Chapter 161

We sat together on the couch - Elise, Mirri, Lilae, and I - cups of tea warming our hands.

Across from us, Myrrakai blew bubbles into hers through a crazy straw, giggling to herself as she kicked her feet like a child who couldn’t quite sit still.

“Are you really the goddess of magic?” Lilae asked.

Myrrakai nodded without taking the straw from her mouth. Tea promptly dribbled down the front of her robe. She choked, sputtered, and dissolved into a coughing fit.

“You are not what I expected,” Elise said.

Myrrakai cleared her throat and waved a hand. “You thought I’d be all stiff and proper, right? Hoity-toity and full of rules?” She snorted. “That was Vaerethis. Goddess of directed intent. Or so I’m told. Never met her - kind of hard when you’re born from someone’s Faith after they die.” She grinned. “But yeah, she was the stuck up one. I’m the goddess of arcane impulse. Biiiig difference.”

She leaned forward, eyes bright. “People didn’t like that at first. They wanted structure. Rituals. Discipline. I say do your own thing. Talk in funny words if you want. Or don’t. Wave your hands, don’t wave your hands. Dance, sing, scream, fart out your spell if that’s what gets it done. Magic doesn’t care. It just wants to move.”

Lilae giggled.

“See?” Myrrakai pointed at her. “You get it.”

“I have more questions,” I said. “If you’ve got time.”

“I’ve got tons of time,” she said instantly. “Right up until I don’t. But right now? Yeah. All the time in the world. So hit me. What do you want to know?” She paused, then brightened. “Oh! Wait, there are certain things I’m not supposed to tell you. Aurelion was quite adamant about that.”

“So you’re part of the High Witan?” I asked.

She snorted so hard she nearly spilled her tea again. “Absolutely not. Too many rules. Too many secrets. Too much pretending they don’t meddle while constantly meddling.” She waved dismissively. “The God-Kings are worse - mean, boring, predictable. And the Veiled are just - ugh.”

“Who are the Veiled?” Mirri asked.

Myrrakai rolled her eyes. “Gods who like to play hide and seek with mortals. Sounds fun, right? It’s not. It’s mostly just being stuffy and mutual masterbation. ‘You’re so great.’ ‘No, you’re great.’ ‘No, you’re the greatest!’ you know - circle jerk stuff. It’s exhausting.”

“What did Aurelion tell you not to talk about?” I pressed.

She grinned. “If I told you that, I’d be talking about it. And he asked me to pretty please not tell you. Cherry on top and everything. But you can ask me whatever else you want.”

“Ok.” I drew the word out as I gathered my thoughts. “Are there other gods from Earth?”

“Noooot yet,” she said, smiling.

“But I’m from Earth.” I mean. Of course I was, right? How could I not be.

She nodded, which immediately set her hair drifting again. She wrestled it back into place.

“So why me? Or how?” I asked. “Why am I the only one?”

“Because you’re special, duh.” She dropped her voice into a terrible, theatrical accent. “As the prophecy foretold, the mortal turned god shall unite two worlds and bring peace and prosperity-”

She broke into laughter before she could finish. “I’m kidding. There’s no prophecy. This was always going to happen eventually.”

“Why?”

“Cross-contamination,” she said simply. “Every time someone moves between worlds, they leak something - mana, Faith, whatever they’re carrying. It’s tiny, sure. Most of it spreads out, fades into the background. But chaos doesn’t behave nicely. It clumps. Shifts. Collides.”

She gestured loosely in the air, as if shaping something invisible.

“And then you come along. You start pulling it all in. Mana, Faith - everything. Like gravity. Like an accretion disk forming around a star. It stabilized, got denser, and started to clump up. That’s where your gates came from. That’s where your divinity came from.”

She leaned forward, eyes gleaming.

“And then you started making your own mana. And your own Faith.”

I frowned. “Mortals generate Faith. That’s normal.”

“Sure,” she said. “But Earthlings don’t have mana. So they don’t generate Faith.”

“Wait,” I said. “You need mana to generate Faith?”

“Yep!”

“But destroying Faith promotes mana creation.”

“Yep!”

I blinked. “That’s a chicken and egg problem.”

“Nope,” she said cheerfully. “You’re mixing up cause and condition. Faith comes from mortals. Even animals make a little. Destroying Faith can help create mana, but that’s not the primary source. I mean, if it was, then there’d be this huge burst of mana every time a god died. And then as people used mana, there’s be less of it and everyone would be starved for it until they capped another god. And let me tell you, that wouldn’t be good for anyone. You know what happens when one of us dies.”

“So how is mana normally made?” I asked.

She tapped her lip thoughtfully. “Best way to explain it… life disturbs reality and that disturbance creates mana. It’s like… imagine a black hole. The event horizon is where nothing can escape. On one side, you’re stuck and you get sucked into infinity. On the other, you could get out if you had the strength. But right there on the edge, weird stuff starts to happen. Energy is actually created from nothing. Matter and antimatter, too. A bunch of it gets destroyed and even more of it gets pulled into infinity, but there’s some that actually escapes. And that’s honest to goodness creation from nothing.”

