"Do you worship any gods?" the boy asked one day, as they trudged ever onward through the Red Barrens. They had been traveling eastward for over sixty days now, three full turns of Selene, with no end to the journey in sight. The boy was unfamiliar with the distances involved, but he was fairly certain that they should soon be within sight of the Gravel Sea. He was anxious to see how his teacher planned to cross the fabled natural hazard, and silently prayed to any god that was listening, that their journey go smoothly. He was mildly curious if Eurya ever did the same.

His teacher scoffed at the question. "Which god deserves my worship?"

The boy sighed and shook his head. That was as final an answer as any. At least he was well used to her casual blasphemy by now.

She noted his reaction with a small smile. "Athun worships War, yes? Your people pray to them before battles and after victories?"

"Yes." His father had often spoken about the mass offerings to War that had preceded major battles. Though the god had never made an appearance on the battlefield themself, the boy liked to believe that War looked favorably upon these gifts.

"A word of warning, Nicos" Eurya said. "The gods don't hear your prayers. And if they did, most would not care."

He took a conspicuous step away from her, the madwoman. "Are you not afraid that your blasphemy might have consequences?"

"Consequences?" she asked. Her arms spread wide, palms facing upward. "Like what? Will War drop out of the sky upon me for calling them a toothless old relic?"

The boy flinched and scanned the heavens, just in case. War had never been described as particularly petty, but who could truly know the minds of the gods? The Twins burned merrily above, mocking his plight, and no answer was forthcoming.

"See?" Eurya said after a moment, as if she'd just proven something important. "Nothing to be afraid of, Nicos."

"Says you," the boy muttered.

His teacher was a lunatic.

"Says I," she repeated. "And because I am your teacher, and am vastly more experienced than you in these matters, I'm certain that you will believe me."

He slowed his pace slightly and looked up at her. With a hesitant voice, he said, "I believe you aren't afraid of them, teacher, but I do not have your skills." Nor her almost suicidal lack of self-restraint. The boy would never back down from a challenge, but the gods were the gods.

Eurya came to a stop, and the boy stopped beside her. The Keeper paused at her other shoulder, silent, but watching. She stared across the featureless wasteland that stretched before them, her mouth chewing on words unspoken. At last, she turned to him.

"It's not about skill, Nicos," she tried to explain. "It's about understanding what you face. Ignorance breeds fear. Knowledge grants courage."

The boy shook his head. "But the gods are unknowable."

His teacher barked out a laugh. "The gods are as knowable as anything. Easier, even. By the Empty, boy, their names tell you all you'd need to know." She poked him in the chest. "It is Memory that gives birth to the gods. Our Memory." She gestured between them. "People. Thinking beings. The gods are nothing more than concepts given life by us. Nothing but people, writ large. Worse than that, even. They are slaves to their concepts, to the perception by which they are viewed. There can be no growth for them, not from within."

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The boy was frozen, struck numb by her words. Eurya towered over him, a vast, unknowable existence, speaking truths men were not meant to know. She leaned forward, eyes boring down.

"War is war," she said. "Not victory in war. Not the glory of war. War. All of it. The good and bad. Just as wars can end in defeat, so too can War be defeated." She paused, then added, "That's not to say they stay defeated. For as long as there is war, there will be War."

"That can't be true," the boy whispered. It defied everything he'd ever been taught. The gods forged the world. Immortal deities, existing above the rest, knowing only victory.

Eurya turned away from him, and continued onward. "You are old enough to make your own judgement, Nicos. But that judgement should not be guided by fear. Never by fear."

"I'm not afraid," the boy lied. "It's just that the gods are different. They have to be different."

The Keeper spoke, finally, "How are they different, Nicos?"

He couldn't answer. Not at first.

They continued in silence, trudging forward across the empty landscape as the boy's mind quietly churned. The texture of the ground shifted slightly beneath his feet as he walked, going from packed earth to loose soil. The ground held a gentle slope, like the curve an enormous hill. A few turns ago, the distance they had traveled today would have exhausted him. Weariness felt almost like a thing of the past, yet he knew it was an illusion. He was mortal.

"The gods are eternal."

The keeper laughed. "No, boy. Nothing is eternal."

"They cannot die," the boy protested. "Teacher said it herself."

They crested the hill at long last, and his feet came to a stop of their own accord. A vast sea of murky, undulating black met his eyes. It extended in every direction, as far as the eye could see. It swallowed the very horizon. A roiling expanse of shifting stone and mud.

The Gravel Sea.

"Everything dies, eventually," Eurya replied without inflection, as they gazed at the sight. "Gods just die harder than most."

"What is this place?" he asked. He'd never— not in his wildest dreams could he have imagined the sight before him. It seemed endless. a kingdom of living stone. He could hear it now, high above the sight. A soft crackling, a crumbling. The sound of slowly shifting rocks.

"Two gods fought here," Eurya explained, "a long, long time ago."

The boy's head snapped up to face her.

"A god of earth and stone against a god of sea and storms," she continued. "They were old. Old and strong. They fought here, alongside their worshipers."

"What happened to them?" the boy asked with hitched breath.

She faced him with a grim smile. "They died. The sea flooded the earth and the earth drank the sea. The two combined and became something else, entirely. The result is what you see before you."

"Memory," she repeated the word he'd heard so often. "The greater the act, the greater the echo. The world remembers, Nicos. Two gods died here, and the world remembers."

He turned back to the Gravel Sea, swallowing heavily. "How will we cross?" How could anyone cross that? It was endless.

"We wait," she said.

"For what?"

"For Memory to assert itself."

He didn't understand. Fortunately, the Keeper was there to pick up the slack.

"There are two Memories here," he said, waving at the broken earth. "The first is what you see before you. Two gods died, here. Their lives lasted millennia. Their deaths will last longer. The second, is what is to come, what always comes. Every year, on the same day. Something just as impactful, yet so very brief."

The boy's brow furrowed. What could it be? He gazed across the broken ground, searching for clues. His eyes drifted upwards, where white clouds drifted through the sky. The first that he'd seen since leaving Farathun. They seemed as endless as the ground below. A blanket over the roof of the world. Even the Twins were swallowed, casting the world into shadow. The earth trembled beneath his feet, soft vibrations that echoed out from somewhere far away. Shifting and grinding. Grey crags crumbled in the distance, and the ground seemed to move of its own accord.

What Memory could be as lasting as the death of a god? What act could echo so far into eternity?

"The battle," he said, as revelation struck.

High above the Gravel Sea, the clouds turned black.