We teleported shortly after that back to my tower. Even suggesting that Steve had gotten the knowledge from his golden Armory, it was still a surprise to me that Carli was able to power the teleport circle, as he'd suggested. The glyph he used to fill in the password, as one might expect, was a stylized goat head, one that I numbly relayed to Jess. We appeared there, and Jess did something--I wasn't clear on what--to lock the platform so that nobody could follow us.

Before anyone left the basement, Alice also went over us all carefully with Purifying Light to ensure that no trace of corruption followed us from that side. The demonic duck, I noticed immediately, was nowhere to be seen.

With that done, she nodded, then looked at me, quite serious. "Now, take me to the remains of that other demon."

So she and I went upstairs, Jess following I think out of curiosity. I wouldn't have called that Steve would also follow us; he didn't seem the type, for a myriad of reasons. But... when he did follow, he had his hand on the Armory.

I... well, look. I was grieving for John, but I also didn't know him well. If anything, I felt numb from the world being turned upside down. The upside is, I felt a kind of macabre joy in showing off my sealed chamber. I splitting the sealed rock faces one as a time as we entered, revealing a long shaft that already smelled stale, which finally emptied out into the massively overbuilt spherical chamber.

It all felt normal to me, but the others seemed put off by it. Jess and Alice both adopted a strange hunched posture, like the room felt cramped them, and Steve frowned, staring at the walls like there was something off about them.

"It's like a separate world," said Jess, finally, as Alice approached my compressed glass sphere. Naturally, it only took her an instant to blast it with light, and I could instantly tell that everything weird about the contents vanished. "I can't feel the world outside except through the hallway behind us."

I just shrugged. "It doesn't block my ability at all," I said. "Maybe because I made it?"

"It's a bit more complicated than that," someone said, and the tone of voice was so casual that for a moment, I wasn't even spooked that it came out of nowhere.

In the moment each of us turned to look, the world had actually shifted to another place, so smoothly that I didn't register any sign of magic being used, only the result. And there he was, sitting on a wide and luxurious leather recliner surrounded by four armless but overstuffed, upholstered chairs. As always, his business suit was impeccably clean and pressed, and he looked completely at ease, one leg crossed over the other, gesturing for us to sit.

Only then did Steve take his hand off the Armory, I noticed, and he immediately moved to sit, his face an unreadable mask to me. Jess and I hesitated, but Alice also seemed to take this meeting for what it was, moving and sitting without any further prompting. It took a long moment of awkward silence and the god staring at us before Jess and I moved, me only a moment before her.

When we were all sitting, the god glanced at me. "All of the divine artifacts have weaknesses, and those weaknesses are the truth of it," he said. "The reinforced rock is not any kind of spatial severing, and some kinds of powers are not blocked by it at all, while others must fight against it. Ultimately," he moved his hands in a gesture like a shrug, while making little movement overall. "Nothing is perfect, as we told you at the start."

The implications of that, right now, hurt. To my surprise, after a moment of quiet, it was Steve who sat forward, his hands clasped together and elbows resting on his knees.

"We failed you," he said, with all the gravity that statement deserved. "And for that, I apologize. But I also feel like... no, I know that you haven't told us everything. The demons seemed to believe that they needed to sacrifice one of us to create a Demon General."

The god nodded back at him, but said nothing.

Steve gritted his teeth, the sound too clear in this divine space, before spitting out what he most wanted to say. "The implication being," he said, "that you expect us all to die. You said that the Demon Lord rising was nearly a certainty. But he can't rise without the Eight Demon Generals being born, which means eight Heroes dying at their hands."

Another awkward pause, serving only as acknowledgment that Steve was correct.

"But you don't want us to lose. You can't, right? The Demon Lord is your enemy."

"We have never wanted you to lose," he said, his voice firm and unapologetic. "And we don't wish for you to die. As you said, though, we do expect it."

Alice asked the next, obvious question. "Why?"

