Ch7.62 Revelations

The water seems bottomless, and instead of rising, Alma sinks toward a glimmering light. She sees it ahead of her, the dark, hard object, floating somehow despite being solid metal. She knows it, but how did it get here?

As she reaches for it, she sees for a moment an identical pale hand reaching for it. She looks and sees a pair of frightened eyes, eyes so familiar, eyes from a distant youth, a timorous, childish Alma she left behind so long ago.

But then she seizes the object, and breaks the surface. Her world spins as she reorients herself. Just as she is looking around, taking note of the chamber glowing with light from the water, noticing that the chamber is empty of anyone else, Sky surfaces behind her, putting an arm around her. “Are you all right, Lady…ehm, Inspector?”

She squirms in Sky’s arm, not struggling but turning, searching desperately for Dion. “Oh no….no, no, no…” Without thinking, she brings her fist down with considerable force on Sky’s shoulder multiple times. “Stupid, stupid, stupid – you are so stupid, Alma!” she roars in frustration and anger.

The water rises up, lifting her and Sky onto solid ground, before splashing away as the ocean-god releases his control of it. Sky sets her down, and she feels shame at hitting him, though she knows such pounding without some supernatural oomph behind it will do little harm to the big god. As she falls quiet, he murmurs, “I will get you home. I swear it. I won’t let them be without you.”

Alma takes a deep breath. “Thank you…does this mean…? I saw myself on the passage through. Was the other me, the Senator’s wife, going to the other side?”

Sky shakes his head. “You’re asking me? I think I caught a glimpse of myself as well. Perhaps your Sky is back home now. Perhaps we cannot exist in the same world at the same time.”

“Gods, I truly didn’t need this now.” Alma opens her hand, suddenly noticing that she is still holding the thing she grabbed. “The God Striker…”

Sky takes a look. “Fancy brass knuckles? A sort of lightweight cestus.”

He looks at Alma. “You punched an Archon to death?”

Alma shakes her head. “No. Gwydion punched him. He could have killed him with this but…he hesitated. He would have arrested him like the good Guardia officer he is. Instead, I ripped Nekh’s soul from his shattered body.” She gives Sky a look of defiance. “He was going to murder all my children in front of me.”

Sky’s expression carries no condemnation. “Sounds like you did what needed doing. Pity someone didn’t do that to him in this time-line.” He takes another look at the artifact, studying the fine script etched into the surface. “It seems inert at the moment. Still, I’m glad you weren’t wearing it when you were walloping me just now.”

“I’m sorry,” Alma says. “That was uncalled for. There wasn’t any convenient wall to punch…but I shouldn’t have punched you.”

“That’s all right,” he says. “I was confused and upset myself when I crossed over. But I will get you home, Alma. I promise it.” He sighs. “But it seems we will have to be back here in another twenty-four hours for that. We should go meet the others and find out what’s happened. Surely they won’t be far…”

“We need to find the Oracle, too,” Alma says. “If she is anything like the Nevieve I know, I would not be surprised if all of this is not just some elaborate cry for help.”

“At least Somrak will be glad to know the Fates are on our side.” He stretches a hand toward the pool. Water rises in a small hump, then pops free in a floating globule. Sky levitates it to float above his shoulder, and a swirl of glowing particles, like a tiny galaxy, spins into being from the center of it, suffusing the globule with bioluminescence, producing a watery glow reflected by the stone of the walls and floor in soft glimmers.

“This place,” Alma says and they start down the tunnel together. “It was Nevieve’s home. And Doria’s. They were our friends.”

“And now it is empty, violated.” Sky pauses, listening. “Though not entirely empty.”

Alma hears the faint echo of voices, too, as they approach the center of the Grotto. “I am not sure if I want to explain to these people what just happened,” she says in a low voice. 

“Do you want to hang back? Just wait by the pool? I could bring you some food.” 

She considers his thoughtful offer, but shakes her head. “It is better for them to know the truth than to think the other Alma is lost.”

He looks ahead and says, “Too late anyway.”

Before he’d even spoken, Alma had seen the two souls approaching. They had almost immediately been recognizable as Bunny souls, different from humans in their own subtle ways. Are they the same souls as her Bunnies, though? Before their faces appear in the watery light of Sky’s glowing globe, she thinks they indeed seem very similar to those of two of her daughters, Rosemary and Mayumi. If there are any differences, they are too subtle to detect without a more thorough examination.

And yes, there it is, Merri’s face entering the light, the ginger curls and freckles and russet fur on her ears so familiar. But her voice, when she asks, “Is that you, Mother?” is different. The timbre is the same, but carrying the accent and rhythms of a high-ring family, not the unique lilt and burr that matches no other accent on the Insula she knows of, the one her daughter emerged from the dreamworld with. 

“Almost,” Alma replies, keeping her voice calm, reassuring. “But not quite. Are you all right, Rosemary? You sound frightened.”

Rosemary slips past Sky and takes Alma’s hands. “You’re all wet! And wearing different clothes! You smell…different. And and and…”

“You’re taller,” May says, wonderingly, wide-eyed. This daughter, too, sounds a little different. Alma reminds herself that in this world, according to Sky, she goes by May rather than Mayumi, a shortening that her Mayumi once tried to explain was just incorrect for some strange reason. “And…you have a sword.”

“Let’s return to the others,” Sky says. “You shouldn’t be away from them. Is everyone well? Your father and sister and little brother?”

Alma feels a flash of appreciation toward this world’s Sky, for trying to distract them while she gathers herself back together. This is so very strange. There are Sky and May together, in her world so much in love, here meaning nothing more to each other than bodyguard and client. Yet she notices Sky looking at the Bunny with a little curiosity, perhaps wondering what his counterpart sees in her.

But she feels her equanimity shaken again, by anxiety and desire about seeing this godling babe. She takes Merri’s…no, Rosemary’s hand, and then May’s as she resumes walking toward the others. “I took an unexpected dip in the pool. I’ll explain everything when we’re all together.”

They find their way to the Oracle’s audience chamber. As they step in, she sees several people: Machado is there, and Cala and Aliyah, all three in uniform. Somrak, too, probably fueling the fire that burns on the stone floor, unfed by wood or anything else. She sees his scar, healed away by her mother weeks ago, returned to his otherwise beautiful face. And sitting at his feet–

“Saira…” she breathes. Her ally. Her patient. Her friend. 

Saira who lost her life in a quest for vengeance – and in the process saved them all. Here. Alive. And…a prisoner?

The Bunnies look up at her, feeling her tension.

Sky murmurs to Alma, “Not sure who that is. She must have joined us earlier today.”

Rosemary tilts her head, one ear flopping to the side. “But…what? You captured her.”

May wrinkles her brow. “You’re not the same Tuma-Sukai who was here a little while ago. You’re the one we first met, aren’t you?”

Rosemary shakes her head like a fly is trying to get into her ear. “What? There’s two of them?”

“Not only him,” May says, looking up at Alma, her eyes accusing and fearful. 

When Alma feels May let go of her hand, she feels a sharp, brief pain at the rejection. She and Mayumi had struggled to find their way to a strong connection – just before the girl had gone off to the Guardia Academy, Mayumi had become, in some ways, the one Alma felt closest to among all her children. The pain of the chasm she’d struggled to bridge returns. But she reminds herself that these are not her children. They are Lady Alma’s. And Senator Gwydion’s.

She wants to explain. These may not be her Bunnies, but they are mortals who are in a frightening situation. And more, she still feels a bond to them, even across the divide of universes.

She gives Rosemary’s hand a little squeeze of encouragement, then drops her hand. “You’re right,” she says to May. “But I–”

“Alma! But you are drenched!” Senator Gwydion, emerging from an alcove, hurries toward her, brushing aside Sky’s halfhearted attempt to stop him. “Oh, I knew this was a bad idea. You don’t even know how to swim. Are you well, my little lamb?”

Before she can think to bring her hands up to keep him back, the god, a rather well-fed, older-looking version of her Gwydion, embraces her. Alma stiffens at his touch. Her eyes widen at the treatment, then narrow at the pet name. Lamb? If for even a moment she had thought this soul was her beloved, that moment was past. She pats him awkwardly on the shoulder blade. “I am fine. For the moment.” She shares a look with Sky, who is trying to hide an amused smile, and tries to silently tell him, Man, you were not kidding. “But I am afraid I have some bad news for you.”

“Alma, what is wrong?” Senator Gwydion sounds worried as he releases her. She waits, watching him look her over, take in the differences. With the fire at his back, he can see her face more easily than she can see his in Sky’s aqueous globule’s glow, but still she sees him blanch. He turns to Sky. “What happened? What did you do to her?”

Sky takes a breath. “Do you know about the pool, Senator?”

Gwydion nods, impatient. “The pool that is supposed to be some sort of link to another world, yes! What…” He pauses, his eyes flickering over Sky’s uniform. “You’re no longer…half-naked.”

“Daddy!” Rosemary cries. “You knew?!”

Sky raises an eyebrow. “I was…? Never mind. I am the first Tuma-Sukai you met. The one that was…out of uniform was from the other world. I think he must have gone back at midnight, exchanging places with me once again.”

“Which would have set everything right,” Alma says. “But…” She opens her hands to indicate herself.

Senator Gwydion deflates, like someone has punched him in his slightly paunchy belly. “You mean to tell me that my wife is…gone?” The two Bunnies look horrified, and Alma catches sight of Cherry – no, Cherish – coming out of the alcove, holding a little baby in her arms. She has been overhearing this, and looks confused and afraid.

“Not gone,” Alma assures him. “She has crossed over to my world, where she will be perfectly safe, with good friends to take care of her.” She reaches out and pats his arm. “However, the same cannot be said about us, Gw– Senator.”

“On top of that, we now have someone with us who knows a thing or two about our enemy, and has beaten him before,” Sky adds. “The Inspector, here, has defeated Nekh in battle. It’s not a bad thing that she’s crossed over.”

“Why don’t you all come closer to the fire?” Somrak’s soul, like Sky’s, is much less scarred than that of the Somrak of her world, though not entirely free of the mark of old wounds, Alma can see even from here. His face, though, still bears the old scar that twists his pretty mouth into a slight sneer. But he has the same challenging, confident – even arrogant – stance. The same slender but muscular figure. 

He looks her over, skeptical but then smirking a little in satisfaction as he notes the way she bears her sword, like it belongs on her hip and is very comfortable there. “And, if you’ll allow me, I can do something about the wet clothes.”

“For as long as you are gentle with the fabric,” Alma replies, with a little smile. “I was told the blend is somewhat prone to shrinking.” She looks again at Gwydion and the two Bunnies, who have moved closer to him for comfort. They are still looking at her, confused. “I am sorry if I scared you. This is as strange and worrying for me as it is for you. I am Acting-Inspector Alma, of Three Rats Station.”

Rosemary asks, “So…our mother is a Guardia officer in another world? And… you have children there?”

As she’s speaking, Cherish, holding the infant comes closer. The Bunny’s big brown eyes are wider than usual. She asks, hesitant, “Are you sure our mother is well?”

Somrak takes Alma’s hand and sends warmth into her, and more specifically into her Guardia-indigo sari and her hair, heating them to the point that steam starts to come off them.

Alma almost wilts at how good that feels. She smiles thanks at Somrak, and says to the Bunnies, “Your mother has my closest friend and my world’s version of your father with her to protect her.” She looks at the one holding the baby – the same beautiful dark skin, the same full lips as her own daughter, but the wild kinky curls of her hair tamed and straightened into a glossy black ponytail similar to Somrak’s. “Tell me, Cherish, do you ever go by Cherry?”

Cherish says, “Oh…well sometimes Rose and May call me that. But nobody else, really.”

Rosemary adds, “And Shirtless Sky called May ‘My Yumi’ or something! And May said that it felt like something from a dream…now isn’t that curious?” She grins teasingly at May. 

“I rather imagine he would call her that,” Alma says with a smile. “He knows my daughters as Cherry, Rosemary, and Mayumi. Their names in my world. They look very similar to you but they are also different. And each has her own accent. Also, in my world, I have four other Bunnies: Sage, Kori, Chime, and Tulip. But no godlings.” She looks at the baby and her expression softens. “What is jys name?”

“His name is Nari.” The Senator’s tender pride pulls him briefly away from his fretting for his wife. Still, his eyes helplessly drift to Somrak’s brown hand holding Alma’s pale one. “Ahem, are you quite done with laundry, Sergeant? Perhaps you should help your partner dry off?” His attempts to keep jealousy from his voice are unsuccessful.

“Have to do this slowly and carefully, Senator, or this outfit might shrink,” Somrak says, trying to sound very serious. “As pretty as that might look, she might find it hard to move if another group of assassins asks us to dance. But…how does that feel, Inspector? Dry enough?”

Alma, used to Somrak’s flirtations, wriggles her shoulders and touches her choli, the bodice of her sari. It is dry and toasty warm. “I think so. Thank you, Sergeant. Now, what do you mean, another group of assassins?”

Gwydion replies, “We were attacked before. At the local Guardia station. Thankfully, no one was harmed in the process.” He is looking at Alma again in wonder and shock at the sound of her voice. “I didn’t really believe what the, um, other Tuma-Sukai said before. Not in my heart. But the way you are taking command with these sergeants…”

“Rather than demanding respect for your station,” Somrak adds, his sardonic grin more pronounced, as he steps back.

As much as she agrees with Somrak, Alma shoots him a narrowed glance. “Nor did I believe this Sergeant’s claims,” Alma says, pointing at Sky. “I am sorry. I did not mean to be harsh before. And…my condolences on your uncle’s demise. I know how attached Gwydion is to Math, I can only imagine what a loss it must be. In my world, Math has become dear to me, as well.”

The Senator’s grief is obvious. “He was like a father to us, a grandfather to the children. It all feels like a horrible nightmare.”

“The Commander regarded Archon Math with great respect,” Sky says. 

“They butted heads sometimes,” Somrak adds. “But what can you expect. The Archon was good for the Guardia. Great coffee, too.” His voice is not mocking at all. 

“The Commander will butt heads with a standing wall if he feels it’s in his way,” Alma says. “And where is he? The Commander? And my aunt, for that matter? I doubt they would allow all this to happen while they watch from the sidelines.”

Sky and Somrak share a look. “Your aunt?” Somrak asks.

Alma smiles a little, relishing the reveal. “Subcommander Varah, in my world. The Fencer.”

Gwydion shakes his head. “That dreadful goddess…”

Somrak’s eyes are wide. “Well…that explains a few things.”

Sky blinks, but merely says, “Since assassins have attacked here, this ward obviously isn’t the safe little hideaway the Commander thought. Somebody has intercepted the information.”

“Then we ought to be going random, throw them off the scent, go anywhere the mole in the Commander’s office won’t know about,” Somrak points out. 

“No,” says Sky. “This Alma has information the Commander needs now. And more than information.”

Somrak looks surprised and hopeful. “You found the God Striker thing?”

Alma reaches into a pocket and shows the weapon, weighty and solid in her palm. “Yes. It doesn’t look very threatening now but once it is recharged, it will be powerful enough to destroy even an Archon. And we need someone like the Commander to recharge it.”

Somrak sighs. “Fine, but…there is a mole. We need to go in, ready for that.”

“I…remember Somrak mentioning a traitor in the ranks of the ‘Off-Blues’,” Alma says. “But I am not sure who it is or who she works for. Only that she is female and has a partner. I am sorry but he could not disclose any more.”

“That he was even revealing that much – should this not be confidential information?” the Senator asks.

“It should be, yes,” Alma agrees. “He should not have told me. But he was being healed at the time. It is not uncommon for people to experience confusion in those moments.”

“I know this. My wife is a very talented healer.” He looks at Somrak as if he might amorously pounce on Alma at any moment, a look that Somrak receives with apparent amusement.

“Your wife has many talents, Senator,” Alma replies, hearing her aunt’s growl in her voice. “If she is allowed to shine, she might even outshine you before you know it.”

The tense moment is broken by a cry from the baby. Cherish says, “Um, he must be hungry. What about food? For him?”

Alma feels the beginnings of panic. “What do you mean…food for him? Did you not – oh…”

“The baby is still suckling,” Dion explains. “And…now he does not have his mother to feed him.” He looks sick with worry and goes to take the baby from Cherish’s arms.

“And he just polished off the last of the stored breast-milk,” the Bunny says as she hands him over. “We grabbed a few bottles on the way out when the Sergeants came to get us, but he’s a hungry little darling.” She nods toward their luggage not far from the fire. Alma can see an empty bottle with a preservation sigil on it, to keep the stored milk fresh.

“Why hasn’t his mother been feeding him directly? Or replenishing her stores?” Alma asks.

May says, “Well she was. But, uh, Sergeant Sky had her looking for the magical item. And so we fed Nari the last bottle not long ago.”

Gwydion’s attempts to cheer the baby are not working, and the cries are growing more demanding. Cherry says, “It was really only about a quarter of a bottle.” Her ears sag against the back of her head in worry.

“No dry formula?” Sky asks.

Cherish shakes her head. “You two were rushing us so much…”

“Oh dear,” Gwydion rocks the baby a little. “What are we going to do until your mother gets back, little Nari?”

Alma hesitates, then goes to the Senator. “Give him to me. I have an idea.” At Gwydion’s hesitant expression, she adds, “I am still a Life goddess. Besides, none of the Bunnies was born after a natural pregnancy, right? So the only way your Alma could have nursed them would have been to use magic to…activate lactation. She has to have done it before, and if she could do it, I’m sure I can. These things are not beyond a goddess’ control. Just…let me try. It is the easiest solution to this problem.”

The Senator looks alarmed. “But, um, here? With…” He tilts his head toward Sky and Somrak.

Alma smirks. “Somehow I think they’ve seen it before. But I will step away a little, beyond any curious looks that might never have seen a female breast before.” And she does, moving to a little hallway, turning away from them, bearing a breast and letting the baby suckle on it, her control over her own body urging her glands to produce milk in response, the milk to flow into the ducts, to the nipple. She grimaces and taps the baby’s lip. “I know you’re hungry but I am new at this. No biting.”

Will he accept her? Will he latch on? Any fears are quickly allayed as the hungry infant takes her nipple, peacefully, eagerly suckling, undisturbed by any possible differences in taste, while Alma enjoys the pleasant release of hormones, the sensation of peace and closeness to the little child. “You are truly adorable, did you know that?” she whispers to the baby, looking at him, studying his face. “So similar to him…”

She glances back to see Cherish standing quietly nearby, a little behind, holding a towel, waiting to be noticed – how very unlike her own brash daughter. Still, her smile is much the same, warm and broad and bright. “He burps up sometimes – you’d better have this.” She offers the towel, and arranges it on Alma’s shoulder. “Hey little Nari!” The baby’s eyes open and he looks up at his big sister. The corner of his mouth curls in a smile even as he suckles. Cherish giggles, then says to Alma, “This is pretty strange, isn’t it?”

“It is. And I don’t know what is stranger, really, looking at you three and seeing all the similarities and all the differences to my own children, or breastfeeding a godling child when I have none.” She shrugs, gently. “This part is not all that uncommon to gods. Your father could have breastfed him, too.”

Cherish laughs. “I would’ve paid to see that!” She becomes more still and quiet for a moment. “You must be missing them. But, you know…we’ll take care of you, while you’re here. Don’t worry.”

Alma reaches to stroke Cherish’s ears, then her cheek, which the Bunny responds to much as Cherry would have, by leaning into the touch, as sensual as a kitten. “Thank you,” Alma says. “I am missing them, yes. But I am here to take care of you and help you back to safety. We will find a way to do that and I will soon be on my way so that you can have your mother back.” She leans down conspiratorially and whispers. “I can tell your father can’t wait to be rid of me.”

Cherry looks a little sad at that. “We do want her back. But he’s just worried sick is all. And just because we want her back, doesn’t mean we shouldn’t be making you feel welcome here!” She brightens. “I wish we could meet them! Especially the ones younger than us. Boy Bunnies…goodness!”

Alma shifts Nari in her arms a little, prompting an annoyed grunt from the babe, but she is only reaching for and then removing her elaborately asymmetrical Guardia badge. “No, don’t grab that, little Nari,” she admonishes. “There’s a pin that will prick you.” She hands it over to Cherish, sliding her finger over a little, inconspicuous bobble hanging from a loop on the pin, starting the projection of glowing images, sculptures in light, of special moments from her own memories, that appear for a short time, and are them replaced by another. She keeps a few dozen of her favorite moments there. “There. Their images will show up eventually.” Indeed, while the first image is one of Gwydion smiling rakishly, the second is of Merri and Cherry laughing helplessly together over some silly thing.

Cherish gasps, looking at the glowing picture in wonder. “Oh, can I show the others? They’ll love this!” Her voice is high and excited.

As Cherry rushes away and gleeful exclamations echo in the chamber, Nari finishes his meal and Alma raises him to her shoulder, whispering encouragement to him and she pats his back gently. Tuma-Sukai approaches, a soft, faint smile on his stoic features that makes him resemble more strongly the Sky she knows. “Somrak and I have been talking. We’ve agreed on how to try to find the Commander. It involves a visit to the off-blues headquarters, though.”

“Do I need to be blindfolded?” Alma asks. “Or just promise I will not disclose the location in the future?”

“Oh, we’ll figure all that out later. He thinks he knows who the mole is. But he isn’t willing to bring the Senator and the mortals and a baby into the middle of what could erupt into a fight, and of course neither am I. So just briefly, they have to stay here, and we will come back for them. But we have a prisoner we can take along. Somrak says that your Sky told him you helped her, once.”

“Saira…yes. I helped her, and she helped me. She helped save the Bunnies’ lives. And then she saved all of us, and gave her own life in the process.” Alma sighs, feeling heavy despite the sweetness of nursing. “Well, can we at least leave the local Popula here to guard the tunnels? This place is a maze. It will make it difficult enough for anyone to locate them easily.” Alma says, then looks at the baby. “After I replenish this little one’s milk reserves, I guess. Hopefully, the good Senator won’t think it all too sour for his baby’s lips.” She shakes her head in disbelief at the whole thing, then turns to the baby. “Come on, baby. Let’s get you someone to hold you while I make sure you won’t go hungry again. Oh, you are a strong little fellow, gripping my fingers like that – not the hair. Not the hair…thank you.”

