--- Dov ---

Dov still couldn't believe her luck.

She had fully expected to die down here. What were the odds that someone would be able to find her in the Realms Below? Nobody ever went there if they had a choice. She had already given up on trying to find her way out. Her goal had been to make sure that she died in a place where her parents would be able to retrieve the corpses. They were supposed to report back regularly, and their last report was weeks overdue. Her parents were experienced adventurers and would have no trouble in this place.

When she saw her rescuers, she had at first assumed that they were military on a search-and-rescue mission. The woman called Galanys was wearing a uniform, after all. She soon realized that nothing could be further from the truth. The only one of them with anything resembling military discipline was Atrog.

They had listened to her story and decided to help her. She had offered them money, her parents were extremely rich after all, but she had been glad to see that their decision was already made even before she made the offer. Not that they refused the money either, of course. They were adventurers, not saints.

She was very lucky that they had even recognized her as a person when they first met and she talked to them telepathically. That could have easily gone much worse. It's not like she wanted to stay in this draconic shape. Looking humanoid felt much better. But she had simply had no real choice in the matter. The Realms Below were dangerous, and in order to survive she had to make changes to her body.

It wasn't even about the fighting, really. She could defend herself perfectly fine as a humanoid. But it had only taken her a few days to realize that almost nothing in this place was digestible for a humanoid stomach, and they had not brought enough provisions. Draconic stomachs were much less picky, so she had decided to change. But then side effects of those changes had interfered with other genetic modifications she had made to herself, and she had to make room for those too. It had quickly spiralled out of control. Soon she was mostly draconic. It was the only stable genetic configuration she could find. With some experimentation she could probably have done better, but the Realms Below did not exactly afford her much leeway to take risks.

Her current form was terrible at almost everything except resilience and a strong stomach. Even her thoughts felt sluggish and distracted. Some of the modifications had necessitated changes to her brain chemistry. A few of the non-humanoid features she had acquired, like her heat vision, were objectively pretty cool, but she had lived most of her life without them, and adding a new sense from one day to another was more disorienting than useful.

She was going to change back into a humanoid form as soon as she was back on the surface and could afford to do so. She might experiment if she could retain the heat vision though. It could be pretty useful, once she got more used to it.

To her surprise, it looked like that wasn't going to take long. Her rescuers had been much better prepared than she and her siblings. Between the maps they brought, Balron's spells, Atrog's breadth of experience, and whatever it was that Rania the shaman did, they always had the right tool to find their way.

She and her siblings had not been nearly so well prepared for navigation. They were strong in a fight, but none of them had really paid as much attention to the non-combat aspects of adventuring as they should have. As the leader, she knew this was her own fault. Their parents had explained to them about the importance of these things, but none of them had taken it seriously enough.

Davlash were genetically flexible and could adjust their talents to their needs, if they had enough time to do so. But there was always a tradeoff to be made, and so this strength had become a weakness for them. When you had the choice between getting better at channeling divination spells, or throwing more powerful lightning bolts, it seemed like a pretty easy decision. So all three of them had neglected utility in favor of raw power. And her siblings had paid for that decision with their lives.

It was a mistake that she would not repeat. She would do better next time. She unconsciously clutched her necklace with a pendant of Brytius as she thought this. Choosing to pray to the god of self-improvement had been an obvious decision to her, even though none of her siblings agreed. The Davlash had been created to be as flexible and capable of growth and improvement as it was possible to be. Who else should she pray to, if not Brytius?

As they traveled through the Realms Below together, carrying her dead siblings with them, she had gradually gotten to know her rescuers.

Atrog the orc was the leader of their group, and in her opinion he was impressively professional. It was the simple things that showed this most. When the group got into a minor scuffle with the local wildlife, he took the time to look at everyone individually after the fight was over, to make sure there were no wounded. Most people didn't do that. They rested immediately after a fight, or took time to calm down from the adrenaline high. They might realize too late that one of their friends was bleeding out, and they could have saved them if only they had noticed it five seconds earlier.