The man spread his arms wider, as though to show he was harmless--an act that nobody who had to deal with a sharply-dressed businessman trusted at all. "There are many questions you could be asking, and I'll summarize the answer to a few at once," he said, his voice level, but not monotone. "The best way to answer those question is a small amount of background--but be aware, we will choose not to give you the full picture. If you want us to invest more of our time and emotional energy in you..." he brought his hands together and laced his fingers into a very tidy bundle on his knee. "...survive. For, say, a year. We don't wish to make these speeches too many times. It is... depressing."

I frowned, but didn't say anything to that.

"You come from a world without magic," he said, "A world within this same universe, this same galaxy, if far enough from your homeworld that the light cone of your species' birth has not reached us. The quantity that differentiates this world from yours is aether, a concept different in the details from your own understanding of dark energy, but..." he shrugged. "It is the answer to some cosmic questions, some of which your civilization has already raised, and some it does not yet know enough to ask."

"Aether reflects reality back upon itself. It is the core of magic, and also a part of life, but it is at heart a physical quantity, and like all natural forces, the scale of its creation and existence boggles the mind. Your own world was never directly exposed to aether; interstellar debris that was exposed to it landed on your world, and from that all life was born. This world," he separated his hands, revealing a green orb between them, "received too much aether, resulting in an apocalypse not unlike a nearby star going supernova. A civilization with twenty thousand years of written history, and which had spread across this star system was erased. All forms of life that existed anywhere near this star at the time were extinguished, without exception."

I shivered, and I couldn't help but note the reactions of the others. Everyone, even Steve (who I was sure was no scholar), seemed to understand enough about what he was talking about to grasp the enormity of the truth.

"Along with that aether exposure," the god resumed after a moment, "came connection. The universe's aether is connected with massive filaments, some of which run across the surface of the universe, and others above and below it. Traveling these aether causeways makes a mockery of space and time, and creatures from the far flung edges of the universe cross back and forth with abandon, looking for a place just like this--a habitable world with no defenses, rich in aether. However, there was far too much aether for most to settle here, and certainly too much for mortal life. A group of us--beings that can live within the aether currents themselves, powerful enough to reshape worlds, what you call gods--we diverted the stream and sealed the loose aether either within the planetary cores, or in the spaces between. It is due to our efforts that this world and the others in the system are livable, and we have colonized them with species and cultures that we favor from many worlds."

"And the demons are another faction?" asked Jess, her voice clipped.

"Not the way you mean it," he said, but tossed his head in a way that seemed like he was reconsidering it. "The Demon Lord is not a foreign faction from another world. It is a monster born from the ashes of this world's apocalypse, and his army already dwells within this world, waiting for him to," he twitched his fingers, and tiny points of flame poured out of the surface of the world within his hands. "...raise them."

"The undead," I said suddenly, making the connection to the wraiths that the demons had summoned.

"This planet, for your reference, has a slightly smaller diameter than your own. The original civilization colonized most of the land and much of the seas, sky, and planetary orbits. The population at the time of disaster was approaching fifteen billion on and around this planet alone. The despair and agony of this civilization's doom reflected back on the world, life turning to death, turning to neither and both." The world between his fingers grew, and the planet itself split away, showing a mass of writhing spirits hovering in midair, reduced to a diseased-looking soup, like a fungus growing through a ball of cola, with some kind of crunchy candy center that fungal tendrils had already drilled down to and infected. "The seal functions well enough to keep what remains of the dead trapped, but aether replicates itself if given a medium, and this unpleasant morass is nothing if not that. The trapped aether constantly grows and puts ever more pressure on the seal, requiring an occasional..." a hole opened up, and the spiritual fungus leaped for it, spilling out onto an invisible, implied surface above. "...venting."

Stolen novel; please report.

Jess stood up, looking like she wanted to shout, but she said nothing, I suppose having thought better of it. She bit her lip, and clearly warred with her desire to speak, then sat back down.

Alice spoke up instead. "Can't you just use up the aether? That has to be what's powering the artifacts, isn't it?"