Ch7.61 Revelations

Sky’s heavy sigh makes Pharaoh wake up. The gangly dog blinks sleepily from his position on Sky’s lap, then thrusts his snout into Sky’s hand, insisting on getting his head petted and scratched. Sky smiles a little and complies, but complains to Gwydion and Alma, “This has been the longest day of my life. I’ve crossed over into another timeline, and they only thing I’ve done is made friends with a dog!”

Gwydion smiles. “At least there’s that. He was really barking at you at first. You know we couldn’t let you leave the Grotto. You would have done more harm than good.”

“Too many people know your face in this ward,” Alma adds. She stretches, having woken from a nap snuggled against Gwydion, seated on a blanket-bedecked stone bend in her Sky’s living chamber. 

Most of this long, boring day, at least one of them has been here, though after some time they trusted him to spend some time with only Doria to watch over him. Now that midnight approaches, Gwydion returned from his research to join Alma, reporting that he has been unable to find the God Striker in time, nor find much information pertaining to crossing into another timeline. 

Alma continues, “Our Sky says hello to everyone as he passes them on the street and he’s come to know most of the people he sees regularly. The news of his return would spread like a wildfire.”

“I know…” Sky feels glum. It is hard to imagine having the life this world’s Sky has. So many connections, while he himself keeps connection to a minimum. As a devil, he should have no empathy – it is something that all those of Hell lack, all except for the rumored, legendary Enlightened One, demon with a complete soul who is supposed to be a kind of saint. Just that legend…and Sky, who was created so as to have it, because the previous agents sent into this world by Hell did not, and were too easily detected and destroyed. Sky, and however many other such agents Hell created, has empathy, and sometimes there is nothing more painful. The most creative tortures of Hell are nothing compared to loving someone. Sky found that out in his years on Earth.

Apparently, this world’s Sky forgot that lesson. Or decided that the love is worth the pain. Sky feels simultaneously jealous and contemptuous of his counterpart. But the jealousy has the upper hand.

“And why exactly would that be a problem?” Sky asks. “You said the guy was almost recovered from his torture. If this crossover doesn’t work, I can pretend to be under the weather. Help ease him back into society, for when he does return.”

“And what do I tell my children when they hear that their beloved friend and protector has been seen walking about but didn’t come home to them?” Alma insists, arching an eyebrow at him. She has stopped being so very cautious about him, even laughed with him once or twice in the course of the day, but still she resisted telling him very much about the world outside, unless it seemed to directly pertain to Math and Nekh. “To his family, who misses him dearly? They would be distraught. Do you have any idea how difficult it is to trick Bunny noses and ears? How many spells we need just to conceal the fact that Sky never left the ward? That we visit him every other day?”

Sky is quiet for a moment before he asks, “They’re really that worried about me? Him, I mean. Beloved protector? How did that happen?” The more he thinks about it, the more unsettled he feels. 

Dion – Sky finds it easier to think of him by that shortened name, as he is so unlike the Senator – explains, “After Nekh’s death, there was a trial. Alma and I were detained in the first Ring for weeks. Sky was left alone here, the only Dei in the station. In the middle of the Shard War, the massive Dukaine criminal organization shattering and fighting. And Sky was in charge of looking after the Bunnies as well. That’s how they came to see you as an uncle, especially the younger ones.”

“Uncle Sky…” He still can’t believe it. They mentioned it before dawn, but since then the discussions have mainly been about the death of Nekh, other information about the Council, the Dukaines, the God Striker, and so on, as they have gone in and out. Suddenly Sky feels an urgent need to know more about how his counterpart fits into all this. “Well I wouldn’t want to mess that up. But I’ll tell you what, those three on my side will hardly look at me without turning pale. And I think they’re even more scared of Somrak…though come to think of it, they look at him a lot, when he’s not looking. I think it’s the tight leather pants.”

Alma snorts, and Sky feels glad he could make her laugh again. Careful…you’re letting your guard down because you think you’ll never see them again after tonight. That’s not necessarily the case. What if it doesn’t work? What will you do then? 

“Bunnies can detect the strangest, tiniest things,” Alma tells him, looking at him as if she too knows she is letting her guard down and isn’t certain of the wisdom of that. “Attraction, jealousy, fear…you would be amazed. But my Bunnies hardly let a day go by without mentioning Sky. These weeks of his healing have been grueling on us. And them. Please, I know it is a tremendous vote of confidence we are asking you for but there are so many people who have been asking, nagging and begging just to be allowed to visit Sky. If they were to meet you, then you and he change places again and he cannot go home immediately… It will break their hearts.”

“And it would most likely force us to reveal his secret,” Dion reminds him.

Sky holds up a hand, the other now gently rubbing Pharaoh’s belly. “Very well. I agree. Though if I don’t go back to my world tonight, we shall have to come up with an alternative to keeping me in here for the rest of my life.” He looks down at the happy dog, who is falling asleep again. “You’re making me envious of this version of myself,” he admits. “How he thinks he can have all these attachments without revealing his true nature, though…” He looks up at Alma and Dion. “It’s going to happen. You’ve found out, and others will, too. I’m glad he can have a couple of good friends like you who know and accept him. Mortals though…”

“Yes…we know,” Alma breathes, morose at the thought. “And considering he is in love with Mayumi and she with him – but…” Alma shrugs helplessly. 

“That…has been hinted at, too,” Sky stammers. “That’s really hard to believe.”

“She is currently at the Academy, looking to become Guardia,” Dion says. “We haven’t even told her about Sky being wounded yet…” He grimaces at the difficulty of the situation.

Sky shakes his head. “She’s – I mean, the one I know – has hardly said a dozen words to me, just politenesses. And here she’s a cadet. I mean, I know your Sky must be lonely but…” He looks at Alma, almost cringing. “And…you don’t have a problem with this?”

“Should I?” Alma’s voice is calm, reasonable. Though at the same time, Sky thinks he can detect a slight strain. “He is an adult, she is an adult and he knows that should he wrong her, I’d have his soul for a rattle.” A little puff of air from her nose, a silent snort at the idea. She looks into Sky’s eyes. “I have very good reasons to trust Sky. I know he wouldn’t be bad to her. Unless she wanted him to.”

Sky opens his mouth at this, but the last five words make him shut it for a moment, and he feels his cheeks warm with a slight blush that brings a smile to Alma’s lips. He clears his throat and says, soft and serious. “He wouldn’t do anything bad to her, directly. But…did he tell you about Earth? His family? Lara?” He hasn’t mentioned that name to anyone else in many years, and bringing up such close-held memories is not easy for him.

Alma nods, sympathy in her eyes. “His picture album was one of the few things we managed to save when his sanctum was destroyed.”

“Oh…thank you.” It feels a bit strange to be grateful for something she did for the other Sky, but grateful he is. “I should really get that duplicated… Anyway, he was able – rather, I was able to tell Lara about what I really am, because at some level she never really believed it. Even though the religion she was raised in primed her to believe in devils, it was just beyond her comprehension. So she thought, ‘My husband is a devil. That’s very strange, but all right, because he is kind.’ Here…people really understand what creatures from Hell are like. And they generally don’t believe there are omnipotent gods holding them in check. On top of that, there was nobody on Earth to rip that knowledge from her unprotected mind, or to threaten her with prison just for knowing classified information. So revealing his secret to her is…it’s just a bad move. And…he couldn’t become fully, uh, intimate with her if he can’t do that. If he thinks he can, he’s just fooling himself.” As he speaks, Sky finds himself becoming more and more exasperated with this world’s version of him.

Alma and Dion both listen with sorrowful expressions. “All those things are true,” Alma says. “But all those things are for him to acknowledge and act upon. And they are for Mayumi to decide as well. Even before I knew Sky’s nature, I warned her that affairs with a god, any god, seldom have good outcomes for mortals. All I can do is be ready to ensure her safety or dry her tears. The rest is up to them.”

“Put me in the same room with him and he’ll get a punch in the guts,” Sky grumbles. He looks at Alma and Dion, and points a finger. “One of you, tell him what I said. He knows it already. He’s just not listening to himself because he’s in love, the idiot.”

Dion crosses his arms and smiles sadly. “And just a few minutes ago you were envious of him. I might think the idiot is still coming out on top.”

Sky shakes his head. “If this does go forward, May’s going to need to understand down to her bones the need for secrecy. It’ll make her feel a little apart from her siblings. And she’ll need a spell, an enchantment, an item, a medallion, something to protect her thoughts from leaking out for any telepath to catch.”

Dion shakes his head, weighing in as a professional. “Items such as medallions and other assorted jewelry are usually a bad idea. They can be easily removed, lost or plainly forgotten. I daresay I can find something more lasting and less prone to being misplaced.”

Alma stands up, adjusting her sword and her vest. “Before you two start making up plans and discussing the strong points of your theories, perhaps we should let my daughter and her paramour make up their own minds and decide on their lives,” she admonishes with a sigh. “We should not indulge our divine natures and forget that this is not our game to play or our pieces to move. And it is almost time.”

“Oh…” Sky puts Pharaoh down, and pets the dog’s head once again. “Let’s get your guy back, huh, boy?” He looks into those eyes for a moment longer, those big bat-like ears, that cocked head with that eternal dog desire to understand what their people are saying, then sighs and, with a mental promise to find a way to adopt a dog once things calm down in his world, he pulls his mesh-reinforced leather jacket back on and makes sure his sword, other weapons, and any other equipment are all in the right place. He looks at Alma and Dion. “Ready.”

He leads the way to the pool. It’s a straight path, and both of the other two have already gone to take a look at the pool, but it is his counterpart who dug the passage, so for some reason it feels right that he takes the lead. He conjures a glowing water glob to light their way, and as they walk, he thinks about all he has learned. The knowledge of Nekh and the Dukaines, Nekh’s lieutenant and the necromancer Nua, the God Striker, all of that is big enough. But it is the less-important things that have him dazed. But are they really less important? 

A father figure. I was a father once. A husband. I loved. I was loved. When Lara died I let the rest of it slip away. I left. I meant to come back, but I left and I got stuck here and they’ve all died or forgotten me by now. And I just couldn’t bear it happening again. Only this Sky, he let it happen. Look what it got him. Tortured, soul-flayed, exposed. In love with a mortal girl who deserves better. Yes, that’s her decision, she’s an adult, but she can’t make that decision without all the facts. And all these others, hurt because of him. But would they even be alive now, without his help?

And a further thought refuses to let him shake it. If this doesn’t work, if I don’t make it back, I will be the one who has to live his life here.

He enters the room and walks up to the edge of the water. It is motionless, not glimmering, except for the moon-like reflection from the light-sphere over his shoulder.

He looks back at Alma and Dion. They look so…capable. So strong. And yet he knows they are wounded. And he can see the kindness on their faces. The concern, not just for their friend, their brother, but for him as well. 

“Tell him,” Sky says. “Tell him he needs to tell her, or break it off.”

Alma walks up to him and reaches up to cup his cheek, whispering, “What you forgot to mention about Earth was how much you loved your wife. And your children. How you miss them all. And how you closed yourself to new connections for fear of the pain of their deaths. Perhaps that is something you should take with you when you return.”

He feels tears fill his eyes at her words, which reflect his own thoughts so closely. He cannot speak for a moment, but finally he says, “If I had friends like you over there, I might be ready to risk falling in love with someone.”

“You need to be willing to risk being a friend first,” Alma says. “I know for a fact that you can be a very good one. If you try.”

He looks at her pale, smiling face, with those strange, beautiful eyes, and he puts his arms around her. He feels her hold him, and he nearly cries out at how good it feels, to be held, to be loved, by anyone. For so long, this has been so rare, but how he needs it.

“What is that? In the pool?” Alma’s face is turned toward the water, her cheek pressed against Sky’s chest.

“Do you see something?” Dion asks.

“Just…a glint.” She let’s Sky go, and as he releases her she leans over the edge, her hand gripping his jacket so that she won’t fall. “A familiar one…I see it!”

Sky puts his hands on her waist to steady her and leans over to look. “I see nothing, other than that the colors are already starting. What do you see? Hey, don’t lean out further!”

“The portal must be opening. Alma, get away from it!” Sky can hear the concern in Dion’s voice, which grows louder as he approaches them.

“I see it!” Alma cries. “She needs me to help her…”

Sky tries to pull her back, but the ground shifts and spins under his feet and his vision fills with the glimmering colors of the pool. Alma tries to pull away, and, panicking, Sky pulls her close to him. Is she trying to jump into the water? Trying to jump away from the water? Disoriented, Sky can’t be sure which way is to or from, up or down. He takes a step back.

And there is nothing under his boot.

Until the cold wet splash envelopes them both.

Ch7.58 Revelations

“Longing to…what? From me? What do you mean?” 

Pharaoh barks to welcome Gwydion and Alma as the enter the living-chamber. Doria flashes them a bright smile. “Oh good! He can barely eat or drink with the shackles on. I’ve been feeding him like a baby. Did you know his May doesn’t have the slightest interest in joining the Guardia?”

“She’s not my May,” Sky protests, still absorbing Doria’s teasing tone that clearly insinuated a romantic attachment between himself and the admittedly pretty but otherwise uninteresting Bunny. But looking at Alma and her paramour, both serious and right now looking exactly like experienced Guardia about to interrogate a subject, he finds himself revising his assessment of how impossible that must be. If this world’s Alma and Gwydion are tough and skilled Dei officers, might not this world’s May have just as much potential? Now he wonders if the two older girls are private detectives or mages or professional boxers over here. 

Alma takes out Sky’s keyring and hands it to Doria. “Thank you, Doria. Feel free to release him. I see you have been in good company while I was out…Sergeant. Did it get too much in the way of picking the lock on your handcuffs?”

“You chose a charming jailer,” Sky replies, noting the hesitation over what to call him. “I just felt it would have been rude to escape with her here.” He points to the smallest key on the ring. “That one, Priestess. Thank you.” He looks over Gwydion’s uniform, taking in the impeccable tailoring. This one and the one in his timeline at least share a fastidious sense of style. “Sergeant Gwydion. I understand you know me here as well?”

Gwydion looks him over before he nods. “I do.” He looks at Alma. “You weren’t kidding when you said this was the definition of strange.” 

“It is, isn’t it?” Alma puts her hands on the back of the chair on which Doria sits. “But the soul matches. Other than being too whole to be Sky’s.” 

Doria finally unlocks the right shackle, and mana begins flowing freely again throughout Sky’s body. It is an enormous relief, but he cannot help but feel disturbed at the thought of his doppelgänger’s damaged soul. 

“Maybe I can find something to explain what is going on.” Gwydion turns to Sky. “I hope you don’t mind if I examine you.” With a murmur of apology, he takes Doria’s place on the wooden chair, grimacing as he discovers he has just sat in a puddle of water left behind by the ever-wet naiad. 

Sky chuckles in mild astonishment at Gwydion’s words as he unlocks the left shackle and frees himself, putting his shackles and keys into their appropriate pockets. “Please, go ahead. I wouldn’t think you could find anything, but Acting-Inspector Alma apparently can see my soul, which indicates ability well beyond my experience with her counterpart. And the Senator Gwydion that I know does not seem to have any divine ability of note at all. But Alma tells me you are the Hammer of Devils.”

“That’s right. I also happen to be trained as a mage. Senator…” Gwydion mulls over the word. “I enjoy politics about as much as having all my teeth pulled out one by one,” he mutters as his eyes glow golden, and Sky feels his hair stand on end and his skin prickles. As Gwydion’s aura expands, Sky feels an atavistic fear, coupled with a desire to attack. He is the Devil’s Hammer! But Sky clenches his jaw to master his fear. 

“Why don’t you tell Gwydion a little more of this other version of us you say you’ve met?” Alma suggests. Sky realizes she is trying to help them both relax. Sky’s own aura is beginning to flare in reaction to Gwydion’s, making them both uncomfortable. “He was rather curious about it when I told him what you told me.”

“Well…keep in mind that I hardly know the two of you there,” Sky says. “We met just yesterday. And the briefing was hurried. Since then, it was a lot of moving around.” He considers how best to describe him. “The Senator loves his family very much. He is quite protective of them. Of course he’s in an extreme situation just now – becoming more protective is a normal response. But his wife had to arrange a secret meeting with me to convince me to go to the grotto. Apparently she didn’t trust him to believe her.”

“I’m married? To someone who doesn’t trust me?” Dion shakes his head and glances at Alma. “Lovely…”

“I didn’t tell him that part,” Alma explains to Sky.

“I see.” Sky pauses, then says to Alma, cautious, “What else does he know about me? The me from here that is. I don’t wish to accidentally reveal some secret of your Sky’s, something which you may know but Gwydion does not.”

Alma thinks about this. “I don’t recall anything that might come up in conversation that Gwydion doesn’t know about.”

“Sky is a close friend.” Gwydion says, still focused on examining Sky. “More, he is a brother. You don’t need to tiptoe around the devil in the room with me.”

“A brother…” The idea is barely believable. But then so is the thought that he has fallen in love with a Bunny. He has not allowed himself such freedom with his emotions for decades, not since he left Earth. There have been moments, with Somrak a handful of times, and with the Commander’s little girl. But even so, he would stumble over trying to describe Somrak as a friend. He looks at Alma. “And he is one of your closest friends, even though you know what he is. The Sky of this world is truly blessed.” To Gwydion, he says, “And your brother, though you are the Hammer of Devils. Astonishing.”

Gwydion slips off his jacket and rolls up the sleeve of this shirt, showing the mark left by an apothecary’s poison in the form of a black glyph. “Hammer of Devils is what Sky calls me. A sphere awakened in me when we had to rescue him from imprisonment and torture.”

Sky examines the glyph. He recognizes it, from one of the classical languages of Hell. It reads ‘gatekeeper,’ which, due to his background, has a connotation of ‘prison guard.’ “There have been none for…well, it’s legendary. And if you have that sphere here, just recently awakened, then…”

“It must still be dormant within your Senator,” Gwydion confirms, nodding. “Whose wife you haven’t told me about yet.”

“Ah…well she is…sweet. To her family. Quite insistent on proper forms – she’s called out Somrak a couple of times for ordering them around. Amusing to watch him grumble. She looks like a strong wind, or a powerful shout, would blow her away. But I see a glimmer of this Alma in her.” Sky smiles a little at Alma and Gwydion. “Though I think she’d squeak like a mouse if she saw either of you. And faint dead away.”

Gwydion looks at Sky, shocked. “You…are saying I am married to a meek, frightened Alma in this….reality of yours?” He looks like he’s having trouble even processing it.

“Well, for all I know she normally dresses in leather and goes around hunting vampires,” Sky replies. “But that’s my impression of her, yes.”

Alma drapes her arms over Gwydion’s shoulders from behind, prompting a smile from Sky at the show of affection. “And we have four lovely children, one of which is a baby godling and the other three are Rosemary, Cherry and Mayumi.”

Dion freezes a moment. “Cherry and Merri are my…daughters?” His eyes lose their golden light and he starts to laugh.

Sky lets the laugh run its course before saying, “They call you Daddy, and they seem to think you hung the stars in the sky. May feels the same way. You say that here she is called Mayumi?” 

Alma nods, “She is. In fact, people call her May but she doesn’t much like that.” She kisses Dion’s cheek. “So how is that for strange?” she asks him.

Dion shakes his head in wonder. “Strange does not begin to describe it. Just yesterday, Cherry and Merri were teasing me by offering to clean up my bedroom in very short, frilly maid outfits.” He takes a breath, thinking. “It seems this other couple have known each other for quite a lot longer. And that something in their past was substantially different from ours.”

“They do all seem very familiar with each other,” Sky says. “As if they’ve been together for decades. All their lives, in the case of the children. So…you two have seven children here?”

“Oh? Oh no… we have only known each other for a few months. Been together for less than a year.” Gwydion turns his head to look at Alma and smiles, and Sky thinks he can see some of that tender regard that the Senator has for his Lady, but not cloying. Yet.

“The Bunnies are mine. From a previous relationship.” Alma explains, looking at Gwydion but talking to Sky. “Gwydion is mostly just a very dear friend to them. Part of the family. Though one or two regard him as a father figure.” She looks at Sky with a grin. “And the same is true for you, Uncle Sky.”

Sky blinks at that. “Me, a father figure?”

“Not for Mayumiii…” Doria says in a low singsong as she hands cups of tea to all three of them.

Sky feels himself blush at the humor evinced by the others. He clears his throat. “And they have the same names? Or almost the same. Wait, do they even look the same?” He puts his hand at the height of a rather short human. “Rosemary is about this tall, red curly hair, green eyes, pale with freckles. Cherish about the same height, golden-brown skin and eyes, big poof of kinky hair. May is a little taller, olive skin, straight black hair, brown eyes with epicanthic folds. All with long ears and puffy tails. Do they sound the same?”

“Sounds like them,” Dion concedes. “Though… Cherish?” He looks quizzically at Alma.

She shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine.” She looks at Sky. “Ours goes by Cherry, and Rosemary usually goes by Merri, but she doesn’t care one way or the other. The four remaining ones are Sage, Kori, Chime and Tulip. Each looks different, though all share the ears and tails, each with their own accents except for the younger ones, who mostly sound local to Three Rats.”

“Accents? As in speaking styles?” Alma nods at Sky’s question. “Huh. The three I know sound like average, well-educated Leeward First-Ringers to me. Same accents as their parents. But it seems that although they have a different father, they are counterparts to the ones here.” He sips his tea, grateful that he doesn’t have to let Doria hold the cup for him this time. “Anyway…I do have a guess at what’s going on.”

“If you are going to suggest a parallel reality with slight temporal asynchrony, then your guess is probably correct,” Dion says. “Which is why I am choosing to accept your story as truthful. Even though all scholars of repute agree that crossing between diverging timelines is impossible.”

Sky grins sheepishly. “I wouldn’t have come up with quite the same vocabulary, but basically, yes. With a big scoop of Fate tossed in.”