Balron was a scatterbrained old dwarf, but he was undeniably strong in a fight, and he was a much more versatile spellcaster than herself. He usually didn't say much. Except once, when they passed an old ruin and he spent the next half hour lecturing the group about their historical significance. None of that was at all relevant for their survival down here, but at least the man's obvious enthusiasm had kept the group's spirits high.

Galanys the human seemed much less experienced than the others. Her mana reserves were so low that Atrog had actually asked her not to contribute to fights, and to conserve her strength instead. Dov found this very strange. Adventurers usually only traveled with other people of roughly the same skill. You had to rely on them to save your life, after all. Her opinion had changed quickly once she saw the woman cast a spell. She knew what a proper spellform looked like from her parents, who had drilled her over and over on the correct technique. Galanys' spells had been flawless even in the middle of combat. She found it strange that someone could acquire so much skill without having an appropriate level of mana.

Rania was an odd one. Dov had been sure at first that the elf had suffered under the attacks of the Mind Warpers, but her team insisted otherwise. They said she was a very powerful shaman, and that made her act strangely sometimes. Luckily Rania did not seem offended at the misunderstanding, and was happy to talk to her. In fact, she could not stop gushing about how awesome Dov was, being an adventurer, a princess, a dragon, and a quest-giver all at the same time. She was not sure what to make of that.

Lastly, Rania had introduced her to her pet rock, who was actually a spirit, and her spider familiar, who was actually not a spirit but an actual pet. She was not sure if she should find it silly or cute that Rania had insisted that she formally greet both of them and recognize them as members of the party. Rania also mentioned that Balron's familiar Whiskers was currently dead, but she would introduce her later.

The party was curious to find out more about her. Understandable, given how weird the situation must be to them. Although she could have done with a somewhat less enthusiastic Rania. The elf's interest in the "adventurer dragon princess quest-giver" was flattering, but bordered on being creepy.

After weeks of isolation, she was only too happy to have someone to talk to, and so she talked at length about herself, and how she came to be in the Realms Below.

For the explanation to make sense, she had to talk about her parents first.

A group of adventurers led by her mother, the telepath Damiah Shan, had conquered the Cursed Lands over two decades ago. They defeated the various creatures roaming the land, and reunited its many villages into a proper country again. She was a bit surprised to find out that the others already knew about that. It turned out that her parents were sufficiently famous that the basics were probably known all across the world by now, even though communications with remote countries weren't quite up to the standards before the Cataclysm, yet.

Most people had expected the kingdom to collapse again after a few years. That was how it went in the Cursed Lands. Nobody had been able to hold onto the region for as long as people could remember. There was always one calamity or another that reared its ugly head, and even the most powerful adventurers would eventually make a mistake and die. It was impossible to hold onto power for long, in the Cursed Lands.

But her parents had done much, much better than most. Their secret was that they did not just rely on personal power. The elven wizard Xilly was one of them, and she was probably the second best biomancer in the world, right after her father Vherdes.

"You mean Vherdes the Hedonist? That Vherdes?" Atrog asked in shock.

"*Yes, that's him.*" Dov replied.

Atrog gave her a long look before he said "It's not every day that you meet someone who is only two steps removed from one of the Old Powers."

“The Old Powers” was a phrase used to describe individuals who were powerful enough to have strong international influence, and who had been that way for a very long time. It was not unusual for a very talented mage or a very experienced adventurer to become powerful enough to take over a nation. But such things usually didn't last long. No matter how powerful someone became, if they annoyed too many people then they would inevitably attract a lot of opposition, and be killed in short order.

The Old Powers were different. They had been around for long enough that everyone took them seriously. Anything that could spend a thousand years overtly controlling an entire country was clearly on a different level. Each of the Old Powers was an entity that had been challenged so often, and emerged victorious every time, that they had simply become part of the status quo.

