“This is unacceptable Vaingloth.”

“And yet, accepting it is what we will do Vitor.”

“No! This is not what we wanted!”

“Of course it is not. Someone’s calculations were incorrect.”

“Calculations? Vaingloth, there is a fragment of the Beast not a hundred miles from my city.”

“A hundred? Consider yourself lucky. Insikir has one within ten miles of his domain.”

“Lucky? No. I will not consider myself lucky Vaingloth. This is unacceptable. That thing could wake at any time and decide to stroll right through my domain and what would I be able to do to stop it? Nothing. Literally nothing.”

“Well there is always your sister, is there not?”

“Pfff, I asked Malgenia and her answer was that she didn’t want to do anything about them. Or she wants to study them. Or she thinks they’re a charming part of the landscape. Or, or, or. You know how she is.”

“Not so well as you do, but her answer doesn’t surprise me.”

“It doesn’t? Don’t tell me you’re in favor of these things? Our reigns can hardly be as ‘eternal’ as they were promised to be if we can run afoul of one of these things whenever they decide they need a snack!”

“Oh, I am terribly wroth with the existence of the fragments. More so than you are I would imagine. I simply do believe they are an issue we are currently equipped to deal with.”

“Not currently? Certainly you mean ‘not ever’? These are not finite entities. Even were we to bring all the force we have gathered to bear on them, we couldn’t erase a single one of the pieces of the Beast.”

“Lost one of your divine fragments finding that out did you?”

“Several.”

“Take heart, I believe we all have, and we’ve all come to the same conclusion.”

“That we are doomed?”

“Far from it. Has it not occurred to you that the creation of the Beast fragments was a predictable effect of the divine battles.”

“No. There was no indication that we might face a problem of this scope. I don’t recall reading a single report which mentioned we might have to deal with the Beast we summoned. That was very much not supposed to be how things were resolved.”

“Indeed. And who wrote those reports?”

– Neoteric Lord Vaingloth planting seeds for Dyrena’s eventual execution.

I was Malgenia. I had to be when I answered the door. Whoever was out there, Malgenia had to be who they were expecting, and there were at least eight terrible possibilities for who might want to meet with Malgenia looming in my head as I waved the door open. 

Only to find a Crow waiting for me.

“She’s in,” the Crow said. Or Crowkin I guessed. I hadn’t seen one before but Malgenia was familiar with them.

“Excellent. Perhaps she’ll also invite us in?” The woman who stepped from the shadows behind the Crowkin had not been there a moment earlier. Malgenia’s near deific senses were convinced of that. I, however, was sure they were wrong.

“How lovely. Visitors!” Channeling Malgenia wasn’t a muscle that had atrophied all that much after a month of being myself but I was still concerned with my performance. As far as I knew Malgenia’s expected response to visitors could have been to turn them into some of her ‘artwork’ with a snap of her fingers.

“Are we?” the woman was harder to make out than she should have been. I had the sense that she was a Blessed, but was she? 

In fact I wasn’t even certain she really there. All I felt confident in saying was that she was dangerous.

And I had Clarity and Responsibility in the house with me. That would have been enough for me to at least slam the door in their faces, except for lightest of brushes on my hand and some gentle laughter I heard as though from across the other side of the world.

I think we need to speak with them, Diyas said.

Yes, you really do, the woman said!

I have a really solid grip on my facial expressions. My Malgenia mask is harder than diamond and stronger than steel. Gaping in shock and surprise though was the only answer I could make to that aside from waving the two in.

“It’s okay Insight, you don’t have to pretend to be her if you don’t want to,” the Crowkin said and I nearly teleported myself and everyone I cared about back to Malgenia’s sanctum.

“We’ve got guests?” Clarity asked from behind me, rather than staying hidden away like I’d asked her to.

“Apparently ones who know a lot more than they should?” Responsibility said.

“Thank you Kalkit, would you like to get back to what you were doing?” the woman asked.

“They will need me, we’re almost at the crisis point I think,” Kalkit, the Crowkin said and with a wave of the woman’s hand, the Crowkin vanished.

“You’re not a Neoteric,” I said, adjusting to interpose myself between the woman and my…hmm, we hadn’t really put a name on what we were had we? My Deaths I guess?

“Delightfully, neither are you,” the woman said. “If you were this conversation would be very different.”

Night, stop teasing my Blessed, Diyas said.

“I said she was delightful,” the woman said with a pout. “None of you ever let me have my fun.”

“Wait, Night? As in the God of Night? As in…” I was still verbal. That was such a supreme accomplishment I feel I deserve unending praise and recognition.

Yay, all hail Insight, the word worker, Beauty said.

Foresoothe! Surely her questions shall lead us to something we haven’t already been told, eventually, Inhibition said.

Be nice you two, this isn’t a casual visit, Reason said, sobering them up and centering me.

“A representative, you may call me Meluna.”

“Your friend mentioned a crisis, does Night face a crisis?” Clarity asked.

“Not as such,” Meluna said.

“Does the crisis concern us?” Responsibility asked.

“It needn’t,” Meluna said.

Just dropping by to say ‘hi’ after all this time are you Night? Diyas asked, a strong note of reprimand in her tone.

“I am instructed to extends Night’s regrets for not speaking with you sooner Beautiful and Bountious Diyas.” Meluna sketched a small bow as punctuation to her words. “She is however rather absorbed in her present task.”

Extend my gratitude to her for her efforts, and let her know, assuming she’s not already aware, that Sola has taken a new Blessed.

“Yes! I met her! Singularly interesting I must say, especially given what she’s become.”

“Does she need shelter?” I asked, trying to work out why Night would be visiting Malgenia, or me since apparently she somehow knew that.

“I…you know, I am quite honestly not sure how to answer that. It may be we who need shelter from her, though I am willing for the present to accept the Foxwind’s judgement of the Blessed’s state.”

There’s a Foxwind as well! I could feel Diyas nearly dancing with delight. Oh! Sola must be so happy!

“She would be except for the small issue where she is currently bound by Vaingloth’s spells and cannot communicate or act through her Blessed or her Foxwind.” Meluna gestured to one of the chairs, asking permission to sit, which I granted with a nod.

As we all took seats around the central table, I conjured an extra in case my inner Deaths wanted to join us.

“Is that what you’re here for? I’m not Malgenia, but I do hold her power and I could probably break any spell Vaingloth could cast. Also, just out of idle curiosity, how in the ten thousands hells did you find out who I was?” I might have stood up then, and the candles which lit the room maybe flared with a deep purple light. I wasn’t being intimidating or threatening though. I was just a little curious you see.

Meluna is trustworthy, you needn’t worry, Diyas said in a calming, and amused, voice.

“Not at all. Though, sadly, Diyas is quite correct. In this, you may rely upon my discretion. As to how I came by the knowledge of your identity, you may take heart that it is quite safe. My associate Kalkit, whom you met, is the Blessed of Secrets.”

“Does that mean Insight’s identity is still a secret or that it was a secret and isn’t anymore?” Responsibility asked.

“It is, so far as I know, quite secure,” Meluna said. “With the current issue that is unfolding, I checked to see what the disposition of the Neoterics was only to discover that Malgenia was missing from her domain. That raised several important questions which is why I sought out Kalkit. He was able to locate where Malgenia’s power was secreted away but was quite as surprised as I to learn that it was no longer Malgenia’s.”

Which told me that the Blessed of Secrets didn’t know all of the world’s secrets all the time, otherwise I would have been discovered years ago.

