“Well that was rather a lot of grace Kurst had stored up. Fortunate that we were all here to portion it out. I’d hate to think what it might have done if his contracts had killed him when no one was around to deal with the fallout.”

“Oh, that would have been simple Vitor. If we hadn’t been able to collect the grace he had stored the planet would have been erased.”

“Erased Helgon? What do you mean erased?”

“Well, as you know, the aetheric potentiation point of matter has a non-defined but probabilistic upper boundary so therefor…”

“Therefor the destruction would have been immense. Thank you Helgon but we do not need a full technical treatise on the subject. Suffice it to say that we cannot allow anyone who has amassed the levels of grace Kurst did to lose control of it. At least not without several of us around to collect the freed energy before it runs wild.”

“But that would be all of you, would it not Vaingloth?”

“And you as well Helgon? Certainly you have collected as much grace from the fallen and your population as we have?”

“Certainly, certainly, Vitor, though I have my experiments to think of as well. As I was saying about the aetheric potentiation point, it’s very important to ensure that one does not concentrate grace too much. Hoarding makes yields imbalances which are very hard to account for. Much simpler to keep things at a lower burn as it were.”

 “It seems rather fortunate that we got wind of the Grand Contract Kurst was trying to implement then! Either it was going to go well for him, in which case we all would have been bound to serve him, or he was going to blow up the world. I suppose we all owe you a debt of gratitude there Vaingloth.”

“I suppose we do, though to be accurate, there was no world in which a Grand Contract the likes of which Vaingloth described was going to work out well for Kurst. The structure he was theoretically putting together could not have held the grace from everyone and so the only result would have been the nullification of the planet.”

“And this from our Master of Divine Contracts. Poor fool got quite ahead of himself, really should have known better.”

“Yes. You’d expect he would have.”

– Vitor, Helgon, and Vaingloth discussing the aftermath of Neoteric Lord Kurst’s overthrow while Helgon also planted the seeds for his own ‘demise’.

Vaingloth wasn’t dead. Malgenia knew death. If he’d been dead I would have felt it. He was simply gone and the echo of that was reverberating around the world.

“Well, that’s not exactly what I expected,” Meluna said.

“What’s not? And why is Insight flickering?” Responsibility.

“Oh, sorry,” I said, pulling myself back fully into the material world. “A Neoteric Lord is gone.”

“Vitor!?” Clarity asked, hopeful relief poised behind her teeth.

“Vaingloth.” His absence was like a missing tooth. A missing rotten tooth which suddenly no longer hurt, but the absence was still a little maddening in its own right.

“He’s dead? Who killed him?” Responsibility asked.

“Little,” Meluna said. “I believe I owe her congratulations. I truly wasn’t sure if her plan to kill Vaingloth was feasible or not. Of course that assumes she survived the confrontation. I do hope so. Zeph and Sola will be despondent otherwise.”

“No,” I said, still a bit addled. Was there more than just Vaingloth missing? 

A Neoteric Lord being destroyed like Vaingloth had was unthinkable, but something else was wrong. Something had changed. Something as wrong as the Sunfall? No, it wasn’t like that. It was profound though and the more I probed at the absence the more unreasonably irritated I grew.

“No? Little didn’t survive?” Meluna asked.

“Little? Oh, Sola’s Blessed? I don’t know,” I said, almost completely distracted as I reached out with Malgenia’s power searching for what appeared to be nothing at all.

“Hey, Insight, are you okay?” Responsibility asked.

In the past when she took that tone with me, my choices were either answer or get clobbered into answering. I wasn’t sure that a good whack to the side of my head wouldn’t knock loose the obsession that had grabbed me, but that wasn’t what Responsibility was offering anymore.

At some point I think we’d both realized that just because the injuries we’d inflicted on each other could be healed didn’t mean that we were at all healthy afterwards. I certainly didn’t want to hurt her anymore, and the fact that she didn’t want to hurt me meant more than I could ever articulate.

“Yeah, yeah I am,” I said, laying my hand over the hand Responsibility had placed on my shoulder. “Okay. Wow. That’s…”

“Yes. I suspect the other Neoterics are experiencing a similar amount of consternation as well. We shall have to see how they react to this,” Meluna said as she began to grow indistinct in the shadows which hadn’t been there a moment earlier.

“Or we can shape how they react to it,” I said, which drew Meluna back into sharp focus.

“What do you have in mind?” she asked through narrowed eyes.

“You said Little planned to kill Vaingloth, but that’s not what she did,” I said. “He isn’t dead. He’s gone. Erased. He and all the power he was personally holding. He went from existing to not existing in the blink of an eye, and I think we both know what had to be responsible for that.”

“She drew him to one of the Beast’s fragments? But, no, she survived that herself, she wouldn’t have…” Meluna said, looking confused for what might have been the first time in centuries.

“However she survived it, she must have known that Vaingloth wouldn’t be able to replicate her feat,” I said.

“Assuming she did, how would you shape the Neoterics reaction to it?” Clarity asked.

“In theory, we’re out here for two reasons,” I said. “I’m supposed to be training you both for the Assumption Ritual but that’s mostly you studying and practicing. The primary reason we’re here, or the primary reason Vitor thinks we’re here, is because I’m investigating how to kill one of the Beast fragments.”

