Metaworld Chronicles

Like a hallucination from a midautumn fever dream, Shalkar’s horizon-spanning canopy smouldered amber from one grey edge of the Pocket Plane to the other, burning so vividly that its Regent momentarily forgot the woes of a goddess.

Her Harpies, colourful as rainbows, their feminine faces brimming with ardour, went up in a single sheet of noise. The chicks ascended, while the old hens from Phaelera’s brood drifted in lazy spirals, scattering into the higher branches and then down again in viridian spirals, filling the space with birdsong.

Richard sat with both hands on the trunk, trying to feel the tree’s movement, his grin growing stiff.

“Gwen,” he gingerly asked via a Message between them. “Is this one of the things you were afraid of?”

“Shh…” was the reply her cousin received instead. “And don’t let me fall.”

Her body might be beside her cousin, but her mind was already diving deep down, down and down into her Astral Body.

Within her proverbial third eye, the Sky Garden didn’t so much fade as stop being interesting in the physical sense. As a liminal pocket attached to the World Tree, she could see the multi-coloured strands of elemental mana that made it so hospitable for the Harpies. She stood as witness to the entire tree’s conduit systems, cascading like water, down through the Geofront, down into the galleries, the Dyar Morkk station, down to the Fifth Vel portal, and into Terra itself, where her eyes could not reach.

Every strand, woven like a fine braid, was living tissue. Every fibre, representative of what had germinated in place of nothing, tethered to the Axis Mundi, its mana, and the golden Faith of Shalkar’s inhabitants.

And there, at the heart of it, in the place where there was a tiny scale embedded…

A vaguely feminine shape made itself known to her.

Known, but not formed. It was what Ayxin had germinated in her womb through Jun’s hope, and the Yinglong’s sacrifice. It was Sufina if the Dryad had not begun its life on an island in the Indonesian archipelago, but as the fruit of a divine tree that spanned the Elemental Planes.

Sufina of Shalkar would not be a woman made of moss and patience, a guardian to the tomb of a man who had irrevocably changed the place humanity held in the world—she would be something more, but what?

Gwen didn’t know. She didn’t even know what Neo Sufina should call herself.

She reached out with her Essence, weaving the golden strands around her arm so that they would touch, like God to Adam on the Sistine Chapel.

The shape answered, reaching out with Essence of its own. Where Gwen’s was more Faith, less World Tree, and some of Almudj, the Dryad’s was mostly tree, some Faith, and a smidgen of the Rainbow Serpent’s Dreaming.

Almudj…

She could feel the Land God, so vividly, somewhere in the deep dark of the roots, on another continent and yet, close enough to touch.

Sufina laid herself on Gwen’s back, metaphysically speaking, and a shiver ran through incalculable tonnes of living timber and out along every root that had married itself into the Dyar Morkk.

A hundred kilometres away, in a transit tunnel under the Sawahi, she could feel a Dwarven signalman look up at the golden glow of the roots and swear an oath to the Sju Dorfran that he would take greater care when tapping mana from the living wood.

She withdrew. In time, Sufina might manifest into the Prime Material, as Ariel or Caliban, but not today.

Her mind withdrew.

“She’s not awake,” Gwen breathed out.

Richard picked up an amber leaf. “By what measure?”

“By the measure of my decree…” Gwen turned her head so that she faced Richard in full.

Her cousin shielded his eyes from the radiance.

“... Should I buy everyone sunglasses…” Gwen asked him seriously.

“We have the budget,” Richard answered seriously.

The amber glow remained. The eternal sunrise did not fade so much as settle. The canopy above the Sky Garden was no longer the bioluminescent silver-green it had been every night since the tree cleared the upper gallery.

It was now the colour of bright and vivid fire. Her city, two skyscrapers below, was bathed in it. She could hear, through their Faith, the sound of several hundred thousand people going outside at the same time to marvel at the new miracle brought by their Goddess.

“Well,” Richard said. “There goes my evening.”

“Why?”

“Regent. The tree has ushered in a new World Wonder.” Her cousin was already standing, already brushing leaves from his dress trousers. “Unlike your careless self, we got announcements to make, minds to settle, and whole religious factions to wrangle, in case their disagreements grew too divisive.”

Her cousin paused, then shook his head at his clueless Regent.

“Do you have any idea how many tourists we receive daily?”

Gwen decided to meditate until dusk, and as she suspected, there were no changes. Aesthetic autumn had always been Sufina’s go-to self-fashioned vision of selfhood, and now it was also her Shalkar’s.

The irony was a little delicious. In Shalkar, the infamous Fire Sea was now barely burning, while a GIANT tree of vivid autumn flames bloomed, keeping the Elemental Plane of Fire’s breach as a planar pinhole.