“And so you thought you’d drop by an introduce yourself to make sure we weren’t going to foul up whatever undertaking Sola’s new Blessed is pursuing?” I asked.

“To be quite truthful when I learned that Malgenia was no more I was quite compelled to make your acquaintance on that basis alone,” Meluna said. “As you might imagine, Night is aware of nearly everything which transpires on this world, and yet you came as a surprise to both of us. I believe Night would have me shower you with accolades and praise as Malgenia represented a singular challenge amongst the Neoterics. Her removal is as welcome as it is unexpected.”

“You do want something though,” Clarity said.

“Of course. Many things in fact. At present however I believe learning about you three may be a critical priority. Whatever brought you out into Wastelands? This isn’t a safe area even for one who bears Malgenia’s power.”

“Kalkit couldn’t tell you that?” I asked, not at all showing that I was slight irritated that there was someone capable of knowing my most dangerous secrets.

“Didn’t. They didn’t. I can’t speak to whether it was knowledge they possessed or whether it was outside their domain. We traveled here rather swiftly and I’m afraid I did not have time for thorough research on you or your aims. For instance, I would gather that these two young women were once Malgenia’s Deaths?”

“The Death of Clarity.”

“The Death of Responsibility.”

Their introductions were accompanied by small nods.

“As I imagine you are important to the Death of Insight, I extend Night’s recognition to you as well. Call my name in dark places and I shall hear your words. I am not always free to act, but to the extent Night can assist, aid will be rendered.”

That was not at all what I’d expected her to say and the implications of having the last unbroken god on our side spread out faster than my imagination could follow.

“Thank you,” Clarity said. “I understand the need to limit information overflow, but it also sounds like something is occurring which we might be able to offer assistance with. You said it wasn’t anything we needed to be involved in, and I can understand at least some of the issues with Insight acting in her guise as Malgenia, but is this a situation where Responsibility or I could tilt the balance in the favor of Sola’s new Blessed?”

Meluna blinked at that and looked from Responsibility to me and then back to Clarity.

“That is an unexpected but welcome offer,” she said. “Alas, I can think of no means you might possess to effect the outcome of the events which are currently transpiring.”

“So we can’t do anything for you or for Sola’s Blessed?” Responsibility asked.

“By remaining here, you are doing everything which is needed of you,” Meluna said. “My primary objective in this visit was to ensure that you did not become involved and I see that was likely wise.”

I wanted to ask why, but I felt the shift in the world’s power all too clearly.

Vaingloth was moving.

And he was furious!

“Are you sure?” I asked her. “There is still time. I can stand against Vaingloth. He can’t overcome me.”

“That is why we need you to remain here,” Meluna said. “If you entered this conflict, Vaingloth would either withdraw or he would assault you.”

“He would not win that fight,” I said.

“No he wouldn’t,” Meluna said. “But…”

And I felt it.

Void.

Emptiness.

Vaingloth wasn’t just dead.

He was gone.

“We’re doomed.”

“We’re not doomed. It is simply 2:00 in the morning and you haven’t eaten anything in the last forty eight hours.”

“I haven’t had time to eat because we are doomed, Helgon. Completely and utterly doomed.”

“Drink this my dear Dyrena.”

“What is it?”

“Hydration.”

“I have water spells for that.”

“This hydration comes in the form of a chocoberry float, with freshly made ice cream.”

“Freshly made? By who?”

“My calculations were done early and I needed a new skill to work on.”

“You…thank you Helgon. Oh my, this is delicious!”

“I’m going to attribute that mostly to your hunger. There is a tray of loaded Dorit Chips as well. Nibble on those and tell me what has you stymied.”

“The summoning ritual. We know it can be pierce the outer veils of our cosmos, but there’s no means to mend the rift once it’s been made.”

“I see, so we can summon the god-killer that we need but we’ll be leaving the door open for an endless parade of similar creatures to follow it?”

“Far worse than that. Once the rift begins to form, it will continue to grow, exponentially.”

“And of course the others won’t believe that.”

“They’ve already rejected the papers I provided on dynamic grace oscillations as being based on ‘conservative estimates’. If even one of those estimates is correct though, a cascade failure it inevitable.”

“Based on your previous work, I feel it’s safe to assume all of your estimates are likely to be correct. I do wonder at the direction of the cascade failure though.”

“The direction? Oh. Hmm. Yes. Yes! We might be able to influence that. Let me see, ah, here it is. Yes! If we invert roughly half the ritual we have designed so far, it will fail, catastrophically, but, but!, it will fail towards the rift closing itself after the briefest of moments. Helgon you are a demon and a delight!”

– High Accessors Helgon and Dyrena discovering anew that ritual magics are ‘non-trivial’ to develop and work with.

A month is a long time to be out in the Wastelands. A lot of things will try to kill you in that time. Silly things. Foolish things. Things that really didn’t deserve what I did to them, but after the first week of failures, I had a lot of frustrations to work out.

“Is it possible that this idea isn’t going to work?” Responsibility asked, giving voice to the thought that had been growing on all of us for at least two weeks.

“I can’t accept that,” Clarity said, having more patience and stubbornness than both Responsibility and I combined it turned out.

“I could, but Clarity was right from the start. The two person version of the Assumption Ritual was never going to enter a stable balance. I thought we could fight and divide Malgenia’s power but any use of it we made at all would skew the division we came up with.” I didn’t know that for sure, but I had plenty of evidence leading me in that direction.

Clarity smudged the Holy Circle we’d been practicing in for the last two hours, breaking us free from its constraints, which Responsibility used as an excuse to wander into the kitchen to pour glasses of ice water for each us.

“Okay, so where are we then?” Responsibility asked, offering each of us one of the beverages.

“Back at square one?” Clarity was more testing the idea out than suggesting it.

None of wanted to admit that. Not after all of the time we’d spent trying to adapt the Assumption Ritual to support a third participant. Especially given that Vitor was expecting we were going ahead with the normal Assumption Ritual which Responsibility should have just about been ready to undertake.

Obviously I hadn’t been “training” Responsibility for the proper version of the ritual. I’d barely survived the “training” I’d been given and I had no interest in inflicting the kind of damage on anyone else.

“There’s got to be something else, something we’re overlooking,” Responsibility said.

“After weeks of review? What else is left to try changing?” Clarity asked.

And that was the right question.

Or I’d gone nuts.

Probably that.

“No arguments on that here,” Beauty said. She, Inhibition and Reason were lounging on one of sofas I’d conjured for our house in the wastelands. 

“Is she thinking silly things again?” Clarity asked.

The meeting with the other Death’s had been a welcome surprise for Clarity. We hadn’t known them that well before their Assumptions, but the promise they represented, that the Deaths who’d gone before us weren’t wholly lost, was a more than welcome one.

Since then they’d stayed manifested most of the time. It was a nice change of pace, and it meant they had more than just me to interact with. Also, usually, they didn’t listen in on my thoughts quite as much when they were interacting with the living world.

“We do when they’re particularly interesting,” Inhibition said, paging through one of the books I’d summoned from Malgenia’s estate.

“Want to fill us in?” Responsibility asked.

“I don’t know, maybe someone else wants to share my ideas for me?” I said, not at all like the brat I hadn’t been able to indulge myself in being for far too long.

“No, this is a good one I think, you should take the credit for it,” Reason said.

“Thank you,” I said with a nod to Reason. “So, what if we didn’t go back to Step 1? What if we went back to Step 0?”

“What’s Step 0? Give up?” Responsibility asked.

“Sort of,” I said, percolating the idea I was working on a little bit more to make sure there weren’t any glaringly obvious flaw with it.