Doria, who has been keeping Pharaoh occupied for the past several minutes, speaks up. “You said you went through a pool with rainbow glimmers? I…fell into such a pool once, myself. I think it was in that direction.” She nods toward the rage-digging chamber. 

“You switched between timelines?” Gwydion asks, turning to focus on her in urgent interest. “When did this happen?”

“Oh, decades ago,” Doria says. “And I don’t know that I did switch. But things felt…off? And when I went to ask the Oracle about it, she studied me like you just did with Sky. And told me I had to dive once again into the pool the next midnight. After that, things felt fine, but the next day the tunnel to that pool was plugged with rock. I’d forgotten about it years ago, until now.” She looks back at the expressions on the other three. “Hey, living with the Oracle, as strange things go, that’s pretty minor.”

“And now I’m here,” Sky says after a moment. “And your friend is there for a reason. He must have some knowledge from here that will tilt the scales, allow something important to happen. Something I wouldn’t know to do. Perhaps something to do with this Nekh fellow.”

“Well, that is another confusing bit,” Gwydion notes. “You claim my Uncle is dead in your reality and Nekh is alive. However, Nekh never moved against my Uncle here. And also, Sky had very little to do directly with Nekh’s death. Alma and I were the only gods fighting him.”

Alma taps her lip with a finger. “True. Some of those parts don’t make sense. Unless…” Alma turns to Sky. “How powerful are the Dukaines in your world?”

“Very,” he says. “It’s only recently become clear just how powerful. They have taken over all organized crime on the Insula, as far as we can tell, coopting gangs and eliminating any resistance. They’re the ones who assassinated Archon Math and numerous other key figures. And Nekh has taken over the Guardia and is using them to wage an all-out war against the gang. That’s why so many people are supporting him. But…I’m more convinced than ever of what I was already suspecting. Nekh controls the Dukaines, doesn’t he?”

Alma nods, her eyes darkening. “And he unleashed them on us, even inside the Curia. Thankfully we were able to stop him before he took control of the whole of the Fourth Ring, though, so there was never a real civil war. Well, there was a war as the gang broke into shards but a coordinated attack of a whole gang would have been much worse. Three Rats was meant to be the final link in Nekh’s chain, actually.”

“It shattered before he managed to close the circle,” Gwydion adds.

“I suppose that’s valuable information for me to carry back,” Sky says. “But I will need to know everything, in case something that may even seem insignificant turns out to be important there. And most important…how did you kill him?”

“We…” Sky can see that Gwydion looks uneasy at this. He glances at Alma. “He was weakened by the Godstriker. Something of a soulbound weapon. And then…” 

“And then I burned the soul out of his body,” Alma says with a sigh, as if this is some part of an old disagreement of theirs. Sky files that away but sees no point in asking. “Something we have been thoroughly punished for, I assure you.” 

Sky looks from one to the other, frowning. “Punished for taking out the biggest threat to the peace and welfare of the Insula. Typical. Can you get this Godstriker? Maybe I am meant to take it back with me.” He taps his short sword. “Clearly it is possible to bring equipment across.”

Alma thinks for a moment before she explains, “We have no idea where the Godstriker was taken. They wouldn’t allow an assassin of Archons to know its location, after all.” 

“That’s too bad,” Sky says. “Still, worth looking into. If I’m meant to return with it, it may well turn out to be acquirable after all.”

Alma turns to Gwydion. “How will he return?”

“The same way he came.” Gwydion’s voice is confident. “Like Doria did. In examining his life force, I can see that this reality is pushing him out. It should take a little less than twenty-four hours for the passage to open again. This coming midnight.” Dion looks at Sky. “And you must be ready to leave by then. You are just similar enough for a biphasic effect, I think. If you don’t return to your reality at the proper moment, this reality will try to assimilate you instead.”

Sky nods, thoughtfully. “Then I will be in the chamber.”

“You will need to stay here,” Gwydion says. “The Bunnies–”

“Alma has already mentioned that,” Sky replies. “And it is clear from what Doria told me, as well. It’s too bad – I would like to meet them, and to explore this world more. But that doesn’t seem wise. And I still don’t know if there’s something I need to learn or acquire here. But perhaps I already have. Or your Sky has. You say his soul is damaged, and he cannot control his form well? I hope he is not getting into too much trouble there.”

“He is you.” Alma says, reaching out to touch his leather jacket sleeve, in an affectionate gesture that speaks of her developing trust. “Trust him. He’ll figure it out. Now, it may be three in the morning, but there is no time for sleep. Let’s get you caught up on everything you need to know regarding the state of the world.”

Ch7.56 Revelations

Sky’s head erupts from the water of the pool, his shaggy hair slicked against his skull. He looks around warily at the chamber as multicolored glimmers fade and and then releases his breath with a snort. He swims to the edge of the mysterious pool and, placing his hands flat on the floor of the chamber, lifts himself out of it with a loud rush of water.

Standing, his steel-mesh-reinforced leather jacket still heavily dripping, he notes the rubble-plugged passageway through which he entered moments before. Then he sees the debris on the floor under a smaller hole in the wall that did not exist when he fell into the pool. From the looks of it, someone dug into this chamber from the outside. There are marks of bare footprints in the dust. Someone with quite large feet.

Thoughts of feet bring to mind the fact that his own feet are aswim in his water-filled boots. Sky leans against a wall and pulls up a trouser leg, then unsheathes a combat dagger from the boot. Setting it aside, he pulls off the boot and dumps out the water, then does the same with the left boot, though there is no knife in this one. He grimaces at his wet socks, pulling them off and squeezing them out. By adding a little of his sea-deity magic to the effort, he gets them nearly dry. 

About to put them back on, he pauses, looking at those footprints near the hole. Then he looks at the blocked tunnel he came in by. 

There are no bootprints leading to the pool.

He looks again at the footprints and walks over to them. He picks one, the clearest one in the dust, and turns to align himself with it. He carefully places his own wet foot next to it, then steps away.

The new, damp footprint is a perfect match.

“Oookayyy,” he breathes, falling back on an old slang-word from Earth.

神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎

He tries to move quietly. But he cannot completely avoid the scrape and crunch of the many chips of stone on the rough floor of this long, narrow chamber that smells of stone freshly ripped apart. He can see the claw marks on the walls, and they are familiar. He even finds, in one long scratch in the stone, a broken-off talon. He pulls it out and examines it. Red-black, the same shape and size as his own. 

Did Hell make two of me? I have always known it was possible, even likely, that many minor devils like myself were created to infiltrate Urbian society, but so far this one seems like a copy. But that theory falls apart on closer analysis. The human-shaped body he wears was acquired after he betrayed Hell and fled the Insula for Earth. But feet as large as his are rare, even among gods.

There is light at the end of the chamber, and a dog begins barking. A small dog or puppy, probably reacting to the sound of his boots on the broken debris. And a feminine voice, saying, “See, Pharaoh? I told you Daddy would be back soon.”

Sky takes a deep breath and enters the light. The first thing he fixes on is the beautiful goddess who is placing a white cardboard box of the type that tends to hold baked goods on a wooden table in the middle of the room. She has long snowy hair and flawless pale skin, and is clad in a lovely indigo outfit that manages to be elegant, alluring, and at the same time practical for combat. Like him, she wears a sword on her hip, though his is shorter and broader than her long, slender blade. Next to her is an excited puppy of two to three months of age. Sky immediately thinks ‘Alsatian,’ from the general outline, muzzle shape, and distinctive brown-and-black coloration. He had a dog like that once, on Earth. But though he longs to pet the dog, he gives most of his attention to the goddess. 

“See, there he is–” She smiles at him and for a moment he feels as if he has met a dear friend after long separation, so bright and affectionate the smile is. But the smile fades as she studies him with narrowed eyes, her strange mottled pearlescent eyes. He is not who she thought he was, he can see that in her face. And he knows how she feels, for until he saw her eyes, he could have sworn at first glance that this was the Lady Alma, that silly high-society political wife, who talked him into this foolish mission to investigate the grotto.

He studies her as she studies him, her face growing cold and cautious, her back straightening and her hand flexing, ready to reach across and draw her sword. Her stance, her toned muscles, her expression and her general aura tell him that this is not the same goddess he left back at the station an hour ago. This one knows how to fight. Not only that, she knows how to kill. 

She is taller and more mature in every way. And older sister? Mother? Aunt? And she is looking at him as if he has murdered her best friend.

Over the sound of the pup’s accusatory barks, Sky asks, “What…is going on?” 

“I could ask you the same thing,” this stranger says. The swirling colors of her eyes to a shadowy undertone as the air seems to become charged with the energies of death around her. “I have heard of clones, but whoever made you is not yet good enough to fool me. Not when I was just here two days ago.”

He stands, relaxed but weight on the balls of his feet so he can move quickly. He just looks at her for a moment, gauging how close she is to killing him. Then he looks down at the dog – this must be the Pharaoh she was talking to earlier, whose barking is growing even more angry. And I am Daddy to this dog? “Your dog doesn’t seem to like me, either.”

“He is not mine.” Alma doesn’t take her eyes off his. “And he is not being fooled into recognizing you as his master, either. Where is Sky?”

Sky blinks, confused. As strange as all this seems, he feels sure the truth, when it comes out, will be even stranger. And if she knows a Sky, then perhaps she is no aunt after all. “There appears to be some sort of mixup. I am Tuma-Sukai. Some people call me Sky, but I had no idea you would do so…Lady Alma, is it?”

“It is Acting Inspector now,” she replies, her voice tight. “And Sky would not address me by title or rank. Which begs the question…” The shadows around her grow and spread like dark wings to hide the exits from the chamber, the one to the claw-hewn place he just emerged from, and the curtained one behind her. She reaches across her waist and places a hand on her sword hilt. “Who are you and what have you done to Sky?”

He meets her eyes, then looks pointedly at her hand, to make clear he knows where it is and to show it does not worry him. It does, but there is no good letting her know that. Then he raises his eyes to hers again, holding it for a moment. Then acting as if all is normal, he glances to his right and takes a seat on a polished bench carved out of the wall. “Well…it seems I am your prisoner, Acting Inspector Alma. Unfortunately, I can’t answer that question, as I am Sky and, if I have somehow replaced him, no one has told me about it. But I will do my best to answer all questions.”

“Pharaoh, stay.” At her words the barking stops and the young dog sits. Sky raises his eyebrows a little in approval of her skill – he knows well that training a puppy of that age so well is not easy. Pharaoh looks up at her, head cocked. Alma moves closer, slowly, still very much ready, though by sitting and rendering himself unable to move quickly, he has lowered the threat to her. De-escalation, they call it at the Academy. “How do you know me?” she demands.

He hesitates only a moment. He is the one being interrogated, it is true, but one can learn a lot from being interrogated. The questions asked, the body language, the things the interrogator will let slip, explicitly or by inference. But to make it work, he will have to answer at least some of her questions. Seeing how she reacts to the answers should prove interesting. 

“I was assigned to protect Lady Alma and her husband, Senator Gwydion, and their children. With the assassination of Archon Math, it seemed prudent to take them into hiding, so we brought them here, to Three Rats.” He does not mention where in Three Rats. The fact they are in this ward will be obvious, so no point in hiding it.

“Lady Alma?” The Acting Inspector looks at him in confusion. “And her…husband…the Senator?”

Sky nods, watching her face. “And their three daughters and infant son.”

Alma blinks, much as he did a moment before. Her hand moves away from the sword but she remains standing. “And who are ‘we’ in your story?”

“Oh, that would be myself and Sergeant Somrak,” he says, his voice casual but his eyes alert. He smiles a little, thinking, Somrak would like this one so much more than the other one. “Do you know him?”

“I do. And he would be laughing at the thought of my fleeing for safety to a crime-ridden ward such as this one under his protection.” She reaches back with a foot and, the legs scraping across the stone floor, pulls a wooden chair closer to take a seat opposite him. “And who is trying to kill me this time, pray tell?”

“Well…that I’m not certain of,” Sky says, relaxing further as this Alma de-escalates things on her side. “The Commander’s briefing didn’t include that. But from the way things have been going, in the news reports and in other rumors…I suspect an Archon named Nekh.” He sees her eyes widen, and if her face were not already so pale and deathly from the activation of her sphere, he is sure it would have become whiter. But wasn’t Lady Alma full of Life energy? “Ah. You have heard of him, too.”

“You could say that, yes,” Alma says. “Though he would have to reach all the way from the spectral realms to kill me.”

It is his turn for his eyebrows to go up. At this rate, his forehead will become one enormous muscle from all the surprises this day. “You mean Nekh is dead? When…?”

“When I killed him,” Alma says, deadpan. “After he tried to do the same to my seven children.”

After a moment to take that in, Sky says, “You…killed an Archon.” He looks her over and revises his initial assessment of the impossibility of that. “Well…maybe you’re something like a werewolf. You were bitten by a bigger, stronger version of yourself, and you just switch back and forth.” He sees her brow wrinkle at that, so he expands on it to explain. “You see, the Lady Alma I have come to know, on rather short acquaintance I have to admit, would faint at the very thought of killing a chicken for dinner, let alone an Archon.”

“The Sky I know was tortured to within an inch of insanity, and his soul, much unlike yours, is very much ripped to shreds…” She tilts her head to lend emphasis to the next word, “…Azzageddi.”

He feels his heart go cold, and his face, which he was trying to maintain as affable, become as stone. He feels the black tattoos coming to the surface, the first time in three years that he has lost control of his emotions this much. But this is his true name, knowledge of which gives power to those who know how to use it. After a moment, he says in a cold, strained voice, “That name…is not meant to be said aloud. Would you tell me how you came to know it?”

“Sky is one of my closest friends,” Alma says with a nonchalant shrug. “It is a secret we share. And considering what I and others have gone through to rescue him from the necromancer he sent to Hell when he first came into this world, I am truly torn as to what to do about an impostor like you.” 

Necromancer I sent to Hell? Does she mean…Nua? It took him a moment to retrieve that name from two centuries ago. And something happened to this other Sky. Torture? From the necromancer? “He sounds like someone I should get to know,” Sky says, keeping his voice level. “I was sent to these caves by a smaller, meeker Lady Alma, who as I said is my assignment to protect, along with her family. She had a dream. She told me that a voice in her dream revealed to her that there is something in these caves that will save her, save all of them. She was very convincing. I elected to go, and I discovered a pool, back there.” He indicates the rough-hewn chamber with his head. “The pool began to glow as I looked into it. The next thing I knew, I was in the water. I’m not sure how. I sank as if it were bottomless, and swam up…and then come into here.” He indicates the chamber. “This chamber. It’s mine, isn’t it? I mean, your Sky’s.”

Alma nods and gets up, turning and walking toward the table. “He lost his ability to shapeshift at will after the torture. He has been staying here to heal and he is nearly ready to return home, I hope. At least he looks that way, even if he does not trust himself to do so yet.” From her voice, he can tell she is protective of him. Worried for him. He almost laughs at the thought that someone in this world would worry about him. “Pharaoh is his companion. We brought him here to aid Sky in his recovery.” She picks up the white box, draws an inward-curved dagger that looks as if it is made of a tooth or claw, and cuts the string before returning to Sky’s side to hold the box out in offering. He looks in and sees it is filled with chocolate eclairs. “Sky’s favorite. From a local bakery. I am guessing you were never sent to serve in Three Rats as Inspector or even met the Oracle who lives in this grotto, then?” 

He looks up from the pastries in shock at the mention of the rank. Definitely going to have a huge Neanderthalic forehead before this mission is done. To give himself time to think of his answer, he takes an eclair from the box and, after admiring its beauty, bites into it. As he chews, he says, “Me, an inspector? That’s even more difficult to believe than the Senator’s wife killing an archon. Oh…this tastes good. Well, in my exploration of this grotto I found no one living other than you and little Pharaoh. Oh, except for a ghost, I think. Some water spirit. Perhaps her bones have not been properly laid to rest. She flitted before me, leading me to the pool. I cannot say if she was friend or foe.”

Alma’s eyes narrow at the report of the ghost. “I see.” She sits down across from him again, the dark aura that was surrounding her subsiding, though Sky is under no illusion that she is ready to leap into action if he makes a suspicious move. “Well, considering how little interest Gwydion has in politics, thinking of him as a Senator is just as strange to me. And you say we had four children together? I assume they all have long ears and fluffy tails?”

“Three of them,” he confirms. “The adults. Um, Rosemary, Cherish, and May.” He sees her look of surprise at the names – or only the middle one? “They seem to be mortals. The baby boy is a god, however.”

That last intensifies her surprise to jawdropping shock. “A godling child? How old?”

“Maybe two?” Sky answers, uncertain. Godlings can age at such variable rates. Some gods can tell at a glance how old a god-babe is, but Sky only knows that the infant is at least a little older than he looks. He could be as old as his mortal sisters, for all Sky knows, but if he were a human babe, he would not yet be a year old. “I have more experience with human babies than divine ones.”

Alma shakes her head in astonishment. “I haven’t known Gwydion for a year, even. And Nekh is still alive? Math is…” she looks at him in disbelief. “Dead? Something about this world of yours must be fundamentally different from mine.”

Sky shrugs. “Your daughters all call him Daddy, so I assumed the two of you have been together at least twenty years. And yes, things seem quite different. At first I thought you were some sort of shapeshifter, perhaps something like, well, myself. That simply doesn’t add up, though. It seems as if we are talking about two different worlds. Two…timelines. And with all the torturing here and assassinations there, I’m not sure which is worse. But if your Sky is stuck in my world…I wouldn’t want to leave him there.”

“I would rather have him back, if it’s all the same to you.” Alma looks as if she is considering what to do next. After a moment, she stands. “Your handcuff keys. Give them to me.”

He looks at her outthrust hand, then sighs. He reaches into a jacket pocket and pulls out a ring of four keys, one of which is for Guardia shackles. He places them in her palm. “Are you going to take me prisoner after all?”

“I am going to ask a few questions to a few people and probably bring you some visitors to hear your tale,” Alma explains, pocketing his keys. “Sadly, the Oracle is away in the First Ring but you might want to meet your dead naiad. And my Gwydion. The Hammer of Devils Dei Sergeant.” She pulls out a pair of Guardia handcuffs. “And since you will have to forcibly stay here, I just want to make sure that this is where you will stay until I return with him.”

Sky groans. He hates being bound – even more than most people do. It goes against his nature. “Come on! I promise I’ll stay put. I don’t intend to go anywhere, and I’d be more comfortable unbound and with my mana flowing properly. Besides…what if a cave bear attacks me while you’re gone?”

Alma snorts. “Knowing you, I’d come back and find you with a bearskin rug to decorate your little den here. But while the Sky I know has sworn the Adamantine Vow to me, I rather doubt it applies to your soul as well.”

“The Adamantine Vow…” He shakes his head. This other Sky is incredibly trusting. He has friends. He’s an Inspector. In a station! And he makes the Adamantine Vow to gorgeous death goddesses. And it is only just sinking in what she said about Gwydion being the Hammer of Devils. So much to ask…but not now. “Very well. Let me get comfortable, anyway. And could I get some coffee for these pastries? You are going to leave them, right? It would be inhumane to take them away at this point.”

“I am most definitely not human.” Alma teases. “But I will have Doria bring you some coffee. And take Pharaoh away to where he will be more comfortable as well. After, of course, you give me the spare key sewn into the waistband of your trousers.”

Sky closes his eyes. He had been planning to unlock the shackles with that key as soon as she was gone and go out scouting. He glares at her.

“My Sky always kept one hidden away,” she says. “If you hand it over now, I’ll shackle your wrists in front of you rather than behind, making it easier for you to eat. And sparing you the indignity of stripping you to your undergarments.” She raises an eyebrow. “You are wearing underwear, aren’t you?”

Sky sighs and uses his thumb to pop a couple of stitches on the inside of his belt line. He fishes the key out and hands it over. “I’m not particularly keen on showing you my boxers. They were a joke gift from my partner.”

Alma’s aura activates again, but so very differently this time. Her skin gains color and a fresh spring breeze blows through the air, bringing hints of birdsong and sandalwood. And from a crack in the wall, thick, tough vines grow, looping out and back. Seeing how impressed he is, she gives him a little smile, but still locks a shackle around his left wrist, puts the other end through the root, and then shackles his other wrist. Sky immediately feels his mana almost…congeal. He cannot use his powers, now. 

“Out of curiosity…are they the ones with the yellow ducklings in rubber floaters?” Alma asks after she clicks her tongue at Pharaoh, who pops up from his seated position, ready to follow.

“Little bears on unicycles,” he says. “Juggling hearts.”

She chuckles. “Classic Somrak. Sit tight. I will be back soon.”

“Feel free to bring more pastries,” he calls after her, as she and the little dog depart.

Ch7.52 Revelations

The sounds of a fight echo through the tunnels in this part of the grotto. Something dull hitting the rock, scraping, gravel hitting the walls. Command words barked. Grunts of pain. Ah…stone being crushed. Someone is being thrown around.

And that someone is Sky. Alma and Gwydion enter the chamber that Pak has (respectfully) claimed and devoted to training to find the martial arts master tossing Sky across the room. Sky, in his human form and flying toward them, twists midair like a cat preparing to land on its feet and reaches his arm out to his right. At first, Alma does not quite catch his intent, as he is too far away from the nearest rocky projection to use it for support, but, to her astonishment, she sees his arm change shape. Only his right arm, growing in length and volume, skin becoming black and muscles bunching from the edge of his shoulder blade to the tips of his fingers, which are now sharp talons that easily grab a stalagmite and dig deep into it, nearly shattering the rock, about as thick as Alma’s midriff, as Sky uses it to regain balance, lose momentum and land on his feet.

Instinctively, Alma reaches for Gwydion’s hand, infusing just a little of her mana into the touch, to make it reassuring more than physically strong. She can feel Gwydion’s frame tense, his sphere rousing at Sky’s partial transformation. And Sky can sense that activation as well for, as soon as he is sure on his feet, he turns to shield his arm with his body as if the sheer volume of the transformed limb could be hidden behind the thin, if tall, profile of the devil-god.