“But that’s not possible,” Meluna said.

“That’s not possible for the rest of you,” I said. “It’s not entirely predictable what Malgenia can and cannot do. I think Vitor assumed that if it truly was impossible that I would simply be wasting some time in the Wastelands, which is far from the strangest thing Malgenia has done.”

“You want him to think what happened to Vaingloth was your fault then?” Responsibility said, guessing the overall shape of the plan I was trying to pull into sharper focus.

“I want all of them to think that this was my fault,” I said.

“They will definitely move against you if so,” Clarity said.

“Better me than Mt. Gloria,” I said. “I know they’re already planning how to divide it up.”

“If I may suggest an alteration,” Meluna said. “The other Neoterics have, historically, been concerned about Malgenia being more powerful than any one of them. Rather than adding to that, you might instead use her reputation as a lever to buy Little’s people the time they need.”

“She’s right,” Clarity said. “If you claim to have been unable to either save Vaingloth or influence the Beast that destroyed him, but are certain that it was being controlled by someone…”

“That will give them even more reason to attack,” Responsibility said. “Or it would if they felt personally threatened.”

“I doubt Little will move against any of them. She grew up in Mt. Gloria so I imagine her rage was primarily directed at Vaingloth,” Meluna said.

“I like that idea, let me talk to Vitor and see how it goes,” I said.

“Now?” Responsibility asked.

“I think she’s right. If it appears to be Malgenia’s immediate reaction it will ring more true than if we let any time pass,” Clarity said.

And so I vanished.

I’d set up our home in the Wasteland far enough away that we wouldn’t encounter any caravans and isolated enough that the other Neoterics would neither feel threatened nor curious enough to stop by for a visit. Distance was largely irrelevant when a Neoteric really wanted to travel though.

“Sister?” Vitor said, looking away from the map he was standing in front of.

He hadn’t been in one of his isolated labs or his sanctum so I’d taken the liberty of transporting myself directly to, what turned out to be, his war room.

“Oh good, you still exist,” I said, holding a flower I’d conjured and sticking a petal back onto it.

“Exist? What do you mean? What happened?” he asked, flustered more than I’d ever seen him over anything.

“I didn’t study enough,” I said, and plucked a different petal off, twisting it between my fingers to inspect it. “So sad.”

“Study? Wait, is that what we all felt?” he asked. “Mal, tell me you had nothing to do with whatever happened to Vaingloth? We’re looking but we can’t find him anywhere. Did you kill him?”

“Why would I kill Vaingloth? Also he’s not dead, unfortunately,” I said.

“Not dead? I don’t know if that a relief or even more concerning. He shouldn’t be able to hide from the scrying spells we’re using.” Vitor said, gesturing to the map he’d been staring at. 

Had his scrying spell been working, Vaingloth’s general position would have shone forth like a tiny bonfire. Instead the entire map was cold and empty.

“He’s not hiding. He’s just not there,” I said

“You said he wasn’t dead though?” Poor Vitor, he had all the power in the world (or a eighth of it I suppose) and yet any of the Deaths could run laps around him when it came to mental acuity (and Responsibility and Clarity could do so at a leisurely stroll, but I might have been biased).

“He’s not dead,” I said with a cheerful nod. “He doesn’t exist.”

Keep an eye out, Beauty said, I’m pretty sure he plays dumber than he really is.

I’m not sure he’s playing, Inhibition said. I think he’s easy to underestimate because he simply doesn’t care about a great many things. When he does care though he is dangerously observant. 

Inhibition’s right, he wouldn’t have been pushing another Assumption on us for at least three more years. That he noticed the trouble Insight is having with Malgenia’s power is likely something he chalked up to the difficulty ‘Malgenia’ experienced with Insight’s assumption.

I’d say I’ll tread carefully, but I think embodying Malgenia’s carelessness is going to be a lot safer for all of us.

Then it’s up to us to watch for you, Diyas said, which was the kind of support I suspect few people throughout history had to rely on.

“When you say he doesn’t exist, what, EXACTLY, do you mean Mal?” Vitor was giving me his full and undivided attention. I should have been terrified of that. For all that I have Malgenia’s power, I’m not truly a Neoteric Lord and if he decided to lash out of me when I wasn’t ready I could wind up twisted, truly dead, or, worst of all, controlled before I knew what hit me.

“Doesn’t exist. Obliterated. Gone. Vanished permanently. Playing hide and seek with existence and losing. Exactly all that,” I said, still smiling as though I was playing the cleverest game ever with my silly brother.

“No. That’s not possible. How?” Vitor slumped down into a chair, no longer looking at me, no longer looking at anything in the world around us.

“Oh, come on. You know how,” I said.

“He wouldn’t though!”

“I know. It was very silly of him,” I said. “But then it wasn’t entirely his idea I guess.”

“Did…did you…?” Vitor’s gaze snapped back to me, naked fear of what I might have learned to do clear in his eyes.