Aside from all the ones I could easily see that is.

“You’ve said that Malgenia’s power is growing out of control, do you have some other idea for balancing it, or limiting it maybe?” Clarity asked, her expression one of furious calculations to work out what I was talking about.

“No. I still think you were right. Having the three of us each bearing a part of Malgenia’s power will provide so much more stability. When any one of us needs to call on it, we won’t tip over to having the majority of it under our control and we’ll have a much greater distance from rising as deities too. We definitely all need to be a part of it.”

I’d wanted to argue against Clarity risking herself to take part in the Assumption Ritual for about ten seconds when she’d declared she would fight with us.

I mean, the kind of things that could happen to her? In an Assumption Ritual? No. Not even a little no, like all the “NO” everywhere, everywhen.

Then, I’d seen that she had to be a part of it.

With three of us, it wouldn’t be a fight at all. It would be all of us working together. Like a dance. If any of one of us stumbled into a moment of weakness, the other two would be there to lift us up. What no one of us could handle, all three of us were far more than a match for.

So we’d set out to see how to make Clarity a part of the ritual.

And we’d failed.

We could have kept working at it of course, a month of failures was nothing compared to what Malgenia had gone through for some of the “experiments” she’d run.

But a month had been enough.

I’m not the quickest of studies, but sometimes I can stumble forward rather than back.

“You want to start over,” Responsibility said as both she and Clarity worked out the beginning of what I was saying.

“We have to.” I had to grin. This was how things were supposed to be.

“Oh why didn’t we see that. Of course the ritual isn’t going to work,” Clarity said.

“Are you sure? You three came pretty close with the last few iterations,” Beauty said.

“The last few dozen,” Reason said in a tone that highlighted the problem.

“Close is all we’d ever manage working with the Assumption Ritual,” I said.

“It’s baked into the core of the ritual itself,” Responsibility said.

“The Assumption Ritual’s whole purpose it to feed a Death to Malgenia,” Clarity said. “What Insight accomplished was the fulfillment of the ritual insofar as it was designed for one of the participants to overthrow the other one. We’ve been trying to work around the safeguards that prevent the Death from escaping, the core of the ritual is designed around the need for there to be a victim who is sacrificed to the victor.”

“And the original designer obviously never considered that someone would be more powerful than Malgenia and make her the victim,” Responsibility said.

“Or more realistically, that Malgenia would make the mistake of trying to use a Blessed in the ritual. That we’re here today is entirely thanks to Diyas,” I said.

Not entirely, Diyas said. I couldn’t have overcome even a fraction of Malgenia’s power on my own, you did a lot of the heavy lifting there too.

With strength you gave me, I said. I know I’m the least appreciative Blessed ever sometimes, but I will never forget what you’ve done for me. Even if I die right here and now, I’d still be grateful beyond my capacity for words to express.

“So what’s the alternative you’ve come up with?” Inhibition asked.

“Step Zero,” I said. “We make our own Ritual. Rather than trying to turn the Assumption Ritual into something it is explicitly designed to not be, we work from the base of what we do want the ritual to do and go from there.”

“That sounds fantastic but there is one rather glaring problem with that approach,” Reason said, and I already knew what she was going to say.

“None of us have ever designed a ritual from scratch, and certainly not one that needs to manage this much power.” It was the weak point in my plan, and I could admit it easily enough because I knew we could work past it.

I had no idea how we’d work past it, but I had five of the smartest people I could ask for to help me find that path and the best god of them all to help us.

Praise only really counts when it’s accurate, Diyas said.

It is accurate! You were part of destroying a Neoteric Lord! No one has ever done that. Even the first three that fell were killed by a bunch of the others working together! 

Could a god be too humble? If Diyas wasn’t going to own up to being the badass I knew she was, then yes, yes they could.

That was a case where Malgenia was straying into my domain. In trying to extinguish your life, she opened herself up to my interface.

And we extinguished her. That was no small feat no matter how much credit you want to give me for it.

It wasn’t, but in this case it’s not power you need, it’s knowledge. I will certainly be with you in whatever you choose, but if you want to craft a new ritual, one of the many gods of magic would stand you in far better stead.

Which, I had to give her credit for was probably true. Just because she was a god, didn’t mean Diyas could do anything and everything. Quite the reverse really. What I’d learned over the years was that she could support me in matters relating to her domain and could occasionally sneak in help from either related domains or, as she described them, lost domains (one’s there weren’t any other gods managing I gathered), but that in many senses I had more freedom in the choices I could make and how I used her power than she did.

“So, all we need to do is find someone who does know how to design rituals then, right?” Beauty said.

I was about to point out that we were in the middle of the Wasteland and ‘people’ weren’t really a resource we had ready access to when someone knocked on the door to my mansion.

The mansion I’d conjured in the Wasteland.

Where no one else was capable of surviving.

The one I’d hidden beneath a veil even another Neoteric Lord couldn’t penetrate.

“Should we get that?” Inhibition asked looking at confused as everyone else felt.

“We’re only three days away from Mt Gloria troops. We’ve got it in the bag from here!”

“We’ve lost so many people though. What if we get attacked again?”

“Listen here Olan. Caravan work isn’t for the weak. You knew there was no guarantee of safety when we started out.”

“Unsafe? We lost six guys on day one! Jammy got turned inside out and then he exploded! There’s ‘not safe’ and there’s ‘inside-out-explosion’. No one said anything about inside-out-explosions!”

“There’s an upside to it through.”

“Don’t you dare say our shares are bigger.”

“They’re not bigger. They’re a lot bigger!”

“They’re not going to be anything at all if we don’t make it to the city gates.”

“We’ll be fine. We’re only three days away. Easy roads all of them.”

“And if they’re not? If there’s, I don’t know, a piece of a wagon spirit that decides we’re roads and it just has to run over us back and forth for a couple of hours? Do we have any plans at all for how to handle nonsense like that? Anything? At all?”

“Oh sure. Of course, we do.”

“Really? Cause we didn’t seem to have any plans for how to handle the crow fragment that decided Tyrbor’s eyes were ‘shiny’, did we? Or what about…”

“Relax Olan. Relax. Getting all flustered about the few minor setbacks we’ve had is not going to help at all.”

“Well doing nothing isn’t going to help either.”

“But there’s nothing we need to do. Don’t you see?”

“See what? All I see is…”

“All you see is?”

“Why is it so dark?”

“What did you mean Olan, I can see you just fine.”

“I…I thought I could…but everything is gone…wait, who are you? You’re not the Quartermaster…”

“I’m not? Well, who am I then Olan?”

“I don’t know…I don’t…where’s the caravan?”

“I don’t know Olan. I know where they were three days ago though.”

“We were three days away from Mt Gloria.”

“You still are.”

– The perils in the wastelands are not always obvious nor are they merciful or quick.

I dropped my fork. 

And my jaw.

And I damn near dropped the shroud that was over us.

“I’m sorry, but what…” I wasn’t going to challenge Clarity’s accurate accusation, but, seriously, what?

“You’re Insight. Not Malgenia. I’m guessing you were probably worried about me finding out so I thought I’d resolve that dilemma for you.”

“Uh…” Responsibility was just as gobsmacked as I was.

Which was encouraging.

“How…?” It was the most central question I could come up with but a zillion more lurked beyond it.

Yeah, ask her if it was because of something that Vitor might have picked up on, Beauty suggested.

Ask her how long she’s known too, that could affect how likely it is other people have worked it out, Inhibition said.

“I know you,” Clarity said. “For what it’s worth I’m glad too, though I guess that doesn’t matter?”

