It had a name once upon a time. But that time was so, so long ago. And yet, that time felt so close—like the memory of a bad dream minutes after waking up.
What did people call it now? Monster? Thing? God of Gods?
They were terrible names, names that didn’t fit anymore. Maybe for a time, maybe for a past life. It was time to move on, just like the World Walker said. They were the same person, the monster and the World Walker, yet there was one difference.
Luka was forgiven. The people of this world forgave him. The orc siblings, the gods, the guests that walked through the park gates.
And yet, that single difference was now moot. Luka had forgiven it—just like the orc siblings, gods, and everyone else had forgiven him. It was time to move on, it was time to take responsibility for its own actions and move on.
It was time to move on.
It was time to move on.
As the words echoed in its mind, it watched as Luka forgave everyone. “Second chances,” the World Walker stated. No matter the crime, no matter the severity, second chances awaited at World Walker Park.
Luka announced this to the crowd, but it knew better. Luka was talking directly to it. To the monster that took over his daughter.
Maybe it wasn’t time to move on—not in the literal sense, anyway. It could always create a new galaxy and worlds later, it wasn’t like it was going to die anytime soon.
For now… it thought it might stick around.
But for that, it needed a name, one that wasn’t so monstrous.
***
Luka sat with Eve, Franky, Tram, Ben, Nicole, Ren, a few other kids, all three dire-mounts, and an eerily quiet raven—well, the raven sat in a nearby tree. Annie had been gone for a few hours, stuck in a heavenly domain helping her reincarnated husband pick a new body. If it was anything like trying on a department store’s sales floor of clothing, Luka understood and remembered shopping around with various girlfriends of the distant past. But then again, Vlad wasn’t shopping for clothes but dictating exactly what his new body would look like.
Luka hoped Vlad wasn’t a weirdo.
A small firepit roared with flames, a few logs burning with glowing embers. Emberwood was named after its orange hue, but also the way it burned. Burning motes drifted from the pit like a mass of migratory fireflies, floating up through the canopy in a haze of lifting heat.
The group drank, they ate grilled skewers, they talked about the park and the never-ending list of things to do. The park was expanding—a simple statement on paper, but a logistical nightmare for those directly involved.
“We’re going to have to cap the number of attractions you make, Luka,” Tram said, stoking the flames. “We don’t have the staff to man them.”
The World Walker nodded along, coming to the same conclusion. “I might have a few ideas for man-less attractions, but I’ll need help with the glyphs.”
“No problem,” Eve said at the same time Sol’s raven squawked.
Tram continued, “Next week we’ll open a booth near Todd’s for people interested in working here. I expect we’ll get some bites. I’ll handle that, but if you want to drop in, Luka, you’re welcome to.”
Again, he nodded. “If we’re aiming for a park the size of Earth’s amusement parks, we’re going to need standardized training as well as specific operational training.”
The mayor sighed. “Add it to the list.”
“Then there’s the matter of crowd control,” Ben said, his voice a bit too cheery for the conversation at hand. “With everything that happened today and yesterday, I’d be surprised if half of Sneerhome wasn’t here tomorrow.”
Tram agreed with her husband. “We’re going to have to turn people away at the gate.”
“People are going to be upset.”
“We have a security team now, remember?”
Ben conceded the point. “Still, it’s going to get ugly if any adventurers show up and want in. They’ll try to muscle us out.”
“Then we let them in,” Luka said. “They’ll spend money at the shops and be forced to wait in line to ride anything—just like everyone else.”
Tram hummed menacingly. “And if they try to muscle the line and cut to the front, the other guests will surely get in their way. Then, if the adventurers pull weapons or magic, Goddess Tippy’s blessing will kick in and protect everyone! Meanwhile, the guests will throw the misbehaving adventurers out!” She laughed loudly and proudly.
No one laughed with her.
“You’ve got a strange mind, Dear,” Ben coolly said, patting her knee.
***
Luka was walking back to his and Leo’s room when time stopped—except for Luka himself. He looked around, tried to speak to Leo, and questioned if one of the gods needed something. When no answer came, he drained himself of all jovialness and hardened his resolve.
“I was wondering when you’d be back,” Luka said to the open air.
Like the inverse of a shadow evaporating when a light was switched on, the monster god appeared before him. It took the shape of a female member of the demonic race, yet where the demons had eyes that sang sinful power, the monster’s whined a saddened tune. She stared at the ground like a child with a welted and reddened bum, refusing to meet Luka’s eyes. Luka, conversely, stared at her like she was his mortal enemy.
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“I’m sorry,” she muttered.
Luka’s guard wilted at those simple two words. “I’m not the one you need to apologize to.”
Her chest raised and fell slowly, the monster god breathing like a mortal—not a god. “I know. And I will as soon as she leaves the brewer’s domain.”
The World Walker studied the beast. “Anything else?”
“D—” She bit her tongue and grunted at herself before whispering, “Did you mean it?”
“Forgiving you? Of course.”
“And did you mean it when you said you’d welcome people like me to the park?”
Luka didn’t hesitate, he didn’t need to. If the creature looked through his mind right now, it would know Luka had already gone over this conversation a dozen different ways—he never once believed Tippy or Neb that it was simply gone. Luka couldn’t, not when he would’ve stayed if the roles had been reversed.
They were the same, after all.
“Do you want a job here at the park?” Luka asked.
The beast looked up, and for a moment, they locked eyes. There were a thousand lifetimes of pain mixed between the two, and yet, a single flicker of hope. It didn’t take long for that flicker to ignite and burn.
“Yes.”
Luka took a deep breath and said, “Alright, you start tomorrow. But—” He held up a finger. “I have some conditions.”
