The instructions on the paper said to leave the note at the window one hour prior, which I did, with the note marked "Yes" and "Here", to indicate that I would meet this phantom Patron, here and not at my own Temple. I left it folded under a small rock, so that the wind would not blow it away.

I did seriously consider meeting away from here, I just... honestly wasn't sure which was going to be more trouble. The note itself suggested this place over that, but... she did leave it up to me. I honestly just wished that I knew what was going on.

The last few hours had been torture. I had not revealed any of this to Raine, of course; Alanna communicated with me briefly just to give me a list of idiotic moves she wanted to make sure I wouldn't make, but she had little else to say. So Raine had eaten a quick dinner and gotten more rest, and I sat or paced the last few hours, feeling time seem to slow to a crawl. At around the one hour mark, I heard something odd and discovered the paper missing, but sensed nothing. That got me wound up again, but all I could do was pace.

Until, finally, at a moment when my back was turned from my bed, I heard a sound and turned to discover a wolf- or fox-hybrid woman sitting on my bed, dressed in what might be best described as a plain ensemble of T-shirt woven of something like silver thread, a rugged pair of calf-length shorts of a similar material, and nothing else. She was... holding a glass of liquor in one hand, and I realized immediately that she stank of alcohol.

She raised her glass at me. "Hello, Ryan Valentine. It is a pleasure to meet you, and my name is Erika." She took a short swig from the glass, leaving it around half full. "I am sure you have questions."

"Are you drunk?"

"I suppose that's an important place to start, isn't it? Yes, I am." Erika leaned back against the wall. "Nervous... I have a... habit. A very bad habit that I hope I won't pass on to my descendant. I drink too much. I try not to, but... I always do this."

I felt like my whole world was crashing down around me. After everything--all the waiting, the stressing, the fear that everything was going to fall apart... "Why now? What the hell is going on?"

"Ah, those," she started to gesture with the hand that held her liquor, and when the glass got in the way, she tossed it aside, shattering it against the floor and spilling what remained. "those are the important questions, they are the reason I am here today."

"As for now... as for why now, the reason is simple. I have a lot of things that keep me from being able... from being able to do what I want when I want. I have an Enemy, you see, and I have to do things when he isn't watching. And I have problems with... with the generators. I want your help with that. That's the favor. We'll... we'll talk about that another time."

As I watched the woman before me, mortified at just how stupid this whole situation seemed to be, I felt something strange. I could almost swear that she was becoming... less drunk, slowly, but far, far faster than a mortal would or should. Was it my imagination?

"But the biggest reason why now, Ryan Valentine, is because now is when it happens. The chances of you surviving the next week or so are pretty... pretty slim. Its weird to say it but I have faith in you, faith that you can do what... what I can't. I can't because... I won't. But someone needs to. I am tired of watching it all fall apart. This could have gone another way, but I don't want that. They are right, their plan will work, but I don't like it."

"What plan? What is going to happen? What the hell is going on?" I wanted to scream, 'And who the hell are you?' but honestly, among everything else that was going on, that was the least important thing I could possibly ask.

"The first question," she pointed a finger at me, squinting in the dimness as though she couldn't quite see, "is nothing. The other two questions are in fact the same question, because now is when it happens."

"Erika." I tried to put as much seriousness into my voice as I could. "What is happening?"

"You have to promise me you still stay in this room for the next ten minutes," said Erika, still pointing right at my face. She gave a bit of a finger wag as though that was going to dissuade me from arguing. "Or you won't get any help from me in the future."

This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

I had been prepared to do... a lot of things. But swearing an oath to a drunk woman? I wrestled with the thought for a long moment, but right now, she was the only one who had answers, and if she really was sobering up like she seemed to be... I sighed. "You told me I had to do what you said. I understand. But--"

"No buts. I am drinking tonight to run away, Ryan Valentine--"

After the third time being called by my old name, I was starting to get sick of it. "Stop calling me that!" I snapped at her. "It's not my name anymore."

"Of course... Ryan." She finally lowered her hand and gave me a smile, one I didn't like. "I am running away because this is all my fault. When you can change the world, everything is your fault. Someday you'll feel the same way. Everyone does." She turned and looked at the broken glass on the floor, but made no move to clean it up, or... anything else. "This is all my fault."

