So all of that happened, and a lot of things make a lot more sense for knowing it, but this story doesn’t have much to do with any of it. See, when people say Iavshet, they mean the surface of the continent, not the underground, where the Nayyosa live; and they don’t mean the Temples and the Dungeons, which are these weird kinda-liminal, kinda-space-warped places that are more sideways than down.

Anyway, when the Lady of the Crossroads, I mean, I guess Lady Sheid started out more like Lady of the Pond but that’s not as nice of an epithet, you know? Lady Sheid took down the First to Fall, or ate it after someone else did, and when the first person who wasn’t physically there heard the story, that was the day the Breathing ended. And on that day, every living sed had the same vision, but only a few of them were able to interpret it, and here’s what they said: on the day the Goddess War ends, not that they called it that or knew what the name of it was, but on the day when the oncoming storm has triumphed over structure and nature alike, that’s the day when the last sed living on the surface of Iavshet dies.

Now, there’s a bunch of politics that I don’t know a lot about, ‘cause when you’re on the level of Do’s dam or Mama, you don’t usually feel like explaining yourself to someone you have an epoch on, and I don’t actually know how many epochs they have on me. Maybe not even one, because even if they all lived through the last thresh before the rebellion, they didn’t necessarily live through the one before; but that doesn’t really matter. What does matter is this: there were a few tens of thousands of sed when the Breathing ended, and of the nine families, five took the warning seriously and started to try to figure out what was going on.

And meanwhile, the war raged.

From the Pillars of the Sky to the Giants’ Steps, from the Islanders who back then only lived in the very northwest to the islands of Arcadia, floating over the bays and inlets on the eastern shore, the spirits of the land started to make deals and alliances and bargains with mortals and the last few Irons. They wanted, the spirits wanted and the mortals wanted, to kill this other spirit or to guard against that spirit, to be powerful enough to build stability and peace. But peace was always another death away; there was always someone on the new border, always some new threat on the horizon, some other godling—’cause that’s what they were, by the time they ate a few spirits or bled a couple of Firstborn or Irons, not that that’s anything more than just a word, godlings—would have an eye on them.

And then a godling ate another godling. All the way killed and ate, not just defeated and sent scattering and consumed their powerbase, consolidated, and incorporated as part of them, but dismembered and rendered the other godling down to raw power, no volition or aspect left. So, well, the way it’s usually told is and so rose the first God, and we really don’t know much about the process but there was a lot of dying involved as the wars went one way and the other all the way across the continent.

Eventually, there were nineteen Gods, and the war wasn’t over, and it wasn’t going to be over until there was only one left. And all of them, every last one of them, had their eyes on the sed, we think because the sed built the System that was empowering them and the sed were the only thing really that could take them down again if they won that last fight. But we’re not sure, nobody is sure, because the Gods weren’t telling anyone and they still aren’t.

There’s something that most people don’t know about the younger sed, not just me and Do but everyone under about two thousand years of surface time. We’re not like the older sed; we’re more and we’re less, more ourselves and less sed, even if we’re still totally, completely sed, and there really isn’t words in any language for it, but it’s like we don’t just love the highest untrammeled power in the concrete and abstract both; we love everything, we hyperfixate on everything, and we give our entire hearts to everyone in our lives every minute of the day. The old sed, the ones on the surface? They couldn’t have taken action to stop the Gods, because they couldn’t want to stop the Gods, it just wasn’t in their nature, they don’t have the dynamic equilibrium that lets them go no, I worship the miracle that is every blade of grass and every note sung, not just the tree and the great chord.

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So the five families, they did the only thing they could. They loved the Gods, loved all nineteen of them that were still alive, and they said look, remember when we did what was best for the Firstborn? It took everything the five Matriarchs had to say actually, we’d rather not die, and what they actually said was actually, we’d rather not sully the hands of the Gods with our blood and our deaths. And those five Matriarchs, there was Mama Vix and Auntie Zka who is Do’s dam, and there were Tasha and Za’ava and Akava, they brought with them everyone they could, a little less than one sed in twenty, and they found the only place where the Gods couldn’t reach.

Lady Sheid was already here, and no other people, or so they wrote, when the five walked into the Godsforsaken Temple. And I know they’re stuck here just like Zidanya was, just like all of us are, but I’m pretty sure they won whatever contest they were doing, and what they wound up with was the best victory they could make. ‘Cause this isn’t the Godsforsaken Temple anymore; it’s the Temple of the Godsforsaken Wanderer, and there are people here now. Imprints were a new thing, and now they’re older than just about anyone remembers, but it’s like a kind of immortality, even if it’s mostly stasis.

And the other big reason why I think they won and built the best future they could for themselves is ‘cause they had me.

People have kids here in the Temple. It takes a lot of cont, a lot of contribution, to be able to even start, and you gotta do the work nobody wants to do for a long time, but your kids are gonna grow up and you’re gonna be there for them, cause they won’t be around except when you have time to raise ‘em, or someone else does. And then your kids are gonna say actually magic is great but fighting is awful, and you’re gonna do that thing with your eyes that your daughter doesn’t get but that says you’re proud of yourself and of her, and you’re gonna turn the whole place upside down all over again.

It wasn’t even me who was the first to call for the Puzzling Tourney, but it was smaller when I was a kid. It took Mama Vix and Akava working together to make it something where there was enough energy retained that Lady Sheid would let as many people do it as they wanted to, and do it freeform instead of solving practical problems all the time, and they only did it cause I asked them to. And then I was gone for a few cycles learning about magic and when I came back it was a whole thing, and I was a second-ringer for a whole cycle, and I didn’t solve a single puzzle on the big board, and I loved it anyway.

This is my story. It’s the story of me, sure, but I’m just a little part of my own story. My story starts back when the Temple was made, and even the Firstborn don’t have an answer to that, ‘cause it was here when they woke up. My story is the story of Mama Vix and the rest of the Five, my story is the story of three of ‘em inventing a whole new school of magic to save a few people, my story is the story of the sed trying to change themselves to be different so that maybe one day we can be a real ilk of kindred that isn’t beholden to anyone.

My story is the story of the people who were nice to me when I was so bad at this. It’s the story of the people who told me, every time I couldn’t find the answer and couldn’t understand what I was missing, that it was okay. It’s the story of everyone who cheered when I did find the answer, or found a question they couldn’t answer, and who kept teaching me what they could.

And I guess it’s the story of outlasting by running away. The Goddess, well, she’s forsaken now; we’re still alive. We have a saying, our memory encompasses all those who would have destroyed us, ‘cause we remember more than three times how it went down, but I don’t actually know any of the other stories. Just the Firstborn, the Goddess, and the Temple.

Anyway, that’s why I still walk the rings every Tournament. It’s a respect thing; I earned my place and I did it on the shoulders of everyone who helped me, everyone who taught me. We all did, me and Do and Nik and Annak and Shar. Well, okay, maybe not Do, since Do is oldest of all of us and was in Auntie Zka’s belly when she walked into the Temple, but Do walks the rings with us anyway. First ring, second ring, one at a time and no skips, take everyone we run into seriously like they’re one of us.

That’s my story. That’s me, that’s us, from Do whose mama is Khazka the Strongest to me whose mama is Mama Vix, who is the best. The Temple-born, the lost but not forsaken.