“Oh what a delight that would be!” I said, radiating chipper joy at the idea. “But no, I tried. I did try. You know me. You know I would have tried right? I mean Vaingloth didn’t matter much, but I did try to save him. Or at least pull loose what I could have. There had to be some good bits in him somewhere. His heart maybe? I would have kept it in a nice jar I think.”

“You tried to save him? You saw what happened?”

“I saw what happened and I saw who made it happen. Quite vexing that she can do what I can’t. Yet.”

“There is someone out there who is stronger than you?”

“I’m not sure? Should we bother them and find out!”

The remaining Neoterics were all listening and the collective “NO” they screamed to us warmed my heart almost as bright as the newborn sun which blossomed into the sky far away.

“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.

“Well that was unpleasant, and messy. We’ll need to spend a fair bit of grace to clean this up properly.”

“And you’re sure that Accessor Polono was going to betray us Vaingloth?”

“His correspondence to the Summerest Council was rather explicit on that score Wepan.”

“Was it envy that drove him? I know we rejected the idea of offering him a place in our cabal, but I cannot fathom why he wouldn’t have used the evidence he’d procured to blackmail a spot for himself among our number?”

“Do you imagine any of us would have reacted positively to a blackmail attempt?”

“Of course not, but ours isn’t an alliance based on mutual appreciation. We’ve chosen who is a part of our number based the qualities we possess which are required to ensure our plan comes to fruition, and he was a talented Accessor.”

“That is certainly a significant element of how our members were chosen, but there is a quality which we also share, one which rather transcends the individual contributions we are capable of offering to the endeavor.”

“Is there? We are so diverse, I am curious what quality you might be referring to?”

“When I approached you with this proposal, what was your first thought?”

“Hmm, I suppose I couldn’t see how we would focus the influx of grace sufficiently. I must confess, I thought you were quite mad to even suggest such a thing might be possible.”

“I believe you spent, an hour was it?, explaining in great detail how the original theory I presented wasn’t viable.”

“Well, yes, no offense, but so many of the assertions in that original paper were just incorrect. I mean, full marks for the overall structure, but even the first transformation would have failed cataclysmically if we’d pursued that path.”

“And what did you do next?”

“Well, I got back to my own work. Yours had been an unexpected interruption after all.”

“And that night?”

“I, yes, well I was curious you see. Your plan, it was madness, but to your credit, it was madness hung on the scaffolding of genius. I thought for sure the equations would never balance, but isn’t that the real joy in life? We push at the impossible and through the labor of our minds we surpass what could have been before. That’s our who aim here is it not? To be the ones to make a new world, a world that without us could never come to be!”

“Exactly.”

– High Accessor Vaingloth illustrating what the other High Accessors in the their cabal most cared about, as well as what (and whom) they didn’t.

I had spent literally days worrying myself sick. Well, not sick, but as physically unwell as it was possible for Malgenia’s body to get. Days, I say! I’d struggled with what I wanted to say, how I should say it, the arguments I could marshall in my favor, the arguments that I didn’t want to make because they were unfair, the arguments that I absolutely couldn’t make.

It had been a lot.

I’d put so much thought into the moment I saw Responsibility again.

It’s worth noting here that you hadn’t exactly reached any actual words you were going to say though. I think that’s an important point, Beauty unnecessarily observed.

I think that’s better, Inhibition said, speaking from the heart can cut through a lot of the nonsense.

Is that an observation from personal experience? Reason asked.

Well, no, not as such. Inhibition, like all of the rest of us, was a much better dispenser of wisdom than practitioner of it, which was oddly comforting.

“Y-you’re in?” I asked, even divine power proving insufficient to keep the stammer out of my voice.

“Yes.” Responsibility looked entirely composed. “I’m in.”

“In to what?” I asked. 

I’m not stupid.

I knew what she was saying.

But did I really?

I mean…just…what?

“Your plan.” Responsibility hadn’t moved. “The whole thing.”

“But…” 

But…everything. How could…why would? 

You two need to use more words, like a lot of them, Beauty said.

“Did…did you change your mind? Do you…” Responsibility asked, her composure fracturing just a little.

“What? No. That’s…”

“Oh for the love of…” Beauty said, manifesting in between us. “You,” she pointed at me. “Tell her how you feel.”

“What? Why me?” I asked. It wasn’t very divine and certainly not at all like Malgenia to shy away from the ghost girl who was stabbing a finger at me, but I make no apologies.

“Because she was brave enough to tell you how she felt already and you owe her, you git,” Beauty said.

I could have fled.

I want it recorded that I could have fled.

And to my credit, I did not.

“I…I…” I managed to squeak out.

“You. What.” Beauty’s demand didn’t help, but what really made me want to be literally anywhere else was seeing the emotions that swirled behind Responsibility’s eyes.

Responsibility was waiting on my reply.

She cared what I said.

Dammit.

She cared.

I blew out a long breath.

“Go away,” I say dismissing Beauty’s projection with a wave of my hand.

I’m pretty sure she only went because I knew she was right.

See. You are definitely not stupid, Beauty said.

“Can I sit down?” I asked, pointing to a space on the bench beside Responsibility.

“Of course,” she said and started to rise.

“No…with you. I’m not Malgenia remember.”

“I…I know,” Responsibility said as she dropped back into her seat.