She wondered then how Sufina would fit into the menagerie.

Ariel was now half-Kirin, half-Faith, a young Godling, in a sense, not that much different from the old monarch of the Kirin Dynasties, except for the fact that his existence was tethered to her being. With Almudj’s primordial lightning—and Faith—Ariel was anathema to Undead.

Caliban was now half-Devourer, half-Faith vessel, a faceless young woman with a borrowed likeness and an inability to grow clothes. Her greatest ability was to manifest itself as a Void-empowered Night Walker, capable of robbing the fealty of lesser Undead from their Masters AND empowering the ones that she controlled.

Golos… Golos could be conjured easily enough, considering their soul-link that predated her use of the Sympathetic Life-Link, AKA Soul Tap. He was an adult Blue Dragon now, albeit the Western species, and his thunder and lightning abilities naturally tore the Undead to shreds.

She had her Sparrowhawks, especially Natalia, who was closest to her Sympathetic Life-Link.

There was Gracie—whom she had banished from her mind because Gracie’s greatest wish was to live a normal life.

Lei-bup was gone, but she still had her Mer, especially Aristotle.

There was also Strun and Garp, with the Rat-kin as her terrestrial Mer.

Her Kirin, her Devourer, her Dragon, her birds, her Mer and her Rats…

And that’s not counting the Dwarves and the Centaurs and the hosts of customers imbibing Shalkar’s Golden Mead, such as the Tower Master living in the canopy.

And now, Sufina too.

Suddenly, Gwen felt… unnerved, as if she was Pandora opening a Christmas present, and only now realising she had grabbed the wrong box.

Yet, as Regent, she was unusually calm. Countless choices had brought her here, and regret would add nothing to the choices she had to make in the near future.

So she sat.

She sat in the amber light with her bare feet catching the light, dangling off a branch the size of an arterial road and thought instead about what she would say to a real goddess, not a facsimile one like herself.

Then she stood, brushed the leaves from her comfortable golf shorts, and went to tell Richard that she was going to Tryfan.

“You’re going now?” Richard said, half-hunched over his desk, with Natalia by his side.

The pair made Gwen feel a little lonely. Gunther has his Alesia. Yue has her Whetu. Richard has Natalia. Ollie has his fishes.

Where was her Elvia? Not that she desired such a thing anymore. A part of her asked, “What about Slylth?” But Slylth felt more like a younger brother. So then she thought about Percy. At which point she felt depressed.

“I’m going now.”

“The tree has turned gold,” Richard pointed out. “Well… golden autumn, you don’t want to see where this leads us?”

“Where would that be?” Gwen asked, amused.

“Well, for now, there are four hundred pilgrims at the West Gate who walked here from Cuzco who have just lost their minds. The Rat-kin are amassing for prayer, and the Khan said he would like to hold a contest… for… breeding successions. It’ll last weeks. You’re gonna miss that?”

Natalia stifled a snort.

“I need something from the immortals,” Gwen answered with a counter. “Existential answers, for the world.”

Richard’s eyes went to the ceiling. “I guess that’s… a reasonable excuse for missing the Centaur fertility festivals.”

“I also need to ask them about Quar-Tath, Matron of the Long Night, who is bound to look unkindly upon our Amazonia expedition.”

“Ah yes, that’s coming up VERY soon.” Richard pulled out a few data slates. “Encirclement is imminent, in fact. I’ll keep you posted. We haven’t had issues with the Sinneslukare since our Golden Mead inoculation programs took root, but you’re right, that’s going to be a big one. And that’s on top of this business with Central America.”

“Take care of things while I am gone.” Gwen gave her cousin a hug. She also gave Natalia a hug, assuming she was a future in-law. “There’s usually some time dilation going on in Tryfan, especially in Solana’s Grot. I’ll be gone for a few days, a week, maybe a month… depending on our negotiations.”

“What are you going to ask?” Richard gave her his usual affirming nod.

Gwen looked at the amber canopy.

“I want to ask a woman with a tree and a snake,” she said, “what happens to people who live forever.”

Tryfan

The Grove did not have weather, which was a stark difference to Shalkar, where the weather did indeed penetrate the planar distortion and bless the Geofront with both wet and dry seasons, as well as winter and summer.

That said, Tryfan did have a climate—which was perfect by any measure—and humidity, which was also perfect for Gwen—and its beauty was like the World Tree at Shalkar at an unimaginable scale.

She arrived via Sanari, as was tradition. The Druid’s aid was both an invitation and an acceptance of her presence.

