“Why?”

The simple question sent chills down his spine. Ral was trying to avoid saying the wrong thing but Aris’s cold voice told him it was already too late. “What purpose would it serve?” he asked.

“Purpose?” she hissed. “It was our birthright. And they took it away from us. They took our parents away from us, Ral. Why shouldn’t we retaliate? Why shouldn’t we take it back?”

“Because that wouldn’t be moving on,” Ral said. He struggled to stay steady on his feet from the shaking ground. “There are horrors happening across Gaia right now, horrors that we can help put a stop to. I can close Gates. If you can join me, we can make a big difference. Being the rulers of a small kingdom isn’t going to help anybody - ”

“You can do what?”

“Close Gates,” Ral said, wincing as the eyes glowed brighter. She then squinted, expression screwed into one of disgust.

“So you fulfilled your prophecy,” she sneered. “Congratulations.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I told you. We were only born because the Parts willed it. Specifically the Being in Smoke, the one Nilda had been searching all her life. We’re all pawns to him. Our lives, our deaths mean absolutely nothing but a sequence of events that fill out the plot of a story he’s written out.”

“What is this story?” Ral asked. “What does this Part want with us?”

“One of the Parts is opening Gates to try to kill us all. This sister.” Aris’s expression shifted again, this time to a cold, distant look. “Opening the Gates turns pure Gaians into monsters and wreaks havoc. We were created to stop her. The Part I spoke to called her the Mind.”

Ral remembered the voice beyond the Gate, the one belonging to the mass of tendrils and body parts. He also thought of the Part Ankle in the form of a child, teaching him how to close Gates. Things were falling into place. “If we’re capable of saving those in need, would it not be our duty to do so?”

“Duty?” Aris sounded incredulous.

“I’ve seen towns destroyed by Gates. They’ve started opening on their own now, did you know? The Part… the Mind is able to do it without an enchanting circle in certain places. Lots of people are going to die if we don’t do something. Aris, this is a chance to make a real difference.”

“How is it our problem?” Aris demanded. Ral couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Did you know the Part who told me this couldn’t even tell me why Mind was trying to kill us all? We are caught in a fight we know nothing about. Now we’re responsible for catastrophic events we don’t even understand?”

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“Are you seriously arguing against saving lives?”

“And are you seriously at peace with living as a pawn? Neither of us are supposed to exist beyond what the Parts want from us, Ral! It’s scripted. Our childhood went up in flames because it was scripted. How are you not in the slightest angry with that?” Aris’s voice rose to almost a shriek. “I killed that Part just to prove I can deviate from what was forced on me. And now you… you seriously want to go back.”

Ral’s stomach squeezed with dread. His sister really did kill a god. Mikol’s voice whispered in the back of his mind: my spirit melds into form by a force unseen. He must have spoken the Yscian aloud because Aris’s giant projected face narrowed the glowing green eyes at him. “The Somas have a theory that things happen for a reason. As if coincidences don’t exist,” he tried to explain. He translated it to standard Gaian.

“The Yscians in the Ivassk desert,” Aris said dully.

“I spent time with them,” he said. “Learned a few things. But isn’t that worth considering? If we can save lives, maybe save Gaia, perhaps it’s a fate we shouldn’t fight against.”

“You mean to say this per-ordained existence is fine with you?” Aris asked. “This life of fixing whatever the Parts fucked up?”

He thought of the scraggly group of survivors back in Sansre. He thought about Rask doing everything he can to help them. “It’s not about the Parts or you or me. It’s about doing the right thing.”

She was silent for long moments before replying: “There’s no such thing as the right thing.”

“And so you’re going to fester inside yourself like this?” Ral asked. He looked around the ‘mountain’ - the forest now distorted and blurred. Roils of what looked like solid smoke squirmed and twisted in the space around them - he realized they connected to her, streaming off her scalp from the tips of her hair. “Camaz said you were losing the will to live. He said whatever was hurting you before was now gone and you will no longer need to suffer. You can live now, you don’t need to choose death to escape it.”

“And what would it be to you?” She sounded sullen, expression still cold.

“You’re my sister,” Ral said incredulously.

“You say it’s fate,” she said disdainfully. “If it is, then I can’t die. Why even worry?”

“If it is fate, why not embrace it instead of… doing whatever this is?” Ral gestured around him, frustrated.

“If it is fate, it doesn’t matter what I do, the results will always be the same.” Aris raised her voice again in annoyance. “Our lives will never be in danger until the story runs out. But if I die then your precious fate isn’t real.”

“Fine, you’re going to die just to prove that something is wrong? It’s ridiculous.”

“I thought…” her voice softened and trailed. “I thought you would understand me. But the years apart have taken its toll. We are two parts of a whole, always have, always will be. And now… Ralos, you are part of this ‘fate’ as well, you realize?”

The dread in his belly dipped down to despair. Instincts screamed at him to run and he did, as strange and heavy as if felt in the strange dream-like world of Aris’s mind. The solid-looking smoke churned like an angry storm in the sky and a few broke off into strands. The tips sharpened into very solid spikes and they crashed down mere hands-widths away from him. “Shit, Aris!”

“If this fate is real,” Aris’s cold voice echoed behind him as he ran. “Then you won’t be able to die either, brother. So let’s test it out.”