I gathered the robes I was wearing and plopped down onto the seat beside her, leaving a hand’s width of space between us. It felt familiar, but also more comfortable since I wasn’t locked into full eye contact with her.

“I…thank you,” I said, because it felt like she deserved that first and foremost. “You were right. I…wow, this is a lot harder than I thought it would be.”

“What’s harder?”

“Everything,” I said. “I thought I had everything figured out. I thought my plan would make everything work out.”

“It still could!” Responsibility said. “I can hate you. We can make this work.”

“Nope. It won’t.”

“Do I need to stab you again? I can do it. You know I can do it.”

“It won’t work, and it never would have worked. Even if you did hate me, and, well, I’ll get back to that. But even if you hated me, even if you hated Malgenia, it wouldn’t have worked.”

“Why?” The disappointment in Responsibility’s voice cut me worse than any blade she’d ever held before.

“Because I’m an idiot.”

“Why would that matter?” The fact that Responsibility didn’t feel the need to correct me was all the proof I would ever need that she truly believed I was the Insight she knew.

“Because if one person in the mix loves the other, they’d never be able to fight for Malgenia’s power enough to split it in half.”

“But…I don’t have to love you. I…I just said that, I…” It was only then that it occurred to me how the last few days must have been for Responsibility.

I had the other Deaths and Diyas to talk to. 

She had no absolutely no one she could have asked to share the burden I’d laid on her.

Worse, she couldn’t even have given the slightest hint that she was carrying a burden.

No wonder I’d found her alone and isolated.

“I hope that’s not true,” I said. “But it wouldn’t matter if it was, because I love you to.”

The urge to kiss her was sending lightning through my body.

Those damn lips.

Ugh.

But.

No.

That had to be her decision. She had to have the choice to say no, despite the desperation of the situation and the Divine Power that was wrapped around me.

With how I’d attained my “divine state” was it any surprise that being worshipped, especially involuntarily was the absolutely last literally-goddamned thing I wanted?

There was an upside to fighting my urge to kiss her too.

If I’d sunk into her lips like I desperately wanted to, I would have missed the completely gobsmacked expression she was wearing.

“Y-you…?”

“Love you. Not like ‘I love all the Deaths’. Like I. Love. You. Like I was planning to spend eternity with someone and you were the one I thought of. Like living without you for the last two years has been miserable. Like…like I love you.”

“No. No. No, you can’t,” she said, burying her face in her hands and folding forward to bury them both in her lap.

That was not the response I’d expected, but something in her tear-stained voice made me think I wasn’t being quite as rejected as it seemed.

“I can go,” I said. “I know none of this is fair to you and if you need some time to…”

And I was drowning in her kiss again.

I wasn’t any more ready for it this time than last, but I was not about to let her get away as quickly this time either.

Fortunately she didn’t seem to have any inclination to leave me like she had before.

“I hate you,” she said, when we finally cooled enough to separate by about the width of my pinky finger.

“You should,” I said, still pretty delirious from the kiss.

“I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. You are just…” she said, touching her forehead to mine.

“The worst?” I suggested, because, seriously, she knew me and it’s true.

Ehem, Beauty disagreed.

“Mine,” she said. “I don’t care what the other Deaths think. They can have Malgenia, but I want you.”

I kissed her and asked, “Are you sure.”

“The last two years sucked for me too,” she said. “I didn’t really know why though. I mean, I was happy for you. Or I thought I was.”

“What else were we ever allowed to be?”

“Ugh. Two years! Two years and you never told me. You’re right. I do hate you. You’re the worst.”

“Still want me then? I can’t promise it gets any better than this?”

“I don’t want better. I want my Insight back.”

“If we do this, you’ll have me. I…uh…I only kind of noticed afterwards that my plan is basically like a wedding proposal.”

“Was it now?” And there was my Responsibility. Dangerous and scheming. Maybe about to stab me. Why the hell had it taken me so long to figure out that I loved her?

“Well, I was asking you to be stuck with me forever as my equal partner. I think that’s what marriages are supposed to be right?”

“And are you still?”

“Still what?”

“Asking me to marry you?”

“I mean, do you want to?”

“That depends on whether you’re asking me or not.”

Oh yeah. There was my Responsibility. Mine!

I felt a divine echo in that claim and Diyas’ suddenly near presence.

Insight’s mine, hands off Dragon.

I had no idea what all that was about.

An old friend. No worries. She’s not into stealing. Diyas wasn’t usually cryptic which suggested this wasn’t something I needed or wanted to pry into too much.

“I am definitely asking you. Death of Responsibility will you be mine, my partner, my equal, my love, if I will be yours?

“No,” she said, because she is So Damn Mean! “No, I’ll be all that even if you’re not mine. Even if you can’t put me first.”

And then we both cried out a lot of the misery we’d been carrying for so, so long.

Eventually though we pulled back, to just marvel at each other.

“We wasted a lot of time,” I said.

“It’s not our fault,” Responsibility said.

And it wasn’t.

“Well, I know who it would be easy to blame,” I said, gesturing at myself though Responsibility took my meaning.

“Her and eleven others.”

“Well, eight others. I think the other three were ancient history by the time we showed up.”