This time, they did not arrive at the trunk, but directly at the top of the tree, at the Pocket Plane within the Pocket Plane that was the tree’s crown, The Bloom in White’s nested greenhouse.

The place hadn’t changed since she was here almost five years ago—which should come as no surprise. One could see the changes in Sanari—clothing, style, the floral scent of the changing seasons—but The Bloom was timeless in a sense that was too uncanny for comfort.

Gwen did not curtsy, as Sanari did, but bowed her head a little, from one Guardian to another.

“Regent.” The golden-eyed Elf bowed while barely moving her head; her gossamer dress was caressed by a wind that was not there. The Bloom in White looked as she did in their first meeting, delicate as a flower, supple as a willow, long-limbed, pale, and golden.

It was a radiance they now shared.

The Bloom in White was seated on a bower that her own World Tree had lowered at will, which was, Gwen thought, a pretty nice way to demonstrate one’s prowess.

The Ljósálfar extended a hand: slender, bloodless, almost translucent. Gwen took it, and was lifted into the air together with the Elf, so that they were transported above the sanctum.

Gwen felt her balance shift. She didn’t know if they were traversing through a barrier, or through folded space—but when they stopped, it was self-evident that they were looking down at the World Tree of Tryfan and all of its inhabitants.

Ageless Elves.

Immortal beings of legend.

Like ants, below and beneath them.

“Our Regent,” said the Eternal Bloom, “has been busy.”

“Our Regent has been meeting unexpected people,” Gwen replied. “You put me in contact with Quetzalcoatl…”

“We did,” Solana said, not meeting her eyes. “As you asked.”

“Through whom I got to meet Topiltzin Quetzalcoatl…”

“That you did.”

“Which turned out to be your son.”

“Tyfanevius’ scion.” Solana did not deny it. “My sin.”

Gwen stared.

That was too easy. And it made her uncomfortable. Where are the word games? The circular logic? The grand oration? Is Solana even immortal?

The Elf read her like a Human book. “Dearest, from one immortal to another, are we not allowed to be forward?”

For once, Gwen did not know what to say.

Below them, the Elves of Tryfan went about their business—which is to say, living languidly, talking, practising, doing things they had practised and done ten thousand times before, in every cycle.

But Gwen didn’t feel like an immortal being, at least, not like Solana.

So she resumed the conversation, rudely and accusingly.

“He killed a child,” Gwen said. “Gods, she looked so young.”

“He harvested a divinity,” Solana said, “which had the shape of a child, and had had the shape of a child for four hundred years, and would have had the shape of a child for four thousand more, because he built it that way.”

It.

“That’s sick.”

“Well, of course. He has been sick for a long time.” Solana’s voice did not change at all. “We’ve grown sick…”

Gwen watched their feet dangle. She still wore her shirt and shorts, and she was still barefoot. Solana’s feet were smaller than hers, daintier, paler, more elongated.

For both of them, walking on the World Tree’s bark barefoot had felt like the right thing to do.

“Sick of this life?” she asked, keeping her voice measured. “Sick of eternity?”

“Tyfanevius and I, we’ve been at this for too long,” Solana cocked her head. “We are not sick of our duties, no. Malakath was… not a way out. He manifested as a question, a curiosity of sorts.”

“What question?”

“If it’s possible to be like your kind,” Solana said. “Chaotic, unpredictable, always hungry, never satisfied. Always looking forward to tomorrow, eager, despite the never-known.”

“Is that so desirable?” Gwen asked. “We hardly live… glorious lives.”

“Oh, but it is full of…” Solana looked for the word in Elven, and seemed to fail.

“Drama?”

“Othello.”

“Othe…”

Gwen stared. Then she REALLY stared.

Malakath knew. Malakath had quoted Shakespeare from the fragment of her world he had spied, or so he said.

“How do you… Othello?”

“Is that so important?”

“Are you the reason I am here?” Gwen forced herself to remain calm. After all, one of the greatest mysteries of her present life was about to clarify itself.

“Not intentionally, but… causally?” Solana’s golden eyes were glazed over. “It began with Malakath, of course, conceived from impossibility.”

“Like… Ayxin’s child.”

“Indeed. He was our creature and creation, wrought of Causality and Essences.”

Gwen licked her drying lips. “A Woman, A Tree, a Snake.”

“You know it well.” Solana’s expression should have been sad, but her features were so elfin that it was difficult to tell whether the Goddess struggled to show emotion, or if her face was ill-built for that level of expression. Indeed, Malakath’s face was far more natural in exercising a wide range of… mockery, sadism, and for some reason, empathy.

“So…” Gwen still wanted the answer to her earlier enquiry. “Othello.”