Vherdes had once been a human monk, and a priest of Edur. He had meditated for decades to discover the best way to spend his life in the most virtuous way possible. His dedication to this goal was so great that when he grew old, he studied necromancy to transform into a lich. Not for any of the nefarious purposes this was associated with at the time, as this was before the rise of Ossor, but simply because he believed that he needed more time to think.

Several hundred years later, he had a deeply ironic epiphany: Overthinking is bad, and the "perfect" is the enemy of the "good enough". Because of all his attempts to become the most virtuous person possible, he had neglected to actually go out into the world and do good.

He came to the conclusion that the most virtuous way to help society was to focus on the basics: The joys of good food, of sex and love, music and art, and other simple pleasures.

It was unfortunate that he only came to this realization after his transformation into a lich. He was unable to experience many of these things in his undead body. But the man was a genius, and he had eternity to figure out a solution.

After centuries of further study, Vherdes discovered how to forge a new mortal body for himself. In the process, he became the first biomancer.

Unfortunately the god Akash took issue with this, as he sometimes did when mortals discovered things they were not meant to know. He banned the magic Vherdes used, and since then nobody else was able to reproduce his feats. As often happened in these cases, the god Unir rewarded Vherdes for his creativity by exempting him from the ban. As a result, Vherdes was the only individual on the planet whose biomancy was unrestricted. Biomancy as it was studied in modern days was a pale imitation of what Vherdes was capable of, and nobody else had ever succeeded in turning an undead back alive, as he had done to himself.

Ever since that day twenty four thousand years ago, Vherdes had spent his life focusing on the joys of everyday life. He spent half his day indulging in hedonistic pleasures, and the other half using his biomancy to improve other people's lives. He invented cures for diseases, and medicines against common ailments. He even modified plants to make them more nutritious and improve their tastes, or to create drugs without side effects.

Ironically, after all his achievements, he was most well known by the general population for his "Vherdes brand" candy bars, modified to be both nutritious and incredibly tasty without being addictive. He was fine with that. It was a simple thing that brought joy to the masses, and mattered more than all of his philosophizing ever had.

To worldly and experienced people like the party that had rescued Dov, with the possible exception of Rania, Vherdes was a well-known figure, and much more than just the brand name of a popular candy bar.

It was therefore not surprising that they had some questions for her, which she tried to answer to the best of her knowledge. Unfortunately she had to admit that she had never actually met the man. His daughter Xilly, her creator, had left in order to seek a life of adventure.

Xilly had joined Damiah Shan's group, and together they unified the Cursed Lands.

Unlike most biomancers, Xilly's main contribution did not lie in her healing, nor in her own physical strength. As luck would have it, there were two other members of Damiah's group whose skills synergized perfectly with Xilly's. Tanya, a druid who could control animals, and Elona, a priestess of Duna who was very adept at manipulating life through divine magic, an ability that was distinct from biomancy.

It turned out that by combining their skills, the three of them could turn ordinary animals into highly efficient killing machines.

Damiah's team did not fight like ordinary adventurers. There were no heroic stands as a knight blocked a dragon's breath with his shield. No rogue trying to discover the dragon's weakness, and no mage diverting its attention with subtle illusions.

Instead, most of Damiah's team spent their time during a fight standing hundreds of meters away from the action, their work already done. Meanwhile, Damiah used her telepathy to coordinate a veritable army of beasts. Even a dragon did not last long under the coordinated assault of a dozen wolves, each the size of an elephant, and modified to be highly resistant to the dragon's breath.

Her team did their research in advance, and fought monsters by creating larger and stronger monsters of their own. A few of their party members did fight alongside the animals, but they were rarely exposed to any danger, as Damiah used her telepathy to coordinate the beasts, and ruthlessly used them as meat shields for her friends.

It was a highly non-traditional method of adventuring, but nobody could argue with the results.

"That's fascinating." Balron said. "It sounds like your parents created entirely new species. I wonder if that is how dire wolves and similar creatures originally came into existence."

"I wouldn't call that fascinating." Atrog added. "More like horrifying. Do you know how many people are killed by dire wolves every year?"

