“Helgon has been making noises again.”

“About what Vaingloth?”

“About Dyrena, Vitor.”

“Seems rather late for that doesn’t it? Or has he finally come around to understanding that her betrayal could only be answered as we did?”

“There were other options but none of you would let me take them.”

“Those options can never be taken Malgenia. You know none of us can risk falling over into divinity. Not even you.”

“Yes. It is a sadness. We were supposed to be gods, and now we can’t even be worms.”

“We are still the lords of this world though sister. And our powers are not so constrained as all that, are they? Didn’t you put up a new exhibit in your garden last week? I don’t think you would have been able to make such a…sculpture?…without the power we now have access to.”

“I would ask but I am sure your sister will share her work with the rest of us when she’s ready.”

“I always share my works. No one ever appreciates them though. It is a sadness.”

“It will be a sadness if Helgon turns out to be hiding Dyrena’s secret tomes.”

“But Vaingloth, we searched for those tomes, and there was never any evidence that they existed at all.”

“With the power she held, is that meant to be surprising?”

“Perhaps not, but we cannot jump at every shadow and quaver in fear that Dyrena may have hidden something in it. She was still only a mortal woman. We proved that rather soundly.”

“Her prowess is the evidence of their existence though Vitor. She knew too much and predicted too accurately everything that occurred. The fact that we are left in the state that we are can only be attributable to some cache of hidden prophecy or wisdom one of the ancient scholars like Krytsak failed to secure due to his incompetence.”

“As I said though, we have searched everywhere. There were no books from Krytsak or any other ancient scholars in her possession.”

“And what if they weren’t in her possession? What if they were being held for her? By the one among our number who she shared her true vision with?”

“You think Helgon has her missing tomes? I don’t know…”

“It is possible. He’s much smarter than he lets us know. And if he has them, we must have them too I suppose. It is a sadness though what that will mean for him.”

– Vaingloth stirring his fellow Neoterics to murder over a set of tomes he knew never existed at all.

I have to send away the women I love. Oh, woe is me. I am forced by the cruelties of fate to cast out those most dear and precious to my heart, stranding myself to labor in cold and empty nights, beset on all sides by fell beasts who could be my undoing.

You are doing that specifically to torment me, aren’t you? Beauty asked.

I don’t know? Is it working?

So, I had a plan.

But no one liked my plan.

What are you talking about? We all like your plan. Most of it. We just don’t like the ‘leaving you alone’ part, Inhibition said.

“You four are arguing about the plan, aren’t you?” Clarity asked.

The other Deaths were projected around the living room in my conjured mansion in the Wastelands, but speaking privately was still easier and quicker. I suppose our distracted air and how we were looking at each other was something of a giveaway though.

“She’s tormenting me,” Beauty said.

“Why are you tormenting our elders?” Responsibility asked, having decided that teasing Beauty, Inhibition, and Reason with their being at least theoretically older than the rest of us was fair game.

“She’s trying to convince Beauty to go off and leave with you,” Inhibition said.

“By whining about how terribly, terribly, alone she will be,” Beauty said.

“I thought we were going to leave Reason here with you?” Clarity asked.

“She’s going to assign Reason to do some research project or the other the moment we’re gone. Then she’s going to do something unreasonable,” Beauty said.

“I am capable of refusing requests like that you know, don’t you?” Reason asked.

“Capable? Yes. Historically likely to pass up an opportunity to understand the problem before acting on it?” Beauty gave a shrug of disbelief as the answer to her own question.

Reason started to form a retort but sank back into her sofa with a frown.

“Could we ask Meluna to stop by?” Inhibition suggested, which, while possibly a wise idea, was absolutely not what I wanted to see happen.

No offense meant to Meluna there. She had a strangely comforting presence while also being somewhat less than subtly menacing.

Or maybe it was because she was less-than-subtly menacing that I found her presence reassuring. I grew up worshipping Malgenia. There are parts of me that are broken that I know I’m still not aware of.

