“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.