She pointed at me.

“Life is like a black hole. There’s this event horizon around you that creates mana. But people and animals move around, so when they get close to mana, they suck it all up. But if there aren’t any people around, mana starts to build up.”

Elise leaned forward, eyes wide. “Ashmoor and Grimshaw were both partially correct… but they misunderstood the mechanism.”

“Exactly!” Myrrakai said, delighted. “So humans suck it all up, so it never gets to build up on Earth because, you know, eight billion people.”

Lilae’s head snapped up. “There are eight billion people in your world?”

“Soon to be nine,” Myrrakai added casually. “But the thing is, all those event horizons start bumping into each other, rather than butt up against the world. And that disrupts the process. No buildup. No mana. No Faith.”

She pointed at me again.

“But you broke the pattern. You pulled enough of both into yourself to kickstart something new. You became a feedback loop - Faith generating mana, mana feeding Faith. A self-sustaining system.”

Her grin widened. “For a long time, you were the only real source of Faith and mana. Just a trickle. But then you started helping people. They absorbed some of your mana. That let them generate a little Faith. And since no one else could take it, it all came back to you.”

I shook my head slowly. “I don’t-”

“You’re a freak of nature,” she said, matter-of-fact. “But honestly, we all are. There’ll never be another Mirri. Or Lilae. Or Elise. Or Ashlara. Or Serah. Everyone’s unique.”

She tilted her head, fascinated. “But what’s really, really, like super duper interesting is that it happened on Earth! With all that latent potential, it should have happened here first. Unless…” She trailed off. “Unless having too much Faith actually stabilizes things. I don’t know. Not my specialty.”

Then she brightened again. “But now you’re here! The first of your kind. And you’re already making more.”

“You mean Morien and Briva?” I asked.

She laughed. “No, silly. Vel, Thae, Moss, Clo, Tansy, and Nim. They were mortals. You ascended them.”

“I didn’t-” I started. “They had Urzan-Brak’s Faith-”

She snorted. “And the High Witan gave you their Faith and that did nothing, right? You don’t channel aspects you don’t have? I mean, it’s not like you can talk to earth elementals or broker deals with kings and queens despite a complete lack of experience. You didn’t just invent a whole new method of enchanting items, you totally can’t tell when someone’s lying to you, and you definitely didn’t learn to fight like a master in a couple of months.”

I went still. “You’re saying… my Faith made them gods?”

“It not only caused them to ascend,” she said. “it shaped the people they became.”

Her voice softened - just slightly. “They’re bloodchildren. Made for slaughter from the Faith of the dead god of carnage. And Vel has, like, real emotions now. And Clo. And the others, even if they don’t show it much. They care. They are so much closer to humanity than any other bloodchild. It’s not that they’re masking - they literally have emotions that other bloodchildren don’t have. And you gave them those emotions.”

My stomach twisted.

“No wonder Tansy is fracturing,” she added. “She wasn’t built to carry those emotions. She lacks the infrastructure to process them. I’m honestly surprised the others are holding together as well as they are.”

I leaned back, letting my head fall against the couch, eyes closing. “I’m killing my daughter…”

“No,” Myrrakai said gently. “You’re saving two worlds.”

* * *

I lifted my head and met Myrrakai’s shifting gaze. “What do you mean by-”

A sharp ding cut me off, bright and cheerful, like an egg timer going off.

“Cookies!” Myrrakai shouted.

“Cookies?” Elise perked up instantly.

“Yeah, cookies! I put them in when I made the tea. I’ll go get them!” She sprang to her feet and darted out of the room.

“What do you think?” Mirri asked quietly.

I shook my head. “I don’t know. This is… a lot. But I don’t think she’s lying. And she’s clearly powerful. Clearly a god.” I exhaled. “She’s been pretty open with us.”

“I like her,” Lilae said with a grin.

“If she is correct, there is much we could learn from her,” Elise added.

“Cookies!” Myrrakai sang as she reappeared, carrying a plate.

She set it down in front of us. Each cookie was shaped like a tiny house - brightly frosted, green grass piped around the base, pale yellow windows glowing, little gray chimneys puffing soft curls of smoke.

“Go on,” she said, bouncing slightly. “Eat up!”

We each took one.

“Thank you,” I said.

Elise didn’t bother with manners - she shoved the entire cookie into her mouth. Lilae bit into hers a heartbeat later.

Both of them vanished.

Gone.

Mirri shot to her feet. “Where did they go?” Her voice sharpened as she turned on Myrrakai. “Tell me where they went right now!”

The table trembled beside her as she gathered her mana.

Myrrakai blinked, startled. “They’re home,” she said simply. “These are home-made cookies. You eat one, you go home.”

Mirri looked at me.

I shrugged, still staring at the empty space where Elise and Lilae had been.

“A little warning would’ve been nice,” I said.

“Sorry,” Myrrakai replied, wincing. “I’m kind of scatterbrained. I was going to tell you, but then the cookies were done and I got excited and-”

“Let’s go,” Mirri said, already grabbing as many bags of books as she could carry.