“True, but they did help create the whole mess of a world we have, right?”

“They did, and judging from the one other one we have evidence of, I suppose it’s hard not to see how broken everything is as a reflection of what they must all have been like,” I said. “The problem of course is that regardless of how it got like this, we’re still stuck with dealing with it all, and I have no idea how we’re going to do that.”

“That’s not true,” Responsibility said. “You already know how to fix our current problem. We’re going to perform the Assumption Ritual.”

“You really are not thinking of attending a collegium Malgenia? Even though father has promised to sponsor you to any you might choose?”

“I’ve already chosen my course of studies.”

“I’m not certain the Temple Aspirants have a curriculum. I gather they are more devoted to, well, devotion to their gods, are they not?”

“Devotion is not required. So long as you act to direct the outpouring of grace, they will let you do as you wish.”

“If that is true then why do the Aspirants always prattle on so. It’s always ‘divine mission’ this and ‘purity of heart’ that?”

“Words.”

“Yes, exactly, so many tiresome words. Repeated ad nauseum. It’s as though…oh.”

“Exactly. Words have power. With enough repetition they can shape people’s beliefs, beliefs other people have about them…”

“And the beliefs they have about themselves? What a fascinating insight you have stumbled upon dear sister.”

“I did not stumble.”

“No. Of course not. You never do. I do notice that you have not been availing yourself of the power of Words much however?”

“I speak when I need to.”

“You speak to me. You occasionally speak to father. Is there anyone else you speak to?”

“Of course. I speak to my patients.”

“Correct me if I have misapprehended something, but are you not an Aspirant in the Mortuary Services?”

“Technically, yes.”

“I would think your…patients? It would seem as though they lack the ability to hear any words you might have to share with them.”

“Oh I know. My words aren’t for them.”

– Vitor missing a rare opportunity to understand the association his sister possessed with the Gods of Death

Malgenia wasn’t nervous. A visit to  the Deaths was not a particularly notable event for her. It was the high point of the Death’s month, but it tended to be something she did as much by accident as by any particular design.

So I couldn’t be nervous. 

And I couldn’t treat the visit as though it mattered.

Unfortunately the other thing I couldn’t do was put it off any longer.

Vitor’s visit the day before had been an unsubtle nudge to get the Assumption ritual started, and he wasn’t wrong. My hold over Malgenia’s power was growing by not quite as fast as the power itself was.

Diyas was helping me with that, but apparently she’d made it back to me mostly because I’d recalled her, however unwittingly. Having a link to the God of Life when you were suffused with enough death energy to slay a planet turns out to be an unstable state, who could have imagined that?

I won’t leave you, Diyas’ assurance was heartfelt, I could feel that clearly, but I was also keenly aware that neither of us might have a choice in the matter she was drawn away from me for too long.

I wanted to investigate that more, since wrestling with Divine problems seemed ever so much more appealing that the course of action I was undertaking but I’d put off talking to Responsibility for too long as it was. She deserved better than that.

The plan to investigate the ritual was still in play, Reason was searching for where Malgenia had hidden the original codex which contained her notes, but even once we found the book we needed it seemed unlikely we’d have an answer in time (assuming there even was one). Based on the documents we found, Malgenia’s notes tended towards the horrifically opaque and cryptic, more fragmentary reminders for herself than anything which might illustrate the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of the processes she’d practiced.

“My Lady! You bless us once more!” Overseer Ka dropped herself into a deep bow.

“Am I a blessing? Can I give blessings? What sort of Blessing would you desire?” I asked, engaging ‘random Malgenia babble mode’ as the most convincing response I could make to potentially any and every situation I found myself in.

“To see you is to be Blessed. To stand in your presence doubly so!” Ka said.

The overseers were, as a rule, fantastically loyal to Malgenia. In Ka’s case she took the fanaticism quite a bit more seriously than the others. It wasn’t always a cruel sort of mania, not always. Often she was quite loving, spending time with the Deaths, regaling us with tales of Malgenia’s many virtues and compassions. It was only when we stepped out of line, or stepped out of line in a manner Ka disapproved of, when she would injure us.

Thinking about it now, that’s really wrong isn’t it? Beauty said.

It always seemed wrong to me, Inhibition said.

Did it? Beauty asked. You were never on her bad side? Not that I could remember.

I wasn’t, but I watched what she did to you. There was a deep anger underlying her words. Deep enough that I was tempted to act on it.

Don’t smite her, Reason said. Vitor just showed us that he’s watching the Deaths through the Overseers. If we kill Ka, or act against her, he’ll start questioning why.

Would he though? Beauty asked. I mean who ever questioned what Malgenia did? Especially if it involved randomly killing someone?

Reason’s right, I said unhappy about that but accepting it. The last thing we need at this point is any extra attention or questions. Also, I’m guessing that doing a murder wouldn’t exactly strengthen the bond between Diyas and me?

The Blessed of Life does not typically murder people, this is true, Diyas said, her statement notable in the lack of an absolute edict against doing so.

“I shall triply bless you then with a task, so you may think of me even when I am gone,” I said. There were all sorts of things I could set her to do which would assuage Inhibitions anger, but requests like ‘lick all of the rest facilities clean’ would be a trifle too obvious, to Vitor at least, as a malicious punishment, which would raise suspicions.