“You…?” Responsibility managed to sputter that much and I was proud of her for it. As questions went it was a bit unspecific but I wasn’t managing any better.

Clarity responded to it with that smile of hers and waited, patiently, like a saint.

I don’t often want to strangle Clarity.

I’ve certainly never done so, and would quite legitimately have murdered anyone else who tried, up to and including Malgenia based on my performance a couple of years ago.

And yet!

“You knew?” Responsibility said.

“Well, yes, obviously,” Clarity said. “Oh my, the dark honey goes so well with the Bloomberry scones. You two really should try them while they’re still warm!”

The little curl at the ends of her lips gave her away.

She was laughing.

At us.

I couldn’t even say I hated her.

The meanie!

She was laughing at me and I still loved her for it.

Why! How! She…

“You knew and you didn’t tell me!” Responsibility was properly wroth with Clarity and yet no knives were in her hand. Heck her hands weren’t even balled into fists yet.

“Well I only worked it out a few minutes ago, so I didn’t keep it hidden for long,” Clarity said and took another bite of her scone. “Not like you two did.”

Oww. That one hit home.

For both of us.

“We…” Responsibility started and failed to find the words to continue.

“We didn’t want this for you,” I said, not finding the right words so settling on the wrong ones.

“Hmm, that’s mean,” Clarity said. “I should probably finish the scones without you.”

“How did you know?” Responsibility said, still as boggled as I was.

“She stopped pretending,” Clarity said and glanced towards me, “You’re very good at it by the way.”

“Thank you?” I honestly wasn’t sure where the compliment ended there and the recrimination began.

“What do you mean ‘she stopped pretending’?” Responsibility asked, which was an excellent question since, as far as I could remember I hadn’t let my Malgenia  guise waver in the slightest.

“I mean she stopped pretending she didn’t care for you,” Clarity said. “And me, which, yes, thank you for that too. I have missed you terribly Insight.”

“Wait, yes, I missed you too, but wait, what…?” Coherency is overrated. Babbling is just as effective don’t you think?

“She stopped…but we didn’t do anything?” Responsibility said.

“Oh. OH! Oh, I’m so happy for you!” Clarity said.

Hehe, I really like this one, Reason said, in on whatever private joke Clarity was enjoying with herself.

“Happy for us?” I asked.

“Yes! You’ve finally confessed to each other, haven’t you?” Clarity said, possessing telepathy or something apparently.

Nope, Reason said, smugly smug in knowing everything apparently.

She doesn’t know everything, trust me, Beauty said.

Should we put in an appearance too? Inhibition  asked.

Not yet, Reason said. Let’s let them work things out, we can complicate the story later.

Because it wasn’t complicated enough sharing my head with three other people

Three? Diyas asked

I share my heart with you my goddess.

I have the best Blessed.

“Have you kissed yet?” Clarity asked, leaning forward and entirely too eager for the answer.

“Have we…?” Responsibility asked.

“Kissed?” I asked, and failed to suppress the flash of guilt that flickered across my face.

Officially, the Deaths were all pledged to Malgenia. Relationships with each other weren’t unheard of but were, officially at least, forbidden. In practice as long as it wasn’t obvious and wasn’t held higher than the Deaths’ relationships with Malgenia the overseers tended to ignore whatever the Deaths got up to on their own time. 

“Yes! Oh you have! And I missed it!” Clarity looked crestfallen.

“No…just, I…” Responsibility, my beautiful, brilliant Responsibility was speaking for the both of us as she failed to achieve any sort of clear dialog.

“We should start over,” I said, recognizing that the situation I thought we were in didn’t bear the vaguest resemblance to the actual situation before us.

“Please don’t!” Clarity said. “I don’t want you two to throw away all the progress you’ve made!”

“Progress? No, she doesn’t mean like that,” Responsibility said. “She means you seem to be about twenty steps ahead of us, and we need to catch up.”

“More or less.” I tossed Responsibility a glance to ask if she wanted to lead the conversation only to be met with a shake of her head.

This was all my fault, so I was the one who got to make things make sense again.

Step one of that process was to cast off my Malgenia disguise.

Could Vitor have pierced the shroud I had cast around us this time? No. I wasn’t being prideful there, he simply couldn’t. I’d made it strong enough to keep out anything short of the Beast of the End of All Things and outside of his domain, Vitor couldn’t have summoned up enough power to contest with me (a contest he would have lost, to be at least a little prideful) without alerting the rest of the Neoterics and leaving them eager to aid whichever side of the fight they thought might win (and from Malgenia’s memories, I was pretty sure most of them would be betting on her).

It was unbelievably relaxing to wear my own shape again. I hadn’t noticed how much I missed it, even when I’d resumed wearing it with Responsibility in the Malgenia’s garden.

What I didn’t expect was the tears it brought to Clarity’s eyes.

“Hey,” I said. “I’m sorry.”

What was I sorry for? Everything I guess? I could have switched back to Malgenia’s form but that didn’t seem like the kind of tears Clarity was crying.

“No. No, it’s okay. It’s just…” and it was Clarity’s turn to be at a loss for words! 

Yay!

Sort of?

“I didn’t think I’d ever get to see you again,” Clarity said in a small voice as she rubbed the tears out of her eyes.

“Yay, right there with you,” Responsibility said and shifted her chair closer to Clarity to give her a hug.

“I wanted to tell you both, so, so many times,” I said, fearful of breaking something by joining their hug.

“But you couldn’t,” Clarity said. “You couldn’t or we all would have died. Vitor would have killed all us, wouldn’t he?”

“No,” I said. “I wouldn’t have let, I WON’T let anyone hurt you.”

“But we all would have died, right?”

“Yeah, probably. If Vitor had tried to hurt you, I would have killed him.” I was not lying or exaggerating. Malgenia had left me more than just power. I had the knowledge she’d spent her not-quite-eternal lifetime developing. I hadn’t assembled it all, but searching for the means to kill other Neoterics had been one of the first things I’d sought after, found, and discovered the folly of possessing. “The problem is that if I kill him, the world is going to burn since all the power he holds will have nowhere to go.”

“Couldn’t you just take it in?” Clarity asked.

“Yes, and no,” I said. “Claming his power would be easy. Claiming and not becoming a god is possible – the Neoterics have done it three times already, but each time they had specific plans in place, and they divided the stolen power between them. I could replicate those plans, but Vitor would see it coming long before I could get the vessels in place.”

“And what could he do about it?” Clarity asked, as wonderfully cold as I remembered her being.

“Alert the other Neoterics. Together they could oppose Malgenia’s domain, though no one would enjoy that. Alternatively, since Grace Overflow Manipulation wasn’t Malgenia’s prime area of focus, he might simply be able to sabotage the vessels in some manner I wouldn’t be able to detect.”

“That’s a bother,” Clarity said. “We’ll need to work out some other means to remove him then. I presume that’s why we’re out here?”

“We have a more pressing, and personal, issue to deal with,” I said.

“Insight needs to perform another Assumption Ritual,” Responsibility said.

“But it’s not time for that yet, is it?” Clarity asked.

“It’s been time for a little while,” I said. “Malgenia was better at managing her power. It’s growing a bit faster than I can manage though.”

“So you need one of us to die for you? Me? I mean, I’m willing, but I had hoped… ” Clarity said before I cut her off.

“No. Absolutely not. Never. No one is dying for me, most especially not either of you. Ever. Am I perfectly clear about that?”

“But isn’t the Assumption a death sentence?” Clarity asked.

“You knew that too?” Responsibility asked.