“She doesn’t seem the sort to make house calls,” Clarity said. “Or act as a house sitter.”

I half expected her to appear with a snappy rejoinder to that, but the shadows in the house remained that simple spots of dimmed illumination that they were supposed to be.

“I did come back you once already,” I said. “You don’t need to worry that I won’t be here when you all get back.”

Beauty eyed me suspiciously.

Because she caught what I hadn’t said.

All of the rest caught it too, but it was Responsibility who refused to let it slide.

“You can’t use any more of Malgenia’s power. You said that and you still believe it, don’t you?”

“I do. And I won’t. Trust me, I barely remember any of it, but what I do remember is more than enough to convince me that Malgenia was right and godhood is to avoided at all costs.”

You remember that, and you remember why, Diyas said. She wasn’t asking me so much as checking in with me to see if I was creeping any closer to dooming us all.

I would lose all of you, I said, answering the question without directly answering her hidden concern about what I’d seen of the Beast. 

Which was exactly the right answer for me to have chosen.

There were five word I was never going to say or even think again, and the farther I stayed away from them, the better.

“It’s hard to even form the words ‘Malgenia was wrong’, and worse when we find things like this where she wasn’t,” Responsibility said.

“Malgenia was wrong. About the both of you,” Clarity said. “And likely about most of the other things she told us. It’s just her power that she understood, so not terribly surprising that she got something related to it right.”

“If we’re agreed, then can we also agree on when we’re going to set out?” Inhibition asked.

“I was going to suggest after another sleep cycle, but I don’t think we know how much longer Insight has,” Responsibility said. “We should probably leave the moment we have our supplies gathered.”

“You’re on her side, aren’t you? Admit it!” Beauty said.

“Freely,” Clarity said, answering for, I hoped, all the others too.

“Good,” Beauty said. “As long as she knows that then.”

And so they left me.

Well, it took a few hours to get stuff together since I couldn’t just wave my hand and conjure everything we needed. 

When I’d told them I couldn’t afford to risk using any of Malgenia’s power I had not been kidding to even the slightest degree. The divinity Malgenia had captured was bursting at the seams within me. It had tasted the briefest of restorations to its natural state, remembering for a fleeting instant what it was like to have a world where it served and supported the natural processes which gave rise to it and that kind of thing? That sense of purpose and oneness and of being right where you were supposed to be, doing what made you complete? Yeah, I could not fault the divinity I was carrying from wanting that back.

It was its poor fortune that I wanted something else a lot more.

“They’re going to make it through the Wasteland okay, right?” Reason asked a few minutes after the rest of our little family departed.

“Malgenia was never particularly gifted in foresight,” I said.

“But they’re going to be okay,” Reason said, questioning I think herself as much as me.

“They’re going to be okay.” It was more a promise than a reassurance. We both knew exactly how long my self-prohibition against using Malgenia’s power would hold up if either group wound up in danger.

“We’re afraid for you too, you know,” Reason said.

“I do. Which is why I’m really not going to use Malgenia’s power,” I said.

“But you’re also not going to sit here, powerless, and take care of yourself, are you?” Shocking that Reason knew me, right? Yeah I didn’t think so either.

“Taking care of you all IS taking care of myself,” I said. “You know what put me over the top in the Assumption Ritual, right?”

“Yeah. Diyas,” Reason said.

“She gave me the opening. It was her power that kept me alive and whole when Malgenia’s safeguards tried to kill me. Without her I couldn’t have survived long enough to fight at all, but when it came down to Malgenia and me in the heart of her power? She was alone there, but I wasn’t. She had an eternity she’d grown bored of to fight for. She had experiments that she was mildly curious to see come to completion. She had her pride which had been poisoned into arrogance by a life without consequences. And I had you. All of you. I wanted to live, don’t get me wrong, but I could hear all of the Deaths who’d gone before me crying out in their slumber. And I knew who Malgenia would take next if I failed. You, Beauty, Inhibition, Clarity, and even Responsibility, you are why I still exist. Twice now I think.”