Malgenia was many things, but well before she reached ‘malice’ her anger would usually be expressed in a more terminal manner.

“What would you have me do, Dearest Lady!” Ka’s eyes were practically alight with holy fervor.

“I should like a comprehensive report on my Deaths,” I told her, wondering if I might do some good under the cloak of the Assumption Ritual. “I do not wish you to interview them. I wish you to fill as many pages as you can with your memories of the events of their lives up until this moment. Tell me what harms have befallen them each, whether those harms be accidental or intentional, misfortune or warranted. To me what you perceive their joys to be and include detailed plans specific to each one on how we may increase those joys while also raising them to conscientious of their fellow Death’s time and happiness.”

Ka was speechless at that and for a long moment I was forced to suppress a wave of panic spawned by the idea that maybe I’d been a little too coherent.

I needn’t have worried though, Ka was having her own melt down of ecclesiastical glee.

“YES MY LADY!” she said, practically vibrating in place, torn between her obvious desire to remain in Malgenia’s presence and the overwhelming urge to get started on the Holy Project assigned to her.

“You may begin as soon as you are ready. I shall look for results in a year? No, too long. A month? Yes, a month perhaps. See that you have a comprehensive draft available in a month!” 

I didn’t bother to watch how she took the news since I already knew that she would be heads down with barely any sleep or food for the next thirty days exactly. That would, I hoped, give her a chance to reflect on the virtues of the women in her care. At the worst it would at least keep her out of their business until the Assumption Ritual was complete and I could circle back (or my successor, depending on how things went) to see whether her outlook had changed at all.

Did I proceed from there directly to Responsibility? As a responsible near-godling that was the course of wisdom and compassion the moment required. Responsibility needed to hear my answer to her, well whatever it was she’d left me with, and I needed as much time as possible to formulate a new plan for dealing with the Assumption. 

I was not going to go through with a full, regular Assumption. I hadn’t ever planned to but the one thing my spiraling thoughts had shown to me was that I simply couldn’t conduct a normal assumption ritual even if there’d been a Death, or anyone else, I could bear to sacrifice.

The gift of my Blessing from Diyas was more fragile than I’d known. I thought as long as I kept faith in her, we would be inseparable. Tearing Malgenia apart had seemed to confirm that, but when Little had needed to call on Diyas’ power, she’d also exposed the fact that my Blessing was only anchored so deep in me. 

Performing a full Assumption ritual would be one of the worst violations against Life’s domain that I could commit and even if Diyas and I were both in agreement on it, fundamentally rejecting the core essence of Life on a level like that would definitely shatter the Blessing I carried.

Which would in turn me I would lose control of Malgenia’s power.

Which would mean the world would end.

Which I was opposed to.

So, no Assumption.

But no Assumption meant the power would grow beyond my control, and the world would end.

All I had to do to avert all of that was speak with Responsibility and then pick another Death to stand in her place (not Clarity). Putting another Death in the right frame of mind would be challenging – Responsibility had taken my story inexplicably well and it had still nearly broken her, if my read on her emotional state was correct.

Which meant speaking with Responsibility and at least bringing her into a vow of silence on the matter was my only path forward (though a part of me held out hope that she would be willing to act as an advisor, and maybe speak with the Death I chose in case I failed to make the right impression).

Responsibility wasn’t hard to find. None of the Deaths were. They were spread out but if anyone was going to stand out to Malgenia’s senses, the women who’d developed themselves as her highest acolytes were the easiest to spot by far.

That, of course, let me avoid Responsibility and seek out Clarity instead.

You say that like it wasn’t obvious that’s where you were going? Beauty voiced an opinion that I’m certain none of the rest shared.

No, Beauty’s right.

It’s where we would have gone too.

Inhibition and Reason choosing to betray me wasn’t a surprise either.

It’s not betrayal if we’re right, no matter how much you don’t want to admit it, Inhibition said.

The sight of Clarity dispelled all thoughts of betrayal, because, well, Clarity is a delight.

Clarity was also in the midst of reading one of Malgenia’s myths to a group of the younger Deaths.

I could have watched that for days. I could have listened to her forever. 

The moment any of them saw me however, it would all end. The children would be over-awed to see me in their midst. Clarity would close up into the formal propriety and deference the Deaths inherently showed to our god.

I could be with Clarity as much as I wanted, but she was never again going to be with me.

Leaving them wasn’t hard. Moving unseen and unheard was among the most trivial of Malgenia’s inherent abilities. Leaving them was, as always, the hardest thing of all.

That was what it took for me to find Responsibility though.

Sitting alone in one of the observation rooms which offered a view into the wasteland.

I closed the door behind me both in a physical and a mystical sense. The Overseers weren’t going to report our conversation back to Vitor. If he was looking, he might notice the veil I’d draped over the room, and was certainly capable of piercing it. I didn’t dare make one of any serious consequence as that would absolutely raise questions I didn’t want to answer, but the small, gentle one I wove in place was sufficient to dissuade mortal inquiries.

