I set the barrels down on the beach, if it could even be called one, and fell to my knees immediately. A wave of lethargy had struck me like a runner falling onto their face after crossing a marathon line. Except, instead of being exhausted, I was having a migraine.

Honna took a knee and offered me a canteen and some bread.

And by ‘migraine’, I’m referring to the existential fear caused by having your mind crumble into bits and pieces of unintelligible impulses and thoughts.

My mind too twirling too much to have a shred of self-awareness or concern, I simply leaned forward and opened my mouth. I wasn’t about to go through the effort of eating.

He looked at me funny. Then, he shrugged and shoved the bread stick into my mouth. I absently crushed the slightly stale wheat stuff between my teeth and swallowed. For the next minute, I was handed the bread as I regained coherency.

By the time He was finished stuffing me, I was sane enough to snatch the water from his hand and raise my head up to drink it. After a few seconds, I slurped down everything and handed it back to him.

He looked into the canteen, frowned, then placed his hand on its side and said, “Aqua Create.” He took a swig for himself, then capped it to his waist and pulled out another stick of bread. “You’re a hungry one, huh?” he said, chewing. [Though, looks like we’re running a bit low on food. I should’ve prepared a bit better.]

“Yeah,” I said breathily as I took in rapid breaths. I also took in the scenery.

The ‘beach’ was gravel.

Actually, to call it a beach would be a bit misleading. The entire ‘island’ seemed to be just a glorified plateau of gravel, so large that I couldn’t even see the end from a hundred meters up.

It wasn’t empty, though. What appeared to be ruins laid buried in the gravel, weathered and ancient. There were large stone bricks tossed all about, multiple arches half-buried in the gravel, all of which looked like they could collapse at any time, a rotted flag stuck upright in the ground, stained glass scattered about callously, and plenty of wood, which looked to have splintered off furniture.

Once I’d recovered enough, I asked, “So...what is this place?”

“I dunno,” Honna said. “We call it the Fallen Beach. So the legends go, a floating civilization the size of an island fell right on this spot. Who knows how long ago that was, though.” [Well, the gods would know.]

“Interesting. Where are we, though?”

[We should be...] Honna brought out a small map and rolled it out on his leg. He pointed to an island separated from a strange section of the central continent by a narrow sea. Given the scale of the map, the island had to have been the size of a territory.

Which was to say, if this beach had really flown in the past, it would have been the size of some countries.

“That’s...big,” I said, with a lack of better words.

“Yeah.” [Though, I gotta admit, it’s sobering to remember it crashed.] He drew a path through the map with his finger a few times, then nodded. “There shouldn’t be any monsters patrolling this island, especially since they’re mobilizing, so it’s no problem for us to take a more direct route up through here, though we definitely want to avoid the Crescent Land for as long as possible. Then, we’ll make it to the northeast Priority point, and from there we fly to the northern priority point.” He traced a path with his finger around the left side of the ‘Crescent Land’ and to a labeled priority point on the northern side of the landmass.

“So...I can’t just fly over the Crescent Land?” I asked.

“Duh. If we did that, the monsters would see us flying above them with two giant freakin’ cannon barrels. Nah, we ain’t doing that.”

“Thought so...” I looked to the horizon. The sun was beginning to rise, signing the...‘beginning’ of a new day.

It had never occurred to me that the concept of ‘when the day starts’ was meaningless until now.

“How about we rest here?” I asked.

Honna frowned at me. “We’ve only been out for eight hours,” he said. “It’ll be another sixteen before we finish this journey.”

I shook my head, waving away his concern. “Y-yeah, no,” I said, rubbing my head. “I can’t keep that up without resting.”

Honna looked out to the north and the great expanse of rubble before us. “You made it this far. We can at least stop at the end of the Fallen Beach, right?”

“I...” I began, my eyes twitching from the headache still pulsing through my brain. “I don’t think I can go back to doing that for...”

“An hour?” he asked. [If we keep this pace, it’ll be daybreak again by the time we finally get back.]

I nodded, still rubbing my head like it hurt. And it did, inside. If I started flying all over again, I would go into a fugue state quicker than I could remember what ‘fugue’ meant.