“Do you really not remember your brief Ascension at all?” Reasons asked. “It feels like there’s things hidden behind thick clouds in your memories.”

“I’m sure there are. And I’m sure those clouds are there for some damn good reasons, because I’m sure I was the one who put them there.” This was not a great conversation to have, what with it risking ending the world and all, but I knew Reason was the one I needed to have it with, thus why I’d asked for her to be the one to stay with me.

“So you do remember some of it then?” she asked. Because it’s really hard sitting in comfort with not understanding something. We’re similar in that we both just want to pick at whatever it is until we know what we’re really dealing with.

“Some. Like I said. But most of what I do remember just shows me that my mind, hell even Malgenia’s mind, doesn’t not have the space or capacity to hold even a small fraction of what it’s like to be fully divine.”

“So how are you going to keep them all safe then?” Reason wasn’t questioning whether I could, she just wanted in on the real plan now that the rest where safely too far away to interfere with it.

“I’m not,” I said. “You are.”

“One tiny problem with that,” Reason said. “I’m here and they’re there. Also, I have no powers that aren’t yours.”

“Yeah, about that,” I said. “Beauty and Inhibition are fully incarnated now right?”

“Yes, but they’re not independent of Malgenia’s power. We’re all still wrapped up in it. If their bodies are hurt or destroyed, they’ll just go back to our usual spirit realm. Unless a Beast Fragment catches them.”

“That’s correct. They’re not independent of Malgenia’s power, but they are independent of me. I said that I can’t use Malgenia’s power and that’s because I’m too close to the border of divinity. You, however, are not.”

“Because we’re not on course to become the new Malgenia.”

“Because you’re on course to become something else. If I’m almost a god now, then I think that means we can make you into something like a Blessed.” My family isn’t wrong that I have bad ideas they’ll probably object to, but sometimes my bad ideas are ones that I’m pretty certain are going to work.

“What? How?” Reason asked, flustered in a manner she rarely is.

“I believe I can help with that,” Diyas said, fully present as she can only be during a moment of divine revelation.

“A toast my friends, to the gods we shall become!”

“Indeed Vaingloth! Together we shall be a pantheon the likes of which the world has never dreamed of seeing.”

“And yet one which it has sorely needed Sasarai!”

“You speak truth Insikir, though we must grant our predecessors some grace. They were called forth into a world already spun to chaos and had to work with what their ancient disciples could offer them. Our world will rise above theirs because ours will be perfect from the start.”

“Perfectable I should think, Vaingloth. We shall each be sheltering survivors of the old world, and as we do not know now what we are certain to know then, I feel we must account for the possibility that challenges and issues will await us after our ascensions are complete.”

“But Helgon, don’t you see, Perfection must include adaptability and the capacity for growth.”

“And to what would we grow Sasarai if we and our world are already perfect? Is there a perfection beyond perfection? And if so does that not mean that the first perfection is necessarily flawed in that it lacks to the refinement of the latter state?”

“You quibble too much about the philosophy of the point Helgon. Our perfection shall be one undreamt, an age beyond the foresight or prediction of any god or power save our own, and that, regardless of what we make of it, is what will make it perfect.”

“I may be speaking too much of philosophy, which is passing strange for me, but you, Vaingloth, seem to be speaking too much from the wine we’ve imbibed.”

“Nonsense! Sasarai, tell him how harmless your wines are! Made to be especially gentle to the senses I imagine.”

“That would be the Castel Red, you appear to have a glass of Umbral White Vaingloth.”

“Red or White, the potency matters not. For we shall be gods!”

– Vaingloth leading the festivities at a private, pre-Sunfall party amongst the soon to be Neoteric Lords of the Earth.

“What…what have we done. What have we unleashed!”

“It cannot see us. It must never see us.”

“We can never become gods. Not a one of us.”