“The aeons allow many opportunities to peek into the Planes, even that of other possibilities,” Solana said. “Given enough power, enough time, perhaps, you too will be able to peek into your old world. Maybe even traverse the grand rivers of Causality—like the ascended Dragons of old.”

Gwen considered the Elf’s words, yet found no rapport for the life she had left. It all seemed… so distant now. So… inconsequential.

“The Unformed Land?” she asked about Dragons instead.

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“I am not of my husband’s species, so I cannot know,” Solana smirked. “But we have strayed. You are here, dearest Regent, because when we made Malakath, we broke something. Ayxin’s child took its Causality from the Yinglong, and so He Who Heeds will slumber, perhaps until the end of our present world, without ever reaching the Unformed Land. It’s a great cost—for a child that is neither Human nor Dragon, and certainly not timeless as we are, or as its grandfather was.”

Gwen wondered if she should tell her uncle that.

“We gave Malakath our all, all our talents. He was his father, and his mother. He is not a mere Hvítálfar, like our cousins below us, but Ljósálfar—the primordial Elves, the beings conjured by the Prime Material itself, to heed the World Tree’s needs. We are its servants. It is our prison.”

Gwen groaned. “He’s a Dragon too?”

“A Dreamer,” Solana said, nodding. “And a being intimately connected to every World Tree.”

Something clicked into place inside Gwen’s head.

“Every World Tree,” she said. “Except one.”

Now, it was Solana who stared.

“You really are terrifyingly intelligent.” The Bloom in White’s eyes were luminous and very impressed. “For a while, we watched you, under Henry, wondering what you were—are you a deterrent sent into our world? Are you the antidote to Malakath, brought by the World Trees themselves? Even now, we do not know. Yet, from the very second you encountered Edmund Ravenport, you were fated to oppose Malakath. Isn’t that interesting?”

“My Master died… thanks to that encounter.” Gwen shot The Bloom a glance that wasn’t nearly so reverent and understanding.

“I wonder, even now, if Henry was a part of something the World Trees have engineered.” Solana waved a dainty hand, and from the moisture in the air, she conjured the vision of her Master as his younger self. “He was such a strange Human. He had tamed Sufina, he could use plant magic as well as we, and he had such grand visions and plans that his species preferred his retirement over his elevation.”

Gwen considered this new information.

“Henry Kilroy came to us asking for the elevation of his Race. We were happy to give it. We believed that between this anomalous human and Malakath, we could find out what was chipping away at the Axis Mundi…”

“Except Malakath himself was the parasite eating your roots.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Solana laughed; her self-deprecation rang out like silvery bells. “Like us, there was no lasting damage he could really do—until he found her. Or rather, your Master found her.”

“Sobel.”

“Elizabeth Winsted Sobel.” Solana nodded. “The creature, of a creature, of a creature…”

“Of your creation,” Gwen appended the Elf Matriarch’s perspective with an addition of her own.

You created Malakath; he instructed Henry; Henry found Sobel; then I came in…

“Given enough resources and time, Malakath’s Towers could challenge the World Trees and take their place,” Solana said. “Given enough sacrifice, Sobel could devour entire Groves.”

Gwen felt another puzzle piece click into place.

“And so… Tryfan fomented war…” Gwen said suddenly. “You kept… the world in conflict. To prevent the Towers…”

“We did that, of course,” Solana said, shaking her head. “But what we did do was… unimpressive, compared to Humanity’s own volatility. Your Master’s retreat from the plan not only derailed Sobel’s taming of the Devouring Dark; he never completed the Towers. They never did become replacement mechanisms for the Axis Mundi. They remain—crude as they are, implements of mass destruction, and nothing more.”

Gwen watched the goosebumps rise from her thighs. “So Malakath has been…”

“Building his own forces, I guess.” Solana willed a floral tea set, grown from the World Tree itself, into being. She moved the cups, one by one. “Sympathetic forces, Far Plane parasites. The Cult of Juche’s Undead. If the living won’t make the Towers he needs, then the dead will.”

“The Great War, the Continental War, the…” Gwen counted the cups, then stopped. “You’ve been redirecting him?”

“You have,” Solana smiled guilelessly. “The Humans, the Dökkálfar, the Mer, the Centaurs, the Rat-kin, and even the Coatl-folk, you have halted him everywhere.”

Gwen touched a hand to her forehead. “Yet, he gave me this.”

“All change is change,” Solana said, handing her a cup of amber liquid. “That’s enough for Malakath. That’s his truth, what your kind calls veritas.”

“I don’t like this veritas. His truth sucks.”