“No. But I’ve always suspected it, and with Insight back, what else could it be?” Clarity asked.

“It’s worse than death,” I said, giving a mental hug to the Deaths who were inside me. “But we think we have an approach that can change things.”

“We’re going to share it,” Responsibility said. “Instead of fighting against each other, we’re going to fight for each other.”

“You’re damn right we are,” Clarity said and I saw what had been wrong with my plan all along.

“What do you mean we’ve run out of Blood Gem extract? Did Insikir renege on his monthly commitment just because our shipment of Graktite Dermal abrasives was only C-grade?”

“Not at all Lord Vitor. No complaints regarding the quality of the Graktite were filed. Our shipment was accepted without question. It’s the caravan Lord.”

“It’s what about the caravan? Don’t tell me that we’ve lost another one? We should be able to track their location anywhere on the surface of the planet and anywhere within the Under Realms. I know those trackers work! I designed them myself! And they could just pray to me if they didn’t!”

“Well, you see, that’s the thing Lord. We do know where they are. Or perhaps ‘where they were’ would be more accurate.”

“Were?”

“Yes Lord. The trackers are still functioning, but the bio-monitors built into them recorded an, an event Lord.”

“What sort of event? The caravan route was carefully divined for its safety was it not?”

“Absolutely. I made sure to check the records and I have them here. The nearest encounter the caravan was meant to have was a Class 2 Peril, an encounter with a fragment of the Cricket God. Well within the capabilities of the guardians who were assigned to the detail.”

“And yet they encountered an ‘event’? Let me see those reports.”

“Yes Lord. Here they are Lord.”

“Good. Good. Yes. This looks comprehensive. What event was able to evade this level of detection then?”
“We do not know my Lord. The caravan was approaching the midpoint of the return journey when they encountered something we have no readings for.”

“No readings? That shouldn’t be…oh.”

“You know what the event was my Lord?”

“Yes. Yes, I believe I do.”

“Can the caravaners be rescued?”

“They can neither be rescued nor recovered. In fact, inform Insikir’s people that we are discontinuing that caravan line entirely. Also all other caravan routes will proceed through Class 3 perils at a minimum. No more low peril routes are allowed. And all patrols must not return directly here. I want an outpost well outside our city limits they stop at first. We cannot have one of those things lured here.”

– Neoteric Lord Vitor discovering that fragments of the End of All Things prowl the wastelands.

Winding up in the Wastelands had been my idea, but that didn’t mean I was entirely happy with it. I knew from Malgenia’s memory exactly what waited and lurked within them. Vitor did too and I’d thought for sure that when I proposed my mad idea of killing the Beast, he’d more or less explode. Then I would agree and drop the idea, and then when I disappeared with Responsibility, he’d know that I was simply being flakey and had changed my mind without telling him. All of which was perfectly in keeping with how Malgenia interacted with her brother and the world at large.

Instead of blowing up though, he got a strange look in his eyes and went thoughtful for a moment.

Then he started pacing.

“Will one Death be enough?” he asked at last, which was not at all the question I’d been expecting.

“You think I need more?” I asked, which was also not at all the question I should have asked. I was on a roll it seemed

“What you are proposing it fantastically dangerous, even for one of us, or especially for one of us,” Vitor said, the wheels still turning in his head.

“You think I shouldn’t go? But I want to try!” I said, lying in Malgenia’s voice with the words I knew she would have chosen.

“Oh, you very much shouldn’t go, but I know you will, just as I know you will likely succeed,” he said, his gaze turning on me with a certainty that was by no means comforting.

Also, wait, he thinks I can kill the Beast of the End?

Can’t you? Beauty asked.

Yeah, this is Malgenia, we’re talking about, even if it’s beyond us, would it have been beyond her? Inhibition spoke from pretty much all of us. We’d believed in Malgenia’s might before we died, and from her memories I had the sense that we were underestimating if anything.

It would have, and it is, Diyas said. The End of All Things is more than you imagine it to be. No power, no matter how vast can slay it as you suggested. 

Well good thing that’s not actually my goal then, I said. Would Vitor know that though? About the Beast?

That probably depends on how much he knows about what his sister became, Reason said. The other Neoterics were afraid of her for good reason after all.

“If you believe I will succeed, why would I need another Death along?” I asked, trying to understand the game he was playing.

“You are singular in your power, and you always have been. Your Deaths however are quite mortal, even if they’ve been well trained. If you bring only one you’ve selected for the Assumption Ritual and she dies before you can complete your hunt you could be left exposed.”

Which was, unfortunately, a true statement. At least from his point of view. That I would die before I allowed harm to befall Responsibility was neither something he could be aware of nor something I could share without completely revealing that I was not even slightly Malgenia anymore.

Vitor’s demand raised an interesting question too; did I want to spirit away all of the Deaths? 

It wasn’t a terrible idea, especially if Responsibility and I choose to simply not return. If I took all of them with me, I could save them all couldn’t I?

I don’t think so, Reason said.

Cloaking that many people will be a lot harder than cloaking just yourself and Responsibility, Inhibition correctly observed.

And, he’s not going to let you take them all, Beauty said. If you try to take more than half, he’s going to claim you need to leave enough behind as reserves.

Does it matter what he says though? He’s as terrified of Malgenia as the rest of them are? Inhibition wasn’t wrong about that either, but Beauty had a response ready for her.

Oh, he’d let us take them all, but do you believe he wouldn’t be scrying as hard as he could to see what you were up to? Beauty said.

Couldn’t we block his scrying? We have access to a lot more grace than he does? Inhibition asked.

We do, but managing a spell strong enough to cloak all the Deaths and cut Vitor off from seeing what we were doing would definitely alert the other Neoterics, I said, feeling like I’d bitten off far more than I could chew and was on the verge of taking an even bigger bite.

Also, we need to consider that there is a difference between ‘cloaking’ and ‘protecting’, Reason said. If we really do run into a fragment of the Beast, cloak or no cloak, we’ll need to be able to flee and the gods themselves had trouble with that.

How many could we realistically expect to carry with us if we needed to flee from a Beast fragment? Inhibition asked.

“Two,” I said. “I’ll take two if you think one is not enough. Having a spare should be more than enough shouldn’t it? If two of them die on me, I can always just come back and grab another one.”

“I suppose more than that would create a different set of problems,” Vitor said, entirely distracted from the mental conference I’d been a part of.

“Good, good,” I said. “I’ll go tonight then!”

“Won’t you need, no, I imagine you wouldn’t. Do you know where…no, no sense asking about that either,” he said.

“We are having quite the conversation,” I said confident and correct that Vitor was paying no attention to me at all anymore.

What other Death will you take? Diyas asked and I felt a collective eyeroll from the Deaths I shared Malgenia’s form with.

So.

Yeah.

That was how Responsibility and I wound up in the Wastelands with Clarity.

What? Of course Responsibility wasn’t happy. I wasn’t happy either. Neither of us could deny that there was any other choice for who would go with us though.

I couldn’t take more Deaths because I couldn’t protect more than two of them.

Or, if I’m being honest, I wasn’t sure how many of them I could protect but there were two who I was willing to break the world to ensure the safety of.

Clarity had been all too easy to convince to come along on our trip, something which neither Responsibility, nor I, was pleased with.

“Would you care to join us?” I’d used five whole words. Malgenia probably would have used one. I’d been (relatively speaking) verbose to give Clarity a choice in the matter, all while knowing how nonexistent that choice was.

Clarity’s answer was written for her the moment she was adopted as one of the Deaths. 