– Words from the Neoterics first council after the Sunfall.

Daydreams are not supposed to be dangerous. Daydreams are not supposed to rend the gossamer veil of the world away and lay bare the majesty underlying all of creation. Most importantly however, daydreams are not supposed to cast you out into a domain where you stand exposed to the All Consuming Eyes of The End of All Things.

Apart from my own incredibly imminent demise however, standing on the divine plane didn’t feel quite as strange as I’d imagine it would.

Oh, to be certain, things were a trifle different from my normal experience. Space, for example, was essentially non-existent. I was more or less everywhere at the same time. Wherever death had or could happen, there I was. 

Not incarnated of course. Incarnation was the gift the mortals held and my mortality was…

Hmmm…

I was the God of Death and many other domains, but was that all I was?

Had I lost my mortality because I let myself dream of eternity with the women I loved?

The divine spark that had been building within me certainly wanted that to be true, but divinity is stupid.

Hey!

Sorry Diyas! You are of course the exception to that rule.

Yes, well, what happened to you?

I have no idea, and I’m a bit more concerned about what’s going to happen to me. 

I didn’t have a body to gesture with, but I was still able to indicate the terrifying maw of the End of All Things that was descending on us.

We need to leave here, Diyas said, not bothering to hide the urgency in her tone at all.

I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I’m…me anymore? How am I supposed to go back to pretending to be a mortal woman when I am clearly something so much more?

This? This was never more. That’s something the Neoterics tricked us into forgetting. Divinity is a substrate of the world. We were never more important than you – no more than bones are more important than the body they support.

That’s philosophically fascinating but I have no idea how to apply that to what’s happening now! I wasn’t frustrated with her. I wasn’t even scared really, which was a sign that I definitely wasn’t fully myself. I just really couldn’t see how to pull the power I’d held for so long and stuff it back into an Insight-shaped package in the material world.

How fortunate that I do.

It wasn’t Diyas who spoke.

I shouldn’t have known the voice at all, since Insight’s ears had never heard Dyrena speak, but even as nebulous as I’d become I still held onto the shards of Malgenia’s memories and Malgenia knew Dyrena all too well.

Of the eleven other Neoteric Lords, Malgenia had been unconcerned with ten of them. In Vitor’s case, she knew him too well to imagine he’d be able to move against her without being staggeringly obvious. In Vaingloth’s case, she knew he would save her for last because she was too useful a weapon to turn on the others and far too capable of ending him if he gave her reason to. Most of the others were the same, apart from Helgon who she was saw had little interest in even being a Neoteric Lord and would happily had spent eternity in his lab if they’d simply left him alone.

Dyrena was the one outlier.

Dyena was understood her.

And Malgenia was not fond of that.

It had taken her a while to develop the animosity she eventually felt for the first Neoteric to fall though. Early on, Dyrena had been a relief as one of the few who didn’t ask idiotic question, or have any trouble accepting Malgenia at her word.

They hadn’t been friends. Malgenia didn’t see the need for that, but Dyrena had been pleasant to be around.

Pleasant and reasonable and perhaps the only person who’d ever been able to manipulate Malgenia. Worse, Dyrena had managed her manipulations without challenging Malgenia in a manner Malgenia could understand how to fight against.

Part of me loved that. Someone who’d been able to hold Malgenia back, or at least divert her from the worst of her impulses deserved a place in whatever celestial pantheon there could still be.

The rest of me though knew who and what I was talking to.

“You’re not dead,” I said, conjuring actual words from nothing.

The Beast was closing on us, but time, much like space, was the faintest of illusions. We had eternity in a moment and no time at all, and that was something the shreds of my mortal mind simply had to ignore.

“Is that an offer you would support Diyas?” Dyrena asked.

“Would you accept mortality from my hands, Betrayer?” Diyas asked.

Neither of them appeared before me, but I assigned visual images to them anyways. As deities we weren’t exactly standing around and talking, but the communion between us was so far removed from the mortal sphere that even acknowledging it was going to make things worse and probably permanent for me.

