“Hi. Where are you?”

“The Eldest Brother Gods’ Arm-Hill. The cliff part. Why?”

This was the very quick exchange I had at comms faux-tree near my house with Camellia, before heading up to the hill. With the cat.

The ichor trail gets narrower and narrower the further it gets from the Arc, and it seems to approach the foot of the hill. Goes on beyond the hill, on the road, but it definitely seems like they almost made the trail go up the hill before they stopped.

Up we go and there is Camellia, who was probably doing something before he heard me stomping up the hill.

“Hello.”

“Lavan, you’re not supposed to be here.”

“Neither are you.”

“I wanted to investigate.”

“So did I.”

“Why? At least it’s sort of relevant to my work, the gods will talk about this and have worries about the situation and whatnot, it will affect human-god interaction.”

“We do the SAME work though. How do you just forget something like–”

“Sorry.”

"Just because you're assigned to the slightly more humanoid gods doesn't mean my work isn't as important, just because the Arc gods talk about all this news in a way that makes no sense– they're still going to talk about it! Just in a horribly oblique way! I have as much reason to be here as you and my stupid inadequate work is–"

I decide to shut up suddenly. Because that's just too much and I think he gets the gist of it. I can't read his face but he probably gets it.

The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

A moment of silence and he says, “Sorry," again.

“Could've waited for updates from the others," I say. "Both of us."

"I just need to know, though." He gestures around flimsily like he wants to say what, "need to know" even means, but can't.

"Same. It's a flimsy reason. Since again, we could wait and it wouldn't really

“So there’s no point arguing this?”

“No.”

So I look around at the rocks. They create a border between the Brother Gods’ flesh and the dirt. Though of course, both have merged together through the decades, so most of the dirt is really just dead flesh. Point is, don’t wake up the gods. Do not bother them.

There’s ichor, but not a trail. Drops scattered.

“It seems the attackers came up here to… eh…” Camellia looks at a scroll he's taken out from his backpack. "Why did they sprinkle around the blood…"

"Maybe they're witches and this has something to do with the

"Also, why is the cat here?"

Oh right. I fully forgot about Ms Loaf, who is contently sleeping in my arms as of now.

"You were the first to say she might be a god. Or, no, you meant the oven, but the oven created her so…"

"Huh. You think the presence of ichor might…" He trails off and raises his eyebrows.

"Firstly, I wasn't thinking," is what I don't say, since he doesn't need to know that. Instead I opt for, "The oven is connected to her, and it felt better when she licked a bit of that ichor trail. Took her to Epi, who said she was fine. Epi also seems to know something about the witches thing, which…"

"So you've got a creature who was sprouted from a god sprout, who isn't physically connected to any network of god sprouts, but is still connected to the oven in some way somehow…"

"And I have no clue how that ties into the ichor." I shrug. "I'm not bringing her in front of any gods because that is not safe for a kitten, but there is definitely something going on."

At this moment, Loaf wakes up and yawns and we coo over her for a bit.

She then sees the scattered ichor drops and leaps towards them, hissing before she starts to lick it. Growling at them before licking each one.