Which brought up the next most terrible choice I had to make; whether to tell her who I really was or not.

Again, it was almost not a choice at all. In a physical sense I could have continued the deception. I could even have trained Responsibility at times when Clarity wasn’t with us. Deception is not challenging when you have the sort of power Malgenia does. Granted Malgenia herself rarely bother to use her power to deceive anyone since she rarely bothered to care what anyone else thought or did, but that was her and my needs were noticeably different than hers had been.

“She’s never going to forgive me,” I said, huddled in a bedroom in the small house I’d called up out of the stones on our first night in the wasteland.

“This is Clarity. You have met her right?” Responsibility asked.

“She shouldn’t forgive me,” I said. “You shouldn’t either I suppose, but I don’t want to give you up, so, please?”

“It’s not getting any less weird to hear you talk like that wearing her face.” Because Responsibility knew Malgenia was not built for anxiety – I’d literally never seen a memory of hers that had even the slightest hint of it. “Also does that mean that you want Clarity to give up on you.”

I really like this one, Beauty said.

“I hate you,” I said and hugged my knees to my chest.

“I’d miss you if you didn’t,” Responsibility said and kissed me on the forehead.

I could feel Clarity coming up stairs from the kitchen where I’d summoned food for us. 

Which should have been a giveaway.

Malgenia loved receiving food but had not, in any of our recollections, every made any for herself or for us. It wasn’t unbelievable that she would be able to call forth a feast but with two Deaths to attend her, she definitely would have waved up some ingredients and had her darlings do all the culinary work.

“So you think I should tell her now?” I asked, rising from the floor and dropping into the head seat at the table, where Malgenia would obviously be lounging.

Or, maybe not. It wasn’t like she shared meals with us. It might have been more in character for her to let the Death eat together while she, I don’t know, star gazed at the pitch black empty sky? 

Listen, I loved her but Malgenia was weird, okay?

“I could do if you want?” Responsibility said. “But we both know who she needs to hear it from.”

And we did. 

I just…

She was going to hate me.

For what I’d done to Malgenia.

For abandoning them all.

For bringing her along without telling her the truth.

For picking Responsibility.

Oh, it was going to hurt.

And I deserved it.

“My Lady, dinner is served,” she said, depositing three plates heaped with various dishes we’d made for Malgenia over the years and sliding into the last open chair.

“Clarity,” I said, gathering all my courage and stealing as much from Beauty, Inhibition, and Reason as they were able to give. “There’s something I have to explain…”

I struggled to find the verbal rope I was going to hang myself with only for Clarity to speak up without prompting.

“You’re Insight. I know. Try the Bloomberry scones, they’re amazing!”

“What do you mean we can’t risk the wasteland?”

“I’m unclear what part of that statement is confusing to you Vaingloth?”

“That was not in our plan. That was not how we had ordained things to be. This world is supposed to be ours, Helgon. That is the part that is confusing me!”

“The world is ours. What’s left of it at any rate. We all have our cities, do we not?”

“That’s not the point Dyrena. We are supposed to have everything. We were supposed to be the Lord of a New World, not a dead one.”

“Well, things didn’t go exactly according to plan, did they. I’m still working on the calculations to explain what happened but…”

“What happened, Helgon, was that the God Devourer we summoned was too big. It was supposed to fall with the last of them. They were supposed to rid the world of each other so it could be ours!”

“They mostly did.”

“Mostly is not good enough Sasarai!”

“Isn’t it though? What did we really wish to attain from this? Power? We hold so much power we’re having to shunt it off into other venues lest it deify us to the point where the End of All Things notices us. That has to be the practical limit of the divine power that we could have gathered.”

“I see Vaingloth’s point. Power cannot truly measured as pure divine force, but rather our ability to exert our will on the world around us. With the wastelands closed and too perilous to travel, at least for ourselves, I imagine we can spare trade caravans of our peoples since the losses will be easily replenished, but with passage denied to us there are practical limits to the power we can exercise. Sasarai, you’ve spoken of your grand garden, but it will be forever constrained by your hedges, don’t you wish to expand it someday?”

“I don’t believe so Insikir. Endless expansion would, after all, eventually lead to an overlap between our realms, and no one wants that.”

“So we must all subsist on the miserable allotment of our own cities? Can we not devise a means of combatting the shattered spirits and fragments of the Beast? Malgenia, certainly she is capable of that?”

“Yes, but I do not wish to. I rather enjoy this world we have. It feels like home at last.”

– Dissension forms between the Neoteric Lords in their first post-Sunfall council, with violence mitigated by the practicality that none of them are physically present to be summarily murdered.

So we were lost in the Wastelands. The three of us.

Yep. Three.

How did we get here? Responsibility insists that it’s my fault, but, really, Vitor is to blame.

I mean, I suppose she’s not entirely wrong. It was my idea after all, and talking her into it wasn’t exactly easy.

“I’m not insane.” That had been the proper start of my arguments and, to be fair to Responsibility, it wasn’t the one I could offer a whole lot of support for.

I mean, you do hear voices, Beauty said.

Smart, helpful voices though, Inhibition countered.

She can see us too, but she could brush that aside as us being hallucinations, except for the small fact that Responsibility can see us as well, Reason said, smartly and helpfully.

“You know if we die in the wasteland, it’s the same as dying here right?” Responsibility had looked at me like it wasn’t a question of determining if I was broken but rather in how many different places and whether there was any chance I could be put back together.

“Technically, dying in the wasteland could be a whole lot worse than dying here,” I said, proving that I was entirely sane because I could acknowledge the issues we would face.

From Responsibility’s expression however it was clear my claim proved nothing.

“Also, we’re not going to die out there,” I said. “Out there I can use Malgenia’s power to cloak us both and no one will question it.”

“Yes. You’ve said that,” Responsibility said, not a single note of agreement in her tone. “The question though is; will any cloak you can raise actually keep out the things in the Wasteland.”

“With Malgenia’s power…?” I started to ask, but she cut me off.

“Yes, even with her power. She never ventured out into the Wastelands and none of the other Neoterics do either – unless that’s a lie too?” Her question at least showed she was still considering what I was suggesting.

“From what I’ve gathered, it’s not a lie. The Neoterics really don’t risk the Wasteland at all. They could, but they’re all faced with the wager of eternal life against whatever they’d want out there. Or almost all of them.”

“Almost? Oh. Malgenia’s different wasn’t she?”

“For a few important reasons. First, yes, her eternal life was different from theirs. There was a cost to her eternity which the rest didn’t have to pay. She didn’t care too much about that, but, she also didn’t care about exploring the wastelands either.”

“But she was always so curious, wasn’t she?” Responsibility had adapted to using the past tense with Malgenia rather well I thought. 

Given that she’d accepted Malgenia was, in fact, quite gone, I was tempted to resculpt the ‘body’ I was wearing to look like myself, but I didn’t trust the gossamer veil I’d cast over us to hold up long enough for me to change back in time if Vitor poked at it. I was pretty sure he wasn’t watching us, in part because Malgenia had always been a stickler for her privacy and in part because he wasn’t exactly the most subtle of the Neoterics. That gave me a feeling of security that I was certain would last right up until I discovered that he was more subtle than I wanted him to be.

“She was endlessly experimenting, the catch was that even a couple hundred years wasn’t long enough to run her out of things she could try from the comfort of her own domain.”

“And she was nothing is not lazy.”

“Heresy!” I feigned outrage, which earned me the eyeroll I deserved.

The Deaths all love Malgenia. She is literally divine in our eyes.

Was.

She was divine.