So I put us all in my house.

Or a reproduction of it.

Clarity and Responsibility weren’t there, and neither were Beauty, Inhibition, or Reason, and their absence was all that was giving me hope in that the moment. 

Whatever it took, I was not going to let them suffer for my failings.

“Someday, if the offer was extended, I imagine I would take your hand Diyas, but we both know why that day cannot be this one,” Dyrena said.

“Is that how you would help her?” Diyas asked.

And yes, even with a divine level of understanding between us, they were, in fact, being that damn cryptic.

It’s for your own good, Dyrena said, whispering the message to me.

Was that possible?

Sure.

Was I willing to accept that?

I mean, it was what I’d been trained to do right?

Just listen to the big, wise, god-like people who all knew better than me.

Just turn off all my judgement, don’t ask questions, don’t try to understand, and don’t, whatever I did, ever think I could be capable of understanding something better than the people who were actually important.

That may have been a mistake.

I fear…

Divine wrath is not what consumed me.

My wrath isn’t divine at all, but empty skies above did it feel right.

I was the God of Death? 

No. The Gods of Death had gotten themselves beaten like a cheap drum when they tried to fight the End of All Things. 

Malgenia didn’t ‘remember’ that, not precisely, but she’d watched the gods fall and the various domains around death had held a pretty solid piece of her attention. One by one she’d felt them wink out, and one by one she’d claimed the domains they’d let slip through the hands of the fallen gods who’d failed and were gone.

I wasn’t the God of Death.

I was something new.

Something the Beast had never encountered before.

And something it wasn’t going to encounter yet.

I turned my eyes, because to hell with godly senses. I liked my eyes. Responsibility had gazed into them and they’d seen Clarity. So I was going to use my eyes to see the Beast.

And it was nothing.

And it was not to be seen.

To bad.

It disagreed.

Or did it?

It wasn’t anything. It was a nullification of existence. It hadn’t broken the gods. It had erased them.

So how could it be anything?

Unless…

Oh this is definitely dangerous, Dyrena said and began to move against me.

Insight, you need to…

But Diyas didn’t get to finish her sentence, because I already had.

I had eyes that could see and so I looked at the Beast.

At the End of All Things.

At the end of my world.

But not at the end of me.

How could I see all that? How could I see it at all.

“You’re not what you were.”

I didn’t even whisper it.

I couldn’t.

To speak those words would truly be the end of everything.

And so I fled.

To the only home I had, to the only safety there was.

Forcing a divine eternity down into a single mortal life was difficult? No. No it wasn’t. Not compared to the gravity of what lurked beyond the five words I could not speak held.

So I fled.

Down to my my bones.

Down to me.

Down to someone’s arms who wanted nothing more than keep me safe.

“She’s back! Clarity, grab her!” Responsibility had lunged for me the instant I reappeared.

And a moment later Clarity was holding me too.

“What in the ten thousand hells just happened?” Beauty demanded.

“Give her a second!” Inhibition, beloved Inhibition, demanded right back.

“She’s going to need more than that,” Reason said.

They were all incarnated, and all still bound up in Malgenia’s power with me. The only thing more relieving than that was Clarity covering my forehead with kisses.

“And she’s going to stay with us for as long as she needs, isn’t she?” Clarity asked me.

Except it wasn’t exactly a question.

Or a request.

“Not forever,” I said. “But for all of our lives and then some I think. I love you, and I always have.”

I had not fought back from the wrong side of the brink of divinity to be shy about what any of them meant to me.

“Thank you Diyas. Thank you so much,” Beauty said, offering an impromptu but clearly heartfelt prayer to the empty heavens above us.

“That wasn’t me,” Diyas said, fully incarnated in the room with us.

Which she couldn’t do casually.

Only when someone was having a divine revelation?

She was holding herself still. Not moving to encourage me, or stop me.

