CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR.

Leigh stared blankly at me for an uncomfortably long time before covering his face with both hands and rubbing vigorously in exasperation.

“Goodmother is a fairly common term for a witch, but there’s no way we’re lucky enough for it to be some nobody. Any other details?” He asked, his voice muffled by his hands.

Thinking quickly through the conversation, I thought of one poignant detail that should probably narrow things down a bit.

“She did call herself the ‘Mother of Witchcraft’.”

Leigh just looked resigned at that.

“Figures.” He clapped slowly. “Congratulations Ray, you’re now two-for-six of the Named. There’s only one creature in this world that would dare call itself that; Myygdulath, the Witchmother Serpent. She’s been missing since the Fall— along with most of the other ‘big’ names. Please please please tell me you didn’t make a bargain with her?”

"Nope." I shook my head vigorously. "Not making any deals with the freaky snake-witch. She actually came to me because she thought she owed me something."

Leigh nodded pensively at that.

"That's… plausible. Witchcraft is all about deals, oaths, and debts, and Myygdulath is a Beast Lord on top of that. If she felt you were owed something, it would have been like a gnawing itch to her instincts, and leaving it unresolved could have negatively impacted her base of power. I thought we might be running into a witch at some point because they're drawn to fate-shenanigans like flies to a corpse, but I didn't think we'd get The witch right out the gate."

"Wait, you knew we'd be running into something like her? Why didn't you bring it up?" I complained a little angrily.

"Ray… look," he said placatingly. "You are an outworlder, and from a high-order world. The amount of things that you've got to be 'caught up' on is a literal lifetime's worth. We've been moving pretty fast but I can't condense a list of everything that could possibly impact our journey. If you want a full primer, then we can sit down and I can do that, but it's going to take a significant amount of time and dedication on your part. Or when we get to Thunderfall I can help you get enrolled in an academy."

I wanted to grouse some more, but Leigh was being irritatingly reasonable. There had been periods I could've spent learning more about Haven, but even tallied up there's only so much information I could've meaningfully absorbed in the last few weeks. And that was the time I had spent learning and practicing the magic that would likely be keeping me alive going forwards.

"Alright, that's fair," I grumbled. "But since— as you pointed out— our luck is terrible and it's likely to come up sooner or later, can you give me the quick-and-dirty summary of the rest of the 'six'?"

Leigh looked a little depressed at that logic, but he agreed with a nod.

"Well, you already know the Corruptor— been a boogeyman for pretty much as long as we've had records to mark its presence. The Witch-Mother is in a similar vein but slightly more ambivalent. Less directly evil, but will absolutely prey on desperation and misery in order to ply her craft. She usually interacts with people as an old woman, but her true form is a giant, pale, hooded serpent— although unlike the others she can change shape whenever she wants.

“One thing that's fairly consistent with stories about the Witch-Mother is her penchant for ridiculously convoluted plots and schemes that seem to rely on random chance and coincidence, but everything somehow works out in her favor. It's like once you make a deal with her the entire world shifts and a thousand tiny details all just 'happen' to twist events her way. Generally speaking, the consequences of making those deals are less about teaching you a lesson and more about you becoming an object lesson for everyone else."

Yeah, that fits with the impression I got. Also…

I considered the vial of essence still in my pocket and Lyr'Rael's current situation. The level of manipulation required to time everything just right was uncanny, but what if this wasn't about me at all? Goodmother— or Myygdulath I suppose— had said she owed me a debt, but she'd also mentioned that Dezzahn had broken an oath to her. Given what I knew, maybe it was less about what I was owed and more that I was a convenient vehicle to get what she was owed.

I didn't like the idea of being used but in this instance, anything that brought down Dezzahn was worth it. The witch might not be an ally, but so long as she was working towards the Corruptor's end I would be more than happy. The feeling of vindictive joy bubbling up in me at the right of being on the other side of fate-shenanigans for once made me feel all warm and fuzzy.

"Next would be… probably Korom, the Skyburner," Leigh said, interrupting my mental diabolical cackling. "He's an Elder Dragon— which basically means he's a ridiculously powerful old lizard with insatiable greed and an indefatigable sense of innate superiority. We don't really have anything shiny enough to draw his interest and dragons as a general rule don't acknowledge debts to non-dragons— or even acknowledge most non-dragons at all to be honest. Best advice if we run into him would be to just… try to look small and unappetizing."

Leigh looked discontentedly at me with a frown.

"Which will be much easier for you as an Eldborn. Apparently, you all taste terrible."

"Sorry I'm not delicious?" I quipped at him with a smirk. He rolled his eyes and kept going.

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"There's Throne, Emperor Kraken of the Undersea. Probably the least interacted with of the Named just because of his location down that far— and because it has never been seen doing anything but fighting other giant monsters. It's the size of a small continent, which makes even trying to talk to it a bit of a non-starter. You'd have to get its attention first somehow, and good luck with that."

"I guess it would be kinda hard to talk to a Kaiju squid mid-combat…" I muttered. Leigh nodded before continuing.

"Exactly. The fifth Named is Gilgamog, the Ancient Turtle, who is… very, very weird." He said, his face wrinkling in consternation. "It isn't native to our universe, but at the same time, it's been here basically forever. As I understand it, the creature has a somewhat tenuous link to reality. It exists at everywhen, but only one where at any given time."