Responsibility still does better with getting the tenses right than I do. Maybe it’s seeing her memories from time to time that make her seem more ‘present’ in the present, if that makes any sense?

Anyways, we all loved Malgenia, but even from the few interactions we had with her, we all knew she had her own little foibles.

Honestly, it helped me love her more.

Sure, she was a goddess, a divinity made flesh, but she was also so, so happy when we made birthday sweets for her. She cooed over them like a little kid and twitched her toes each time we put a new one in front of her.

And she was killing us every couple years or so.

Which had sort of curdled a bit of the milk of love and kindness it was true, but I’d spent a long time knowing a different side of her, or imagining one, and it wasn’t terribly easy to let that go.

Anyways, she was lazy, most of us, or most of us who were paying attention, noticed that. She had her fixations and fascinations but if it involved real effort, well, that’s what the overseers, or other minions, or, in a pinch, Vitor were for.

“Doesn’t that present a problem though? If she hasn’t gone out into the Wasteland in all this time, how are you going to explain her sudden desire to risk a trip to the one place which all of the Neoterics are afraid of going?”

“Oh, that’s easy, I’m not planning to explain anything,” I said. “I mean, when was the last time Malgenia was forthcoming with any explanations for her ideas? Like ever?”

Sometimes the manner in which my former Lord and Mistress lived her life was extremely convenient, which on reflection made a lot sense given that she had the power several gods and an aversion of inconvenience.

“Fair. In theory that would mean that you could just cloak us here though, oh, or, I see. If you did that it would raise questions that Vitor or one of the others might feel like going to the trouble to get answers to.”

Responsibility couldn’t read my mind, but it was so refreshing to have someone who understood how I thought.

We understand how you think, Beauty said.

We just don’t always agree with you, Inhibition said.

Consider how often we don’t say anything. At least half that time it’s because we agree with you. Reason was being mean. Because she liked teasing me. I could only imagine what a nightmare she’d been for Beauty when they were both alive.

Picture you and Responsibility but about five times worse, Beauty said.

Hey!

What? I’m being nice! I didn’t say ten times!

“So the plan is you and I sneak off alone, head to the Wasteland, we train for the right way to do the Assumption Ritual and then…what? Let’s say it goes right and we manage it, then what do we do?”

“Oh there will be so many possibilities then,” I said. “Simplest one. I come back and say I tried a variation of the ritual which didn’t seem to make a difference. You come back and simply cloak yourself so that you can move around and live as you like. Or we just don’t come back.”

“Not sure how well that would work, but, okay, we’d have to power to figure things out then. Sounds like we might have a plan.”

We did not have a plan.

Vitor, happily, had not been spying on us. He was however increasingly paranoid that I wasn’t going to perform the Assumption Ritual and so, of course, was waiting in Malgenia’s foyer as soon as I returned.

“You seem cheerful,” he said, with the sort of guarded caution any living being should have on seeing Malgenia smiling.

Since telling him “I’m in love with one of my Deaths are we’re going to run away together and live happily ever after” wasn’t even vaguely an option, I had to scramble to come up with some other excuse.

I could have told him I’d found a new method of killing things, but while that would have delighted Malgenia I was also reasonably sure I couldn’t possibly manage to devise anything that wasn’t old hat for her. So I had to slide closer to the truth.

“I’m going to be taking a trip,” I told him, freezing the delight on my face and silently commanding him to not inquire any further.

“Where?” he asked, growing visibly more concerned.

“The Wastelands!” I said. Was it the right answer? Better question, was there anywhere else I could name that wouldn’t immediately be revealed to be a lie the moment I ventured into the wastelands? Right, so the bad answer was the only answer.

“What? Why?” Vitor might have been asking out of concern as a brother, he might have been asking out of worry as a Neoteric Lord, but I think he was mostly asking out of sheer disbelief.

Which made sense.

What reason could I possibly have for doing something as unhinged as risking the wastelands?

“I want to find something to kill,” I said, a half baked, truly idiotic idea forming in my head.

“Everything living is here though? There’s nothing to kill out there!” He wasn’t wrong about that, but he wasn’t entirely right either.

“I know. That’s why I’m going to go kill it,” I said. It was a lot easier to lean into Malgenia’s unique brand of madness when I was contemplating something truly mad.

“Mal, this doesn’t make sense. Are you just trying to put off the Assumption Ritual? I know it was rough last time, but that was a fluke. I’m sure it’ll be better this time.”

“Oh, it will, and no, I’m not running from the ritual at all. I picked a Death and I’m going to bring her with me. She’s going to be my reserve if I need one during the hunt.”

“Hunting what? There’s nothing to hunt out there!”

“Exactly! We’re going to hunting Nothing. What did Vaingloth call it? The End of All Things? It’s time that dies too, don’t you agree?”

“It’s rather surprising with the collection of individuals we’ve recruited for this endeavor that we don’t have any concerns about internecine strife undermining our efforts, wouldn’t you say Vaingloth?”

“I wouldn’t say anything of the sort Helgon. What I would say is that our current state of detente has required a great deal of design and orchestration, and that I, for one, will be all too glad once our ‘endeavor’ as you called it concludes.”

“Oh? Will we be in a more stable state then?”

“Of course, of course! We’ll be immortal by then after all.”

“Well, somewhat immortal. It will only be conditional immortality, correct?”

“Conditional? Bah. We’ll have the powers of the gods. Who will there be to oppose us at that point?”

“Well, each other I imagine. Isn’t that the problem we were discussing?”

“Ah, but by then we will have no need to oppose each other you see Helgon.”

“Do I?”

“Yes, you do. We will each have our own domains, separated from one another across the face of the world. What you chose to do in your domain will be of no concern to any of the rest of us. Just as nothing we do will be of concern to you.”

“I suppose projecting power outside our domains will be difficult, so that should offer some security. Still though if several of us agreed to work together…”

“If we agreed to work together against another, surely it would only be after all diplomatic options had been exhausted and that too is important. We need to be able to, collectively, keep one another in check. Can’t allow one of our number to do anything too terribly foolish when we have the power to destroy the world after all.”

“And the threat of censure by the rest will act as a natural guardrail against such behaviors I take it?”

“Excactly. With none of us able to menace the rest independently, we shall all enjoy a peaceful eternity together.”

“None of us except Malgenia.”

“What?”

“None of us will be able to menace another, except Malgenia, who could menace us all if she choose. She’s part of the reason I say we’re only conditionally immortal.”

“Well, yes, that’s true. But she’s not interested in such things. I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

– Helgon almost getting Vaingloth to admit the obvious flaws in his long term plans.

You would think it would be difficult to feel an overwhelming love for someone and simultaneously want to throttle them. 

Or you would if you weren’t me gazing on Responsibility.

Part of me was happy really. The urge to strangle her told me that this was my Responsibility sitting beside me. My beloved Responsibility. My beloved, idiotic, infuriating Responsibility.

“We, as I believe I just explained, cannot perform the Assumption Ritual,” I said, exercising Supreme Divine Patience, which was not in fact a gift of Malgenia’s portfolio, and which I did not in fact truly possess.

“We can, and we will,” Responsibility said, as resolute as I had ever known her to be.

Seriously, having all this power sucked. Why couldn’t I just be me again? Punching her until she shut up or made sense, or knocked me out, that was always a significant possibility, would just have been so much simpler.

“The Assumption Ritual can’t work if we’re not willing to fight. If we attempt it, one of two things will happen…”

“One of three things,” Responsibility cut me off to point out. “And we can determine which of those three it will be.”