I could destroy everything, and she was leaving the fate of all that was in my hands.

I love you too, I whispered to her.

“I couldn’t leave you,” I told the others, “But I may have been over estimating how much control I have over Malgenia’s power.”

“What happened? If you can talk about it?” Clarity asked.

“I let myself imagine being with you forever, and apparently eternity comes at a cost,” I said, feeling the rising force of Malgenia’s power fighting ever stronger within me. It had tasted it’s proper home once and it could do nothing but hunger to return.

In that moment though, my hunger was greater than its was.

“Insikir are you certain of the results you published last month?”

“Certain enough to publish them Helgon, why do you ask?”

“They suggest that our entire endeavor will prove to be impossible.”

“Did you not read the entire publication? And even if you didn’t,  I believe I made a clear case in the precis arguing the opposite of your conclusion, assuming the subject matter was beyond you?”

“No, no, I read the precis, I read the paper too. Rather a lot of philosophy in there don’t you think? No, what I’m referring to is the calculations you used as the supporting evidence and the conclusions you drew from them.”

“The calculations were smartly done, and they’ve been double checked as well, by Dyrena in fact! If you have issues with them, or believe you have spotted an error, may I suggest you have her explain your mistake to you.”

“Well, you see, I have spoken to her. Which is why I am concerned.”

“You think she made a mistake? Truly Helgon is that what you believe?”

“Not at all. I believe you did though.”

“I will hear no more of this! The calculations were flawless, I know my discipline better than you ever shall!”

“I am certain you do. I am also, however, certain that you may be somewhat lacking in the fundamentals of biological processes and protocols.”

“What? What has biology to do with the grace-to-aether ratios for reality fractures?”

“Quite a lot it seems. You see here you predicate the success of our endeavor on the notion that we will only need to create a reality fracture on the submolecular level and that generating the required aether to do so is well within the boundaries of the grace which we are in the process of accumulating.”

“I know what my conclusions were Helgon.”

“The key point is the hypothesis that we need to ensure that the Predator creature which we plan to attract will be capable of widening the breech without our help.”

“Yes. Appendix C explains that. By utilizing a submolecular rift, we can ensure that only a Predator of sufficient ambition and puissance to devour the gods will be capable of passing through. Lesser entities will lack the interest or capacity to widen the breech.”

“I agree. Everything you wrote there is sound, and the calculations are correct in and of themselves. You have simply missed one critical fact.”

“One which you, in your infinite biological wisdom, somehow observed?”

“Oh, not at all. It was Sasarai who found this. I simply confirmed it.”

“Sasarai? Sasarai noticed a problem in my work? Are you serious? What did you confirm?”

“Life, even if it is not as we know it, has the hallmark that it propagates. Your calculations show that a sufficiently powerful entity will be able to breech into our reality. What they do not address is what will happen if that entity is breeching into this reality not for itself but for its offspring. You presume that the entity will also serve to keep other entities out, and the arguments you make are persuasive, unless those other entities are its own young.”

– High Accessor Helgon convincing High Accessor Insikir that they needed a rift which was both much larger than they’d originally planned and far more temporary.

The Neoterics weren’t exactly leaving me alone. Determining how to destroy the Beast Fragments had become something of a ‘group project’ with annoying daily check-ins. 

To their credit, they hadn’t attained the other Neoterics present state without a significant amount of personal acumen (unlike the reports we’d read of the wealthy and powerful of the pre-Sunfall world) so their contributions of the project weren’t entirely useless.

‘Not entirely useless’ was not the same thing as helpful however. 

“You could tell Sasarai to collect ‘beastial stool samples’ himself,” Responsibility said. She was draped across one of the couches I’d conjured for our House in the Wastelands. Clarity was occupying the other end of the couch, her lap full with Responsibilities legs and feet as she read through a book Insikir had sent over.