The monster’s chest continued to rise and fall. “Name them.”
“Allow Tippy and Neb to come here.”
She hesitated for a fraction of a second before the time-frozen landscape rolled forward a moment or two. When it refroze, two gods stood between them, spells and weapons raised. Yet they didn’t dare act.
“Seal her power,” Luka said flatly, his eyes locked onto the monster. The gods remained stiff. They wouldn’t attack, not when the world could be destroyed on a whim.
“Luka…” Tippy said, “what’s going on here?”
“She wants to work here, and for that, I want her power sealed. If she’s truly remorseful and wants to start anew, then she will start from the bottom and learn what it means to be mortal—to be a normal person.”
The monster didn’t move, but she said, “If that is what you require. I trust you.”
Luka’s eyes snapped open, remembering something somewhat critical. “Actually, before you do that, resurrect Mage Farr, the guy you turned into a bean.”
She flicked her wrist, and the mage appeared. The man looked around, his eyebrows waving like the rough sea. “What—whaaaaa—” he cried before time froze him in place.
“I also removed his memories just before I killed him,” the monster said. “He thinks—well, he’s confused and thinking you placed some temporal spell on him… or that orc brute knocked him out somehow.”
Luka pinched the bridge of his nose. “Thank you. Please seal her powers, guys.” When Tippy and Neb didn’t move, Luka asked, “She was sealed in a tomb before, right? Can you two do the same sort of thing? She’s not going to fight back,.”
Silence stretched until Neb said, “We can. But we’re trying to figure out its angle.”
The monster’s eyes dropped to the ground.
“There’s no angle.” Luka stepped past the gods and stood beside the monster. “She wants to start anew, and I believe a lifetime without magic will do her wonders.”
When no one spoke, he added, “Just read my thoughts, I’ve been thinking about this a lot.”
“We are,” Tippy muttered. “But it wouldn’t be the first time a mortal is tricked by the words of a god.”
“We’re just trying to be sure, Luka,” Neb said, his starry eyes unflinching as they bored into the monster.
Luka sat on the ground, careful not to harm time-frozen Leo in his hood. “We’ve got all the time in the world, so be sure.”
The gods continued to stare. Tippy and Neb at the monster; the monster at the ground like a beaten and hairless dog.
When nothing happened after ten minutes, Luka asked, “What’s your name?”
She looked up, that flicker of hope twinkling in her eye. “I want to be called Vale.”
He smiled. “Vale it is.”
That was when Tippy and Neb shared a look and decided. Soon after, Vale’s magical powers were sealed away, never to be unlocked unless the gods willed it.
“I’m thinking gate greeter for your first job,” Luka mused. “You’ll stand by the gate and welcome people in while answering any questions people might have.
“If you wish it, so be it,” Vale tiredly said. Her body collapsed, all magic within crushed and condensed. Muscles never before used inflamed as she tried to move, but her mortal body refused to budge. Tears streamed down their cheeks, shocking everyone present other than Luka.
Vale touched the messy drops, shuddering under the weight of everything.
Luka crouched down and placed his hand on Vale’s shoulder. “Welcome to the team,” he said with a dazzling smile. “We’ll get you a place to stay tonight and talk more in the morning.”
Just like that, the park gained a new employee.
***
Luka slapped down a card and tossed a pair of dice, grunting at the outcome. He took a quick drag of prismpuff and handed it off. Franky scooped the dice, and slapped his own card down—a higher scoring suit—but groaned when his roll fell flat. He took a longer drag. The game was called Emberthrow, a staple all residents of the Kingdom of Embers knew how to play.
To the side, little Leo sat on the head of the massive Sebby, both wolves intently watching the back and forth. Olive the emu pecked at some hay in the corner of the barn, and Eve cleaned the bird’s feathers. It seemed Olive got into a mud patch again.
“So, now, if you roll six or more and hit a star and/or ember, you’ll win,” Franky said, explaining the rules as they went. “Simple as that.”
Luka recoiled at the notion. “Nothing about this game is simple,” he muttered as the hallucinogenic smoke caused the cards to ripple. Each card had a design and picture, a picture that moved as if real.
“What are you on about now? Emberthrow is as simple as they get—all you’re doing is moving your pieces around the board to capture the opponent's forts.”
Pausing and reevaluating the cards, dice, and the joint, Luka made a grave discovery—there were no pieces or forts.
“Wrong game!” Eve shouted from the corner as she followed Olive after the emu noticed a barn mouse, running hidey-hole to hidey-hole.
Franky blinked a few times and took a drag. “Oh.” He scratched his head and tossed down another card. “Your turn.”
“This mortal game reminds me of the Deliverance Waltz from the planet Yaararrarrar,” a hazy voice said, taking the prismpuff. Vale leaned up from lying down and brushed off half a bale’s worth of hay from her shirt. She sucked in a lungful, holding it for a moment before exhaling and saying, “The people of Yaararrarrar were a lawless lot and often made up the rules as they went.”
Vale paused and squinted at the ceiling of the barn. “Is the wood moving, or is that just me?”
Franky pursed his lips. “Emberthrow has rules… I just don’t remember them.”
Luka tossed a pair of silver sisters, a face card depicting twin moons. “Why moons?” he asked.
“We used to have two moons,” Franky explained. “Before one disappeared.”
Like always, Luka took that information in stride and accepted the oddity for what it was—just one more thing about this world. Thinking of this world… “Hey, what’s this world called, again?”
Franky opened his mouth and said its name, but that was when Olive decided to pounce on the mouse. The scuffle—and Eve’s shouting—drowned away the name.
Luka sighed and took another puff.
He liked it here.