It was a quiet evening in my new home, and I was struggling to find a purchase on the moment as I stood on the cliff and looked out. I'd never lived an extrovert's life before, but now I was kind of obliged to. It was more than just the people of our new clifftop temple, more than Alanna and Miana, more than Felli and Raine and Muir.

Erika had apparently plotted the whole thing with three gods becoming one Church. I thought it was odd when Miana brought it up, and I honestly was still pissed that the Arch Sorceress was so eager to meddle in our lives, but her meddling had so far only ever turned into very expensive successes. I didn't know how much I wanted to trust the fox, and might not if I disliked either of them, but... I didn't, and they didn't seem to dislike me, either.

Honestly... I should have resisted more. This was a major commitment for all of us, but none of us really understood what was going to happen. I was still new to the whole world, and yet it felt like I'd just gotten married to two strange women, and we were all immortal, and if like a whole lot of marriages we ended up not feeling it after a few years or decades it would be damned messy divorce.

But it wasn't about fun or beauty or money or sex, and it wasn't a shotgun wedding orchestrated by an angry parent or other outsider. We weren't faking anything, even if the decision turned out to be foolish later. We were scared and we trusted each other and the world would destroy us if we didn't come together. Erika's meddling aside, we each had a chance to say no. Didn't we? Didn't I?

In the meantime, I was the one with the least baggage, and that didn't mean 'none'. I'd tried to trade some of the diamond flame to the Djinn for help with magical stuff, but the energy wouldn't transfer, or not easily. I was able to let her see the stuff, in a strange sense, and she was intrigued. Apparently none of the types of soulflame were deliberately created; the appearance could be tuned, but each was somehow an impure form of 'pure' flame, the so-called Clearflame. Diamond flame was a strange flame, and she wasn't quite sure of its properties except that it was reasonably dense and seemed to be linked to all three of us.

Since we'd apparently impressed her, the djinn did deign to give us a name, though clearly not her true name; she called herself Colle, and she gave me a few hints on modifying the divine token that shielded the cliff dwellings, and also suggested modifying the extra Key I had to unify the three of us into a church. The first was tricky enough; I didn't want to try the second until we could agree on what the unified church would mean magically, spiritually, and religiously. Were we three aspects of the same divine being? Loose allies? Or very tightly bound allies that were still independent of one another?

Meanwhile, Raine had gotten very cagey, and Muir was being a bitch. I loved them both, in some ways more because they were their own people and not just blind followers, but it certainly they weren't eager to make my job easy. Muir at least I understood, but Raine clearly had a problem that she was afraid to bring up, and I was giving her space and time. Soon enough, we'd figure it all out, I was sure.

So I took every day one at a time. I wasn't ready to plan anything out; with all of the unknowns, it would be foolish to even try. The refugees were mixed about staying, which was fine; the town wasn't ready for inhabitants except in the roughest sense, and our status as a hidden temple meant that it would be tricky to get supplies. People could go and come back, though, and some promised to do exactly that, bringing things that they could never have carried on their backs. We'd need to have a more developed trail through the woods, but that was also kind of a giveaway that something was hidden here... well... it was complicated.

The one thing that wasn't complicated was my ever-increasing love for the place. The temple building proper was an exquisite work of art, with hidden ways and small secret chambers and hideaways and nooks that I'd not even asked them to create or include. When the temple was quiet, I could hear the gentle roar of the waterfall below, and I could always feel the pounding water and the thin mist hanging in the air around the town. The slope of the river was gentle enough that I could wade into it and cool my feet; the wind that was always passing one way or the other over the cliff brought the smells of near and far into a pleasant mix.

Meanwhile, there was enough hidden room in the cliff for the three gods to have their own free space, not to mention the few Blades that chose to remain in hiding there. Alanna insisted that each have a separate way out, so that we need not brush awkwardly into each other when going about our lives. At the same time, I insisted that we have a shared space for when we chose to meet, which led to an unnecessarily large and formal room that I would have much preferred was actually a lounge and separate joint office.

Alanna was working out the logistics of moving in, while Miana was trying to wrestle with the changes in her church. I dealt with the day to day of the settlement, but there weren't, for the moment, any fires to put out, so I just sat on the cliff feeling the wind and watching the world.

There was a constant nagging sense, of course, that I was messing everything up. I probably was. I wanted to do better; I wanted to be better. We had time, though.

As I sat there feeling the breeze, I caught a faint whiff of smell--no more than that, and smiled to myself. She always had a way of sneaking up on me. "Hello, Erika."

"You're getting good at that." As always, the fox was barefoot as she slipped up next to me and looked over the woods. "Are the portals making a noise?"

"It's the smell. Not much around here that produces ozone."

She gave a reluctant growl that I took as appreciating my sharp senses. As she looked out over the cliff, she said as though idly, "The view from my place is better."

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

I turned to glance at her, but she kept her eyes locked on the horizon. "Does this mean I'm invited to play at your place sometimes, dear fox friend?"

Erika could not have rolled her eyes harder, and gave a sigh of exasperation. "Not if you treat me like a kid. Come on, I think you deserve a little dose of perspective yourself."

In the time it took me to stand up, I was somewhere else. As I'd expected, the place she brought me was all dimly lit metal, a utilitarian look that screamed of Earth military projects. From what I could tell, we weren't brought to any kind of teleporter room; it was just an empty room, with a single exit door, with one of those industrial door levers instead of a knob, and a small wire-reinforced glass panel that didn't give me much of a view outside. I glanced around the place, finally returning my attention to Erika herself, who was watching me.