“And yet, the truth is, you will now make for Quar-Tath’s lair. Sobel has gone to the Land of the Cult of Juche. You are not powerful enough to take on that task, so what you may do is exorcise the Sinneslukare from beneath The Long Night’s lair, and reduce her hiding places by one.”

It was not foreshadowing. Gwen knew the moment was coming—she wondered then if all of this had been ordained by Solana, deliberately or inadvertently.

Around them, the Grove’s light seemed to grow warmer. Gwen noticed it first, as a flare against her forearms, a brightening of her skin, a glow, so that she and Solana looked like a proper pair of pulsing quasars.

“Where’s Percy?” Gwen asked.

“Percival. Student to Sobel. Blessed of the Long Night, personally taught Necromancy by Malakath… and your former brother,” Solana said, shaking her head sadly. “I am sorry, Regent. We should have taken greater care.”

Fuck… Gwen groaned internally. Nonetheless, first things first.

“Will The Long Night attack us if we invade Amazonia?”

“No,” Solana said. “But her daughters will.”

Daughters… of which she only knew three.

Phyr Quar-Tath, Mistress of the Long Night—Sobel’s host in the Web Spire.

Qila Quar-Tath, Mistress of the Suffocating Dark—keeper of the battle pits, Elvia’s former “Owner”.

Vestra Quar-Tath, Jabbess d-lilth Venorsh—her hostess and sponsor.

“The Eternal Midnight sleeps as the Yinglong sleeps. She may answer in a season. She may answer in a decade. She may answer, then deliver the consequence a millennium from now,” Solana assured her. “Tyfanevius will make sure of it.”

“But her daughters…”

“To the Midnight Monarch, they are of no consequence, nor are her people.” Solana’s gaze swept the Elves below. “I would like to think I am different, and yet…”

Gwen snorted derisively—an ugly bark of sorts—then felt ashamed.

“Eternity does that to you,” Solana said. “You will know it, in time.”

“What will I know? “

Solana turned her head, so that her exquisite face was now staring directly at Gwen.

“Would you like another unhappy truth?” the Elf asked.

“Will you deny me if I said no?”

Solana’s lips curled. “Call it the musing of the timeless.”

She took a deep breath.

“Gwen Song, Guardian of the Axis Mundi, understand my son’s blessing and curse. You are now nearer to me than you are to your loved ones—your Richard, Elvia, Yue, your Petra and Lulan and your followers. This is not… an opinion; it is a measurement. You who are so full of Golden Mead are now their hope and nourishment, a fount of life in living form, the solution to all of life’s grotesque happenstances.”

Gwen considered this terrifying revelation, and found that she had no rebuttal.

When she continued, the ageless voice was almost gentle. “Think, Regent, of those who love you dearly. Think of Ollie Edwards in Arica, his veins possessed of more Golden Mead than anyone else there, who will remain hairless and ageless, so long as he lives in your service, and the benediction of your golden blood flows…”

“Think, Regent, of the Dwarves who ward away evil with your Golden Mead, your flesh and blood, imbibing it freely even as it changes their bodies. They are a long-lived race, dear Regent, and their civilisation now rests in your pale, dainty hands. How will they fare if you cut them off from the mead? How many will fear the dark? How many will believe their peers unparasiticised by the Sinneslukare?”

Gwen didn’t like where this was going at all. The cup was too full. She was spilling the nectar.

“THINK, Regent, of your Mer who even now move to conquer the Vels in your name. Who carry the banner of Lei-bup, he who gave his being so that you could tame the Devouring Dark. Think of Strun, your High Priest among the Rat-kin in all but name; think of all the millions in those warrens who pray to your SPAM nightly, for ending generations of slavery, where they were used as food and game by the Centaurs. They who are fed on the milk of paradise cannot live, even for a season, without your blessing, dear Regent!”

She pointed at the Elves below.

“You think the Hvítálfar were immortal? Sanari? Ageless? Not at all. They live because I feed them so. The tree feeds them so…”

Gwen wanted to scream ENOUGH—

But she also knew that this was the consequence of her choices. The Mer. The Rat-kin. The people she had saved—were her albatross to bear.

They did not belong to Malakath, or Solana, or some higher power. She had chosen to save them, and here she was…

What would be the alternative?

“You watch them die,” said Solana, reading her mind again. “One tribe at a time. Just as you will face the same choice in the next century. Your Richard, your Elvia, your Yue… will you give them your Golden Blood? Or will you allow them to die in peace? Allow them to perish with contentment?”

Gwen stood up.

“Right,” she said to Solana, no longer wishing for truth. “I think there’s an Amazonia I need to attend to.”

“Regent.”

“Solana… don’t.”