“Hey…sorry,” he says in restrained tones, arm already changing back to match the rest of his frame.

“It’s all right.” Gwydion replies, his voice rough but level. He looks at Alma to reassure her that his words reflect the truth before saying, his gaze still resting on her, “Master Pak, I bring your wayward student as requested.”

“And a most tardy student she has been,” Pak replies, approaching them. “Tuma-Sukai, better! But not fast enough yet. Welcome, Sergeant!” he greets Alma. “Or I hear it is Acting-Inspector now? Congratulations and consolations.”

Alma cannot help but snort softly at the old Guardia joke. “Thank you. I know how much you hate excuses, Master Pak, and while I have a full station and other divine duties taking up my time, I recognize that I should have met with you earlier. I will make sure this does not happen again.”

It is an empty assurance and Alma knows it. Not only does she have those duties, she also has seven children, three of whom at an age that requires her frequent presence to help with things like homework and fashion and everything in between. And she would rather spend her time, between work and harvesting and sphere practice, with her children than fighting with an old god – who is currently looking at her as if he knows as well as she that making her swear by her words would be the same as forcing her to lie. “Oh, it will happen again and again,” Pak says. “For all my demands, I know that you have not been sitting idle at home.”  

Alma takes the time to look at her teacher’s soul more closely. Their previous lessons had all happened before this change in Alma’s sight that makes soul-scrying so easy and constant, when once it would have brought about strong headaches if she had used her soul-scrying for longer than twenty minutes. So she had not looked at Pak’s soul then, the same way she had not looked at Sky’s. There was no reason to. And most people do tend to be uncomfortable with the idea of being naked to the soul before someone’s eyes. But now that she can see it easily without arousing suspicion, she studies Pak’s soul, looking for signals of the anomalies Gwydion and Sky have mentioned. Beyond the fleeting look of tenderness and sympathy that crosses the old master’s face, Alma can see the layout of his soul.

A strange soul for a god. There are death gods who devote themselves to the study of souls, continuously adding to the Clan’s pool of knowledge on the most varied subjects of soul construction, kinetics, pliability, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Sadly, Alma has never been one of them – ironically enough – but she has more or less tried to keep herself updated about her fellow clan gods’ findings. Pak’s soul is unlike any she has ever seen (or seen described) for a god. Demigods souls have more variation to them, just as demigods vary in their divinity, lifespan and ability for magic. But Pak’s soul does not even seem to fit in that category either.

Gods’ souls are built from a core of pure, nearly solid energy surrounded by eight layers, or levels, of slightly less compact energy. And while it is generally admitted by death gods that a soul may lose – or give up – a small part of the energy of the outer layers, the core must, at all times, remain intact. It is the core which holds all of the layers together and floating around itself, like rings of gas and rocky debris floating around one of those strange spherical planets that some fantasy stories tell of. The stronger, more energetic the core, the more layers it can maintain around it, and the more layers around a core, the greater number of protective ‘walls’ surround the nucleus, making the whole ensemble more stable and making gods’ souls particularly suited to survive the challenge of eternity – and particularly difficult to naturally decompose, even within the Wheel, without the aid of spinning. It is also to these layers that memories cling as they are formed and stored, shaping the soul as they accumulate and interact with each other. A god’s soul is so stable and has so much space for storing said memories that gods can virtually remember anything that has happened from birth to very, very old age. Virtually. Other forces come into play there that Alma does not quite understand.

Mortal souls, however, tend to have a lower energy core surrounded by one or two layers. Because it is less powerful, the core is seldom strong enough to maintain its pull on the cloud of energy surrounding it for more than a handful of decades, which leads to the more rapid decay of the souls and, subsequently, the finite lifespan that plagues mortals in general. Some species have such small cores that the core itself starts disintegrating the moment it is formed.

Demigods and other creatures alike mostly occupy a space somewhere between mortals and gods, often siding closer to the former, with moderately strong cores and anywhere between three and six layers of energy around them – seven being exceptionally rare – which adds up to a lifespan of at least a few centuries.

Demons are rather unlucky creatures. With fractured cores, usually held in several pieces which hover just close enough to each other to maintain some sort of teetering connection between them, they have a single, often sparse and incomplete outer layer of energy, like a swarm of bees flying erratically around a broken hive. Devils…well, if Sky is any indication, devils are not so different from gods when it comes to souls. Alma has read some references to devils missing a specific component in their souls but it is controversial whether it is truly missing or just shaped differently – not to mention a certain aura of vagueness around what ‘it’ might in fact be.

Pak’s soul…is a bit of an impossible mess. There is a core in there…in fact, there are two, each about half of what would be expected for a god of his age and power, linked in close symbiosis and rotating, slowly, around an invisible axis. And around them, instead of complete layers, eight shimmering points of light, circling the dual core, like comets, each on its specific orbit and followed by a tail of twinkling particles. Like a soul made of broken away fragments of others. Or…one made of a fragmented core and whatever else made up what should have been a single layer of energy.

Could it be? Could Pak be…a demon? A changed one? Could a demon be changed into a…proto-god?

Alma tries hard to master her self-control, not let her findings show on her face. Stupid…so stupid… In her weakness, the other day, after returning from her journey to the Wheel, she had not looked closely at Pak. She had not seen him before that, not during any of her visits to Sky. And after she and Gwydion had come out of the chamber to check on their friend before going home, Pak had already left, leaving Nevieve with some excuse of a previous arrangement with Kumiko. Had he been avoiding Alma until now?

The silence stretches for just a little too long. And there is a look of tired resignation – or is it relief? – in Pak’s eyes, when he breathes deeply and takes a couple of steps back, still facing her and Gwydion.

“Let us start,” he says. “Today, Gwydion will get what he imagined so long ago, when he brought his attractive fellow Sergeant with him to my dojo, hoping to impress her with his manly prowess and greater skill at unarmed combat.” The humor in his voice is obvious, softening his contempt for the scenario. “However, instead of facing each other on the mat, you two will join forces. Against me.”

“Oh, you were imagining a little one-on-one session, were you?” Alma asks Gwydion, an eyebrow raised.

“I…have to admit the idea has its charms,” Gwydion replies, carefully picking his words. “But he’s making it all up.”

“I do know a thing or two about unarmed combat,” she says moving a little closer to Gwydion and leaning to whisper in his ear. “You wouldn’t have ended up on top.”

“Pinned down under you sounds just as good,” he whispers in return. But Pak clears his throat in annoyance at their flirting and Gwydion adds, louder for the master’s benefit, “I’ve seen you fight. He’s just trying to get me in trouble. He likes it when I’m in trouble. Especially with you.” He turns a scolding gaze toward Pak.

To their slight unsettlement, Pak actually laughs at this, wheezing in his amusement, a sight they have not often been offered to contemplate. “You will have to catch me. We shall see how long it takes.”

“Catch you?” Alma asks, surprised. “As in ‘capture and immobilize’?”

“It should not be too hard, the two of you against an old one like me,” Pak replies. “Creaky old bones.”

Sky chuckles at this, not fooled in the least, not unlike his friends. “Shall I just watch?”

“You must rest,” Pak determines after looking him up and down. “Your turn will come soon.”

Sky actually looks shocked. “I think it’s the first time I’ve heard you tell anyone to rest, Teacher.”

“Bah!” Pak nearly spits in displeasure. “I know your body better than you, Tuma-Sukai. And when you must rest, you rest!”

“Do you need healing?” Alma asks Sky while Gwydion takes a step forward in preparation for the exercise.

“Not really,” Sky tells her. “Nothing I can’t handle. And you should preserve your power, I think…” 

He smiles mischievously in anticipation of what is to come, making Alma chuckle. “Very well, Mister Partial Transformations! Impressive, by the way.”

Sky’s smile turns coy but loses nothing in pleasure. “Thank you. Good luck.”

“Should we use our powers?” Gwydion asks Pak as Alma joins him. “Or just go with simple combat?”

“You will have no chance of catching me without your powers,” Pak says, his aged, knobbly bamboo cane in his hand. “Even then…use whatever powers your creativity calls for. We start now.”

And, suddenly, Alma’s world takes a ninety degree turn as her legs are swept from under her and she lands, back first, on top of Gwydion’s belly, the god having been thrown to the floor even before she was. Alma rolls quickly off of Gwydion and looks toward Pak, only to find him already across the chamber, grinning at their clumsiness. She glares at him, annoyed at his mocking, and kneels, her hands touching the sand-covered rock of the grotto, sending signals to the roots of plants above to stretch downward, changing seeds buried in the ground waiting for rain, urging them to germinate, to grow, to stretch deep, deep…

Deep into and through the roof of the chamber the gods are in to snatch at Pak’s head, at his arms and legs, to crumble a portion of the rock and make it fall on him while Gwydion gets back to his feet. And hates losing. Hates it. From the time she was a young girl playing board games with her older brothers – she still refuses to touch a chess board though she has become quite good at other games of strategy – she has hated being fooled into a loss and the grinning, that mocking grin reaches the depths of her childhood peeves and makes her want to rip it off Pak’s face at whatever cost.

But Pak is not so easy to catch and he evades plants and rock, stepping lightly left and right and back and forth, minutely, just enough to evade each strike and fall, barely even looking up but tilting his head a little as if in challenge to Alma before leaping back, into the shadows in the farther side of the chamber.

“Oh, I wish I had popcorn,” she hears Sky say, and a part of her wants to smack him as well.

“He’s not going to make this easy, is he?” Gwydion mutters by her side.

“No, he’s not,” Alma agrees. “But I’ll get him if I have to collapse the whole chamber.”

“If it’s all the same to you,” Gwydion replies. “I’d rather avoid something that dramatic. We need a plan.”

“Any ideas?” she asks him.

“Do you always take this long chasing a target, Guardia?” Pak taunts them. “I should maybe call for a cup of tea while I wait.”

“I can still see you, you know?” Alma tells him. “Darkness is not enough.”

“Good,” Pak replies. “You should have no trouble capturing me, then.”

“I can’t see him,” Dion whispers to her.

“No spell for that?” Alma asks.

“If I have to use multiple spells at once, I won’t be as effective,” he lets her know. “But if that’s what it takes…”

“Wait… If I can bring him to you…into a trap, maybe?” Alma suggests.

She turns to look at Gwydion for a second. Just one second. And suddenly, she is being struck in the back, one breathtaking, long, whipping hit like a lightning strike shoving her forward. If Gwydion did not quickly reach for her right wrist and pulled her back, his bulkier body spinning and standing back to back with hers, ready to repel a second assault, she might have just fallen on her face.

 “Are you all right?” he asks.

“I…am…but…my ego isn’t,” Alma replies, wheezing and glaring into the darkness, where Pak is already, standing relaxed. “He’s grinning again…”

“Not for long,” Gwydion growls.

It is the type of growl that makes the little hairs on the back of her neck stand on end. A wild instinct makes Alma duck and protect her head, her body dropping to the floor almost at the same time as Gwydion’s. The ground shakes. Rock shatters. A roaring explosion fills her head, making her ears ring painfully. She catches a glimpse of light at the corner of her eye and reflexively raises an arm toward it. It phases through her body with familiar ease.

 An imp. A scouting spell. Gwydion’s.

Another, different glimmer catches her eye, further away and moving. This one, she sends her plants against. Vines that lash out to grab legs, bamboo stalks that grow downward to make bars for a cage. She sees Pak, his ears undoubtedly affected by Gwydion’s blast as much as hers, looking for footing after that earth-shaking blast, and she wants to make sure he finds none. But the old master is nimble, much more than he likes to pretend he is, and manages to evade all but one of her vines. It wraps around his wrist, slamming him against the wall. The stalks of bamboo reach the floor now, surrounding him on three sides – the fourth being the rock he has just hit. And the vine pulls him up, preparing to slam him again.

Success!

Alma grins in wild glee but her joy is short-lived. Just as Pak is about to hit the wall again, he twists, his feet pressing against the rock. His free hand slashes his cane against the cage bars, bamboo against bamboo, harvested plant against living stalk. And…

Alma’s plants shatter. An impossible cloud of debris lands on the cave floor as Pak pulls his wrist free from her vine and jumps into the darkness. A circular portal into the Void opens just as his feet are about to land but still, with only a finger’s breadth of vertical space to maneuver, he manages to turn, teeter at the edge of the portal and jump back as Gwydion makes it grow under Pak’s feet.

“Not bad, not bad,” Pak says from the shadows. “But the lesson doesn’t end until you catch me.”

“We really need a plan,” Gwydion whispers to her, eyes glowing golden, his scouting spell perched on his shoulder, ferrety face intently following Pak’s movements.

“I’m open to suggestions,” she whispers back, “since my cage wasn’t enough to hold him.”

“No, but it was close…” He goes silent for a few breaths. “Distract him. Get me some cover. I have an idea.”

“Sir, yes, Sir,” Alma replies dryly before calling out louder, “He’s mine!”

She jumps toward Pak, his cover in the shadows useless against her sight. She draws her sword, knowing he will use his cane as a weapon if necessary. This is not the sword given to her by Fencer on Year’s End, the one infused with just a tinge of Alma’s soul, just enough that Alma always knows where her sword is and feels its call when she steps further than half a room away from it. It can get quite uncomfortable, being this far away from her sword – currently sitting in her sanctum – but the memories attached to it still prey on her and she fears, whenever she answers the urge to pick up that beautiful weapon, for her soul, should it just slip into the metal without her being able to stop it. It is irrational and unreasonable but she fears it, nonetheless.

And anyway, her old training sword has served her well for over seventy years. It is like an extension of her arm, Alma’s skill evolved to wield it with barely a thought to balance or direction. She slashes its tip at Pak, not looking to hit him but only to catch his attention. Pak doesn’t even bother parrying her attack, instead stepping away, dancing in front of her, just remaining out of range of her sword. Alma does not mind. She has only to keep attention away from Gwydion. Her death sphere sparks awake, filling the room with whispers. Filling it with spectral images. Ghosts. Well, not ghosts. Spectres made of energy left in her from her harvests. Puppets. Hovering in the darkness that stretches to fill the chamber, obscuring the walls, the floor. The exits. It is not enough to render Pak’s senses useless but it does have some success limiting his movements. He becomes more careful, his steps just a little slower, his cane parrying the strikes of Alma’s blade now.

She lets her spectres, whispers and murmurs sussurrate louder and louder, adds to them with the rustling of leaves from the branches now growing downwards from the ceiling. Sound, movement, light. Confusing and distracting. The floor becomes littered with vines and roots that snap up, lashing at Pak’s legs. Since the awakening of the Wheel in her, life and death have lost their stark, limiting borders. She has found that she can call upon them both at once and she does so now. Still, Pak manages to step over her blanket of greenery without ever staying long enough in one spot to get caught by her plants.

He suddenly turns to his right, cane slashing through the air. Anticipating his intention, Alma spins, places herself in the path of the cane, taking the blow on her left forearm and slipping, falling back to land on something soft and moving between her and the rock. Gwydion.

The god grunts against her, pushing her gently back to her feet and slipping away as Pak tries to thrust his cane into Gwydion’s gut. Alma throws herself against Pak, hitting his chest with her right shoulder, her hand turning the handle of her sword to shove the pommel against his stomach. 

Pak grabs her wrist, twists it painfully and, his left elbow sliding between him and her, his body turning and pulling her off-balance, sends her flying across the room. She grimaces as she drags herself off the floor, kneels and stands. Even in complete darkness, deafening background noise and a mix of scents and textures, Pak has nearly managed to find and hit Gwydion, whatever he is preparing.

It’d be nice if it were about done, she thinks as she again covers the distance separating her from Pak.

And hits a solid wall. Solid but soft. And flexible. Rustling. To her left, Gwydion is trying to catch her attention, a figure of light among the spectres she summoned to confuse Pak’s sight. She cancels the magic that maintains the spectres, the whispers. Dispels her shadows.

And finds Pak standing in the middle of the chamber, touching a transparent barrier surrounding him, only barely visible from the shimmer of magic in it.

She sees him through a hole in her vines and bamboo shoots, woven into a see-through meshwork that Alma does remember creating. Outside of the barrier, glyphs glow, drawn on the floor. 

Gwydion joins her, grinning. “I hope you don’t mind what I did to the plants,” he says.

“I don’t mind at all,” she replies, inspecting the living cage, finding the threads of magic he used to force her vines into the shape he wanted. “Impressive.”

“Did you notice the room growing smaller around you?” he asks. “I didn’t close the barrier until he threw you out, of course.”

“And then you reinforced the cage with this magical wall,” Pak adds. “Not bad. There is much room for improvement. But that was not as terrible as I expected.”

Gwydion rolls his eyes. “Lovely… We weren’t terrible.”

“He’s bluffing,” Alma replies, grimacing as the abrupt end to the action brings on the pain of the bruises to her back, arm and ribcage.

“How bad did he get you?” Gwydion asks, concerned, as he cancels the magic holding the barrier up.

“I’ll live, she replies. “But my ego is in serious need of a massage.”

“After that glowing high praise from Master Pak?” Sky asks, carrying a tray with four small cups and a gently steaming teapot. “You should be beaming with pride!”

“Your voice reeks of sarcasm, Tuma-Sukai,” Pak says, approaching the trio of gods. He looks disturbingly fresh and unmoved by any of the blows he took. “But sarcasm is allowed from one who brings tea.” He waits for Sky to put the tray down on a low ledge and pour a steaming cup of tea for him. “For as long as it is good tea.” 

“Doria prepared this,” Sky tells him as he hands Alma her cup. “There you go. To warm your ego.”

Alma takes the cup and blows into the warm beverage to cool it. “Thank you. Are all our training sessions going to be joint sessions from now on? Maybe with each of us having a chance to snigger at the others?”

She narrows her eyes at Sky, who smirks and shrugs after serving Gwydion his tea. “Hey, I need to improve too, you heard him say.”

“You do. And you should all practice fighting together,” Pak tells them. “You have much to learn from each other and many battles ahead, fighting side by side. But for the moment, you are to practice the exercises I have given you on your own. Specifically you, Tuma-Sukai, and you, Gwydion. Do not practice with each other without my presence.”

Gwydion looks surprised at this, as do Alma and Sky. “Does that mean you will not be present for the immediate future?”

“Yes,” Pak replies. “I must leave the ward for a few days. I must consult someone regarding your cases. Perhaps I can find ways to speed you along the path a little.”

Or maybe you need to get away from us before we figure out what you really are, Alma thinks to herself.

“When I return, we will continue,” Pak promises after finishing his tea. “Until then…I bid you farewell.” He places the cup back on the tray and bows slightly at them. 

Sky bows in return. “Go safely, Teacher.”

“Stay well,” Gwydion says, bowing to Pak. 

Alma, not a fan of bowing by virtue of her Clan’s ways, simply nods her head at the master. “I will see you again.” 

Pak smiles at her Clan’s customary words of farewell. “Always a blessing and a warning.” He turns and, waving a hand at them, walks away, down the tunnels and away enough to be out of earshot.

“Did you sense anything?” Gwydion asks her as soon as she signals that it is safe.

Alma nods confirmation. “Saw more than sensed. He is not quite like us.”

“His soul?” Sky asks, still whispering, not daring to raise his voice too high.

“Yes, it’s unlike any I’ve ever seen,” Alma explains. “Like a cross between a god’s soul and a demon’s. Like it’s made of fragments put together.” She shakes her head, still finding it difficult to process. “I don’t want to say what this looks like.”

Sky looks thoughtful, worried as he takes her words into consideration. “Gods have many origins…who is to say what his was? If he reveals something unusual about his soul when he uses magic, that could explain why he has so rarely used it.”

“And why he didn’t complain about my absence from practice until recently,” Alma adds. “He might have been delaying for some reason, unsure if I’d know what it all means.” Which even she is not sure of so it would be lovely if Pak believed she did. “Other beings have elevated themselves to divinity. And they show signs of it. But only a few types of these beings would trigger Gwydion’s sphere.”

“To even think that feels like betrayal,” Gwydion says, looking glum. Alma cannot help but feel sympathy for her beloved. Without a father present and with Math’s machinations being such a constant in his life, Gwydion has come to rely on Pak as a figure of authority. Of parental discipline and guidance. To lose confidence in him… “But it does fit. And this sudden departure…”

“There are races of beings with demon blood,” Sky points out as if trying to justify things to make them as little frightening and grim as possible. “Worlds once overrun by them, but who are not inherently evil. Perhaps he comes from one of those.”

Alma takes a deep breath. She does not have an answer beyond the most obvious option, that Pak could be a creature spawn from Hell. But there is no point in standing here for the rest of the evening trying to come up with possible answers. “Well, no way we can be sure for now. I’ll go through my books and see if I find a match. Maybe my memory of Clan knowledge is playing tricks on me.”

She is quite sure it isn’t. But it is something to do.

“And…it would be unlike him to reveal anything without purpose,” Sky notes. “I believe he will tell us when he is ready.”

“Indeed,” Gwydion states, dry and grim. He puts his cup back on the tray, only half of his tea consumed. “Well, now what do we do?

Sky, cheerfully but strained: “I don’t know about you, but I was exhausted before your training, and watching it made me even more worn out,” Sky says, his voice straining to be cheerful. His hands tremble slightly and the inflow of blood through the veins around his eyes make his face look haunted, telltale signs that Alma has come to recognise as a warning that he is reaching his limit of holding on to this humanoid form for the time being. 

“Yes, you should rest,” she tells him gently, putting her cup back on the tray and touching Gwydion’s arm in a subtle signal that it is time to go. “And we can enjoy our walk back to the station. Maybe stop by Kyri’s on our way in?”

“You both know I treasure every minute of your visits…” Sky says, apologetic.

“We know,” Gwydion assures him as he takes Alma’s arm in his. “But Pak has worn us all out and it’s best not to push too far. Besides, either of us can always visit later. It is not every day that we both get to be away from the station in daytime.”

He smiles at Alma, making Sky smile as well, satisfied to see their ease with each other. “And you should use that to enjoy life together, just the two of you, sometimes.”

Alma smiles back at Sky, letting go of Gwydion’s arm just for long enough to hug her good devil-god friend. “Have a good rest.”