The author's tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

"*Don't worry about it.*" Dov responded. "*They made sure their creations were perfectly sterile. There are already enough wild monsters running around in the Cursed Lands as it is.

"*In any case, after they were done unifying the land, they kept innovating and creating more and more powerful creatures. They created them to be docile, so that they can act as guardians for civilians. Our goal is to give every village in the country at least one creature to defend it that is strong enough to deal with any of the roving monsters. We are not quite there yet, but the cities and the larger towns are all protected already. It's much more effective than humanoid guards, and it's much less tragic when the creatures die, since we can just make more. If they die while keeping civilians safe, then they did their job.*"

Her rescuers had pensive looks on their faces after she said that, but then Atrog spoke up and agreed with her. Dov was very glad to hear that. She had received rather mixed receptions before, to say the least, so she was always nervous to explain these things to someone new.

"So it's like you are training the animals to be adventurers? So that they can keep people safe?" Rania asked.

"*Uh. Sure. Let's go with that.*" Dov responded, unsure where the elf had gotten that idea from.

"That's awesome!" Rania said. "Oh! Could you do the same for Aranea? She is not very strong right now, but if your parents help then maybe she can become just as powerful as the rest of us."

"I'm not sure if that's a great idea, Rania." Galanys said. "Do you know if Aranea would like that? Maybe she is fine being a cute pet, and wouldn't want to be turned into a monstrosity?"

Galanys gave Dov a look that said more than a thousand words, so she decided to back her up. "*Galanys is probably right. The creatures I'm talking about are not pets. They are weapons. Aranea is just fine being as cute as she is. No need to give her the ability to breathe fire if she doesn't want to.*"

Rania seemed to think about this for a few seconds, then said "You are right. You hear that Aranea? I'm not going to force you to be anything you don't want to be. But if you do want to be able to breathe fire, or to get bigger, or have stronger poison, or anything else, then please tell me about it. It would be really cool. But only if you really want to, though!"

Dov decided not to ask how Aranea would even go about telling Rania her opinion in the first place. She was just an ordinary spider and could not talk.

"*But enough about my parents.*" She continued. "*You asked me how I got stuck in these caves, and I haven't even explained the most important thing, yet. Namely, my species.

"*On one of their adventures, my parents discovered old technology in the ruins of the Cursed Lands. Really old technology. The notes were not in any dialect of Common, so they probably preceded House Mardok's decision to unify the language. It is older than recorded history. In the course of her experiments on these artifacts, Xilly made some amazing discoveries. She now understands much better than anyone else alive how genetics work, and how magic interacts with them. She used that knowledge to create a new species from scratch, and she called them Davlash.

"*My siblings and I are the first generation of Davlash. We were created and grown in test tubes.*"

She looked at everyone expectantly. They were surprised, but not outraged or horrified. So far so good.

"*The really important thing about my species is this: I can see my own genetic code, and I can change it. Other humanoids only have the genes they were born with. I have an entire library of genes within me that I can activate or deactivate at will.

"*At the moment, I have activated several sets of genes that were taken from dragonborn, and in some cases even actual dragons. That is why I look like a young dragon right now. Unfortunately genes don't come with a manual. Every change I make has side effects, and I usually can't tell what those will be in advance. It is very easy to make mistakes. That is why my siblings and I each started out with a genetic configuration that was known to be stable. In my case, most of my genes were patterned after Damiah Shan. But the older I get, the more different genes I try, and the better I understand how to make the changes I want. I can also copy the genes of other people I meet, so that I will always have new things to try. I just need to eat a sample of saliva, or some other substance with genetic material.

"*I expect in a few decades I will not have many genes in common with my baby self anymore. I think that's a good thing. Unlike other humanoids, I am not limited by what I could do at birth. I can keep growing and improving myself forever.*"

She subconsciously touched the symbol of Brytius again as she said that.