Following the ‘Not-So-Great Council’ of the remaining Neoterics, I’d popped back to my house to bring the two of them up to speed. Several of the other Neoterics had objected to my continued cloaking of the house, but it had been easy enough to explain it’s necessity since if any of the Beast Fragments did stumble across me before I discovered how to destroy them, things would not end well for anyone. 

Then we’d spent a few weeks pretending to work on a problem which had defied their comprehension for centuries.

Vitor, interestingly, had not been among those opposed to my return to the Wastelands. It was possible that he simply knew fighting against Malgenia’s whims was a losing cause, but he also had to know that I hadn’t performed the Assumption ritual yet and he hadn’t brought that up either (probably because I wasn’t showing any signs of being overwhelmed by Malgenia’s power, since I was doing fine with it).

Malgenia had trusted her brother, not just because they were twins, but because she knew she could see through his schemes and stratagems well before they came to fruition. In my case however, I hadn’t spent my whole childhood with him. I knew him as a figure of terrible awe and majesty, flawlessly perfect in ever physical detail and casually cruel except to Malgenia’s Deaths who were beyond his reach. From Malgenia’s memories, I’d discovered another side to him though. The awkward child who bloomed into a prodigy of any physical challenge he was tested against. The cocksure young man more interested in the rewards his talents could bring him than honing them at all. And finally, the man alive with the fire of ambition, pushing his talents to their utmost to ensure the success of their plans to overthrow the gods themselves.

Malgenia saw all his fallings and foibles. She knew which buttons to push to get what she wanted and which ones to push to entertain herself. All that I knew was that he had depths and desires he’d never shared with her, but seeing past his facade was not something I felt certain I could manage. The glimpses I perceived which seemed to be his ‘true self’ could easily have been simply another layer of subterfuge.

“Poop,” Beauty said. “Tell Sasarai to go pick up the poop himself. Make it sound childish.”

“And we want to antagonize the Neoteric Lord of the Garden why exactly?” Clarity asked.

“Because he knows there isn’t any,” Reason said.

“He wants ‘Malgenia’ to search for it so that she’ll get too close to one of the fragments,” Responsibility said. “It’s his idea of a clever plan to make her the fifth Neoteric to fall.”

“He had an interesting point,” Inhibition said and kept reading as most of the rest of the room stared at her in shock.

“She means the genesis of Sasarai’s idea is that Vaingloth fell a Beast Fragment and his stored grace didn’t erase the world,” Clarity said, with a nod to Inhibition who nodded back in agreement.

“Something to keep in mind should we actually figure out how to control the Beast Fragments,” Reason said.

“Something everyone is keeping in mind,” I said. “Which is why any research we do there needs to be clearly focused on their destruction. The moment any of the Neoterics think that control is an option, a silent war will start.”

The silent war started centuries ago, Diyas said. You are correct that it will go loud the moment any of the Neoterics gets proof that the Beast Fragments can be weaponized.

“Including if that Neoteric is our own,” Beauty said.

“I’d considered that but would we really want to launch an attack we couldn’t foresee the outcome of?” I asked. “That seems like the mistake they made during the Sunfall, and I’m not eager to repeat it.”

“Plus, is it at all a good idea to saddle you with any more power?” Inhibition asked.

“That wouldn’t be a problem. I’ve still got Malgenia’s grace well under control, we don’t need to rush any of our plans to account for problems with that,” I said, ignoring the luminous glow fighting to escape from my soul. Godhood could fight all it wanted, I did not have time for it to be a problem so it wasn’t going to be one. Simple as that.

“I can tell you that this book doesn’t have anything to suggest that killing one of the Beasts is possibly,” Responsibility said, shaking the book she was holding. “The closest it gets is pure speculation on how ‘Aetheric manifolds might coalesce if the fundamental constants of the world varied’, from what they used to be of course. It doesn’t have anything on what they might be now.”

“That one came recommended strongly by Insikir too,” Reason said, frowning in the frustration we all felt.