Sky holds her closely, squeezing her a little in pleasure at the touch before releasing her. “I think I shall, after all this. I…feel I am making progress. That is setting my mind at ease.”

Gwydion pats Sky’s arm companionably, holding his upper arm in friendship. It’s not completely comfortable yet but he is visibly trying to make it so. “That, you certainly are. Will see you later, Sky.”

“Farewell to you both,” Sky replies, gripping Gwydion’s shoulder and squeezing it lightly before letting him and Alma go about their business. 

This time Gwydion puts his arm around Alma’s shoulder, holding her closely as they walk, speaking softly about the minutiae of the magic Gwydion used to capture Pak and which Alma didn’t notice at the time. Behind them, Alma can hear Sky carefully picking up the tray and carrying it out, toward Doria’s kitchen. And out of the corner of her eye, just a little to her left, beyond Gwydion, it almost seems to her like there is a glimmer of a soul. Just for a moment. Two dots of light. And then it’s gone.

Ch7.50 Revelations

The walk back to the station is fraught with erratic thoughts, none of which Dion is too keen on entertaining. Today’s practice session with Sky and Pak was a total disaster. Yes, it started well, with a friendly spar of little energy expenditure but interesting exchange of technique, understanding the evolution of Sky’s physical recovery. But as soon as Sky changed into his devilish form, Dion lost all control over his actions, became a spectator in his own body as the beast inside him – his sphere, he knows – unfurled its wings, leapt out and struck Sky, again and again, wanting to kill him. Not banish, no. Kill.

If it hadn’t been for Pak, Sky might very well be dead. Then again, if it hadn’t been for Pak, this idiocy would probably not have taken place. From the simple effort of keeping from attacking Sky even in human form, which Dion must deal with each time he visits his friend – but which he has endeavored to not let be an obstacle to visiting – the god of magic and Hammer of Devils could easily have predicted that something like this would happen. However, he could not have predicted the distinct antagonism he felt against Pak when the old master stepped between Dion and Sky. It was not just that he was standing between Dion and his target but that, in using magic – which he rarely has since Dion met him – he revealed a taste to his mana that Dion’s sphere finds quintessentially wrong and in need of destroying. However, it is not quite the same flavor as Sky’s transformation produces or the ones Dion remembers, albeit blurrily, from fighting Margrave’s demons, leaving Dion to wonder if this Hellish magic Pak wields is something acquired from contact with Hell and close research, instead of intrinsic to a wielder from Hellish provenance. Still, something in this new mystery gives him pause and bothers him deeply, after so much trust placed on Pak. Suspicion cannot be a positive thing in their decisive times ahead and losing someone like Pak to betrayal would be quite a hard hit to take. 

Just considering the possibility leaves Dion feeling tired, which the mighty blow he took to the gut does not help dissipate. It still hurts. Of course, he has slowly been healing and he could have accepted Pak’s faster healing magic but he felt ashamed enough and disturbed enough that the pain of the blow served to ground him. To keep him in charge and not the beast, which is now sulking at his displeasure with its efficacy and licking its wounds after the fight. And yearning for its mate, to release tension after a battle it self-righteously believes it should have been allowed to win.

And though Dion himself longs to talk to Alma, to tell her of all that has happened and hear her thoughts on it and her words of encouragement and be healed by her, it leaves him wondering about the dangers of this inner, innate need for her nearness, like an addiction which could leave him vulnerable, forcing him to latch on to Alma like a tick. Something she would certainly find irritating and lead her to see him as a weakling child she must care for. Or a patient. Certainly not a partner.

But he has a recent history of trauma fueling his need as well, trauma only she can possibly begin to understand, for she has been through it with him. He does not have to speak. A single look at her, a longer moment of hesitation, of uneasy silence, and he knows she will know he needs her support, her reassurance. And she will be there to give it.

So he cannot keep himself from bypassing the station as he returns home and walking straight into the bar. There is a direct portal from the breezeway into the antechamber, one that used to lead into Alma’s sanctum. She has since moved it to serve all Dei sanctums, not just hers, making it a convenient way sneaking past the Bunnies and nosier, frequently intoxicated, bar patrons who might use Dion’s and Alma’s comings and goings to tease the gods, which would soon become tiresome and unwelcome. Dion left Alma in her sanctum when he left for the Grotto, about two hours ago, but he expects her to be done by now with what she told him would be a short, simple exercise with her sphere and, not being yet her time to go on shift, to probably be spending this free moment with her children. He almost feels bad for knowing he is going to be pulling her away from them. But it will only be for a little bit. An hour. Maybe two.

He enters the bar to find only Tulip there, building some sort of intricate sculpture out of discarded wooden matchsticks and paper napkins. She looks at him as soon as the door opens and he knows she knew it was him even before that.

“Hello, little flower,” he greets her as usual.

“Hi, Dion!” Tulip chimes, running toward him with a smile before stopping and wrinkling her nose in mild displeasure. “Ugh, you’re all sweaty-smelling!”

Dion realizes he has forgotten, in his dark musings as he returned home, to cast the cleaning spell he frequently uses when showering is not an option. He must smell not only of sweat but of Sky’s blood as well. But if Tulip notices this, she does not mention it – nor does it stop her from hugging him in her usual death-grip – and Dion does not make a point of turning it into a conversation piece.

“I’m sorry,” he says, hoping she will run out of strength in her arms before her grip on his waist combined with Pak’s previous attack renders him unconscious from the pain. “I should have gone right into my sanctum and showered but I wanted to see if your mother was here first.”

“Yeah, she was supposed to be helping me with this,” Tulip gestures at the abstract artistic creation. “But she hasn’t come out of her room yet. You know, you look good when you’re sweaty. Like, really shiny. You just don’t smell very nice. Have you been exercising? Is that how you get all muscley?” She looks a little uncertain. “Do gods even have to exercise?”

“Well, gods can choose what they look like, to a certain extent,” Dion explains, feeling uneasy at hearing Alma has just missed a meeting with Tulip. “But that would feel like cheating. And what is this creation of yours?”

Tulip looks a little unsure as well. “I’m still trying to figure that out but no reason to stop working, right? Hey, you could help me!”

Dion smiles, trying not to chuckle at her attempt at an alluring, smouldering look. “After I tell Alma that you’re waiting for her.”

“Yeah…thanks.” Tulip looks a little put out by the gentle refusal but shrugs in that way of people used to being told no and goes back to her work. “I’ve knocked twice already but she didn’t answer. Might be napping.”

The words send a chill down Dion’s spine. He controls himself not to look worried in front of Tulip, but, as soon as he is past the portal and in the antechamber, he rushes into Alma’s sanctum, dreading what he might find. 

He sees her sitting limply in the nook carved into the wall, on the left of the room, half fallen to her right, her back against the wall, her legs crossed and hands pale and lifeless, the whole position looking unnatural for a body in control of itself. Dion runs to her side, sitting down and reaching to pull her to him, touching her wrist to look for pulse, listening intently to catch her breath. Nothing. He touches her chest, knowing her heart beats for slower than his, that her breathing, at the most active of times, is less frequent than normal. But even that weak cadence that has often left him listening, careful and worried in the dead of night, when he happened to wake up and stay awake while she slept and seemed almost dead only to breathe in deeply a few minutes later, is now absent, and Dion feels his own heart stop, painfully, blood frozen in his veins. He does not breathe for fear he will miss her next breath as he examines her with every natural and magical sense he possesses. Nothing. Nothing!

Panic begins to take hold. What can he do? What can he do?! Is her soul in the Wheel? Is it trapped somewhere? Is she… No. No! She can’t be! Not after so much. Not after they seemed to be finding their way back to health. No, no, no. He needs to have her examined by someone who can see souls. He isn’t even sure her soul is not in her body. But…she looks eerily similar to the way she felt that night, in the grotto. After Nua…

Think, Dion. Think!

Can he call on a Death god? Imset told him to call if ever they got in trouble or Alma seemed unwell but he has left no means of contacting him directly and Alma’s ways are lost without her. Damn it, he should have foreseen the need for them! Melinor is the same. Death? If Alma’s brothers are beyond Dion, her father would only be reachable through Lyria, maybe through Math. Too many steps, too many steps. There is no time!

You’re panicking, control yourself!

Who else? Who else? Fencer? Again, how to reach her quickly? Who else helped heal Alma back at the grotto? Nevieve? Nevieve! If she cannot help, she will surely be able to get someone who can much quicker than Dion.

He gathers Alma in his arms and stands, feeling his chest contract at how her legs dangle with dead weight, at how much colder she feels than usual. So pale, much paler than her ethereal fairness, her lips nearly without color. He holds her tightly to him and walks out into the antechamber, takes the portal into the breezeway praying that no one is there to see him and ask questions.

His prayers are answered. No one seems to be using the breezeway, no Bunnies to see their mother lifelessly held in Dion’s arms. He does not push his luck. The mana expenditure is great but he opens a portal directly into Nevieve’s guest chamber, the only one into which the Oracle’s defenses allow portals to open.

“Nevieve!” he calls out. “Oracle!”

He doesn’t have to call again. Nevieve can hear him from wherever she might be in the Grotto. The door to the chamber he is in unlocks after a moment and opens, lichen on the rock wall illuminating his way with a bluish-white glow as he carries Alma through the tunnels, to guide his steps toward a chamber where Nevieve and Pak sit in woven straw chairs, drinking tea from a delicate porcelain set resting on a low, carved-rock table. The two older gods look a question at Dion, who fails to find something to say at first, the words his mind refuses to conjure blocking the flow of any others to his throat.

“She’s… unconscious,” he says finally, stammering, holding Alma’s limp body closer to him. She seems on the edge of death but he cannot bring himself to say it. “I found her just now and I don’t know how long she’s been like this but I can’t detect a pulse and she’s not breathing and…”

The words flow out of his mouth in a flood, faster and faster, stampeding until he cannot say anymore. His eyes are burning now with the edge of tears, his throat feeling dry and scratchy. He can barely keep his legs from shaking, his knees from buckling.

And maybe seeing that, Pak rises to help Dion with holding Alma. But something in Dion reacts badly against the gesture, a part of him which he is coming to know better and better makes his arms tighten their hold on Alma, screaming inside him,

NO!! DON’T TOUCH HER!

And he finds his aura flaring, aggressive in reaction to Pak’s movement. Dion knows, on a rational level, that Pak is just trying to help, that he, Dion needs help. But he cannot stop himself from reacting, and so Pak takes a step back, lowering his arms and nodding, maintaining eye contact with Dion but making himself as nonthreatening as possible.

Nevieve, on her part, rises from her seat as well and walks to a shallow depression in the ground which has been filled with sand and covered in a woven palm-leaf mat, a common feature of Nevieve’s chambers that include a sleeping area.

“It will be all right,” she says calmly, as if nothing has just happened between Dion and Pak. “Lay her down on this mat.”

Dion does so, carefully, keeping Alma’s head resting on his lap. He keeps his eyes looking at Pak who seems to be going out of his way to stay within Dion’s line of sight, but speaks to Nevieve as he asks, “Do you know what’s happening? The last time I saw her like this…” He shakes his head at the pervasive memory of holding Alma in some other chamber of this some grotto, the goddess’ body laid on a mat just like this one, calling her name and waiting for her to regain consciousness, to regain control over her own body.

“Her soul is journeying,” Pak answers instead of Nevieve. “Fear not.”

“It is so,” the Oracle confirms, kneeling in front of Dion, at the level of Alma’s head, those milky-white eyes glowing with Nevieve’s extraordinary sight. “This vessel is missing a soul. And a soul is missing its vessel. Rather confused, our poor firefly. Let us give her a beacon to follow home.” 

Nevieve touches a delicate fingertip of her webbed hand to the center of Alma’s forehead, leaving a fingerprint of light glowing on it as if a particularly fat firefly had landed where the finger touched. She sits back, smiling reassuringly at Dion. “A long time ago, there were beings who had such a frail connection to their own bodies that they could travel through the realms of the living without ever touching anyone or anything, unseen and unheard. I suspect our young Alma, with her third sphere and the injuries she has sustained, has become a little more…detached from her body and prone to becoming discorporate at will. She must have lost her way back, this time around.”

“But this spell of yours…it will guide her back, yes?” Dion asks, stroking Alma’s hair more to his comfort to his beloved’s.

“She is already settling back into herself,” Nevieve assures him. “She is built for this and this death-like stasis is a mere preservation mechanism her body has found. You will need to become used to it, Gwydion. I suspect that as her abilities develop, she will find the Wheel calling more and more.”

“But she will also learn to return to her body more easily,” Pak adds. “Provided she practices.”

“But until then, I will need to learn how to call her back,” Dion says, feeling his breathing become easier as the colors of life return to Alma’s cheeks and lips. He kisses her forehead, relieved to feel her skin regain some warmth against his lips.

“She can practice here,” Pak suggests.

“If she so wishes,” Nevieve agrees. “But it might be that she prefers to go at it alone – ah, here she is.”

Alma’s chest rises with a deeper inhalation as her eyes flutter open, the pearlescent glow in them focusing on Dion while her expression remains blank for the moment. She must still be regaining control of her muscles but though her recovery is not immediately complete, Dion still slumps in relief, shoulders hanging along with his head while his eyes feel like they are burning again, but with tears of relief.

“You’re back…” he breathes.

“You are in the Grotto,” Pak says, more pragmatic than Dion, voice soft but dry. “You gave Gwydion a scare.”

Alma’s face resumes its ability to move, contorting into an expression of confusion before it falls into worry and misery.

“Hmm? Why? What happened?” Her voice comes out of her mouth still rough and stumbling from their incomplete control over the finer muscle movements of her throat and tongue.

“I found you in your sanctum,” Dion explains. “You weren’t breathing and you didn’t have a pulse. I thought–”

He trails office, unable to complete the sentence. His arms hold Alma as if she might fly away or fade through them at any moment, almost too tightly for Alma’s comfort.

“Oh…Oh, I’m sorry,” Alma says, sounding distressed as the words register. “I was…I must have lost track of time. I didn’t mean – It was supposed to be a short thing.”

“What happened, firefly?” Nevieve asks gently, touching Dion’s shoulder to push him back a little, to get him to relax his hold on Alma.

Dion does so, reluctantly, noticing that his beloved is now managing some tonus on the muscles of her neck, shoulders, and abdomen. 

“I was visiting the Wheel,” Alma says. “I didn’t expect to take long and it didn’t feel like a long visit. But when I turned back to re-enter my body, I could not find the way back. It was as if the path had faded. But then I found it again.”

“When did you enter the Wheel?” Pak asks.

“I don’t know how long…” Alma replies. “There are no watches in the Wheel. I remember sitting down to meditate just after Gwydion left to come here.”

“You were out of your body for two hours, then,” Dion says, feeling his own voice tense as anger begins to rise in him in the wake of relief. How could Alma put him through this with such a reckless move?

“There is no time in the Wheel,” Nevieve says. “And for that reason, it is easy to lose your way back, especially now that all of this is new to you. You should not start such visits to the Wheel without someone to show you the way back, should you lose it.”

“It’s the first time I have lost my way,” Alma argues. “I–”

“It could have been the last!” Dion cuts her off, raising his voice. “You never warned me that this was what you’d be doing! I wouldn’t have come here, if that were the case! Is this what you wanted a sanctum for? To try dangerous things while I’m not looking and can’t help if things go wrong?!”

“Calm yourself, Gwydion,” Pak says, voice low but firm, the kind of voice that will not be disobeyed and that leaves Dion’s arms shaking and struggling to keep control.

Alma slowly sits up, keeping her eyes on Dion as she sits beside him.

“I am sorry,” she says slowly, deliberately. “It was reckless and it could have gone badly. It did go badly because it hurt you. I would not have done it if I had any idea that it could go like this.”

“Perhaps we are needed elsewhere,” Nevieve says, looking at Pak.

To Dion’s surprise, the old master has somehow managed to walk back to the table and fetch a cup of tea, which he is now offering Alma, without Dion ever noticing Pak’s walking away or back to their side. “Tea. Coffee later.”

Alma nods, taking the cup. “Thank you.”

“Come find us whenever you crave our company,” Nevieve tells them, guiding Pak into another of the myriad chambers of the grotto.

After a moment of uneasy silence, Alma puts down her cup, untouched, resting it on the mat beside her. She hesitantly reaches to touch Dion’s hand, clenched against his thigh. “Gwydion, I–”

“You don’t understand,” he interrupts her again, hissing through gritting teeth.

She removes her hand and that gestures hurts him as much as the confusion and alarm on her face.

“You don’t understand, Alma,” he repeats, locking his eyes with hers. “I thought you dead again. I held your body without knowing if you were in it. Again! For the second time in just a few weeks!” His wide eyes search her face. He is surprised at himself that he isn’t digging his fingers into her arms, his hands instead pressing fingernails into the flesh of his thighs through his trousers. “I can’t do this again, Alma! I can’t! I can’t keep coming home wondering if I’ll find you gone. Or waking up three and four times every night to make sure you’re still alive. And with me.”

He looks away from her, feeling the helplessness, the whimper in that last sentence. It hurts him to be like this before her and to be angry at her and to just be generally angry at himself without the benefit of being able to hold her for comfort. He wants to shake her and he wants to hold her and kiss her. But most of all, he wants to not feel as rotten as he is feeling.

“I wish I had magic words to say to make it all go away,” Alma says, voice subdued. “I didn’t want to worry you. I knew…the way I must look when I’m discorporate…I didn’t want you to go through the pain of seeing it again. All those other times, the Shan’doír sent me back so… you’re right. I didn’t know the risks. I just – I just wanted to make something positive out of it!” She sighs, looking up and blinking away tears. “I feel like such a victim sometimes. You and Sky – you are becoming stronger. You can learn to fight better with what you have and become stronger. I still feel helpless. There are all these challenges, all these…gambles and…” She looks at him. “I feel like I always need to have you there holding my hand. I wanted to feel in control of something without anyone having to sacrifice for me.”

He looks at her for a long while, silent. Anger has run its course in him, drained by the absence of resistance on her side and the onslaught of his mana usage when opening the portal here. Without someone to fight with, he feels himself incapable of fighting altogether. But he is still hurt and still hurting. And she is hurting too. In the end, is there a point in prolonging their pain over…nothing. Stubbornness, maybe.

He opens his arms to her, gently holding her as she moves closer and leans against him, holding him in return. The scent of her hair helps soothe him, like a balm with healing properties that never fails to make him feel better.

“You should practice,” he says. “But…not alone. Please, not alone. You were supposed to be doing some art project with Tulip and she didn’t care to follow me into your sanctum but imagine if she had found you.”

He feels Alma tense, her breathing stop for a moment. “Tulip…I forgot. Oh, Gwydion, I don’t want to subject you to seeing me like that again.”

He considers this. He does not particularly want to see Alma like that again, but if he knows that she is not in danger, it would not be so bad. “Maybe Nevieve can teach me that beacon spell,” he says. “If I can call you back and know you’ll return to me…maybe I can get used to it.”

“But what of your time to study and rest?” Alma insists, though he can tell that her heart isn’t in it. “You need that too.”

“I need to know that I have you with me more than I need those things,” he says softly, kissing the side of her head. “I rest better knowing I’ll wake up to you. And I can read while I watch over you.”

Alma seems to struggle with this but, finally, she nods. “I won’t go into the Wheel without you there.”

He can tell from her tone that this saddens her, putting conditions on herself in this way, but this sacrifice of hers does help make him feel better. “Just until you know your way there and back without needing help,” he assures her, promising himself that he will honor his words. 

“Can we keep Nevieve and Pak as much out of this as possible?” she asks.

“You don’t trust them?” Dion asks her though it is mostly a rhetorical question. He knows the duality of the answer he himself would offer if asked.

Still, Alma hesitates in answering. “I know they will help us if we ask. But at the same time…they want us to ask for help at every step. They want us to tell them every new thing we learn. Knowledge is power and I cannot get over the fact that Nevieve was in alliance with my mother all the time we’ve been in Three Rats. And Pak, probably with Nevieve. They are players in the game. And we keep getting played.”

It is a bitter truth. But it is the truth. “We’ll ask Nevieve to teach me the beacon spell. And try to do as much as we can on our own safely.” He emphasizes the last word, wanting to make sure it is settled.

She nods. “Thank you. And please…forgive me. I feel miserable, knowing what I put you through.”

Not as miserable as I felt going through it, he thinks, but realizes that is petty. He holds her tighter in his arms for a moment. “And I am sorry I reacted so strongly. It just hasn’t been a good day.”

She squeezes him back and he can feel the bridge of her nose against his neck, a minute intake of air marking her breathing him in. “Was it all because of me? Or does it have to do with the pain in your belly?”

He nods. “Pak wanted Sky and me to spar and use our abilities against each other. It went well at first but…as soon as Sky started changing, I completely lost control. I’m afraid I hurt him badly before Pak intervened and stopped me with a blow to the stomach.”

He can feel her tense as he tells her this. Sky is not just a very close friend of hers. His life is in her hands. If the wounded god-devil is beyond recovery, she will be called to put him out of his misery. It dawns on Dion just how much he could have jeopardized with his loss of control. And that doesn’t help him feel any better.

“And Sky?” Alma asks.

“Pak healed him,” Dion assures her. “He used some kind of Hellish magic, Sky says. More painful but more effective.”

“I wonder where he learned it,” she says, sounding suspicious.

“I don’t know but it triggered my sphere,” Dion says. “The same way his attack made me want to pulverize him. It tasted Hellish. I don’t know what to make of it. But I couldn’t stand his healing.”

“Hmm… I think it’s time to take a closer look at the good teacher’s soul,” Alma says dryly. She pulls away a little to look at Dion. “Do you want me to heal you?”

He looks at her with tenderness, reaching to cup her cheek in his palm. “I don’t think there is anything I would like better right now.”

