidered since it meant I was bomb with the power to flatten more of the world than anything since the Sunfall.

“The floor’s fallen away in front of us,” Zeph said, stopping me with a gentle touch of her hand.

“Too much fire?” I tried to picture how hot it was getting around us. With Sola’s blessing, the breeze blowing past us didn’t smell great, but the toxins and flesh searing heat was a non-issue.

“No. Something was here. Something he’d kept bound.” Was she angry about that? From her calm tone you might never know. From the tension she couldn’t keep out of her fingers though? Oh yeah, she had plenty of rage to deal with too. Probably even more than I did since she’d seen a lot more of what Vaingloth had done than I had.

“It, or they, are free now,” I said, aware all too acutely how some forms of freedom were better than others.

“I know, I just…” She wanted to go find them. Between Sola’s fragment, the pelt, and now someone else Zeph knew, I had to wonder if Vaingloth had intended to style himself as the King of the new world by pretending to be its sun?

No. What was I saying. Given his ego, even without all the rest that would have been obvious.

It was comforting that while I could understand his desire to kill his enemies, resurrect them, and then kill them again, I could point to his desire to rule the world as an enormous point of different between us.

“Yeah. We’ve spent too much time suffering for no reason,” I said. “Don’t waste any more. Go find them.”

“I can’t. You need me.” She wasn’t wrong about that. I would have been weeks or months getting back to Mt Gloria without her, and that’s under the assumption that the other Neoterics wouldn’t have found me first and had other ideas than letting me return and carry on my life.

She wasn’t entirely right either though.

“I owe you so much, you have no idea.” Normally it wasn’t easy to admit things like that. I mean, I owed a lot of people for a lot of things, but the thought of them collecting on that had filled me with terror and despair since my only value had been as kindling for the longest time.

Zeph would never ask that of me though, even before all of this, even when I was just ‘Little’ and nothing more. That just wasn’t who she was.

“You’ve never owed me anything,” Zeph said, and I heard the song of praise for Sola hiding behind her words.

“You should still go. Unless I miss my guess whoever busted out of here is probably faced with a world that won’t make a whole lot of sense to them will it?”

It wasn’t an amazing feat of insight to come up with that. Anyone Zeph knew and felt strongly about had to be someone she’d known from before the Sunfall, at least if Vaingloth had also been interested in them. Picturing going from a world where Sola blazed overhead for everyone to see and share in her light and warmth freely to the dark, dead land we lived in was unimaginable.

But people had done it.

There’d been people who lived through the world collapsing and dying. And they’d kept going, building what they could, persisting even if they couldn’t see the light in their world ever returning.

What if the person who’d been trapped by Vaingloth (since Zeph wouldn’t have the hitch in her throat that was there if it had been a relic of other item) had been one of my ancestors? One of the people who’d pushed forward and hung on so that someday I could exist?

Zeph was silent and unmoving so I squeezed her hand.

“Seriously. Go. You need to do this and they need you too.”

“But you…” she tried to object.

“I have Sola,” I reminded her.

“And I can guide her from here,” Sola said to us both.

I was rewarded with a return squeeze on my hand. Zeph probably smiled too but I wasn’t going to get to see those anymore either.

And then she was gone.

“It’s not too far,” Sola said. “In fact, I can lift you up directly if you want.”

“Thank you, but I want you to conserve your strength. I know you can do a lot more now, but I also know people are going to be asking a lot more of you too.”

“It’s the nature of the divine.”

“Yes, well, I just got you back, so if I can walk, let me give that to you.” As prayers went, walking was an odd one, but it seemed appropriate under the circumstances.

“You’ve already given more more than you can ever know.”

“I’m betting I still haven’t paid back that first feast. Do you know how good that good was?”

“That wasn’t all me.” Sola’s amusement made ‘arguing’ with her a lot easier.

“Don’t care. You were there so you get all the credit. Now where do I go?”

“On your right, there’s a small walkway left. Just hug the wall.”

“The one that’s on fire?”

“You won’t be burned.”

“See, I’ll have to pay this back now too.”

We went on like that, and the silly banter distracted me both from enormity of what I was planning to do and from the anger that had been creeping back into my heart.

Vaingloth was a miserable bag of puke but he was gone and the world had so may other things left to focus on.

“The High Tower is just ahead but most of it has been reduced to ash already.” Sola didn’t sound especially worried about that. She was just letting me know that, like it or not, I was soon going to have to allow her to help me out a bit more.

“We’re probably high enough now,” I said, thinking back to all the times I’d looked up at the castle and wondered what all of the parts of it were used for.

‘To stroke Vaingloth’s ego’ hadn’t been my guess then, but it very definitely was as I stood in its burning ruin.

“The tower will block your creation if you make it here though, wont it?” Sola asked.

It was a perfectly reasonable question. Especially since she had a vested interest in make sure why creation would be able to do its job properly.

“What tower?” I asked and unleashed a teeny, tiny, itty-bitty spec of the power I’d stolen from Vaingloth.

Sola caught me, which was good since I hadn’t intended to explode quite as much of the castle as it turned out my teeniest and tiniest of sparks was able to obliterate.

The wings of fire felt pretty cool though, and if anyone was looking up at the castle (they all were, after the explosion, literally everyone was looking at the castle) I had to guess that I looked amazing.

Not that anyone would be able to tell who the form covered in flames with big flaming wings was, but, still, I liked the image I was able to come up with.

“Now let’s give them a real show,” I said and reached into the ocean of fire I was carrying.

What blossomed in the sky above the castle did more than warm me, or even warm the entire city. It did more than banish shadows which had lain draped over buildings and people for centuries. It woke something up in everyone.

“Wait? This is for me?” Sola’s voice held a note of surprise since I’d told people I was going to recreate the fire portal and left out the tidbit that it wasn’t going to be a portal anymore.

It was a home.

I couldn’t put the sun back in the sky, but I could make a spot for a little piece of it to live right at the top of Mt. Gloria, where everyone would share in what she had to offer.