I was, it seemed, a little clumsy with it though as Responsibility noticed the veil’s arrival.

“Hi,” I said, my voice sounding shy even to me. It was as non-Malgenia a greeting as I could possibly have given.

“I’m in.” Responsibility said, without preamble or any convincing at all.

“Do you imagine I’ll need two or three rooms for guests Vitor?”

“Guests? Those rooms are for guests? I thought you were making spare butchery rooms?”

“Abattoirs. Though technically that term should be applied to rooms for livestock, not people. And, I won’t have any of those. Abattoirs. Not people. I shall quite a few people!”

“I’m sorry, I must have heard you incorrectly. I could swear I just heard you say that you won’t have any rooms in your abode dedicated to taking people apart for your various little games?”

“I never play games. Games are something you can lose. If you can’t lose then it’s a pastime. Also, why would I limit only a few rooms to that purpose? That seems wasteful.”

“Ah. Yes. Right, your entire abode will…you know, I don’t know why I would have thought anything else.”

“I agree. Most foolish of you Vitor. But you still haven’t answered my questions. I want to make sure I will have enough room for guests to be comfortable.”

“I believe the last thing you will need to worry about will be making guests uncomfortable my sister.”

“Oh? You like what I’ve done with the spaces which have already been constructed?”

“Your style is resolutely your own.”

“Yes. The architects said I should express myself in the design and decor.”

“That would be the architects who are now a part of the decor would it not?”

“Yes, though I’m not sure if that’s an expression of me or an expression of them.”

“I doubt they would be wearing the expressions you left them with of their own accord, so I would say the sculptures in question are distinctly a part of your voice.”

“And my guests will see it as you do?”

“Do you know who these guests will be? It would be easier to gauge their reaction if I had a clue as to who might be visiting you?”

“I am quite uncertain myself. I suppose it will depend on the children you select for me.”

“Children? You want me to pick out children for you?”

“If you want something done properly, you must do it yourself, correct? Which means I shall need to raise them properly if they are to serve as proper vessels for me – or perhaps I can employ a college of overseers? Yes. That might be preferable. I believe I lack the talent for growing things, small people especially.”

“Can we go back to the bit about these children serving as vessels for you?”

“Well, how else am I supposed to live forever?”

– Neoteric Lord Vitor discovering that Malgenia is not quite the same sort of Neoteric Lord as he is.

It’s funny how a day can pass and bring you no answers whatsoever. I had made progress but that progress consisted of making it out from under my covers and wandering aimlessly around a new expansion of the garden. Progress however does come with some drawbacks.

“You haven’t remodeled in so long I thought you’d sworn it off for eternity sister.” Vitor had found me because that’s what he does when life in general hates me.

“Why would I swear at remodeling? I don’t want to make any pacts with a building?” I asked, gambling that Malgenia’s brand of aggravating stupidity might drive Vitor away sooner.

Or if not at least he’d be as annoyed as I was.

“I recall making quite a few pacts with different restrooms during my stint of collegiate studies.” He sounded wistful about that but I wasn’t sure I followed what he meant. 

Could he have been sickly often in college? Vitor? Sickly? No, those two ideas could not coexist. For one thing he was far too proficient with bodily augmentation via applications of grace. If anyone could ever have been immune to the illnesses of the ancient world it would have to have been Vitor, given what he managed to become.

Although.

The image of Vitor absolutely miserable with the sniffles flashed through my mind. Not a memory, sadly, just a silly dream, but it was so cruelly delightful I couldn’t help but smile.

“Since you seem to be in a good mood today, perhaps I may ask if you’ve made a selection yet?” Vitor asked, completely misreading me.

And like that my smile faded.

Yes, I had made a selection.

No, it was not a good one.

Yes, the Death I’d chosen was the right one.

No, I was not going to proceed with her.

Yes, I needed to find a new one.

No, I did not want to.

The impression of Responsibility’s lips flitted vividly back through my mind.

Which did not help!

I was so doomed.

Probably, Beauty said.

That’s also not helpful. Reason backing me up was nice but I knew Beauty was being honest.

“I have never removed your capacity for asking questions,” I said, not intentionally meaning it as a threat, but not NOT meaning it as one either.

“And yet they all love her,” Vitor whispered to himself so quietly that a distracted Malgenia wouldn’t have noticed. I, who did not have the option of allowing herself a moment’s lapse in awareness in the presence of Vitor or any other Neoteric Lord, heard his complaint all too clearly.

It did my heart good.

Vitor was the sort of person who deserved an eternity of suffering, but maybe not the sort Malgenia could have inflicted. Unspeakable agony was perfectly justified for any of the Neoterics based on the cataclysmically evil choices they’d made, but in Vitor’s case I felt that an eternity of unending irritation and frustration was the proper fate. He needed to never quite figure out how miserable he really was.

Powerlessness was important too though of course. That had to be a given for any of the Neoterics, myself included. I was horrible for what I’d done to Malgenia, but give me centuries with no accountability and I would…well probably not be worse than her, but the world didn’t need even the lesser plague that a copy-Malgenia would represent.

“So, who is she?” Vitor asked, undeterred from ensuring that his sister was going to take care of herself.