Her lips curl in a soft smile as she leans closer, her head tilted in anticipation of a kiss. The addition of healing magic to the exquisite pleasure of touching her lips with his results in an intensification of the usual quiet blanking of all thought, the silencing of the everyday symphony of things demanding attention. It adds a measure of physical pain and relief and ecstasy to the emotional experience, in a very much addictive mixture of sensations that completely erases any chance of him holding a grudge. And Alma knows that very well, the little minx, reeling him further into her web of delicious abandonment of worry and fear. He can feel himself drinking in the comfort and affection, the feeling absorbed by his sphere like a glutton being fed cake. It is just so…intoxicating.

And just like a drug, it leaves him hungry for more when it is finally over, and dizzy for the disorienting loss of the anchoring touch of her.

“How does that feel?” she breathes in question, forehead resting against his.

“Can I have more? I think I’m still sore in some places,” he replies.

She chuckles softly and kisses his nose. “Once we’re home, I’ll give you a thorough check-up. But for now, I’d like to go and check on Sky. Just to make sure.”

“I know he’ll enjoy that,” Dion says. “And I’ll feel better, knowing you checked him over.”

“Then let’s go,” she says, though she makes no motion to stand up.

“Maybe just five more minutes?” he suggests, holding her comfortably.

She nods, “Five more minutes.”

Ch7.49 Revelations

The journey is what matters.

To be alive is to be in transit. Conception to death, the length of the road varies but it is always a road. Curves, corners, sudden drops, steep rises. Abrupt stops. Narrowings in the path. Widenings. Crossroads. It is all but one path. A ‘not yet’ at the beginning.

A ‘no longer’ at the end. Everything in between is a ‘for now’ and that is the total sum of things. For now, we are alive. For now, tomorrow is possible, yesterday is certainty. For now, there is hope in that now will stretch and now will remain what it is. A now. For now.

And when now becomes no more, when the thought is entertained of what lies beyond that ultimate threshold where hearts cease beating and chests stop rising and synapses refuse to fire, when memories can no longer be made but held in the minds of those for whom now still lingers, what lies ahead? What happens when nothing else can happen? And why does it matter?

Does it matter, knowing what to expect after death? Or is the terror of not knowing that truly sparks imagination? What is more frightening, to know there is only suffering awaiting beyond the grave or to not know what to expect, even if there is nothing to expect? Can the mortal mind truly believe there is nothing? When the greatest activity of the mind, the prime and beloved occupation of thought is to fill nothing with its creations, to shape nothing and color it and give it purpose, to make it something, can anyone truly even fathom the prospect of nothing? Can we worship it in the same way everything can be worshipped?

Is there a god of nothing? Is it legitimate to create something to embody the essence of nothing and then worship that?

And thus, different religions have sought to fill the void in their own ways. That is, after all, the purpose of religion: to explain whatever is too complex, too frightening, too strange to be explained by conventional knowledge. To replace the harsh truth with little innocuous fallacies that are more palatable, if not as accurate. For while knowledge is essential to understand the world, belief is vital to accept it.

It is the dance of the years. Knowledge challenges belief, brings to question the very foundations of our actions. Of our world. And belief strikes back. It denies knowledge, fervently, waiting for it to crumble, for it to be proven wrong. For while knowledge requires proof, belief requires only itself, and it is often another’s belief in jys own knowledge – and in ours – which leads jyr to produce the knowledge which will question our belief. And then, evidence will either prove wrong the premises from which our beliefs stem or it will fail to prove them wrong. And, in some cases, regardless of evidence, we will choose what to believe in and hold onto that, come Hell or high water. What does knowledge know, after all? Knowledge, heartless knowledge, what does it know of our needs and wants?

In the struggle between knowledge and belief, belief always wins. For belief is our choice and knowledge cares nothing about us, and when forced to choose between a harsh truth one cannot control and a not always gentle but customizable lie, nine and a half out of ten people will pick the lie.

Why accept darkness and nothingness when one can have angels and devils and gold-paved roads and perennial flames and anything the mind can conjure?

It is, after all, what the gods have. In life, but not in death. Not on the Insula. On the Insula, there is the Wheel. Of course, belief has such great power on the Insula that it allows gods to actually live, in the clouds and everywhere else, so some of the various beliefs of the myriad religions coexisting in relative peace all over the mountain do have to be obliged. If mortals want to believe in angel choirs and walks through the desert, then that is what they get…for awhile, at least. Once their souls are collected by death gods – something that the vast majority of people seem to be comfortable with – they can embark on a small eternity of bliss and family members or of flames and guilt and relentless torture. For as long as their souls are traveling into the Wheel, they can experience all of that and believe it will last forever. Because to a soul there is no time. And once they are in the Wheel, they enter a kind of decomposing stasis, losing their shape as their memories of themselves erode. And once the Spinner comes into play, this is replaced with a kind of rearrangement of energies which equates to melting a rock and pouring it into a new mold instead of chiseling away at it with a hammer and a rusty nail.

It all takes quite a lot of energy to accomplish, especially if thousands of souls are to be reshaped and recycled at once. Apparently, about as much as that contained in a relatively young god, full of life and potential. That was what Sharia was using, every year, in a sort of sanctioned hoax carried out by the Life Clan. Perhaps – most likely – with an injection of her own mana, flavored with something which allowed her to force the Wheel to turn.

Always with sacrifice, the Shan’doír had said. An unnecessary sacrifice. Or was it unnecessary? Who would have spun the Wheel, for all those centuries, otherwise? Was it truly essential for the Wheel to be spun or is the need to spin it each year a thing of beings who evolved to care for mortals? Of deities. Gods.

The Shan’doír are not gods. They are before gods, before the concept of a god. Before the need for gods, perhaps. A simpler time. A time of flux, of a war still remembered but not quite understood. A whisper of a memory. Time flowed differently, then. Reality was different. There are just patches of that time left, now. Warped to fit.

Or existing in parallel, like the Wheel, being touched by and touching pieces of the current reality, like the souls of those whom different from the beings of yonder days, inhabit now the space of the living, the space of that feeble existence that encompasses the totality of everything and believes that beyond it is only nothing.

Belief and knowledge. In Alma’s mind – better yet, in her soul – the dance continues. Reaching the Wheel, something which should happen only once in her life – and right at the end of it – is suddenly easy enough that she can do it without aid, if she relaxes enough or if something chases her away from solidity. If she can master it, maybe she can use it as an advantage, somehow.

And she can be in the Wheel without losing her ability to think, though thinking becomes harder without the physical support of a brain to organize thoughts into synapses. Sadly, without eyes, there is no landscape to see, so there are no golden roads or halls of drinking. Without ears, there is no sound. No angelic choirs, no courts of accusation.

There is, effectively, nothing. The ‘voices’ of the Shan’doír are mere projections of their souls into Alma’s, like memories shared directly. How long did they wait for a new Shan’doír soul to slip out of the Wheel? Did they send one of their rank to be spun and reborn into Alma? And does it matter? The souls awaiting in the Wheel are like fireflies, sparking her attention. She cannot see them but knows they are there, knows how to contact them, to touch them. To spin them.

Were all Shan’doír able to spin the Wheel? Were all of them necessary to do so, in their time, while Alma is expected to do it alone, now and forever more? Can she ever plan to ascend, if she is to remain the only Spinner? Is she to remain the only one?

Truth be told, spinning the Wheel was almost painful and it was tiresome. But then, Alma hadn’t had this sphere active in her. Now, a whole new array of abilities is blooming. And spinning the Wheel for Nasheena was easy. Recycling the souls broken by the Soul Bomb was easy, once she relaxed and stopped fighting them. She does not see it wearing her out through the centuries in the same way it consumed Sharia. And from what the Shan’doír tell her, nor should it happen.

“The Wheel spins always, at its own pace,” they tell her as she hovers at the center of the Wheel, just a few days after her lesson with Sharia. “Faster or slower, it means little to this plane.”

“Then why is the Spinner necessary?” Alma asks.

“The Spinner is the heart of the Wheel, setting the pace of its spinning,” they reply.

“And how do I know how fast or how slowly to spin it?” Alma insists. She detects no hesitation from the Shan’doír as they answer her questions with their cryptic statements. But still, it is frustrating not to get a straight answer on anything.

“You will know,” the Shan’doír voice says, three words Alma suspects she will be hearing more frequently than she would like. “Because the world of the living will tell you. How quickly should a heart beat? It is the body who determines it.”

It makes sense, Alma must admit. But… “Am I…doing a good job?” she asks, fearing the answer. Can she truly replace Sharia and not become worse than her for being able to actually have an effect over the Wheel? “Can I hope to be a good Spinner, even without much guidance to go on from the realms of the living?”

“The Wheel rejoices in its new heart,” the Shan’doír say, reassuring. “It sings its song to you. Listen. And you will learn to sense when things are right…and when they are not. Then, you will know to change.”

A song…yes, Alma can sense a certain cadence to the Wheel’s movements, like background noise of birdsong and insects buzzing in a forest in the lazy hours of the early afternoon. “But I have known no other song to the Wheel, other than this one. Is this the right song? Or is the Wheel wrong?”

“It is the song of the days before you,” the Shan’doír say. “The song of the days after us.”

“And why are you no longer its heart?” Alma asks.

Silence, for the first time. Is that hesitation out of fear? Or out of pain? “Its heart was broken. And then you came.”

“Who broke its heart?” Alma insists. “And what does it mean?”

“You will understand,” they insist in return. “When the time for understanding comes.”

Alma tries a different approach. “Am I one of you? Did you send my soul into the Wheel to be cleansed and reborn?”

“You are Shan’doír. Of the Wheel. The Wheel chooses your time to serve. To bear it and to link it to the living realms. We have served. We have chosen our fate. You will serve in your way. And choose your own fate.”

More questions. Every answer just sparks more questions. “Will I be bound here, like you, when my time comes?” She pauses, unable to avoid pressing the issue. “Have you…done something to break the heart of the Wheel?”

“The war broke the heart,” the voice replies, sounding tired, pained. “It broke our hearts. The scars…they bind us together.”

“Will you show me?” Alma pleads. Any crumb of information could be vital, though she does not yet know how or for what.

“When you can understand, you will understand,” the Shan’doír voice says, the words projected into her mind as if no more will follow, no matter how much she insists.

Still, she does. “And until then?”

“Until then…you can believe.”

Ch7.46 Revelations

It is a well-accepted truth among gods that there is no other place more special than a sanctum. A god’s sanctum is very much what the name entails: a sacred haven. It is a place of convergence of energies prompting relaxation and recovery, a place of privacy, of storage of important things, of sacred things, of items of power and memory. Of thoughtless ease of being. In some religions, it is the place of physical manifestation of immaterial gods, the nexus of communication with beings who do not, will not, cannot step among their worshippers. The sanctum sanctorum. The holiest holy place.

Home.

And just like any mortal home reflects the tastes, needs and personalities of the people inhabiting it, so does a god’s sanctum mirror in almost indiscrete perfection the whims and turmoils of its inhabitant. Many gods cannot imagine life without a sanctum any more than a clam can live without a shell. Some, however, refuse the anchoring effects of possessing a sanctum, whether for fear that it might represent a point of weakness, an entryway into their vulnerability, or simply a place to where their wandering soul might feel obliged to return.

It is also an expensive thing to make to those who do not possess such skill. A pocket universe, completely separated from the current framework of reality requires a great deal of mana to create from nothingness – reshaping a piece of a pre-existing place to suit one’s needs is easier, less expensive but suboptimal when compared to a fully dedicated reality. And both options require maintenance, a stipend of mana directly correlated with the size and spatial intricacy of the sanctum. Gods without enough worshippers or any other ways of gathering mana seldom manage to maintain sanctums much larger than a single room.

Thankfully, Alma does not require much more than the single room. Maintaining the newly reshaped sanctum for her Bunnies while having a separate sanctum of her own will increase her mana consumption considerably, though she does not want to admit it before her children, who worry enough already about their role in making Alma relinquish a place that should be her ultimate stronghold.

It was never a stronghold, anyway. Alma hadn’t had a proper sanctum in a lifetime before being assigned to Three Rats. But she must admit that having one for the past weeks has been a lovely experience, even if it ended up being shared with the Bunnies. And moving into Gwydion’s sanctum…it feels wrong. Yes, the prospect of not spending her nights with him feels to her like a stab to the chest, especially after their bittersweet time at the estate. But Gwydion’s sanctum is so completely his, so completely him even in the way it welcomes her and embraces her in its energies. It has been his space for a long time. It would be wrong to invade it, even if he tells her that he would be glad to have her living there in permanence. They will find their own balance, in time, but for now, she wants to spare him the loss of his space.

So here she is, standing in the middle of the little seedling of a pocket universe he created for her and which she has nurtured into germination, trying to find a layout for a suitable sanctum in her mind. Everything seems to her as a sad copy of the one the Bunnies now occupy. Perhaps, that is just the way it is supposed to be.

Grass floors, soft and fresh under her feet. Bookshelves and a desk lining nooks to either side of the door. A restroom with just the necessary amenities through an archway to the far right corner, ivy branches and leaves covering the entrance. A walk-in closet beside it. To the far left, a depression in the floor filled with a comfortable mattress and fine cotton sheets. A living curtain of wisteria almost hides it completely from view. Another alcove carved into the wall to the left. The almost mandatory pool, much smaller for only being for one but able to welcome four with ease, fills the room with the peaceful sounds of running water. Soft lights. Pleasant scents.

Alma opens her eyes, feeling drained but enjoying her creation. She smiles to see Starfax perching on a shelf carved into the wall to be a comfortable platform for the phoenix. Starfax looks around her, sits, grooming her feathers and looking pleased. Good.

The first signs of an impending mana hangover begin to hit her. Exhaustion, dizziness, a certain difficulty in stringing thoughts together. The pain won’t hit her immediately with full force, it seems. Every hangover is different, really, but this one seems to be biding its time. Well, small blessings.

She could go and ask Gwydion to cast his healing spell on her but the pain isn’t so bad yet and they have agreed that she should stay here tonight, communing with her new sanctum, creating the necessary bonds to it so the energies of the place will align with her own for perfect relaxation. She must admit that she is not exactly overjoyed about this. The truth is that she has been delaying this moment of ‘moving out’ of Gwydion’s sanctum, content to sleep in a room that merely accepts her instead of being hers if that means she can enjoy the loving refuge of Gwydion’s arms each night. It is just so easy to succumb to his requests, among kisses and caresses, to delay her sanctum one more day…and another. Tomorrow and tomorrow and a week from now.

If it hadn’t been for Sharia’s own ignorance and treacherous attempt to drain Alma, leaving her with no choice but to learn and prove herself as Spinner in less than a year, alone in her endeavors except for the Shan’doir, themselves trapped… Alma already suspected, from her first encounter with them, that she might have to walk that path with no help from the world of the living. But the whole incident with Sharia has just spurred her resolve.

And now, after nights and nights of relying on Gwydion’s loving embrace to keep her nightmares at bay, as well as the ghost and shadow pains of having her soul pulled out of her and into her sword, revived by Sharia’s ruthless attack, Alma hesitates over staying in the sanctum she insisted on creating today.

But she should stay. Gwydion will be busy with Geryon, anyway, engaging in some fundamental magical research of theirs that can only be conducted while the conditions are perfect this week. And she should not disrupt their focus.

She looks down at the little plush gryphon, battered and nearly smooth after over a century of being dearly loved by a lonely child, held gently in her hand. Gryphy. Gwydion had lent it to her, to keep her company, in a sweet, heart-melting gesture of comfort. She holds Gryphy to her chest, remembering the shyness on Gwydion’s face when he had impulsively reached for the shelf on which Gryphy was placed, snatched the plush animal and, after a moment’s hesitation, offered it to her, to keep her company when Gwydion himself couldn’t. His childhood treasure, kept mostly hidden inside his sanctum. Such a gesture of trust, of vulnerability, of desire to comfort. She wonders if he has any idea of how much it meant to her, how much it feeds her love for him, that he could do something like this.

As her head starts feeling heavier with the effects of her mana hangover, Alma sits on her new bed, soft but not too soft, bouncy but not too springy, and lets herself fall back, lying with Gryphy held to her chest, feeling the memory of Gwydion’s arms around her, his scent in the old plush fabric filling her nostrils. Her eyes closed, the soft sounds of the gently running water of the pool lull her into a place of almost-slumber.

Curled into a ball, she waits for the nightmares to come, the terrors of her empty hours bound to those memories Wasure has not locked away in some mental recess of her mind. There is still so much left to haunt her, even with the memories of Sky’s and Gwydion’s tortures put away… The constant pain in her soul left by Nua’s assault creeps to the forefront of her awareness whenever she is without distraction and she feels it more keenly now, alone for the first night since the attack. Tears roll down her cheeks from the sharpness of it. From the tragedy of it.

The gamble with the Council. Sky’s forced exile from those he loves and his struggle toward recovery. The lies and secrecy with the Bunnies, with the station personnel, with anyone they meet on the street. The things they had to do, that they have to do now and going forward. It is all so much to deal with, to come to terms with, only marginally manageable in the comfort of company who knows and understands what she is going through and now finding her alone and vulnerable.

And in pain. Running out of the room in search for Gwydion is only a faint thought now. She cannot even bring herself to cover her body with a blanket even though immobility has her feeling chilled, let alone get up and leave. The weight of her pain and panic and self-pity has her pinned to the bed. The comfort that Gryphy provides becomes a firefly on a moonless night of crushing blackness.

The change comes unnoticed at first. And maybe at first it is just the exhaustion that comes from crying until there is no energy left to produce tears. But Alma’s tired heart lies exposed and vulnerable in its misery, unable to resist the flow of energy, of mana and emotion around her—all there is in the sanctum she created from the seed made for her by her love. And its energies wrap around her, probing at first, then carefully pouring into her, questioning, curious, empathetic. Comforting.

Compassionate.

She is slowly filled with peace, with quiet, with hope. And she falls asleep.

神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎

She wakes feeling rested and re-centered. Starfax’s cleansing light shines softly upon her, like a perfect complement to the sanctum. It now feels to Alma like a place of healing and sanctuary, so perfectly suited for her as to be a second skin. And though the design is similar, albeit simpler and smaller, it feels so different from the sanctum she created for herself and her Bunnies, so much more attuned to her that she is amazed she ever believed that other sanctum was truly hers. She feels so safe here…

It takes her a moment to remember Gryphy, nestled safely against her chest. Without Gwydion to animate the old plush animal, it is no longer interactive, but its embroidered mouth and button eyes look to her as if they are watching her with a soft, friendly smile, encouraging and reassuring. She smiles in return, stroking its head as if caressing an old friend.

“You are a good companion, aren’t you?” she murmurs. “I wish I had had someone like you when I was little.”

A little twinkle catches her eyes. At first it looks faint, just a trick of the imagination. But as Alma focuses her full attention on it, she begins to see it more clearly and gasps as she realizes what it is: a tiny fragment of a soul, so small that Alma had never noticed it, buried deep inside Gryphy and bound inconspicuously to the plush doll.

Who does it belong to? How long has it been there? Why was it implanted in Gryphy? And if the magic to bind souls to objects has been banned and kept hidden for centuries, who in Giffleu’s and Eidon’s circle would have known how to do it? Or was it added after their tragic disappearance, by Math himself or someone else in little Gwydion’s childhood circle of caretakers?

Alma jumps from her bed, rushing toward the door. She hesitates for a moment before crossing the portal that will take her back to the antechamber into which Gwydion’s sanctum – and now her own – opens. The night is only halfway gone. Gwydion should still be busy with Geryon and whatever magic they are working on. It could be dangerous to interrupt them. But she cannot keep this from him. Gryphy is his, made for him, given to him by his mother. The only thing he had of his parents for decades, before he was told of the estate. He has a right to know.

Still barefoot, not bothering to compose her hair, mussed from lying down, she walks through the portal, into the antechamber with its wood-panel walls, simple table and comfortable leather sofas – minimalistic but elegant – and toward Gwydion’s door.

She looks down at Gryphy, and lifts her hand to knock.

神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎

“Are you trying to get us killed?” Geryon scolds him.

Dion looks at his friend, blinking back some sight into his eyes as he comes out of a muddled half-trance of mana flow currents interspersed with stray thoughts and worries of Alma alone in her new sanctum. “I wasn’t manipulating magic yet. How would I get us killed?”

“You are failing with preparation,” Geryon replies, lying on Dion’s bed, four paws tucked neatly under his feline body while Dion has to settle for as comfortable a sitting experience his own desk chair will allow. “And you know those spells are fiddly. One wrong move and you will be the one contemplating asking your girlfriend if she enjoys the feel of cuddling up to a furry body.”

“Considering your luck at romance lately, it might not have such a bad effect on my love life,” Dion counters, closing the spell book resting on his lap. “I’m sorry, Geryon. I thought I was ready for this but I am still a little…” he gestures vaguely toward his head “…scattered.”

Geryon makes a show of sighing, which on someone with a rigid beak for a mouth looks strangely like a rather quick yawn. “Only to be expected, I guess. At least we managed to sort out the approach to the spells, if you can find it in you to concentrate for long enough sometime during this week.”

“Yes, maybe we can try it— ” Dion’s senses tingle with the familiar feeling of someone knocking on the physical door to which the portal into his sanctum is linked. The identifier spell has no trouble telling him who it is: Alma.

Dion opens the portal for her, more to let her know it is safe to come inside than because she requires permission. In the delicious sharing of his sanctum of the past days, he has given Alma unrestrained access, leaving her free to come and go without requiring his permission or intervention. But she should be communing with her new sanctum, not knocking on his door.

“Hey…is something wrong?” Dion asks her as soon as she steps out of the portal. “Did the seed not take?”

“Oh, it took,” Alma replies as he stands up and walks over to her. “I have a sanctum now and it is lovely. Thank you.” She touches his upper arm with one hand and kisses his cheek. The simple caress of her cool lips warms his heart almost as effectively as a kiss to the lips would raise his temperature. “But I found something that I need to show you and I couldn’t wait. I’m sorry if I interrupted a major breakthrough.”

“Oh…no,” Dion assures her. “We were just plotting out our approach before trying to cast the spells.” He glances at Geryon, apologetic.