"*The best way to think of it is not that we Davlash are a new species. It's more that we get to choose and change what we are, instead of being limited by what we are born as. It's not just a polymorph effect either. Those types of spells just layer an artificial body on top of your real one. We Davlash can actually change our genetic code directly, so the change is much more thorough.*"

The others were silent for a while. It was a lot to take in.

Eventually the silence was broken when they started asking her questions. They were much nicer questions than she had expected, and she was glad to see that this time nobody called her an abomination. That had happened before. Fortunately the people who voiced such opinions tended to make themselves scarce instead of escalating the situation once they found out that she was a princess, and that her parents were some of the most powerful adventurers on the continent.

Balron wanted to know technical details, which she could sometimes give, and sometimes had to admit she didn't know. Rania wanted to know if she had any cool abilities or secret techniques. Then she added "nevermind, don't answer that", they wouldn't be secret techniques anymore if she talked about them, and that might diminish their power.

Atrog and Galanys wanted to know more about her upbringing, and she was more than happy to focus the conversation in that direction.

"*I have dozens of siblings. Xilly created us in test tubes, and she is still doing that today. I am the oldest, by about five days if you go by the time of decanting. We actually had a relatively normal childhood, I think? I mean "normal" relative to the fact that our parents were a group of adventurers who were all in an open relationship with each other, and also incredibly rich and powerful. Obviously that's not really normal. But Xilly did not run any experiments on us, or anything like that. I have heard rumors before. People get the wildest ideas when they hear that I was created in a lab. But really, our parents just treated us like normal kids.

"*Well, they tried to, at least.*" She smiled as she reminisced, but her current draconic form unfortunately made that look rather threatening.

"*It's not like there are books or guidelines on how to raise children of a species that has never existed before. What cultural norms do you teach a teenager who looks like an orc male, when that same kid might be a female gnome the week after? It's not even something we can fully control, because each gene has side effects, so there is always a tradeoff to be made. For example, my telepathy is tied up in the female part of the bloodline of my mother Damiah, who is a human. So I usually can't go too far away from looking like a human female without weakening my telepathy. Except that apparently turning into a dragon worked just fine and does not interfere with it for some reason. Genetics is complicated and side-effects are often unpredictable, even when you have divination enchantments woven into your genes.

"*Because of all this, our parents had to find a way to raise us in a way that was basically agnostic to all existing cultures and species. They encouraged us instead to build a culture of our own.*"

Fortunately for them there was at least a little cultural precedent for the acceptance of shapeshifters, even though this was outside the capabilities of ordinary biomancers. Vherdes the Hedonist sometimes changed species or sex as the mood took him. Since the man was an Old Power and well regarded for his contributions to society, criticizing this would be political suicide for any noble.

The question of racial and gender identity was a different matter, however. House Mardok had standardized the language Common around the same time that they began to systematically record history, fifty thousand years ago. It was an attempt to make sure that history would remain legible forever. Denissa Mardok was the most ancient and powerful of the Old Powers after all, to the point that she no longer fought with people, but rather with universal concepts such as linguistic drift. It had annoyed her when her favorite historical records, novels and theater plays had to be adapted to changing times every couple of millennia, so she decided to put a stop to that.

As a result of her efforts, the language had remained practically unchanged for fifty thousand years. Common contained two gendered pronouns and one pronoun for everything else. Like Vherdes before them, the Davlash had all chosen to simply pick one of the two gendered pronouns for themselves and call it a day. It was absolutely never worth it to argue with House Mardok.

"Multiculturalism is hard." Rania agreed with her. "It's like when I talk with fey. I always have to remind them that I'm mortal, and that mortals don't like dying at all, and that I would even prefer to fall prey to a really bad prank over dying."

After looking at the confused faces around her, Rania explained: "It's because fey are immortal, and they also like playing tricks on each other. So when a fey dies they just come back to life later, but when they get pranked then they have to live with the shame forever. So most fey will kill themselves when they notice they are about to get pranked hard. It's a way of escaping a cruel fate. But sometimes there are cultural misunderstandings where a fey will murder a mortal because they want to save them from a really bad prank, often one made by another fey. The cultural misunderstanding is that the mortal would actually prefer not to get murdered!"