Honna stared at me seriously, speaking at me as if he were scolding my behavior. “We don’t know when the monsters will initiate their attack. If you really think it’s best that we stop, I can’t stop you, but looking at your expression...I get the feeling you’re not putting in your all.” [And we can’t afford to slack off like that. She should know that.]

That stopped me in my tracks. Up until now, he had acted a lot more kind and considerate, and he seemed like a chill guy, but now he was talking...down on me, like he understood anything I was going through!

“Excuse me?!” I said, furious. “Not putting in my all?! Seriously?”

He sighed as if speaking with me was too much of a pain for him to indulge. “I could have woken you up an hour later than now, and I’m sure you would have been fine. We need to make as much progress as we can because everyone is relying on us-”

“All they’re ‘relying’ on us for is transport!” I growled, putting a clenched hand to my chest. “We only learned that the monsters were on the way a few days ago, we have time -I’m not going to exhaust myself to the point of harm for the sake of saving an inconsequential amount of time!”

Honna put a hand to his forehead and sighed. [If this is the hill she’s going to die on, not much I can do.] “Whatever, let’s forget about it. We can just sleep beside the cannons or something and get rest, if you really need it so much.” He began to walk away, to one of the cannons I’d set down not far away.

I looked to him with indignant fury as he left, trying to find some sort of response to what he’d say, some excuse to continue the argument.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

In the end, I remained quiet.

Then, I sat down on the other side of the barrel and tried to sleep under the daylight.

I got angry, I got sad, I sent gravel flying with unconscious impacts, and then...

I fell asleep.

I had been skeptical that I could even sleep during the day, but it had been a whole lot easier than I’d expected. Actually, strangely easier. Perhaps I fell asleep easier when I was pissed to high hell, or maybe I’d just been so mentally exhausted that I slept like a...floating rock.

When I woke, it was nearing sunset, and there was a bag of bread, nuts, and interesting-looking roots set beside me. I absently chewed on them for a moment, reorganizing my thoughts soberly.

I felt embarrassed. Frustrated, too. I most certainly shouldn’t have tried to carry those barrels another hour, and I would never be able to carry them eight more hours to the priority point either, even after resting, but...

I mean, I was trying my...best.

I couldn’t say it fullheartedly. I could have gone a little longer. It would have hurt, but I could at least go an hour. Thinking about doing it for another hour made my stomach curdle in anticipation, even though I had gotten in some rest.

I sighed. Why did I need to overthink things like I always did.

I was so pathetic...

[Fair enough.]

I flipped around suddenly, startled. [What was-]

[Me, myself, I, Green.]

[Oh, hey there. It’s been a while.] I responded annoyedly.

[Yes, well, I’ve been a bit busy. I had to do a more thorough background check on you. I wasn’t aware you could read minds, before.]

[I wasn’t exactly hiding it. (Like, seriously, it never came up.) Plus, you ahd plenty of time to figure it out when I was with the Marionettes]

[Hmm. Well, I did have an inkling of it earlier, but I didn’t catch on.]

[Cool. So I suppose you’re the one who got me, uhh, ‘busted’(not that it really matters, I guess)]

[Oh, yes. I told Blue about it.] Green thought.

[Blue. I guess they’re another god?]

[Yes. Anyhow, where in the world are you? What’s going on?]

[Where am I? I dunno, some place called ‘The Fallen Beach’]

[Well that makes it easier to find you...one sec-]

...

Since he didn’t seem to be picking up, I decided to move on with my day. I didn’t exactly expect him to be on time after the last time he told me to wait a moment.

Honna had woken up not long before I had, in fact, and had his map was unwrapped in front of him while he ate the same stuff he’d given me.

I floated and stopped not far from him.

He looked up. “I guess you’re up,” he said.

“Uhh, yeah,” I began. I didn’t want him to hate me or anything, so I quickly began, “Look, about yes-”

“Sorry,” he said, scratching his head. “I probably shouldn’t have acted like I knew better than you, earlier. I’m just worried about getting there on time.” [You never know what shit will go down while you’re absent.]