I stood and picked up the rest. “Thank you for the hospitality,” I told Myrrakai. “This has been… enlightening. But she’s right. We need to make sure they made it back safely.”

Myrrakai rose with us. “Of course. I understand. Safe travels.”

I lifted the cookie, paused. “Anything we should know about these? Is it going to be… rough?”

She shook her head.

“Will we be faced with our worst fears? Buried alive somewhere?”

Another shake. “Wow,” she said, her eyes wide. “You really don’t trust me, huh?”

“Sorry,” I said. “We’ve had a week.”

“I know,” she said brightly. “I’ve been watching.” Then she softened. “But really - these are safe. Straight home. No surprises. One moment here, the next you’re there.”

She flashed a wide grin.

I glanced at Mirri. She sighed, resigned.

We brought the cookies to our mouths and-

-Myrrakai snatched it out of my hand as Mirri disappeared.

“What the fuck?” I snapped.

“Sorry, sorry,” she said quickly, clutching the cookie to her chest. “I just need to tell you one more thing.” Her eyes locked onto mine. “Just you.”

She took a deep breath. “Okay,” she said, holding the cookie just out of reach. “This part is important, so pay attention, yeah?”

For once, she stopped fidgeting. Her shifting eyes locked onto mine with an intensity that felt profoundly out of place on her otherwise chaotic behavior.

“You’re not supposed to exist like this. Not just ‘a god from Earth.’ That’s weird, sure. Weird happens. I like weird.” She waved that aside. “But this? This is different.”

She pointed at me. “You’re stacking.”

She said it like it should mean something to me.

“Most of us,” she continued, gesturing vaguely around herself, “are one thing. Maybe two, if something goes very wrong or very right. But eventually it settles. It has to. That’s how reality keeps from tearing itself apart.”

She pressed her fingertips together anxiously, tapping them one by one. Tiny strands of light stretched between opposing fingers, snapping with soft pops that released curls of multicolored smoke.

“You don’t settle,” she said quietly. “You accumulate. Absorb. Reshape. Hybridize.”

Her gaze drifted over me like she was studying a puzzle she couldn’t stop thinking about. “You’ve got your core thing - family, right? That’s your anchor. But then there are fragments. Echoes. Pieces from the High Witan, from other gods, from everything you’ve touched.”

“My aspect isn’t family-”

“It’s messy,” she interrupted with a grin. “And I love it.”

Then the grin faded. “But it isn’t stable.”

She stepped closer, voice dropping low. “Your Faith isn’t acting strange because something’s wrong with it.” Her eyes flickered through impossible colors. “It’s acting strange because it’s trying to become something that doesn’t have a name yet.”

Then, abruptly, her energy snapped back. “Which is amazing, by the way! New categories, new mechanics, whole new ways for reality to break-”

She stopped mid-thought and winced. “-but also kind of a problem.”

Her expression tightened. “The more you grow, the harder it is for the world to… agree on what you are.” She hesitated. “And when reality can’t agree on something…”

Her smile strained. “It tries to fix it.” She said it casually, but something cold curled in my stomach anyway.

“Usually that just means pressure. Resistance. Weird feedback. Headaches. Powers going a little wonky.” She shrugged. “Annoying, but manageable.”

Then her gaze sharpened. “You’re waaaay past that point.”

Silence settled over the room. “Eventually,” she continued, “something will try to simplify you.” She said it like she was commenting on the weather.

“Not kill you,” she added quickly. “Well. Not necessarily. More like… compress you into something reality can understand. One aspect. Clean. Defined. Safe.” Her face scrunched in disgust. “Boring.”

She stepped closer again. “And if that happens, you lose everything else. The extra pieces? Gone. Your flexibility? Gone. Your ability to change?” Her voice softened to nearly a whisper. “Your family only exists the way they do because of that mess.”

The silence afterward felt heavy.

Then, suddenly, she brightened again. “Buuuut! Good news. You can fight it.”

She closed the distance between us, close enough that the shifting colors of her eyes solidified into a perfect reflection of mine.

“Don’t pick,” she said. “Don’t define yourself too tightly. And don’t let anyone else define you either. Not the Witan. Not the God-Kings. Not your enemies.” She poked my chest with a finger. “Not even your friends.”

Another poke. “Every time you lock yourself into ‘I am this,’ you make it easier for reality to agree.”

Her grin returned. “Stay messy, my friend.”

Then she stepped even closer, pressing against me without the slightest hesitation. I suddenly became very aware of how thin her silk robe was - and how little it actually concealed.

“Oh,” she whispered conspiratorially, “and one more thing.”

Her lips brushed my ear. “Miralis knows.”

Then, just as suddenly, she straightened again, all manic brightness returning at once. “Okay! You can go now!”

Before I could respond, she hooked an arm around my neck and kissed me with fiery passion. Heat, spice, tea, ozone, and something impossibly sweet flooded my senses all at once.

Then she pulled back abruptly and shoved the cookie into my mouth.

I was standing in the foyer of the keep, surrounded by bags of books, feeling very confused.