“Yes, your faithful puppy was too worried about you to focus on anything else,” Geryon says, stretching his forelimbs and raising his haunches, beak opening wide in a yawn. “We should reschedule for a time-slot during the day, when he is not deprived of cuddles.”

Geryon’s teasing makes Alma look at Dion with a tender smile that could melt an iceberg. “Were you missing me?”

There is no point in denying it. Dion’s sphere is already whimpering for her like the puppy Geryon accuses him of being. “I start missing you the moment you slip out of my sight,” he replies, putting an arm around her. “Why do you think I blink so quickly?” He grins at Alma’s little eye-roll before giving Geryon a mock-scolding glare. “Now Geryon, if you are done making me look utterly pathetic…”

“Yes, yes, three is a crowd,” Geryon says, taking his sweet time to climb down from Dion’s bed and cross the distance to the portal. If he sees Gryphy, dangling in the safety of Alma’s hold, he says nothing about it. “Sweet dreams, you two.”

“Have a good night, Geryon,” Alma wishes him as the gryphon disappears through the portal. Once they are alone, she focuses those beautiful, mystifying eyes of hers on Dion. “I am really sorry if I interrupted your research.”

“Perish the thought,” Dion tells her, wrapping his free arm around her waist. “You heard Geryon. I just couldn’t focus enough to cast the spells safely. So…can you stay? Or are you going back once you show me what you needed to show me?”

Alma considers this. “I feel a strong connection to my sanctum already. It feels like a glove, fitting me perfectly.” She wraps her arms around him, embracing Dion closely. “And I was missing you terribly. I’m glad I had Gryphy with me to keep me company.”

The words make Dion smile as he holds her, squeezing her gently in his arms. “I’m glad he helped a little.” He releases her, taking her hand to guide her to sit on the bed. “But, tell me, what is so urgent that you couldn’t wait? Is there something we should be concerned about?”

“I am not sure,” Alma replies, sitting beside him. “But it is something I hadn’t noticed before and I don’t know if you know about it.”

Dion cannot help but be rattled by those words. “What is it, my love? I am worried already.”

“I found something in Gryphy,” Alma explains, placing the plush doll on Dion’s lap. “It’s very faint so I hadn’t noticed it before but…I’m confident it is a piece of someone’s soul.”

Dion feels his blood freeze in his veins. A soul? Hidden in Gryphy? How did it get there? No one was ever allowed to take Gryphy away from Dion, not even to clean the doll. And every repair necessary before Dion could repair Gryphy himself had been done by Iovan, under Dion’s careful watch. Of course, Gryphy had been left in Dion’s room at Math’s estate for years, but he had been hidden from sight and why would anyone do anything to an old stuffed animal? Could this be something from the time when his parents were still alive and with him? Would they have known spells to bind souls to objects? They were both researchers in magic, weren’t they? Hellish magic. Had they been researching soul-binding magic when they were taken? Had that been the reason for their abduction and not their work against Hell? He almost feels himself drowning in questions.

“Can you tell me anything about it?” Dion asks. “What kind of soul, who it could belong to?”

Alma shakes her head. “It’s too small a fragment.”

“Why would anyone do something like this?” Dion asks, inspecting Gryphy with the full array of his magical senses. Nothing. Not the smallest vestige of any spells he couldn’t trace back to himself. He needs to direct his research toward finding spells to fill that gaping hole in his abilities. “Do you think it was just an experiment?”

“Why run it on your doll, of all items?” Alma counters. She thinks for a moment. “Souls are like…a collection of memories held together by a frame made of pure energy. Maybe it was an attempt at anchoring a memory? But whose memory and for what reason…I really don’t know.”

“I have had him with me for over a century,” Dion murmurs. “And I never detected anything. Even now, I can’t see it. It could be a major breakthrough.”

“It’s very, very faint,” Alma tells him. “If it is a memory, then it must be just a glimpse. And if I didn’t have my eyes constantly scrying because of the Wheel and hadn’t been alone with Gryphy, I might not have noticed it either.”

“Can you…play that memory?” Dion asks.

“The only way I can have access to it is if I release it from its bindings,” she explains. “It will fade into the Wheel soon after.”

“Can you not bind it to something else?” Dion insists. “Or back into Gryphy?”

“I don’t have the knowledge necessary to bind souls to objects, Gwydion,” she replies, looking pained as if he had just asked her to stab herself in the chest. “And I am not sure I want it.”

Idiot, idiot, idiot… How could he suggest that to her of all people?

Dion puts an arm around her and holds her closely to him, kissing the side of her head. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“I understand. You want to know what it is,” Alma replies, leaning against him. “I…could add it to another soul, I guess. It would be absorbed, along with the memory. But I cannot be sure it’s not something dangerous.”

Dion’s eyes move wildly from left to right as he considers all the options and risks. “A memory…whose memory could it be? My parents’? My own? Who could have bound it to Gryphy? How long has it been there? My mother made Gryphy for me. It has to be something from her, right? It has to be. My father supposedly created the God Striker. Could that be a bound weapon? If it is, then he could have certainly bound this piece of soul to Gryphy, couldn’t he?”

“Gwydion, allowing this soul fragment to bind to your soul could be very dangerous,” Alma insists, looking worried. “If this is a trap…”

“Please, Alma,” Dion begs her, grabbing her forearms, looking into her eyes, desperate. “I…I need to know. If any of this could help in finding the truth about my parents, I’ll risk it. I have waited so long and who knows when I can go back to the estate? I am going to go insane, knowing that memory is there and not doing anything about it. Please, I’m begging you. Please!”

He does not realize how tight his hold on her arms is until he catches her glancing down and turns his eyes to look at his clenched fingers against her pale skin. He releases her immediately, feeling ashamed at himself.

She looks again into his eyes, compassionate and tender, and nods, even though her concern is still evident on her face. “I know. I understand.”

He hugs her in an impulse. “I trust you. If anyone can protect my soul, it’s you. If there’s anyone who I want anywhere near my soul, it’s you.” He holds her a little tighter. “You’re the perfect match to it.”

He feels her arms hold him tightly in return, her chest moving with a deeper inhalation. Then she lets go. “All right, let’s do this before I regain some sense. Lie down, get comfortable. You need to be relaxed to allow for the connection.”

He looks at her in gratitude and kisses her before hurriedly climbing onto his bed and lying full length, his head falling carelessly on his pillow, watching her recline by his side, letting her adjust the pillow under his head to make him a little more comfortable, her expression guarded and worried but shifting to a soft smile when she catches him looking at her. The prospect of opening himself to such extent is half-frightening, half-thrilling, but he trusts Alma, even as he sees her concerned and unsure. And he needs to know. He has to know.

He takes a deep breath and closes his eyes, trying to relax, feeling Alma gently placing Gryphy on his chest, feeling her hand stroking his hair, soft and cadent. Hypnotic. He keeps his eyes closed, his breathing controlled and deep while the darkness beyond his eyelids becomes darker. Alma’s touch becomes a distant caress. And he doesn’t know when the binding happens but he hears it, in his mind, like a memory of years gone. A voice. Her voice. Singing.

Sunlight
Rising day
Take my
Tears away
Springtime
Dragonflies
Wake up and rise

He sees himself through her eyes, small and chubby-cheeked, his hair longer than he ever remembers having it, looking up at his mother in adoration. And her voice, clear in his mind.

Sing sweet
Nature’s flute
Through trees
Ripe with fruit
And should
Pathways part
Keep me in his heart

Her face is not visible at first, as the memory is hers but as the song unearths his own childhood recollections, the point of view shifts, with barely a transition, and he can see her clearly, the young red-haired goddess, smiling and loving, looking at him with the hazel eyes and the easy smile that greet him whenever he looks in the mirror.

Should bliss
Never come
When all’s
Been and done
Should life
Be unkind
Keep me in his mind

His mother. Eidon. Singing to him, the bright blues of a sunny day peeking through her long, smooth hair.

Moonlight
Please be gone
Sing bright
River song
Sing winds
Come what may
He’s loved today.

A little blur of red and gold buzzes by.

Look, Mommy! A dagonfwy! he hears himself say. Such a tiny, high-pitched, childish voice…and his mother’s soft laughter.

The memory fades, reaching its end, and even though he stretches his arm and tries to hold on, calling for his mother, begging her not to go, not to leave him, her image dissipates. Her voice disappears into silence.

“Please, Mommy…please…” he hears himself whimper in a rough, wet voice. His cheeks feel wet with tears, his eyes burning with the effort of weeping.

A soft touch of lips to his forehead sparks a hope that his mother has not disappeared with the memory. He opens his eyes with the urgency of seeing her face again before him, smiling at him. But the vision he finds instead is Alma, looking down at him with tears in her eyes, with compassion and empathy.

He reaches up to touch her face, stroke her cheek, to smooth her hair, as if feeling the reality of her right here with him could somehow quench his need for what he has lost. He has her, at the reach of his hand, so close that her pain at his grief stings him like a dagger slipping through his ribcage. A brief glance at Gryphy and he removes the plush childhood friend from its perch on his chest, setting him aside, carefully, even more lovingly than he once treated the doll. He is grateful for Gryphy, now more than ever, but…it is reality he needs, not imagination. Not memory.

He touches Alma’s upper arms, gently nudging her to join him, eyes pleading, words caught in his throat. She lies with him, quiet, her arms around him, her body pressed against his, cooler than his but still making him feel warm and comforted and just…not alone. Not alone anymore.

He holds her as if she were a rock in a gale, keeping him steady through the turmoil. Through the grief. The loss. “Thank you,” he barely more than whispers. “I–”

He tries to tell her how much this means to him, how much he owes her, how he needs her here and just…just everything that is going through his mind. But his voice is choked by emotion, fresh tears threatening to spill.

“Shh…” she whispers softly, stroking his hair. “I know. I saw it as it was being transferred from Gryphy into you. Oh Gwydion…”

The sorrow in her voice is like the final drop of water, making the dam holding his emotions under some sort of restraint shatter and collapse. Tears roll again freely down his face to the sound of his sobs. He does not even know if it is happiness at recovering this memory or grief at losing his parents that makes him cry. Maybe both. All he knows is that he cries until he loses track of time, always in the safety of Alma’s arms, helpless in her embrace, his head cradled against her chest. He cries until reality fades, until sleep creeps gently into him. Until blessed slumber wraps him in darkness and peace and oblivion.

Forgotten for the moment in the silent room, Gryphy’s embroidered mouth seems to smile. In the wake of Alma’s soft whispers of comfort, there is almost a ghost of a childish giggle, faint words saying,

…a little friend your age to grow up with you. Wouldn’t that be fun?

Ch7.45 Revelations

“Busy?”

Gwydion looks up to see Alma is peeking into their shared office. Even though it is her office too, she always gives a little knock before entering, and he shows her the same courtesy in return. Why they do this, he’s not entirely sure. Perhaps, he thinks, it is because she grew up without privacy, in her father’s harem, a place which she has said had no doors.

He must have missed the knock, so deeply absorbed was he in the book of spells he is studying. Like all such tomes, it is a chore. One would think the old grimoirist would have heard of spaces or punctuation even seven hundred years ago. Not to mention the word games. Every spell in this one appears to be trapped with one step that, if performed, will cause spell failure and even potentially deadly backlash. The word games, which when solved identify the trapped step, are meant to prevent the less-clever wizard from using the spells for sinister purposes. As if cleverness equals an honorable and dutiful heart, Dion thinks with annoyance.

But Alma is here, and he closes the book and puts his hands, fingers laced, on top of it, as if telling himself that paying attention to Alma is what he is doing now, not studying. He knows he has a tendency towards obsession when it comes to study.

“Not really,” he says, in answer to her question. “It’s a slow night. Not even any paperwork.” He furrows his brow as she stays with only her head visible at the partially opened door. “And how are things out there?” He allows the meaning of ‘out there’ to remain ambiguous, either the streets from which Alma has just returned, or the hallway in which she is for some reason keeping her visually pleasing body so cruelly hidden from his eyes.

“Fortunately your sense is borne out by the reality of the streets.” She looks down at a little sound, like the soft whine of a complaining child, and shushes it. Then she looks back up, grinning a little nervously. “I…have someone I want you to meet.”

Dion gets up and rounds the desk. “Everything all right? Who’s come to visit?”

Looking as if she’s been caught in the midst of a minor crime, she says, “A… baby.”

This brings Dion to a screeching halt. He feels the blood drain from his face. Were we incautious? Was a Bunny born from nothingness when we last made love? A thousand thoughts rush and tumbled over and crash into one another: the anger of the Council, the responsibility of parenthood, the disappointment he will surely cause Alma if he tries to be a father, the certainty that the child will grow up to hate him. And buried beneath all them the gleaming golden desire to see it, to hold it, to try, try, try to do right by it. “A b-baby?”

Alma looks at him for a moment, then, realizing the reason for his consternation, she gives one of her characteristic snorts and laughs. “Oh no…not that type of baby.” She steps fully into the office, one arm cradling a blanket-covered, squirming object, and closes the door behind her. She tries to pull the blanket off a little, but the creature inside it uses its snout to flip the blanket up and reveal its furry black-and-brown face. “This is Pharaoh.”

Dion tilts his head at the little ball of fur. It tilts its head back, dark-brown eyes bright, ears like two perky triangles aimed in his direction, shiny black nose sniffing the air. Its paws, larger than he would expect in a creature so small, hang over Alma’s forearm. “It’s a…puppy. A very cute puppy.” It is cute. But he not quite sure what one is supposed to do with puppies, really. “Are you adopting…him?”

Alma smiles in that mischievous way she has when a playful mood comes over her. “Well, since my sanctum isn’t ready, I suppose we’ll have to keep him in your place… You don’t mind, do you?” She raises an eyebrow.

After a moment’s hesitation, Dion asks, “Is he housebroken?” He reaches out to pet Pharaoh’s head, but the dog dodges his hand and licks his palm. Ugh! Why would it do that? He flinches his hand away. “I don’t know the first thing about keeping or training pets. I’ve never had one.”

“Oh…poor Gwydion,” she says, sounding honest in her sympathy. “Well, I was only joking. This little sweetie,” she turns the puppy so his nose touches hers, “had a loving owner who passed away today. The owner had no family to take in a puppy, so I promised his soul I’d find Pharaoh a home.” She looks back at Dion. “And as tempted as I was to adopt him, I believe we know someone who needs him more.”

“Oh.” Dion is relieved he won’t have a puppy making smelly wet spots on his rugs or chewing on whatever puppies chew on or howling at two in the morning or…the other things that puppies get up to. “And who do we know who needs a puppy?” He is imagining she means one of the Bunnies. Is there a birthday coming up?

“Well.” Alma sits, and the moment her bottom settles on the cushions the puppy bounds off her lap and starts sniffing around the sofa with intense curiosity, his tail raised high and curled a little over his back. Alma allows him to do so, keeping a fraction of her attention on him. “Sky wants to come home. We want him to come home. And he’s improving but…he doesn’t really have anyone there, all day every day, to push him to maintain his form as long as he can. But if he has someone who needs him…” She strokes Pharaoh’s back as he jumps over her legs and explores the other side of the sofa, “someone that he needs to take care of…well, you know how Sky is. It’ll drive him forward.”

Dion crouches beside the sofa and attempts to pet Pharaoh again. This time the puppy is too focused on interesting new smells to attempt to intercept his incoming hand with a tongue. The fur of the puppy’s back is soft and warm. “True. Sky cannot really resist helping someone who needs it. But this little gentleman seems a bit young to be introduced to a…” He stops himself from saying ‘devil.’ Sky is his friend, and devils are the enemy of the Insula and are by definition the epitome of evil. Sky is not evil. Dion knows this in his heart. Sky may have started off as a devil, but there has been some change wrought over the course of his life, some alchemy of the heart that has made Sky into something unique. Still, he has seen Sky lose control. “I’m just afraid we might do Sky more harm than good if he inadvertently hurts Pharaoh during a crisis.”

“I truly don’t believe he will,” Alma says with a shake of her head. “I’ve looked through that photo album of his. You’ve seen the pictures, the children, even little babies in his arms. And the dogs. Seems like he was rarely without a dog in those days. I think it will ground him. And we can talk with him and Doria about it. He has enough time to recognize when a change is coming on, to hand Pharaoh over to Doria and go into that soundproofed cave.”

Dion chuckles as scratching the base up the puppy’s tail induces the little animal to raise his butt in the air, raising his snout as well in apparent pleasure. “He does seem quite welcoming of strangers.”

Uncle Math, Dion remembers suddenly, turned down the request for a dog when Dion expressed it at…when was it? He must have been about eight years old. A pet? Too much trouble, my boy. You have far more important things to think about. Besides, they die in only a few years. Dion starts to feel a little jealous of Sky.

“You should have seen him when I arrived,” Alma continues, her voice driving away the memory, to his relief. “Trotted up to me, barked once, then looked at me like he expected me to help, and then turned and led me to his owner.” She teases him by touching first one paw, then the other. He jerks each paw away at her touches, as if he’s annoyed by it, but his offended huffing almost-barks are as playful as her touches. Then he begins to squirm and bounces upright, lands with the paws splayed out, head down, rear high, his tail wagging. He barks loudly and high-pitched, leaving his mouth open to expose sharp white teeth.

“Uh oh… I think you made him angry,” Dion says.

Alma laughs as she pats the sofa, causing Pharaoh to try to slap her hands with his paws, as if trying to trap the tail of a rat. “No, he’s just playing. He was down about his owner, but once Pharaoh sensed that the man was at peace, he seemed happy to come along with me. Cheerful little tyke.”

“Are you sure you don’t want to keep him?” Dion asks, watching them play. A little hope rises in his heart at the thought. “You seem quite attached already.”

Alma keeps patting the surface of the sofa, making the puppy chase her hands. “Believe me, I’m very tempted. But we are already seeing a pet proliferation here. And I suspect Lexie might try to trick him into falling in the pool. A mature cat like her won’t take kindly to an excitable puppy.”

Dion assuages his disappointment with the knowledge that she is right. Besides, if Sky moves back here, Pharaoh will be around all the time. “Then perhaps we should take him to Sky as soon as possible. Maybe make the best of this slow night and sneak out.”

Alma looks up at Dion and sighs, as the puppy, looking almost shocked that she’s stopped playing, suddenly rolls over and starts writhing on the cushion, grunting as it scratches some itch on its back, or perhaps just enjoying the texture of the upholstery. “Yes, you’re right. Once the Bunnies meet him, it’ll be hard to give him to Sky. I can just hear Kori…” She shakes her head. “And we’d have to explain why – which, no matter what we say, would prompt a slew of questions. Just let me give him a proper examination for parasites…”

“Parasites?” Dion sits beside her, on the side without a puppy. Still, he can’t help but feel his skin crawl at the idea of fleas and worms. He casts a little cleansing spell on his hands. “Helping Sky this way, and respecting the owner’s wishes. This is a good thing you’re doing.”

“He was a kind old fellow,” Alma says. She lays the puppy on her lap, belly up, and puts her hands on his pink, hairless belly. The air smells like spring as she activates her life sphere. “Hmmm…” The smells and sounds of a green meadow increase for a moment, and the puppy looks astonished. “There. Just needed a little bit of deworming. Good to go.”

“Then so are we,” Dion says. “Oh…what do puppies eat?”

神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎

Visitors.

Sky grunts when he hears Doria’s welcome through the tunnels, and her squeal of delight at something. He checks his body. Is everything…normal? What is normal? he thinks. No wings, no horns, no tail. His skin is a healthy, human brown, not an almost-black crimson, though pale from living underground for weeks. Almost two months now.

But just checking his skin isn’t enough anymore, is it? Once, before Nua’s tortures, Sky would only be one shape or the other, Tuma-Sukai or Azzageddi, tall island god or hulking bewinged fiend.

In the intervening weeks, he has been trying to return to that stage, and he has had some success but…something is broken. Whatever it was within him that drew a thick, clear line between the two forms was destroyed by the damage inflicted on his soul by Nua’s godbound whip. Before, he did not have to concentrate to maintain his borrowed form. Now, it requires constant effort. Perhaps worse, parts of him change without warning. Wings try to erupt, talons grow. Sky has a recurring nightmare of talking to the Bunnies when horns come out of his skull, and they start screaming while he looks around in panic trying to see what is frightening them before he realizes it is him.

But for the past few days he has been receiving a visitor. Pak shows up without warning. It seems that he is one of a very few gods, perhaps the only one other than the Oracle herself, who can teleport into the Grotto outside of the one heavily secured receiving chamber. And the training from the ancient teacher is quite different from that Sky received back in his time at the Guardia Academy. There, Sky was taught to control and focus his rage, yes, but now Pak has been teaching him a different kind of control: not over combat, but over his own body.

“You have locked yourself into each form too tightly, Tuma-Sukai,” Pak told him. “And now that the lock is broken, you have no control at all. Rigidity will not aid you any longer. How ridiculous that a water god ever thought it would.”

“It was not a choice, Master Pak,” Sky argued. “It is how I am made.”

“Have you not overcome the way you were made in more profound ways already?” Pak shakes his head as if tired of the denseness of his student. “A devil who became a god? An agent of chaos who became Guardia? You are of the ocean! Not stone!”

And so Sky has been learning to flow. It has been the most frustrating training of his life. The frequency of random eruptions of his devil form has actually increased, and he has howled at how all his hard work, being able to hold his Sky-shape for hours at a time under strain, has been undone. He has cursed at Pak, barely stopped himself from attacking him.

But now, days later, he is beginning to see the results. The ability to remain fully ‘Sky’ is building up again, and when he does it, there is no strain. None. It is becoming natural. But still, there are those eruptions. Pak insists they will pass, but they upset Sky. They horrify him. What if it happened while he was embracing Cherry or Merri? What if it happened while playing with Tulip or Kori? Or…while kissing Mayumi? Making love to her?

The thought makes him want to vomit.

He shudders and shakes the thought off. He doesn’t need such things clouding his mind, darkening his mood. Not when Alma and Dion are visiting again. He can hear their voices as they approach. Unripped clothes on? Check. Yesterday Doria laughed at him for walking around oblivious that the light cotton trousers he was wearing had a gaping hole in the back from his tail. Despite his skill with a sewing kit, he’ll soon need to ask her to buy another dozen of them for him. There’s a bulk discount.