"...I did not know that." Balron said. "That actually explains a lot. Why, back in my youth one of my companions was playing a game with a satyr, when one of the onlookers suddenly attacked and killed him. We fought them all after that. Two more of us died that day. Do you think..."

"Yes, that was probably a cultural misunderstanding. I guess your friend was losing the game really badly, and the onlooker wanted to spare them the shame of losing?" Rania replied sadly.

Balron got a faraway look in his eyes as he heard this, and said nothing.

"This is really very important information, Rania." Atrog said. "How do you know all this? It is not public knowledge, and we definitely need to tell the authorities about it."

"The spirits told me because I asked nicely." Rania responded. "It's normal shaman stuff. I don't see why it's a big deal? Maybe lots of people know this, but they just didn't put it in books?

"Anyway, Dov, you were telling us about your family and how you got here." Rania transparently deflected the topic.

Dov was amazed by the conversation that had just transpired before her. Even she had not known this about the fey, and her parents' education had been very extensive. She quickly caught herself and continued her story.

"*My parents thought that getting experience as adventurers would be good for us, since it makes you stronger in both mind and body. Some of us took them up on the offer. I'm a follower of Brytius myself, so I could hardly say no. It's the fastest way to grow after all, and the risk of dying is not so important when your parents can resurrect you.*"

If anyone present was jealous of this, they did a very good job hiding it, she thought.

"*My sister Morgan is the second oldest of us, and she has a superiority complex a mile high. She couldn't stand the possibility of falling behind the rest of us, so she decided to tag along. My brother Alexis is trying to become the strongest sorcerer in the world, and nobody has ever become a powerful sorcerer without killing monsters. They can't really get stronger by studying or praying after all, so they have no alternative.*"

"*My parents put me in charge because I'm the eldest and most responsible. Alexis was just fine with that, but Morgan has been a handful. Anyway, we decided to go to Oruk, because it was the most advanced civilization before the Cataclysm and therefore should have amazing loot.*"

"You are not the first to have that thought." Atrog replied. "Most of the easily accessible ruins have already been looted long ago. All the low-hanging fruit have been picked."

"*Yeah, we know that now, too. We heard people claim that before, but we thought those were just rumors to keep other people away from the loot. We should really have asked our parents for advice on this before rushing off. Honestly, in retrospect we could have planned this a lot better.*"

"*Anyway, this is how we ended up in the Realms Below: We were looking through random houses in Greenwatch, when we noticed a very suspicious human man walking around near the miasma without a care in the world. He entered a government facility by House Erundir.*"

The others all perked up at that, but Atrog gestured for her to continue speaking, a concerned look on his face.

"*Naturally we decided to cast a stealth spell and sneak in after him.*"

"Naturally. As one does." Galanys interrupted in a deadpan voice. Dov tried to shoot her an amused look, then reminded herself once again that facial expressions did not really work in her current draconic form.

"*It did not go well. There was an elven man there, and the two of them talked to each other. But we didn't stay hidden for long. When they noticed us, they attacked. The human turned out to be a really powerful mage. We had some chimeras with us to help keep us safe on our adventures, just like our parents. But the mage made short work of them and killed them all. At least their sacrifice bought us time to escape. They had locked the entrance by then, but we found an open door to the Realms Below, so we escaped that way.*"

She noticed that Galanys had pulled out a piece of paper and a pencil, and seemed to be sketching something at a rapid pace.

"*I would rather not talk about what happened to us in the Realms Below, if that's ok with you all. Let's just say that it was not the happiest period in our lives, and leave it at that. I am so glad you found us when you did.*"

After a few seconds of silence, she continued.

"*You all look like you really want to ask me something. What's wrong?*"

Galanys showed her the sketch she drew and asked: "Did the elf look like this?"