“I have upset you…” The Elf leaned forward, so that her dress fell open, and Gwen could see a great deal of her ageless flesh. So unblemished was she that Gwen couldn’t help but wonder if she would, at all, give her loved ones a chance to experience the ravages of time. Then she indicated to the Hvítálfar, their elongated bodies skittering about like spindly insects. “But such is the truth, dear. When you have enough loved ones who have remained timeless for so long, it—”

Gwen leapt from the bower.

She didn’t want to hear it.

“It becomes husbandry,” came the final words of The Bloom in White, without apology, thundering through the sanctum. “It becomes how much you can bear…”

Shalkar. The Bunker.

In the VIP suite, a pair of Gwen’s companions sat opposite one another, separated by a table.

To the left sat Elvia Lindholm, “Saint Elvia of Bath”, blonde, pretty in a petite way, a little taller than when they first met, with a pair of Knight Protectors on either side—one from St George—the other from St Michael.

In their holy garb and full-body plate armour, they made a fearful trio.

Which made it rather ironic that they sat in demure silence, with smiles frozen on their faces.

This was because, opposite the Saint and the Knights, sat one Gunther Shultz, Tower Master of Sydney, and the deadliest Battle Mage in the history of the Mageocracy’s very extensive list of combat honours.

Gunther was sitting on a crate. The Radiant Mage did not like the soft sofa, and so found, somewhere in the Dwarven Geofront he had traversed, a crate of the correct height, and was sitting on it with his ankles crossed, eating something out of a paper cone.

It was Shalkar’s speciality, an ultra-rich soft-serve ice cream. A staple of the Rat-kin’s daily pursuit of happiness.

They had exchanged a hello, and then things got awkward.

Elvia knew Gunther never really cared for her other than as Gwen’s caretaker. And Elvia knew Gwen respected Gunther more than anyone.

So they sat in silence, waiting for their hostess to arrive.

After about two hours, perhaps by pure serendipity, she arrived.

By Richard’s counting, the Regent had been gone to Tryfan for six days. Earlier, he had come to greet them both personally, though clearly, Gunther rightfully possessed the right to greater respect and deference—and for once the Knights had nothing but agreement.

When their Regent showed up glowing and dishevelled, wearing shorts and a tee-shirt with an Ariel print, and barefoot, both parties began to doubt their present reality.

“Don’t get up,” Gwen said. “Evee, I am so glad you’re here, but do you mind if I see to my Brother-in-craft first?”

“Not at all.” Elvia bowed from the waist. The Knights performed likewise. They recognised Faith when they saw it, and this woman—this… Regent, was brimming with more than that which exists in all the relics of St Paul.

“Gunther,” Gwen bowed her head.

“Gwen,” Gunther did not.

This rudeness seemed, at least to Elvia, to make Gwen strangely happy.

“Can I get a hug?” Gwen asked as soon as they were out of sight. “I haven’t had one… since I landed in Neo Tenochtitlan.”

Her Brother-in-craft embraced her wholly, lifting her off her feet.

When he finally let her go, Gwen felt… happy, and mortal. “Oh… thanks for that. I needed that.”

Gunther regarded her radiance. “Nice glow.”

“Speak for yourself,” she said, then laughed helplessly. “SO much has happened.”

“Bet…” her laconic Brother-in-craft grinned. “I am not really here to bother you. I just needed a quick question answered, in person.”

“Shoot,” Gwen leaned back against the giant office table. “What can I do for you?”

“Alesia’s pregnant.”

Gwen’s eyes grew large. “ARE YOU FOR REAL?”

“Yes.”

“OH MY GOD,” she opened her arms and embraced Gunther so hard that she almost lifted the giant off the floor. “Congratulations! Gunther! This is incredible. Just how much sex did you guys have?!”

“Hey…” Gunther pushed her away, his face scarlet. “Don’t tease. I am not here for that. I want to ask you something more serious.”

Gwen felt her insides grow wobbly. She had literally just had this conversation with Solana.

“The baby… is healthy, insofar as human medicine is concerned,” Gunther said. “He or she, your future nephew or niece, however, already has a mana signature.”

Which doesn’t happen until the Awakening.

“Oh…”

“Yeah…” Gunther looked at her critically. “Did you do it?”

“Did…” Gwen gulped. “Did I do what?”

“The baby.”

“Did I get Alesia preggers?!”

Gunther stared. His eyes flashed with Radiance.

“NO!” Gwen said, with an intensity that frightened her. “Absolutely not!”

In truth, she had no idea what she did any more. That was the thing. There was no instrument. There was no Divination that would answer it, only her own divinity.

“I don’t know,” Gwen said, honestly. “I wouldn’t. As much as I want you two to be happy, I’d never do something like this.”