I was fed up to here with having to repeat myself. "What is happening?"

"Ciel'ostra is dying," said Erika. "Painfully, miserably. And all of her power is being stolen by your enemy. Her enemy. Do not leave." Her last words were sharp and heavy, and I barely heard them.

My first instinct had been to turn towards the door, but I didn't make it more than a step before I stopped. I could have knocked the door off its hinges with godly power, stormed off to Pal'lud or Bia'nella or... somewhere... and done what?

Emotions stormed through my chest. The only reason why I stopped was because I had been thinking about it for days--why was it so important that I follow her directions? Now, in the instants after she told me what was going on, an analytical part of my mind, unaffected by my emotions, pieced the situation together, and things fell into place.

Leaving would get me killed.

"You are a smart one. I thought you would be." Erika stood up, her bare, humanoid feet making no noise on the stone floor. "The necromancer will take her power and open a portal from there to here. An army will pour out into Balant. This city will fall, and all who live here will be killed." Erika reached out and took my hand. "They need a place to go, Ryan of Eyes. Xethram. Ryan Thomas Valentine--Rythva. You want to build a temple in a place where there is no town, a place nobody knows. These people must flee, must hide, in order to survive. Your being here was fortuitous, but the work is not done. There are two more pieces to this puzzle, and those pieces will be found far from here, in a place I cannot reach, and you can."

"I have faith in you, Ryan--Xethram. Faith that you can do something I cannot." She gave a short laugh when she said my godly name--was it really that bad--and pursed her lips when she paused for a moment. "You have to convince gods to care about the mortal world once more. If you can do that, you may not only survive and save the lives of many thousands, but become a god in your own right, not merely one who was handed godhood."

There was a quiet that fell over the room. For my part, I was still furious, but more than that... I felt like there was still a fog over my mind that hadn't lifted yet. A confusion, something that I didn't understand.

"Why me? Why can't you save her? Why... all of this?"

Erika looked me in the eyes, and I could tell for sure this time that she was less drunk than she'd been a few minutes ago. If anything, I thought I sensed a giant headache starting to come over her, as though she was moving from drunk to instantly hung over. In the meantime, she seemed to handle the pain with practiced apolomb.

"My enemy does not know how weak I am," she said quietly, and I felt like I was hearing something that should never have been spoken. "If he did... he would run rampant over the world. I have power... power to stop him. But if he saw me use it, if he saw how weak I was becoming, he would understand that he could win the war. He intends to go to war with the whole world, Ryan. I know he does; he told me so, and I read his mind. He meant every word of it."

"George was... always so stupid," she said, giving me little explanation, and her voice became quiet. "Back then, he was a tyrant... a militant idiot who thought, who genuinely thought that he could rule the whole world with force. He was what other people made him, and we... should have killed him. But Robert wouldn't do that." Her voice took on a mocking edge, although she was staring at nothing, as though the corner of the bed carried a face I could not see. "He put him in jail, in stasis... and eventually George woke up, escaped, fled to the surface."

"George killed most of us," Erika whispered. "I have her memories of those days, those years. Before we dropped the veil, before we let the world resume, George could have destroyed it all. He wants it and we can't let him--"

Suddenly, Erika paused, and I realized that she had accidentally moved her hand. The feel of her fingers on my skin must have been foreign to her, because she was snapped out of a trance she had not been aware of. I saw the light return to her eyes, aware only after the fact that it had dimmed as she was dragged back into a memory, a nightmare from the past.

"I shouldn't have said anything," said Erika suddenly. "We can talk about this, maybe... but not now. You are going to die if you can't get the help of the gods, R--Xethram. I will tell you what I know, but you must do this on your own, or it will not have any meaning."

I met Erika's eyes, and found that she had definitely sobered significantly, but was also furious--and the rage bubbling under her surface wanted to consume her.

So she spoke, and I listened. As the picture unfolded, while I still didn't know what to make of the woman before me, I became more and more certain that about two things: first, without her, I would, not, could not possibly have survived.

And second, it was all their fault.