"*Yes he did. How did you draw that so quickly and accurately? Also, why is the guy in the drawing naked?*"

"You went to the same facility we did." Atrog interrupted her. "We fought that elf, and he committed suicide rather than be captured, but there was no sign of a human accomplice. We had to escape into the Realms Below when the miasma suddenly started closing in on the facility."

"*So that's how you found me! That's ridiculously lucky. What are the odds of that?*"

"That is an excellent question. Do you remember if the men you found said anything important?" Atrog asked.

"*Oh definitely. I remember it pretty clearly. It sounded so ominous and suspicious. They talked about how all of their data had been ruined by coincidences and accidents, and that they would have to throw it all out. The human seemed to be in charge, and he told the elf to "make sure the instruments are ready for when the anomaly arrives." They were really angry about their loss of data, and the human said, I shit you not, "When this is done, Tonos dies first." Like killing a god was something you would just discuss casually. That's when they noticed us and we had to run away*"

"Wow. That's not ominous at all." Galanys said.

"I disagree." Responded Rania in an impassive voice. "I think that sounded very ominous."

Everyone gave her a look, but then she broke out in a grin and added "That was a joke! Did I do it right?"

She looked at Galanys for approval, who smiled and gave her a thumbs up.

"Seriously though," Rania continued, "what you are saying is that you arrived just in time to witness a conspiracy of Bad Guys, and to overhear some cool and ominous stuff without context. But you were too late to hear anything actually useful, and couldn't stay long enough to get more details. This is great, you guys! We have a plot hook to follow!"

Atrog put his head in his hands. "Why is my life like this?" Galanys pat him on the shoulder in sympathy.

After that, the party explained to Dov what had happened to them in more detail. They had met Lilian Weaver, a woman marked by Tonos. One day later they killed someone who had conspired to kill Tonos somehow. It did not take a genius to recognize this as divine intervention.

But when she mentioned it, Atrog explained that many things about that theory did not add up. As a paladin, he understood well that the gods were bound by agreements between each other. Moreover, they did not have a drive towards self-preservation in the same way that mortals did. On a historical scale, it was helpful to think of gods as continuous beings rather than discrete entities.

When two societies prayed to two similar gods and they intermingled enough, then eventually the two gods would also merge into one. Conversely, when a religion underwent a schism, their god could literally split in two. It happened rarely, but it did happen. There had even been attempts by governments to induce this on purpose, but that had always backfired and usually resulted in the deaths of everyone involved, as the gods did not appreciate being manipulated in this way.

That could be what happened here. However, this really only happened in very rare and extreme cases that were very public and involved systematic social changes. Even Oruk's incredibly thorough cultural reforms of the old tribes and their cultures had not been enough to trigger a divine intervention. A random mage with delusions of grandeur, trying to kill a god, should not possibly be important enough to warrant an intervention by that god. The gods had rules about this, to limit each others' behaviors, and they would not interfere directly without a very good reason.

In Atrogs opinion, it was far more likely that all of this was not an attempt by Tonos to protect himself, but simply part of his domain. As Rania implied, it was probably not coincidence that she had overheard only the most ominous parts of their conversation, and nothing else. Tonos operated on story logic, and who would want to read a book where the heroes spy on a group of villains, only to hear them discuss their favorite foods for hours?

"I believe that makes Rania the expert on this." Atrog concluded, "She understands stories very well."

It seemed to cause him physical pain to get those words out.

Rania beamed at him, then said "Thank you! So what I think is going on is that this is a crossover. Dov clearly has her own very detailed and thorough backstory. And it even sounds like a very different genre from our own. In fact, her backstory is much better and more detailed than mine!"

"*That's a terrible thing to say!*" Dov interrupted her. "*Just because my parents are more famous and my circumstances more unique doesn't mean that your own upbringing is somehow lesser! What would your parents think if they heard you say that? You are taking story logic way too far. People don't have a "backstory". They have a childhood, and an upbringing, and loved ones, and life experiences that shaped them as people.*"

Rania gave her a very confused look, like she had just turned the elf's whole worldview on its head.