“Three? No. If we’re not willing to fight it out properly, then one or the other of us will hold the claim to all of Malgenia’s power, or, far worse, neither of us will, and then it will destroy pretty much everything.”

“Or, and hear me out on this, we fight.” She had that smug look on her face that said she’d figured something out that I was being an idiot for missing.

Oh! Oh, yeah, she is good, Beauty said.

Is she? I mean I think she’s missing…oh, OH! I see, yeah, she is good, Reason said, being careful I was sure to give me not one damn clue of what she and all the rest of the them had figured out.

Take a moment, you’ll get it, Diyas said, which was just wonderful. Even my god was toying with me.

“You’re cute when you frown,” Responsibility said.

“I look like Malgenia,” I grumbled.

“Yeah, but I know it’s you in there,” Responsibility said.

And, as predicted, I got it.

I hate you all, I said to my inner chorus.

“I don’t know if that’s going to work,” I said, mostly to be difficult since it felt like the kind of thing that might be possible, and might be our only hope.

“It might not.” Responsibility was only agreeable when she knew she’d already convinced me.

Ugh. Had we already gotten married at some point? How did she know me that well!

“You really think fighting FOR each other instead of against each other is something we can do?” I asked, failing to suppress any of the whininess or uncertainty in my voice.

“Kiss me again and we’ll see,” she said.

It was a fair point.

And I was very stupid.

How had I not seen this as an option before?

Because that would have required admitting that you actually liked her? Beauty said.

And believing that she loved you enough to fight for you like you would fight for her, Inhibition said.

And they were both right.

Which was exactly as hard to accept as I’d have imagined it to be, if I’d let myself imagine it at all.

“Are you sure?” I asked. “We’re still working on translating the original version of the ritual. There might be another answer.”

“Are you withdrawing your proposal?” Responsibility asked already knowing the answer.

I paused.

I should, shouldn’t I? If I really loved her, and my earlier protests aside, I did, I couldn’t really deny that, but if I really loved her, shouldn’t I have wanted to protect her from the insanity of the Assumption Ritual? I knew how bad it was, and she didn’t.

Also, forget the danger to the world, and to myself, could I really do that to someone who was  important to me?

“I still want you forever, whether or not we do this,” I said. Because I was greedy.

“I think this is the only way we get to have forever,” Responsibility said. “Or even much longer at all if what you’ve said is true. You put performing the Assumption ritual off as long as you could already haven’t you?”

“It wasn’t needed at first, Malgenia’s power was diminished a bit after I, you know, tore her to pieces. After that? Well just getting a handle on all this is kind of still a work in progress.”

“That’s going to be true for the Assumption Ritual too. It’s usually a month of preparations right? Can you make it that long?”

I got up and started pacing in response. It was a question where I knew what the answer had to be but that didn’t mean I was at all certain what the answer was.

“I can, mostly because I have to,” I said. “I’ve got some assistance there that I can fall back on.”

“Diyas? She can help you with that?”

Of course I can! I’m a god! Diyas wasn’t actually offended, you could tell by lack of Divine Smiting, but her point was a valid one.

“Does that seem weird?” I asked. “Early on, my ability to hold things together was almost entirely her.”

“She’s not all that she was though, right?”

Well. No. Grumbly gods are delightful. Seriously I highly recommend connecting with one. I believe Smiting was suggested as an option. Happily, they don’t often smite their Blessed, especially not the ones who luv them so, so much.

{Divine grumbling}

“She’s a bit more limited. We’ve been working on that though,” I said, letting Diyas grumble without commenting on it.

“Working on it how?” It was weird that talking about something as intimate as my secret faith was somehow easier that a publicly acknowledge ritual which had been going on for lifetimes now.

“We’ve been collecting Diyas’ other fragments from the wasteland and putting her back together as much as we could.”

“How?”

“It’s pretty easy. Each fragment is her and they all want to be together, so we just…”

“No, I mean how are you finding fragments in the wasteland?”

“Oh. That’s the ghost’s job.”

“The…ghost’s job?”

“Yeah, when Malgenia said she was the Neoteric Lord of the Dead, she was not kidding. Some of her power is bound up in the literal army of the dead she has on call. Or that I have on call now I guess. Anyways, they’ve been a lot of help.”

“Why haven’t we never seen them? A lot of the Deaths spend time watching the wasteland?”

“We’re nowhere close to the other Neoteric and the wastelands are so much vaster than what we can see,” I said, casting my thoughts to the visions I’d seen both in Malgenia’s memories and through through the sense of the ghosts I’d sent out.

“Aren’t those areas claimed by the other Neoterics though? Or was Malgenia’s claim that the Neoteric had taken all the corners of the world under the protection another lie?” She didn’t sound angry about that, just curious, but that was largely because we’d all learned to hide our true feelings lest we risk the ire of the overseers or, unimaginable worse, Malgenia herself.

“It’s not going to surprise you when I say that was a titanic lie is it? I think the Neoterics claimed the areas as ‘their cities’ and enormous buffer areas around them.” 

It was something I was not entirely unhappy about since the distance the Neoterics had enforced between themselves (Vitor and Malgenia excepted) meant that they didn’t casually drop in on each other. The prospect of someone like Vaingloth or Sasarai visiting me, ever, was spectacularly unappealing. I would have tried setting up my own domain if a.) it wouldn’t have given me away in a heartbeat and b.) run into the issue of where the land would have come from (not to mention the population that I needed to support the Deaths) (I’d considered using the citadels that Dyrena or Helgon had been given but it turned out that, technically, those areas had been divided up between the other Neoterics already).

“That’s why there were still fragments to be found, wasn’t it?” Responsibility asked.

“Yeah. Malgenia didn’t believe in keeping any of the fragments, and apparently the other Neoterics weren’t interested in them enough to brave the dangers out there. Or, that’s not right. They were interested, but the number of remaining fragments outside their hoards weren’t worth the effort, especially since it would leave them vulnerable to each other.”

“How long did it take you to figure that out?” Responsibility asked, wearing her ‘I’m calculating something important, so keep talking I need more info for the equation’ expression.

“A while, figuring out Malgenia’s life, even with some of her memories has been a full time job. The good news is, I haven’t really had anything else to do for the last couple of years.”

When I put it like that it sounds like my life as Malgenia was constant struggle and peril. Which was pretty much exactly accurate. I still felt terrible vocalizing it though, like I was asking for sympathy that I hadn’t really earned. It wasn’t like Responsibility’s life had been all that delightful either.

“Do you think you’d be able to give me a crash course in what you’ve learned then?” she asked, the equations still turning in her head.

“I can try, but there’s an obvious problem with that.”

“If you name me as the next Assumption candidate, I’ll have to do a months worth of ‘Final Training’ with the overseers to prepare me, and after that we’ll be expected to perform the Ritual right away.”

“Yeah. Malgenia had the ceremonies around the Ritual down to an old tradition. I could try to meet with you at night, but…”

“But it wouldn’t be enough time, and it would attract a lot of attention. Malgenia normally doesn’t spend any time with the candidate, and if she does Vitor would definitely spy on what we were saying.”

“We could use the garden to enjoy some privacy,” I said, enticed by the idea of spending time together.

“That would definitely attract suspicion though.” She wasn’t wrong about that, but something she’d said earlier came back to me.

“You know, there is one other place it would be perfectly reasonable for me to keep us cloaked.”

I conjured a vision of the two of us venturing out into the wasteland, overlaying it with all of the monsters which I knew to be out there. Monsters even the Neoterics feared. Monsters I suspected we needed to go meet.