"Uh… what??" I blinked, trying to wrap my head around that one.

"Yeah, I've got nothing, kid. Apparently, it experiences all of time simultaneously, but can still only be in one place at any given point. Also, the future is a web of possibilities, which means it has memories of multiple branching futures that may or may not happen but from its perspective already did… all of them inevitable, yet mutually exclusive. I have absolutely no idea how that works, but talking about it is an excellent way to get free drinks in Nar'Aelith. Just get a Magister ranting about 'acausal matrices' and watch the ale flow."

He smiled dreamily in fond remembrance of whatever alcohol-induced adventures he'd gotten up to, while I rolled my eyes in response.

“And the last one?” I prompted him.

“Xoa, the first Titan. Sometimes just called ‘the Firstborn’, it’s probably the… friendliest is the wrong word, but I can’t think of one that translates to ‘least directly antithetical to the concept of mortal civilization’. Titans are elemental consciousnesses of pure energy that come into being when an event causes an area to become oversaturated with magical power for an extended period. Xoa’s ‘event’ was the aetheric chaos from the creation of the universe.

It used to wander around the world, just kinda doing its own thing. People could talk to it, but you needed a very strong will to not be driven insane when it spoke. Something about the 'lingering echoes of creation itself' resounding within Xoa's voice."

Leigh paused, rubbing his chin thoughtfully.

"That's it for the big ones. None of them except Dezzahn have been seen since shortly after the Fall. Most people assumed— and probably hoped— they'd all died with whatever killed the Achorai."

"Big ones?" I asked.

"Yep. The top of the ranks, so to speak. If you want me to list every Beast Lord and minor god on Haven, I'm gonna need access to the Mysterium archives and a few months to research first. Assuming I’m not still banned, anyway. There was this teensy little misunderstanding—"

I waved him off with a tired chuckle.

"Nah, we're good. I'm impressed you know as much as you do in the first place. In my old world, we can barely keep track of things that happened two hundred years ago, let alone over eight thousand."

"Well, it isn't exactly historians pouring through ancient archives and dusty ruins for most of this information." He mused. "More like, 'Oh yeah, I think my grandpa was there. Hang on, I'll go ask him.' It may be remarkable from the perspective of the unaided human lifespan, but magic changes things. It isn't exactly common, but there're plenty of people alive today who remember the Fall first-hand. Hell, there are a couple of old monsters on the Mysterium council that've been around since the height of the Achoran Empire. Doesn't hurt that the Achorai also had a penchant for carving important records right into ward-stone."

Murmuring an absent-minded acknowledgment, I took a second to process the reality of beings that ridiculously ancient just walking around the street. The number of things someone with that kind of lifespan would have experienced…

That's gonna be me, someday. I can't even begin to imagine what that's like.

Anxious thoughts of my impending immortality kept me company while we ascended the crude elevator being hauled up the side of the ship. I was again struck by the sharp contrast between these ships and the Duchess Corinne; with the latter's gloomy adherence to militant austerity beating you over the head with every step, and the former assaulting your eyes with a kaleidoscopic blast of colors and rune-marked canvas.

We arrived at the room Nezzick had set aside for me (apparently) and I was slightly annoyed to find it was significantly larger than my cabin back on the Duchess. I was also surprised to see Lyr'Rael standing unaided in the center of the room, doing an odd mix of brandishing and leaning heavily on her enchanted glaive. When we entered she glared fiercely at me before pointing a trembling hand at the room's single bed.

"If you think, for one moment, that I am sharing your—"

"Whoa whoa, slow down." I interrupted, raising my hands in mock surrender. "Listen, I already have a girlfriend, and she's awesome. She's also a little jealous and a lot better at incinerating things than I am. I've got my own room on another ship— I've never used this one and honestly, I didn't know it even existed until a few minutes ago. As far as I'm concerned, this place is yours until you get tired of it and decide to leave. No expectations."

The glare softened and was quickly replaced by a mixture of bewilderment and suspicion.

"Why are you helping me?" She asked quietly.

I thought about that for a moment before answering.

"Because… because I know what it's like to wake up one day with nothing, in a completely new world, and to need the kindness of strangers to live. I'll talk to Nezzick— let him know if there's anything you need. For now, you should probably get some rest before that Wyydham lady pops out of a shadow somewhere."

Lyr'Rael snorted almost unwillingly and nodded.

"Thank you."

With that we left her, stopping by the shaman to make sure she would have everything she needed before we headed back to the Duchess. On the way out, Leigh patted me on the shoulder.

"Good work there kid."

"Figured I could pay some things forward, you know?" I replied.

"No, I meant about making the whole 'girlfriend' thing clear right off the bat. That ship is made of wood and we are definitely in range if Shani gets mad."

He pantomimed a blast of fire incinerating the both of us with thematically appropriate whooshing and crashing noises. I shuddered and nodded vigorously.

"Yep, speaking of, I'm gonna go tell her about everything before Grafton completely villainizes me and we get roasted anyway."

Leigh took a few 'accidental' steps to the side, opening up some distance between us.

"You mean before you get roasted. For once in my life, I am an innocent bystander."

I laughed at his antics, but couldn't help but notice that we both definitely sped up on our way back.