It becomes husbandry. Solana’s final words haunted her still. She braced for Gunther’s ire, his disappointment. The horror of it was too much.

Then, Gunther nodded, slowly. “Right. That’s fine then.”

“It is…?” Gwen stared.

“Well,” said Gunther, grinning. “You’re the Godmother either way.”

Gwen nearly choked on the Dad Joke, then she laughed, long and hard.

Godmother.

A compound word. The second half was a job. The first half was a category.

“Gwennie?” said Gunther. “You’ll be the Godmother, right?”

“With all my life.” Gwen got her face back under control. “Unreservedly. Yours will be a blessed, bonny babe, Gunther.”

A kid with a mana signature in the womb…

“She’ll hold you to it.” Gunther’s smile was warm, and his presence was radiant, and he loomed. “Now, go see to your girlfriend. I bet she’s got an offer for you too…”

Ahaha… Gwen felt her insides crinkle.

“Will you stay for dinner?” Gwen asked anyway.

Gunther shrugged. “The amount of work I have still… Waiting for you was a good break. I am serious.”

Then he gave her a pat on the back. “Don’t forget, if you need my help—we’ll come to your side, anytime, for any reason.”

They hugged once more, and Gwen felt more grounded, even as she added a stray thought to Gunther’s promise—that if she did have her way, their sibling bond wouldn’t just be for anytime—but for all of time…

Elvia found her at the rail an hour later, after Gwen gave her summons.

The sheer act of it felt so strange, and yet, going back to the VIP waiting area to pull Elvia out by the hand had felt equally awkward.

Her Evee looked different from how she remembered her; that much was certain. The puppy fat was gone, the rounded cheeks were no longer so pinchable. Elvia was a young woman now, mid-twenties, like herself, and though her skin was flawless, her vitality was exuberant; the Elvia she had met in Sydney a decade ago had long expired.

What stood in front of her now was a youthful-looking woman, ripe with adulthood, and possessed of sad eyes that were too mature.

Comparatively, her own reflection, captured in Elvia’s eyes, bore more resemblance to her late teen self than to what she had looked like in her mid-twenties, in another world, more so thanks to the uncontrollable glow.

“It’s a beautiful city,” Elvia said. “The tree makes it hard to be miserable. It’s almost like heaven, in a sense.”

“It’s Edenic,” Gwen said.

“That’s the word,” Elvia said carefully, like a girl stepping around broken glass. “You always were the best with words, Gwennie.”

Gwen laughed. In the past, she would have hugged Elvia already and pressed her cheeks against her cheeks.

“You’re not going to pitch me?” She said, her voice controlled and measured.

“I was instructed to pitch you.” Elvia stood closer. Her friend did not bow or kneel, and Gwen was grateful for the show of spine. “The Ordos would like me to instruct you in the sorcery of Faith. The Crown believes an untaught Demi-deity is a hazard. The Factions, every Faction, believe in you more than the Church, and I fear they are right.” Elvia turned her head. God, Evee looks so pretty still… pretty and pitiable. “So I am asking. Will you let me teach you Faith Magic?”

“No.”

“No,” Elvia agreed, lowering her head.

“This is what I’ve chosen.” Gwen felt her chest tighten, though she was genuine in her thoughts. “What good is a veil that covers the Faith? It’s sophistry. Nothing will change what I have become. And there is nothing to hide and nothing to be ashamed of.”

“Yes.” Elvia was quiet for a moment. “Then I’ll spare you the rest of the excuses I had for the Regent. Gwennie. Can I say my own thoughts now?”

“You may.”

“I would like to leave the Church,” Elvia said, “and come to Shalkar, and run a chapel, devoted to you.””

The wind off the desert moved the amber above them. Somewhere far below, a shift-bell rang in the Dwarven Geofront. It was lunchtime, and a great mass of bodies began to move in the city below.

“Evee…”

“I have thought about it for a long time. Since before you went to Teithuacán.” Elvia’s voice was perfectly steady, which made Gwen’s heart sore. “Back in London, you said I had to wait. Well, I’ve waited, and I’ve gone to places, cured countless people. I’ve been to Che’ell-Cressen, where I gave my hand to the Mistress of the Suffocating Dark. I’ve murdered and healed, healed and murdered, until the Ordo negotiated my release. I cost Mathias his dreams… I’ve done it all…”

Elvia looked at her now, and her eyes were melting pools of hope. “Is that enough?”

And there it was. Gwen’s jaws tightened.

Solana’s curse.

Elvia would live a long, long life. But Elvia would be thirty in a flash, then forty, then sixty, a hundred, a hundred and fifty. With the Yinglong’s blessing, and with Sen-sen, she could live a very, very long time.