The god's little lightshow ended, and we returned our attention to his face. "We have used up a great deal of it already," he said, "Aether, regrettably, is not a quantity that can be transferred through the causeway itself to other planets, unlike many other things. Under different circumstances, we would use that power to colonize other planets, but everything here received a similar dose, and many of them were already colonized when the disaster struck, leading to... similar problems. We used a great deal of aether to terraform and colonize the system, and still more to place seals and divert the aether currents. These tasks have tied up the full attention and resources of many of us, and those who are currently engaged in these tasks do not wish for another god to be allowed to... if I may summarize, play, while the others work. So it was decided that mortals would decide how the overflow of aether was to be used."

"This has led to its own complications."

I frowned, and somehow, my thoughts drifted to the buried lump of processed metal underneath the plateau. It was certainly old enough to have been from the original civilization, but... but with the level of magic they were talking about, this planet should have seen at least one golden age by now. We weren't the first heroes, not by far. There should be plenty of stories of people using aether to enhance farming and manufacture on a scale that would take thousands of years of technology to match.

Was there no golden age, or was every golden age erased?

"This is where we will cut off that part of the discussion," the god finally said. "Not because I cannot continue, but because I do not wish to."

"Wait a minute--" Jess started to interject, but a single roll of the god's finger quieted her, I assume against her will.

"Mortals cannot handle unlimited power," he said, "But when given focus, they can handle more. We did not create the threat that lies beneath the world, but we are certainly willing to use it as an excuse. The war between mortals and the Demon Lord takes a great deal of pressure off the seal, allowing centuries of repair to be done in a few years' time."

I spoke up when he quieted down for a moment. "That doesn't explain..." I trailed off, realizing that there was a lot it didn't explain. "...so you want us to lose?"

"Not at all," he said, without explaining.

"But the pressure only comes off if a Demon Lord is born. If eight heroes die."

"That does the most good for the seal," the god answered, "but it is not the only way to release energy. As dear Alice surmised, the Divine Artifacts themselves consume a great deal of aether. Indeed, all magic does. There are other ways--"

Suddenly, Steve broke in. "Why were we summoned from another world?"

The god switched mental tracks so smoothly that I began to wonder just how little attention he needed to pay to keep up with us. "The mass of aether within the planet gives rise to more of what you would call gods, gods who desire with all of their hearts and souls to escape. As long as the seal is maintained, they are no threat, and so they seek to control the surface so that they can break the seal. Thus, we task you with preventing this, for the good of all, and they task others with escaping the seals and freeing their chosen champion, the Demon Lord, whose task and Great Work it is to allow these Demon Gods into the world."

"The full scope and consequence of a conflict between gods is too complicated to discuss for now. I will summarize it in this way: the critical element in these wars is foresight, and to escape another god's foresight, you must use elements from beyond their control. All those born on this world are close enough to those demon gods to be... predictable. The demons they summon from other worlds are beyond our ability to foresee, and you are beyond theirs."

"As well as yours," I said, quietly. His reactions to everything I had done so far made much more sense in that context.

"We spent no small effort to discover how you would respond to a number of different challenges," the god said, finally bringing his arms in to his chest and crossing them, a motion I thought might have been slightly defensive. "Although these divinations are theoretical in nature, we trust the results, and thus far have not been disappointed. That is how we know who deserves a chance to be a hero, and what form and nature of artifact to give them. Any final questions?"

There was no edge to the word final in his sentence, but we all flinched anyway. There was a moment of quiet, before Jess spoke up.

"Five heroes, seven-pointed demon glyphs, eight demon lords, ten elements. Is there some kind of sacred numbers thing going on that we need to worry about?"

The god's mouth, for once, spread into a grim smile. "Every number is sacred to someone, but often enough that is meaningless to the greater universe. The coincidence is certainly a sign of deliberate action, but this is not a tool we have laid out for you to find. I personally find the numbers amusing, myself. Since I'm sure the missing numbers will occupy your mind, I will tell you that there are nine worlds, and our own divine glyphs use six-pointed stars. None of which, as you have noticed, is helpful."

Jess deflated at that news. I suppose the arcane bent of her mind was hoping for some kind of sacred geometry that was going to enhance her spellwork, but she just nodded, glumly.