Alma enters with Dion just behind. They both have an anticipatory look to them, as if there is something they want to surprise Sky with. Dion, indeed, has a satchel over his shoulder, supporting it with a hand underneath, the top of some kind of packet poking out.

In greeting, Sky says, “Whatever that is, it made Doria squeal loud enough to hear from here.”

Alma goes to Sky and embraces him. As he enfolds her in his arms, her voice is amused. “It sounded like a good kind of squeal. She says she hasn’t seen this much cuteness in ages.”

“Cuteness?” Sky asks, looking down at her and then, releasing her, at Gwydion. He begins to worry at what this is all about.

“Oh, he is quite cute, I assure you,” Dion says. Something within the bag struggles and squirms, and the package crinkles audibly. “Ah, oops.” Dion asks Alma, “Shall I put him down?”

One of Alma’s arms is still around Sky’s waist. She looks up at him, hope in her eyes. “Not before Sky agrees to accept our little gift, I think.” It is almost a question.

“A gift?” Sky asks. “A pet? Um, I…I don’t know…” He stiffens, nervous.

“You need a friend to keep you company in your exile, Sky,” Alma says, giving him a friendly squeeze. “Look at you. You haven’t been eating enough. You’re practically skin and bones.”

“And your skin will soon be as pale as Alma’s,” Dion adds as he kneels. Whatever is in the bag wriggles, a snout poking at the rough cotton fabric from within. “This little fellow needs a good home. I am sure you two will do wonders for each other.”

“But I might…hurt him.” Sky’s anxiety is rocketing. He takes his hand off Alma’s shoulder because he can feel the tips of his fingers trying to transform into talons.

Alma nods at Dion, and the handsome Sergeant, laughing, allows a furry creature to erupt from the bag and stumble onto the floor, one of his forepaws slipping on the smooth stone surface so it falls onto its chin. Unfazed, he bounces back to stand on four feet, a black puppy with a brown mask around the bright eyes and the muzzle tipped by a wet nose. He gives himself a shake, the outsized ears flapping, the shake ending at the his rump, back legs lifting off the floor so much that he almost has another spill. But he recovers immediately and then looks at everything with intense curiosity, ears perked up, sniffing the air. He turns back to Alma and Dion and then starts snuffling along the floor, air moving in and out of that muzzle rapidly and loudly as he advances toward Sky to smell his bare feet.

“His name is Pharaoh,” Alma says.

But Sky barely hears her. Entranced more than nervous now, he sinks smoothly to sit on the floor, holding his hands out to let the puppy smell him. Pharaoh snuffles at his fingers, gives Sky’s hand a lick, then dodges Sky’s attempt to touch him. Sky does not try to touch him again, just letting the puppy walk in a circle around himself, then sit, ears perked up and eyes fixed on Sky, a quizzical expression of intense curiosity on his face, head tilted.

Sky feels a big smile growing on his face, something that has not happened so very often of late. He turns his hand palm up, lets Pharaoh sniff him again, then lightly scratches the puppy’s chin. “Hello there,” Sky says in a low voice. “And what do you see, hmm?”

He looks up at Alma and Dion, to see them smiling at his happiness, leaning against each other, Dion with an arm around Alma’s waist. “Where did you get him?” Sky asks.

“On my harvests. An old gentleman who had his only friend in little Pharaoh here, and whose only wish was for the puppy to find a good home. He seemed to believe that the puppy was quite special and from what we have seen, he is.”

“We debated keeping him at the station, but,” Dion says, “we came to the conclusion that this is where he should be. And he does seem to like you.”

Pharaoh is now tilting his head, using Sky’s moving fingers like a massage machine, so that they are scratching the back of one ear now. He is leaning into it. Sky looks at him, imagining what would happen if those fingertips turned to sharp talons. “I don’t want to scare him. I might change. I might lose control.”

The puppy suddenly spins in place and yaps a sharp bark. He crouches, looking at Sky, rump high, head low, his mouth open in a telltale position of playtime challenge.

Sky responds without thought, leaning forward and suddenly putting his hands on the floor, fingers spread, He gives Pharaoh a little playful growl, then moves his hands together, a little left, a little right, like a playful dog’s forepaws. The puppy follows suit, yapping again and panting loudly, like laughter.

Over the loud barks, Sky hears Alma say, “I think this is pretty much settled.”

“Here’s one bag of kibble,” Dion says, pulling the paper packet from the satchel. “I’ll take care of arranging food deliveries for the puppy. Oh, and I have something else.”

But Sky is too focused on play to reply just yet. Pharaoh jumps back with a whimper at a more sudden move, but then returns to the game, jumping toward Sky to try to bite him playfully on the arm. “Ooo, sharp little puppy teeth, eh?” Sky gently wrestles the little dog with one hand, play-growling, not minding that his thumb is being gnawed on. “I haven’t had a dog…any kind of pet, in so long. Haven’t…let myself.”

He closes his eyes against the tears that threaten to spill, and hangs his head, pulling Pharaoh into his lap, rubbing the puppy’s pink belly. Pharaoh grunts softly in pleasure at the belly rub, panting happily with his forepaws limp, relaxed.

Sky has most of his life been drifting from place to place, never staying more than a year or three in a single locale, and therefore not finding it easy to keep a pet of any sort. There were only three places he settled long enough where that could even be possible. In the first, the island where he took on the guise of a local god, he never really had a pet. There were pigs on the island, brought there centuries before by the first humans to arrive, and there were several fish and turtles that he, in his oceanic aspect, became acquainted with. One shark seemed to enjoy shadowing him as he swam the depths, but only because his hunting of fish provided the shark with opportunities.

And in Sky’s time in the Guardia, for so long, until arriving in Three Rats, he kept his emotions so shut down that he never really considered keeping an animal companion. His life was not, really, his own, even now but more so during his time with the off-blues. He felt he didn’t deserve to have such a pleasure. He was still, in a sense, in mourning – for his lost family, for his lost Earth. Joy was not a thing he allowed himself, and it only slipped into his life surreptitiously and rarely.

But it was during his decades on the farm on the Great Plains in America that he discovered what it was to have a dog. He was averse to it at first, just as he was averse to the thought of having children. To be sure, even falling in love with Laura had been something he had struggled against. But his resistance had broken the night he’d almost lost her, on one of their shared missions during the war, and after that he could no longer deny what he felt. They married and, when he could not bear to risk giving her a child – a half-devil child who could very well be a tragic monster – he and she adopted the orphans of the war, the waifs wandering the roads in search of safety. And they raised pigs and goats and chickens and cows, and cats came in search of the barn rats, and there were dogs. Lost puppies and old dogs whose owners could no longer care for them, wild dogs who forsook the wilderness and the whimpering offspring of carefully bred hunting dogs.

And Sky, whose great flaw, his mutation, the thing that made his an object of spite in Hell was empathy – the very thing that allowed him to live among gods and humans without being detected – had found that empathy go into overdrive with the animals of the farm, and perhaps most especially the dogs. There was always a dog, often several, looking to him with the eternal questions: Can we play? Is there food? What do you want me to do?

Just tell me what you want me to do, the dogs’ expression said. I’ll do it. I want to please you. I want to make you happy.

Alma and Dion move closer, Dion squatting, balanced on the balls of his feet to pet Pharaoh’s head, and the puppy stretches in Sky’s arms to lick Dion’s hand. Sky’s feels Alma’s fingers in his hair, stroking his scalp, then caressing down to cup his jaw, tilting his head up. Though he is sitting, she only needs to bend forward at the waist to touch her forehead to his. “I think Pharaoh just told us everything we needed to know about you.”

He murmurs, “It’s all hitting me so strongly. The farm. We had a dog looked just like this. He was lost. Followed one of the girls home. Already getting old, he was, but he took to us so strongly. Especially me. Slept against my leg.” Nuku, Sky had named him. The dog had loved him dearly, and Sky had returned it. He’d needed nursing back to health, and then his health had gone again, with age, but for four years Nuku had been happy, maybe the happiest four years of his life. Sky’s meager healing powers had, in the end, only allowed him to ease Nuku’s passing. He had died curled up on Sky’s lap, Laura petting the dog’s head and weeping beside him. Laura, who had shot a man and knifed another, crying over a dog who was already old when they took him in.

Alma smiles and straightens, leaving a pale white hand on his dark-bronze cheek, looking at him with affection. “You are going to be just fine, my friend.”

“You better be,” Dion says, “because Doria is threatening to charge the Guardia advanced speleology expenses. And you know the Commander hates dealing with extraordinary expense reports.”

Sky reaches out a hand toward Gwydion, who takes it, right hand to left hand, not a handshake but a clasping like two friends might when walking together, in affection or in support against falling on slippery rocks. Sky’s voice is rough as he says to the handsome once-playboyish god, “I know you know this means a great deal to me, but I don’t know if I can ever express how much it really does.” Sky does not wipe the tears from his cheeks. “And it’s just so good to see the both of you here and happy…together.”

Dion squeezes his hand, the Devil Hammer looking with a deep and abiding friendship at his natural prey, and says to Alma, “I think we broke him.”

“Oh, he was always the most sentimental of us three,” she replies, seeming to disguise how touched she is with humor. “Now, we did have to get pretty well organized to manage being so far from the station at the same time so why don’t we make the best of it and maybe…hmm, have dinner and chat in honor of the good old days?

“Yes,” Sky says. “And in honor of even better days to come.”

Ch7.44 Revelations

“Focus, Alma!” Sharia’s voice is harsh, acidic. Old.

Funny how one’s idea of someone affects perception so completely. How the same old bent goddess can seem so grandmotherly, almost worthy of that pitiful benevolence usually directed at those whose physical or mental capabilities are fleeing, or so twisted, so malevolently dry. How an amusing cackle turns to harsh gravel when emotion and knowledge turn a quaint family member into a shameless fraud. Alma listens to Sharia’s rambled instructions with only half a mind’s worth of attention. It all seems…ridiculous.

Maybe not ridiculous as such. What word better describes the absurdity of a whole school of knowledge built over and around a fallacy? Can anyone call beliefs ridiculous, even when being in possession of the truth? But then, what to do with all this supposed knowledge? Throw it away and start over? Try to save something of what has been a whole world’s truth for centuries?

It is frustrating. Alma has spent her life believing in a number of premises: 1) souls are neither created nor destroyed but continuously recycled; 2) souls have two states – embodied and disembodied; 3) disembodied souls are (with the exception of ‘ghosts’ and the like) drawn into the Wheel, where they stay until recycled; 4) it is a death god’s calling to release souls from their bodies and open the gateways which facilitate passage into the Wheel; 5) it is a Spinner’s task to spin the Wheel, accelerating their cleansing and transition into readiness for new life.

And all of this remains true. All of this is still compatible with the new things she has recently learned. But then, things stop adding up. Like the Spinning Wheel ceremony, that one moment in the year during which the Wheel can be spun, and only if a particular sun shines over the chamber in the Death Clan estate, at a particular time and on a specific angle. A single moment in time and place which mobilizes hundreds of gods all over the Insula to gather around a life goddess – always a life goddess, celibate and drained continuously by such incredible efforts – who stands as the fulcrum of the Wheel where it must spin.

It is just not true. It cannot be. Because Alma has spun the Wheel for a single soul and it wasn’t even all that difficult either. It did not leave her exhausted. She knows she will need to learn how to spin thousands of souls at once, but Sharia’s truth no longer fits with her own.

And so Alma stands listening with half an ear to Sharia’s gibberish while the memories of being in the Wheel, of speaking to the Shan’doir, of spinning the Wheel, minutely, for Nasheena run through her mind. Sharia does not mention the Shan’doir. She does not mention the inside of the Wheel. Every piece of the scarce knowledge she shares – only a part of the whole of the knowledge the old goddess holds, Alma has no doubt – is like a tale being told by someone who saw things happening from far away, not from the center of the action. And while in some cases this may be good for perspective, in this case, it is like being led by a blind guide over the edge of the abyss.

And the Shan’doir do not recognize Sharia as a Spinner or even as someone they have seen before in the Wheel. What has Sharia been doing for centuries? How has she been spinning the Wheel from the outside?

“Focus!” Sharia shrieks at her for the tenth time. “How did you manage to survive so long in your wretched Clan if you can’t even manage to get through a short lesson?”

“I’m sorry, Sharia,” Alma replies yet again. “The damage my soul sustained recently makes it difficult to concentrate. Did you ask me a question?”

“Yes. Have you tried to spin the Wheel since the ceremony?” Sharia asks, huffing slightly.

Alma considers before answering. Sharia should know the answer to that question. Being the Spinner, she should be able to sense its movements. She should know Alma has spun the Wheel recently, for Nasheena’s soul. So why ask? Is this a test? Or is Sharia’s dwindling power leaving those cloudy eyes truly blind to the Wheel?

She decides to risk it. “No. I’m not really sure how I did it in the first place.”

She does what she can to sound convincing but Sharia’s reply is silence. Long, staring silence, those greying eyes looking deep into the swirling vortex of Alma’s as if they were a window of the truth. But no one does deadpan like a death god. Alma holds her gaze steady, waiting for the moment of being confronted with her own lie.

And it never comes. Sharia harrumphs, nods and holds a finger to Alma’s face. “That’s right, you don’t. Never try to spin the Wheel alone, little girl. Not until I say you’re ready. Until then, I’ll guide your every incursion into it.”

Alma nods, putting serious effort into not letting her eyebrow rise in suspicion. She can feel the hairs on the back of her neck rise, that long-honed sense of ‘something is not right’ that has been so useful to her in the Guardia tingling against her nerves. She swallows, feeling suddenly sick to her stomach without knowing exactly why.

“What should I do in this lesson?” Alma asks.

“Lie down on that bed,” Sharia orders her.

Though Sharia’s living quarters are in a separate building located in the Life Clan temple estate, the lesson is taking place in Death’s house, apparently due to a demand made by Alma’s father himself, that the lessons happen where Alma can easily be assisted by the people who have seen her through the countless health crises of her youth, if need be. Sharia had not looked happy about this but she had eventually accepted it with a grumble. So Alma is now in her childhood bedroom, surrounded by the sights and scents of her youth, the doorless chamber making her feel only marginally secure for being in her father’s house. She lies down on her bed as ordered and watches as Sharia sits on the edge of the bed and places a gnarled hand on Alma’s forehead.

“I am going to show you how it’s done,” Sharia says. “Open up your essence to me. It’s the only way to teach you the paths.”

Alma hesitates before nodding. Opening her essence, the pathways of energy flow that connect the various layers of her soul to someone else is not just an incredibly intimate experience but something that no god has the right to demand of another god or mortal. It is a deep, deep level of nakedness before another and a special kind of vulnerability before someone Alma is beginning to feel is deeply, deeply…off. And she does not even know why.

Her gut demands her to stop. To rise from her bed and run, run at full speed, out of the house, into the public portal, back to Three Rats, to the station, among her children, to children’s arms. To real safety.

But what would that accomplish? Running would only get her a scolding, as if she were a child again. Running is the way of children, who are too weak to fight back. And she is not a child anymore. If only to find out why this feels so wrong, she must go ahead with the charade. So she opens herself to Sharia, letting her manipulate Alma’s energy, feeling her trigger strange pathways, convoluted and strenuous, unnatural almost. For a moment, it seems like it won’t happen, like the Wheel won’t open that way, no matter how much they try. Alma feels strained, pulled in a multitude of different directions, stretched nearly to the point of breaking. She endures it until she can endure it no more, until she feels as if she is going to die from the strain. It triggers her memories of that horrible pain, of being nearly bound to her own sword, and she cannot resist any longer. The path into the Wheel is so clear… at all times. She can run there instead, beyond Sharia’s painful touch, beyond the agony of this world.

She curses herself for her weakness. But she runs.

神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎

“Little soul?” the voice is calm. Gentle.

Alma opens her eyes to find she doesn’t have them. Not in this form. Not in this place. The Wheel. She welcomes the timeless coolness, the peaceful absence of all physical sensation. Of pain.

“Shan’doir?” she calls out.

“We are here,” the voice replies. “We are always here. Have you come to visit?”

“I am…” What was she supposed to be doing? Her mind feels jumbled. She feels sleepy. How can she want to sleep with no body to rest? “I am…someone…is with me?”

“Little soul, why are you so weak now?” the voice asks.

“I…I don’t know.” Alma searches her memories. “I am being taught…how to spin the Wheel.”

“Taught? You have spun the Wheel,” the voice says. “You are Shan’doir. You know.”

“Can you feel anyone with me?” Alma asks, feeling dread creep into the fore of her mind.

There is silence for a moment. How long it lasts is anyone’s guess – There is no time here. But there is still agony in waiting.

“You need to go back, little soul,” the voice says suddenly, though without urgency.

“Back? Why?” Alma asks, confused. “Have you detected Sharia? She is our Spinner. She has been spinning the Wheel for centuries.”

“The Wheel spins of its own will, little soul. Of its own heart,” the voice explains, patiently. “The Spinner is the heart of the Wheel. Without the Spinner, it can only be forced to spin through sacrifice.”

Alma’s confusion only grows. “Sacrifice of what?”

“Go back, little soul,” the voice says. “Before you find out.”

Returning to her body is like being pushed back – or pulled back maybe – by a strong elastic, or sucked by an enormous vortex. She feels the pull, for a moment seeming like it is her body calling her soul back but the pulling sensation doesn’t end, even after she returns to the boundaries of her body. The pulling feels stronger now that she is in her body, actually, draining her, as if something or someone is stealing away her life-force, sucking it as one would suck the contents of an egg through a hole in its shell.

Dread creeps up Alma’s spine, a cold dawning realization that chills her blood, now that she can feel it.

Sharia. Sharia is sacrificing her!

She can still feel the old goddess’ hand on her forehead. She can feel her life-force drain away through that touch, physical and spiritual and she acts immediately, cutting the connection with Sharia, curling herself into a little metaphysical ball, protecting her core. Too weak to move her body, it is all she can do to protect herself. But it is enough to make Sharia shriek in frustration.

“What are you doing, silly child?” the old goddess protests, trying to force the connection with her to reestablish. “The first session is nearly done. How do you expect anything if you won’t let me teach you?”

“Gg—gg—“ Alma tries to speak but she can’t force her throat to make the sounds.

“Shut up, child. Let me in again,” Sharia scolds her. “You are my worst student yet.”

“Nnn—nn—nnooOOOO!” The word is mostly a cry, primal and animalistic, pure sheer panic in a scream she can’t quite control.

And though it can do nothing against Sharia, it does the necessary. From every hallway and room nearby, people start pouring in, looking to see what is making Alma scream. Gods and mortals, all gather in the room, asking questions, looking at Sharia in suspicion. And suddenly, Alma is being lifted in protective arms against Sharia’s protests. There is a scent of sweat, of blood, of elemental fear in the air, but Alma feels safe now. The scent is welcome. The arms, familiar.

Melinor.

Alma looks up at her brother’s face, that duet of beauty and decay contorted in anger, glaring a threat at Sharia that gets the seasoned goddess to shut up, glaring back but not without a hint of concern. Alma struggles with her tongue, wanting to ask her brother to crush Sharia’s skull in his powerful hand, to destroy her for having tried to drain Alma. But the words don’t come and Melinor simply turns away from Sharia, and takes Alma away to her mother’s garden.

神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎神兎

“Here, have some more tea,” Lyria insists gently, pushing another steaming glass into Alma’s hands.

“I already had two glasses, Mother,” Alma protests. “There is only so much that tea can do. And you have already examined me five times.”

“Well, at least it does not hurt,” Lyria notes, glancing toward Death, who is currently seated on a garden bench across from Alma. “I would rather keep you here for observation but if you insist on going back today, at least have the tea.”

“You are sure she was draining you,” Death says with that subtle intonation that turns a statement into a question.

Alma nods, serious, holding his gaze. “At first I did not notice it. It just felt…painful. Like being pulled in a thousand different directions. It was somewhat similar to the first time I spun the Wheel but the whole thing felt off from the start. It felt like too much effort. It was nothing like when I spun it for Nasheena. Nothing like when I entered it. But I guess…I thought she used alternate routes. And then I realized it. I felt her draining me.” She carefully avoids mentioning the Shan’doir. For some reason she cannot quite understand, the idea of sharing that knowledge with her parents seems inconceivable. “I guess she thought I wouldn’t know what she was doing. And she became greedy.”

“She must have been desperate to try something like that on you,” Lyria says.

“She may not have planned on taking such risks at first,” Death says. “But perhaps the energy of a young goddess with a Spinner’s gift was too seductive to just ease into draining through multiple sessions. And I gave her no option when I refused to let her lessons take place in her own sanctum. I wonder now how many young deities with even a hint of talent have been sacrificed in this fashion.”

“I do not know how many,” Alma says, measuring her words. “But I suspect she has been doing it for centuries. She may have used her own energy at first but once it became too much of an effort… Would anyone really suspect it?”

“If they have, they made sure to cover the tracks,” Lyria says, shaking her head. “So many life gods… It is just as difficult to keep track of them as it is to track death gods. With the exception that life gods are less organized. And Sharia is nearly untouchable in the Life Clan. None can deny her. But to just do something like this after the last Year’s End ceremony…such a great risk.”

“She trusted her experience would make her irreplaceable and unquestionable,” Death says. “Presumption and worthiness, to each their chosen measure.” He stands, his right hand adjusting his left cuff. “Is she irreplaceable, Alma?”

“No, Father,” Alma replies, holding her glass tighter in her hands to help steel her nerves. “And please, do not ask me to take any more lessons from her. I won’t. I will learn, one way or another, but not from her. I want her as far away from me as I can possibly have her.”

Death pierces her with his gaze. He knows. She knows he knows she is withholding information. And he knows she knows she is not fooling him. Still, Death does not need to press to get what he wants. He just needs to be patient. Eventually, all things are brought his way. And both of them know it. So none of them mentions it.

“At this point, I suspect the place would be your elected ward of exile,” Death says. “Melinor will see you there. I look forward to your progress.”