There wasn’t really any reason to argue about who was in the wrong, even though I’d intended to admit I was, so I decided to leave it at that. “So, what are you doing?”

“Not much. Just recalculating our path. Chances are, at this pace, we’ll be over the ocean for the next...ten hours. We might pass an uncharted island or two by chance, but that’s about it.” [Though we won’t be too far from the coast.]

“Alright...” I looked at the map briefly. “We would save some time and maybe be able to take a short rest if we stopped on that little...wave-looking place,” I said, pointing to a peninsula in our path that looked like a tidal wave.

“That place is a known monster outpost, so that’s a no-go,” Honna responded.

“So there’s no sneaking by? Could I just kill them or something?”

“What? No, of course not!” [Is she a lunatic or something?]

“Hmm...” I, honestly, wasn’t sure why I couldn’t, besides that it would reveal my location, but it didn’t take a genius to understand my suggestion was ludicrously undereducated. “I guess that’s that, then...This is going to be really painful…” I grimaced.

“If you say so. You seem rested up enough to get going, though.” Honna noted.

I rubbed my head. “Nah, the headache’s not gone. I’m sure the pain’ll relapse really quickly after I get going.”

“If you say so,” he said, standing up. “We may as well go do that about now, actually.”

“Could I get a moment before we leave?” I asked. “I just need to do one or two things.”

“Sure.”

I floated off and pulled a paper and primitive pencil from my pocket. A new line had been written in small font:

{Things are on track. I need your help with more things, so make your trip fast.}

Seriously, Zerith? I’m trying my best here, I don’t need two people rushing me.

There was another paragraph written after it:

{I also asked the head tailor to make you a new robe to signify your status as the Green Representative. You’ll also be moving rooms once you return. Luxuries like the room and clothes I prepared for you earlier will become sparse if the war intensifies, so if you need anything specialized prepared, you should tell me what you’ll need before that happens.}

I did find the room strange. Maybe it was actually a guest room.

Before I could think more, Green popped in again.

[Found you!]

[Hey, you’re not a half-day late, this time,] I thought snarkily.

[It isn’t my fault that the rest of them aren’t willing to take any risks in a losing war.]

[Is it really?(Maybe that was a bit harsh on him.)]

[Mind your own business, will you?!]

[Sure. Anyway, I had a question to ask you. Is there only seven gods?]

[Yes. Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet. We represent the colors of the visible spectrum,] Green responded.

[Huh...] That was about what I’d figured, though it wasn’t the type of gods I’d expected to rule over the world. [I wonder if it applies to my world, too.]

[It probably does, though I have no idea. Your gods have been absent from their realms for as long as I’ve lived.]

I furrowed my eyebrows, confused. [Absent? So you’re saying they’re just...gone?]

[Yes. It’s quite strange, though since I have eighty-one other universes to monitor, I haven’t given it much thought.]

[So…is it bad that they’re gone?]

[I’m not as knowledgeable as you seem to hope I am -by no fault of my own. The others might have answers, but, frankly, I doubt the knowledge would help you in your current predicament.]

[I couldn’t have imagined a god could be so useless…] I absently thought to myself.

[Well, excuse me for answering your questions to the best of my ability, pathetic girl!]

[S-sorry! I can’t really monitor myself when we talk like this.]

I heard Green sigh in his mind. [I’m not that offended. I know what they think about me…though I’d prefer if anyone tried to understand…]

[Erm…I don’t really know what to say about that. Sorry…] I quickly digressed to what he’d said earlier. [Umm, wait, so you said there are seven gods, each representing the visible spectrum...? Does that mean there could be, like, invisible gods? And orange isn’t even a real color!]

[You love silly questions, don’t you? I’ve only got so much mental bandwidth, so I’d prefer if you could keep the racket down.]

[Get used to it,] I said. [You can stop the connection at any moment, you know.]

[Yes, but that’s too annoying to do.]

[(I doubt it.)]

[Regardless, I’ll need you to catch me up on the happenings. It seems as though a lot has happened since you woke up.]

[Yeah, I can do that. But how about I get going, first?]

[If you must.]