Steve spoke up after her. "I can't help but notice that there are five summoned heroes but eight generals. Are there others out there, or are..." his voice caught in his throat, but only for a moment.

Still, the god didn't require him to finish this particular thought. "Unfortunately it takes the full and dedicated attention of a god to power a divine artifact," he said, "and since we must govern so many worlds, we are short on hands. There are never more than five heroes, and after each death, a new candidate will be sought out and summoned. That process is already underway, and it will complete soon, perhaps even today."

A day. I closed my eyes, finding that as soon as I stopped staring at the room, my ability to sense things got a little wonky, but I didn't care. If one of us died, they would be replaced within a day. For all of our troubles, for all of our hopes and dreams, for all that we were called heroes, we were not that special.

Or were we? Was I?

I opened my eyes, finding that more time had passed in a blink than I thought could have, should have. Jess and Steve were gone. The god had sat forward in his chair, and Alice was there, leaning into his chest like a scared little girl, as he held her in a gentle hug like a loving father. Even as I watched, they separated, Alice looking like she had already had a good cry.

She turned her eyes to me only for a moment, and then was gone.

The words tumbled out of my lips without conscious thought. If I had thought about them, I would probably have said it differently, or maybe just shut the hell up. "Am I special?" I asked, a hint of accusation in my voice.

He turned to look at me, and the veneer of furniture wisked away, leaving just the two of us in a void in space and time, both siting on nothing. Still, he said nothing, and simply leaned back, looking at me.

"Eight demon lords," I said, already knowing just how flimsy my theory was. I didn't need him to tell me I was wrong; I knew it. But I said it anyway. "If one was a designated survivor, kept away from combat, that leaves four heroes dying twice."

"We started this conversation by reminding you that your power is not perfect," the god reminded me, and I let out a ragged breath, one that was probably more relief than disappointment. I didn't want to bury all of my friends, and I certainly didn't want to make friends knowing for sure that I would bury them. "Besides, you ought to know better than most that one hero alone is in vastly more danger than four sticking together."

I tried a different tactic, my mind probably flailing desperately, if I'm honest. "If you want us to waste aether," I said, "me going around and reshaping the world has to be far more efficient than any--certainly better than the Golden Armory," I said, finding my thoughts derailing again, hijacked by my own growing awareness of how dumb I sounded. Of how I was searching for any way to believe I was special

"A building hero will be of much more use than fighting hero in that respect," he said, "but the Bracers of Jade Will are not built with that, specifically, in mind. And, you ought to know that another hero, perhaps your own replacement, might be better at it than you are."

I flinched, and bit my tongue. Instead, I considered what he said. "So the replacement will have different powers?"

"The artifacts are custom to the bearer," he said, "They are named for their purpose and their aesthetic, but there is more to them than that. Armory, Arrow, Mind, Will, and Purifying are but five of many potential purposes, and each comes with some known and some hidden qualities. By which I mean, you, and some blessed mortals, are informed of most of what each artifact can do, but not all."

"So we can all really be replaced," I said, some pain in me coming out. "Even Alice, who decodes your shitty poetry and destroys the undead with abandon."

I did notice his head twitch slightly when the poetry was mentioned, but he didn't get baited by it. "Please do not think that we do not mourn John, or that we do not put our hopes and dreams in all of you," the god said, finally standing up, and I found myself forced to my feet as well. "We put together each team not wanting any of you to die. We see the potential in each group, in each individual." He steps closer, and I feel like a boy standing in front of his father, as he reaches out and puts his hands on my shoulders.

"We cannot foresee the future," he said, quietly, as though being this close somehow kept away all prying ears. "If we could ensure that someone would survive... this war would be different. But we cannot predict you, and we cannot predict your enemy. There is no prophecy, no safety. Only the knowledge that we have given you everything we possibly can, in order to give you, and the mortals you support and defend, a chance."

I looked away, embarrassed that I had been so... well, so stupid. I felt like a kid again, and it didn't help that the suddenly oversized figure of the god pulled me into a hug.

"There is hope," he whispered in my ear, and then I was back in the vault.