Charming. Very brotherly. That none of the other Neoterics could handle the power Malgenia had accumulated and her failing to take the next Assumption would mean the end of all of them sort of soured any feelings of sibling affection I might have mistaken him for having.

To be fair, I’d also seen Malgenia’s memories of the few attempts on her life she was certain he was behind. They’d been tentative assassinations, more probing tests to see if containing Malgenia’s unique quantity and style of grace was possible. When the “experiments”, to use the ‘gentler’ term Vitor labeled them as, proved to all be disastrous failures the efforts to make Malgenia the fourth Neoteric to fall dwindled away.

Dwindled but did not depart entirely. The need to remove her was an inevitability in the minds of the other Neoterics, since each was convinced that if twelve could be reduced to nine then their number could and should be reduced to one.

Malgenia believed that too, in a sense. Rather than plotting the demise of the rest of the Neoterics though, she simply waited. Her brother and the rest spoke of being immortal, but Malgenia understood the promise of mortality far better than any of them could. Given time, they would all find their ends, and all she had to do was wait (or so she’d thought).

“You know the names of my Deaths? Have you been carousing with them?” I asked, both buying time with a non-answer and genuinely curious to discover how much Vitor already knew. The phrasing and tone were intentional. Again, not a threat, but Malgenia did not tolerate the other Neoterics visiting her Deaths, and only made occasional exceptions for Vitor for reasons that seemed to escape everyone, including Vitor.

“Of course not dear sister. It would not do to disrupt your careful cultivation. I do inquire as to their progress from your overseers however. They say that you spoke with the Death of Clarity and allowed her to draw a portrait of you yesterday.”

Killing Vitor was wrong.

Not in a moral sense.

In a “I don’t know how I’d handle all the grace he has on top of the impossible ocean of Malgenia’s and I’d like not to erase the world” sense.

On the other hand though…

Woah! Inhibition said. 

Yeah, let go of that mantle there, Beauty said.

Or smite him, but make it count, Diyas said.

I’m not sure if anyone had ever believed the gods were good influences on our lives, but I have to assume they’d never met a collection of fragments that had been blasphemed against quite like Diyas had.

Better idea, pout, Reason said.

I had no idea why that was a better option, not at first, but I did it anyways.

“I’m sorry, was that supposed to be a surprise?” Vitor asked, slightly flustered by the flair of divine power he’d sensed from me.

“I can’t get you anything,” I said, grasping what Reason’s play was.

“You were…for my celebration? A picture of you?”

“Well not anymore,” I said, leaning into the pout. 

“No. Please. I would enjoy that very much,” he said, a long dead echo of actual brotherly affection sounding in his voice

“It won’t be a surprise though.”

“It already was!”

“Fine. But not till she’s done with it. And if you don’t like it, I get to keep it.” I said.

“What would you do with a picture of yourself?” he asked, as though his castle wasn’t adorned with well over a thousand portraits of him.

“Make a statue,” I said, channeling the most horrible idea I could come up with – or in other words making certain I sounded like Malgenia.

Vitor looked at me quizzically and then frowned remembering in an instant exactly what, or rather whom, Malgenia preferred to use as clay for her ‘statues’.

If that left him with the impression that Clarity was of no importance to me and that she couldn’t be used as any sort of tool or lever against me, then the disturbing notion came with the bonus that I could hold off on smiting him to oblivion for a little while longer.

Disappointing, Diyas said.

“They also tell me you spoke with the Death of Responsibility? Even singled her out for personal attention?”

The urge to smite him wasn’t quite the same, but it was there. 

Can we hold her back if we need to? Beauty asked.

Not for something like this, Inhibition said.

And Reason was quiet.

Probably because she already knew I wasn’t going to smite Vitor.

Which was impressive because I had not at all come to that conclusion.

I mean, would I end the world for Responsibility’s sake? A few days ago, probably not?

Or was that a lie?

I’d picked Responsibility out for what was not a marriage proposal but something disgustingly similar to one.

And she’d kissed me, but I very much had not refused the gesture.

Would I burn the world for her? 

But she’d stabbed me!

That should have bothered me, shouldn’t it?

If anyone else had stabbed me, my response wouldn’t have been subtle or kind, even given the fact that a stab wound was essentially meaningless to me.

So why didn’t it matter than Responsibility had done so.

I loved her, but…

But that word didn’t mean what it was supposed to.

I loved all the Deaths.

I loved Malgenia.

I loved Clarity.

But Clarity was different.

And so was Responsibility.

I’d been dancing around and over the thought for a day already and it still settled in my stomach like a block of stone.

“She was entertaining,” I said, dissociating into my best Malgenia impression, or at least the best one I could manage in that moment.

“So you’ve made your choice then?” Vitor sounded delighted, because in the end that was all that he cared about. 

If he’d actually paid attention to the relationship between Malgenia and her Deaths, he might have been noticed that I wasn’t exactly as faithful as I appeared to be. He might have saved her from me. 

And he might have been able to save Responsibility from me.

Except the Neoterics never saved anyone beside themselves. The rest of us they’d kept around to toy with and terrorize away the boredom of the eternity before them.

If anyone was going to save Responsibility from me, it was going to have to be me.