"No questions?" Her face had a guarded expression in the dimness. Alone with her, I realized again that she was a fair bit shorter than me, for what little that mattered.

"Oh, I'm curious about a lot of things." I just looked at her. From what she'd said, if her technology was vulnerable to magic, me trying to do magic here would probably screw things up. She was hesitant to trust me. "But honestly, I'm gonna have my hands full. If I fill my head with trivia right this minute I think I'm gonna regret it."

Erika, the last Arch Sorceress, watched me for a moment more, then laughed once. "Okay." She gestured, and started walking out of the room. "Come on, the viewing room's over here. Can I ask you a question?"

"Of course."

"How long has it been since HELIDER disappeared? Be as specific as you can." She paused, one hand on the door handle, not looking in my direction, and waited as I squinted uneasily at her.

"HELIDER... that was almost a century ago." I did some mental math. "Ninety...two years ago now. When I went under, I guess that was March 23rd."

"Ninety two years. I guess the estimate was off by a few percentage points after all." Erika opened the door and walked soundlessly through the metal corridor outside.

My own boots seemed to thunk, squeak, or at least tap with every step, but no matter how I concentrated, I could not hear a thing from her. She moved through her home like a ghost.

Finally, though, we came to what she called the viewing room, a name with no irony. The glass panes overlooking the planet below stretched out like an IMAX theater screen, stories tall and almost a hundred feet wide. A few asteroids hung at the edges, just enough to provide proof that we were hidden in the planetary ring.

It was a breathtaking view, even though I had no context. It made me forget, for a moment, that there shouldn't be gravity here, but I felt ashamed for being surprised a moment later. How could I possibly be amazed at that, by now?

"This year, the facility will have been in orbit around the planet Draco for two hundred and sixteen thousand, and seventy eight local years." Erika's voice sounded deader inside than I had ever heard it. "A local year is, by my estimate, about a quarter longer than Earth's. I am the eight hundred and twenty third clone of the original genetically engineered biocomputer, which itself was tailor made to accept ERIKA's original consciousness. The original is long since gone. We have her memories, but we don't want them."

"She lived for someone who is long gone. She wanted us to live for him, forever." The fox turned her dead eyes to me. "Forever is a very long time, young god. Longer than you can possibly imagine."

I shivered, but was unable to look away from those eyes.

"So we try to live for the people. But they're nothing like us. And we dare not become like them." Erika gestured, and a bottle of liquid--clearly, from the size and shape, alcohol--slid across the room on a very thin rail of light, and she plucked it up and uncapped it. I thought for a long moment she was going to toast something, but she put the bottle to her lips and didn't drop it until it was empty.

I watched her, aware now more than ever that this was perhaps the most vulnerable she would ever be, to anyone. She discarded the bottle, as though at random, but it was caught by some magic and spirited away to be refilled or recycled.

With my attention caught by the bottle, I was startled when her claws sank into my arm. Her eyes, when I met them again, were terrifying--deep, and at the bottom, a nearly unfathomable resentment.

On her breath, when she whispered, I could smell alcohol, and some kind of spice. "You're like me," she hissed quietly. "More than you know. You'll be trapped, lost, confused. Made to live someone else's life. And unlike the other gods, you know what I am, where I come from. I can't tell them because they won't understand. But you. I can talk to you."

"I will keep you alive and keep your stupid church alive. We'll trade favors. But I warn you, Ryan Thomas Valentine. I warn you because when the time comes I won't be able to warn you."

"I am insane, Ryan Thomas Valentine." Erika's claws dug deeper into my arm, and I felt blood running down it. "There has not been a soul I could talk to in nearly one hundred thousand years. I am sick. Sick, sick." Her voice grew darker, colder. "Sick, sick, sick of being alone. But you can't be here, can't come here, not for more than a moment. No one can. And I can't leave. I can't."

As close as she was, as drunk as she was, I thought she might kiss me, but she let go, and flicked her hand resolutely, shaking most of the blood from it. "I will play games with you, but don't you ever play games with me. I am broken, and I am all that remains. You must be my outlet. I must talk. I must be a person at least a few hours a month or there will be nothing le--"

She was interrupted by my laugh, and she cocked her head at me. I shook mine in return. "A few hours a month? We can talk once a day if you want."

She gave me a look like she wanted to believe that, but was having trouble. "I'm telling you that I'm insane."

"That's probably why you've been able to manipulate all the rest of us." I took a step back, and then sunk to the floor. "Be honest--who among all of my new friends and allies is sane, Erika? The djinn? Either of the goddesses? Dear departed Xenma--where is he now? I lost track of his spirit once I let it go. My vicars?"

There was a long silence then, and I turned to look out the window. The view, as she said, was far better than my cliff, if nowhere near as detailed. In a way, it was familiar, although it was a world I'd never seen. The concept was familiar, and in a world of magic, that was hard enough to come by.

So when the silence became deafening, I turned to look back around for Erika, but she had gone. I traced my steps, hesitantly, back to the room where I'd arrived. As I suspected, when I stepped back onto the platform, I found myself once more on the cliff.

I looked up at the planetary ring--the Arch--still visible in the daylight, and my eye alighted on the one shining speck that I knew was the Arch Sorceress' abode. "You'll be fine," I said to that speck, without knowing or caring whether she could hear me. "We'll all be fine. We'll figure something out."

And then I covered the claw marks in my arm and went back to taking care of the people around me. What else could I do but live one day at a time? Being a god was just being a leader--with all the responsibilities and frustrations that came with it. Being saddled with one more broken soul to take care of was all a part of the job.