But compared to Solana? To a common Hvítálfar?

She would need the Golden Mead, as Henry had gifted Sobel, forever, so that Elvia would be the High Priestess of her Goddess and live in Shalkar forever, in a city built out of a World Tree’s Essence, eating bread grown by Essence and time, healed by Golden blood, under a canopy that turned amber when Gwen felt the mood was right.

What kind of relationship was that?

Or, she could carpe diem. Love her Elvia at forty, and sixty, and eighty, and then stand at a graveside in three hundred years’ time with her face unchanged, and Evee would be but one body in the great procession of pale Princes and Princesses of the Regent’s reign—then the Pale Goddess of Shalkar would go back to her paperwork.

“Gwen,” Elvia said. “You are crying.”

Gwen dabbed her face with the heel of her hand, and it came away with gold in it. There was Faith-Essence even in her tears.

“So… no then?” Elvia said.

It becomes husbandry.

Gwen said nothing. If Solana had no answer, how could she, who had yet to live the years?

“I… don’t know,” Gwen confessed. “I can tell you I am scared shitless, though. If that helps.”

Elvia laughed, just a little. Then she leaned in, and she was silent for a long moment against her shoulder.

Then she said, very quietly:

“Gwennie, I am scared.”

“I know.”

“I don’t think you do.” Elvia pulled back enough to look at her, and her eyes were wet but steady. “Do you remember what I told you, back in London? That I was not afraid of God…”

“But you’re afraid of me…”

“And I remain afraid.” Elvia’s hands were still on her arms. “I am not afraid of a world that needs Gwen Song. I have seen that world; I have worked in it; it is a better world for what I can do to help.” Her fingers tightened. “I am afraid of a Gwen who no longer needs the world.”

The amber canopy moved above them. Far down in the Core, something warm stretched in its sleep, and every root in the Dyar Morkk stretched with it.

Gwen agreed with one thing.

She should not have so haphazardly gone to see Solana.

Richard came up the terrace at nineteen minutes past six, in casual business attire, looking relaxed, with a data slate and an expression she had seen before.

“Regent.” He did not look at Elvia. “We need your eyes on this.”

“What is it?” Gwen asked, still lingering in the limbo of Solana’s liminality.

“The encirclement of Amazonia is complete.” He turned the slate around. The map on it was not a map of the surface; it was six radial arteries and a hundred and forty nodes and a low-way road that ran, uninterrupted, from Deepholm to the Andes, Bunker to Bunker, Geofront to Geofront. “Strun’s last Himsegg Vjeit tied off at the eastern margin nine hours ago. Deepholm confirms the foundry is at full draw—they’ve cold-staged fabricator engines at every node on the Arica web, and Hanmoul’s cut the first eight thousand rations into the Mead stock. Shield Golems are seeded across every node.” A fractional pause. “And there’s something else as well. Cuzco reports that there are disturbances in Amazonia. I am not sure if it’s related to us—but there are reports of a growing beast tide. It will overwhelm the southern Suyu. Prince Inti has requested aid.”

Elvia moved from her shoulder, but the weight on them had only increased.

She owed the Dwarves this. They had built her an empire and put her likeness next to the Bringer of the Lumen, and now, this was what she owed Hilda’s people.

And Inti was a good and trustworthy friend. She had given them trade, shelter and a way to connect to the rest of the Human world—as well as bringing woes to an otherwise isolated theocracy.

Phyr Quar-Tath, first Daughter of Quar-Tath, would be the muppet responsible. She was the one sheltering the Sinneslukare Dwarves.

Last time, she had visited the realm of Midnight as a tourist. This time…

Gwen stood and paced, recollecting her train of thought.

Richard waited. He was very patient with her, as always.

It becomes husbandry.

Elvia sat where she had left her, white against the amber, hands folded, waiting to be told to go.

Looking at the friend she had wanted to spend eternity beside, she suddenly crossed the terrace, took Elvia’s surprised face—and kissed her on the forehead.

She felt the warmth going out of her and into the other woman, unbidden, unasked-for, and she glowed golden for a moment, cut off from all the trouble of the Prime Material.

Elvia reached out, but the Regent was gone. Gwen had gone to her cousin, her Majordomo, and she was ready for the next chapter of the Pale Goddess’ wrath.

“Assemble the Rat-kin legions from Central America,” she said. “Make ready the Tower for the southern Suyu.”

“Regent.” Richard snapped to attention.

The light that radiated from her halo was no longer so warm. It was sharp and stabbing and stung the eyes. “Get the Tower in range. We tame the tide—then, whatever the outcome, we shall revisit Che’ell-Cressen.”