“There’s supposed to be a companion volume that it illuminates,” Responsibility said. “Apparently they were rare though so the note with this book said ‘hope you still have a copy of the other one’.

“And of course we don’t?” Inhibition asked.

“I checked Malgenia’s personal study and I asked Vitor to check his, but neither one of them held onto the book Insikir referenced. According to Vitor it was ‘hundreds of pages of wild speculation wrapped around three or four solid thesis, most of which could be found in other volumes,” I said.

“And Insikir doesn’t have a copy either?” Clarity asked.

“He said he lent his out decades ago and never got it back,” Responsibility said.

“Seems like time to ask for it to be returned,” Beauty said.

“One problem with that,” Responsibility said. “You can’t ask for things from dead people. He lent it out to Helgon a few years before they blew Helgon up.”

“Technically he blew himself up,” I said, reviewing the bit of memory Malgenia had left of the incident. “They’d caught him outside his sanctum, but he didn’t give them the satisfaction of killing him. Also didn’t give them the satisfaction of absorbing the grace he’d hoarded.”

“How was that possible?” Responsibility asked.

“Malgenia had no idea but laughed herself silly for a few days over it,” I said. “Their theory was that he’d imbued it all into the traps and such that he left around the Factorum, but none of them could sense much there. The parties that they sent in to verify that never came back and so they all chalked it up as confirmation and not worth the effort to scrounge the grace that wouldn’t blow up when they tried to steal it.”

That does leave open the question of whether we even want to try to discover how to control the Beast Fragments? It would be supremely poetic justice, but Little’s example doesn’t seem to point to it being a replicable feat, Diyas said.

“Isn’t wasting time more-or-less what we’re going for though?” Inhibition asked. “We’re still not any closer to discovering how to perform the modified Assumption Ritual. The more time we can invest there the better shape Insight will be in for whatever conflict eventually arises.”

“Worst case, she can do the usual ritual with me,” Responsibility said. “It’ll just mean I get to hang out with Beauty and Inhibition and Reason right?”

“No. Worse case I toss myself into the same Beast Fragment that Vaingloth did. I’m not subjecting you to this for any reason,” I said.

“There’s no guarantee you’d become like us either,” Beauty said. “You could be one of the Sleepers, and trust me when I say it is not pleasant making that transition.”

“Neither of you are destroying yourselves,” Clarity said. “There are other answers and you will find them.”

“Yes ma’am,” Responsibility said placing her fist over her heart.

Neither one of us had technically told Clarity we were desperately in love with her, but some things were obvious even if they weren’t captured by words. Oddly, the old jealousy I’d always felt when Responsibility scored points with Clarity was entirely absent. How could I be jealous of Clarity loving Responsibility? Responsibility was gorgeous and deserving of all the love in the world, even Clarity’s. 

It was good that they had each other in case I had to…

Had to what? 

I stopped that thought right in its tracks.

Like hell was I about to start preparing for my own demise.

I had fought harder than I’d ever imagined possible for my existence and allowing myself to pass on would be a direct insult to Diyas and as much as I loved my girls, my god had a pretty solid claim on my heart too. 

Clarity was right. There were other answers and we were going to find them.

Best of all I knew where to look.

“I think we may need some help,” I said. “In fact I think we need as much help as we can get and I know two places we can find it. Unfortunately I can’t go to either one.”

“Because the other Neoterics are watching you constantly,” Clarity said.

“But they’re not watching us,” Responsibility said.

“I haven’t wanted to even think about this because I hate the very idea of exposing you to the kind of danger being outside the house entails, but you can move about without attracting the kind of attention I can.”

“Where do you need us to go?” Responsibility asked.

“I call dibs on talking with Helgon,” Clarity said. “You can have Mt Gloria.”

I looked at my Deaths and felt a wave of pride and inspiration wash over me. They were so brave, and so beautiful. All I could imagine was what it would be like to spend eternity with them.

Which, as it turns out, was precisely the sort of daydream I should not have conjured for myself.