“People are trapped in history, and history is trapped in them.”

  James Baldwin, American Author

  The winged serpent dove towards the woman on the stone platform jutting out of the surface of Delver’s Mount. It could taste her scent in the air – an easy afternoon snack for the famished predator. It extended its jaw – wide enough to consume a bull whole – to snatch up the tiny tidbit.

  The woman, and the stone platform on which she stood, vanished a fraction of a second before it would have swallowed her whole. The serpent pulled out of its dive and flicked its tongue, trying to detect where its prey had gone. It caught her scent, floating in the air behind it.

  The serpent whipped its head around, and the stone slab caught it square in the face, thrusting it straight into the mountainside. The hidden spiked pit opened and skewered the ambushed beast, and a barrage of lightning, fire, and ice quickly finished it off.

  Milly guided herself back down to the mountain and waited for the notification to appear.

  “Damn it,” Milly muttered in frustration. It was the third serpent she’d killed that afternoon, and she still hadn’t reached level forty. The system had decreased the experience she received each time she used the same trap.

  “I guess isn’t not much of an ‘experience’ if I keep doing the same thing over and over,” Milly said, resigned to the newly discovered quirk. “So much for doing this is the easy way.”

  Milly created another platform on the mountain and landed upon it, a tiny hop as her feet touched stone the only blemish in an otherwise perfect touchdown. She was growing used to the crude method of air-propelled flight, though it was taxing on her magic reserves.

  She sat alone on the platform and stared out at the forest below and the ocean beyond its shores. The gentle waves that broke against the shore belied the dangers that swam below the surface, preventing her from setting out across the waters.

  It was the afternoon of her third and final day at Research Station Omega. Apoi would have the hot air balloon ready for her tomorrow. It was imperative that she reached level forty before she set out. She needed to control the wind itself.

  Last night, over an extensively detailed map of the air currents across the Archipelago Research Alliance, Hydel had enthusiastically described the gentle, meandering wind currents that would carry her to other islands.

  “Biddle’s Current to the west will take you to the Isle of Black Glass. It’s another volcanic island, only its compound transforms stone into glass. Incredible transformation, and still a complete mystery. Administrator Biddle’s team has been studying the island’s compound for a decade, and they predict it will be several generations before they understand enough for practical application.”

  Hydel gave a soft sign of scientific envy. The Oriane thrived on impossible problems.

  “Anyway, from there, you can catch the northern current to the Isle of Gigantism, then north-east to the Isle of Slumber – don’t land on that one – and finally west to Core Research Station. It’s the largest island in the middle of the Archipelago.”

  “And how long would that take?” Milly had cautiously asked.

  “This route? Perhaps… three weeks?”

  “Three weeks! Hydel, isn’t there a faster way?”

  “Faster? No, not at this time of year. If you were to wait until winter, the currents shift, and we can reach Core Research Station in two weeks via the more direct north-westerly passage. But we can’t reach that current in the summer – there’s a two-hundred-mile dead zone between here and there. Unless you can control the winds themselves, you’ll have to be patient.”

  Hydel chuckled at his own joke, and Milly made up her mind.

  She didn’t have three weeks to waste floating in the sky. After her lesson, and again this afternoon, Milly descended Delver’s Mount to hunt, leaving Coco with Enzel to keep the capybara out of harm’s way.

  As she waited on the platform for another beast to soar her way, Milly withdrew the Archipelago map from her inventory and unrolled it on the platform.

  The Archipelago was massive, comprised of over a hundred unique islands stretched across a thousand miles of open ocean. The ocean was impassible due to the vicious predators that swam beneath its surface, so the Orianes’ relied on hot air balloons to travel on air currents and move between the islands.

  Milly tapped the crescent moon shaped island at the edge of the map. “Hydel said this island was their Alliance’s newest discovery. The Isle of the Void, or something like that. It took the Core Research exploration team two years exploring the currents to find it.”

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  The Explorers of the Archipelago – of which Bestian had been a member of when they’d found Delver’s Mount – discovered a new island every decade or so as the air currents shifted. Such a discovery was a cause for celebration across the Archipelago, not only because it expanded their kingdom, but because it gave them access to another ‘compound’.

  As far as Milly could gather, each island has a unique compound located in its depths that shaped the island. The mutative properties of the compound at the heart of Delver’s Mount spawned the hybrids, but every island was different. It was through intense study of the compounds that Oriane’s evolved their understanding of the world around them and, as such, each newly discovered island represented another opportunity to learn.

  The Orianes had no religion, but their devotion to scientific discovery came close.

  Milly sighed as she rolled up the map and stashed it away.

  “Or, at least that’s the history they believe,” she reminded herself. “Is their memory reflective of true history, or did Cizen twist it to his own ends?”

  Nothing she had seen had dissuaded her conclusion that the God of Death had crafted the black orb – this Project Rebirth. Unfortunately, the orb itself remained as much a mystery to her as when she’d first arrived. What few tidbits she’d learned had just raised more questions.

  Bestian and his people were sustained by the orb through the golden threads of life, yet not only could they not see the orb – they unconsciously avoided it. Each time Milly tried to get Bestian to stand in the space next to it, the Administrator went white and found an excuse – any excuse – to be as far away as possible.

  As if to approach would be to walk over his own grave.

  It was an inconsistency that escaped Milly’s understanding, for the black orb was slowly filling Research Station Omega with life.

  In the midst of their morning’s breakfast, a new resident had popped into existence beside Milly – a six-foot-tall elderly woman with short white hair named Nubs. Milly nearly decked the woman out of shock, but neither Bestian nor any of the others had reacted at all to her sudden appearance. Geta had teased Nubs for sleeping in before handing her a plate of roasted garden vegetables.

  No one questioned why Nubs had suddenly materialized. No one wondered why there weren’t enough vegetables to go around that breakfast, even though the residents maintained meticulous control over their food supplies and meals.

  As far as they were concerned, Nubs had always been there. There were five hundred and six souls in the black orb. If it would take two years for the orb to obtain full charge, Milly suspected another resident would pop into existence in the same manner every day or two.

  Milly watched a herd of boar charge through the jungle far below. “Cizen… Dr. Taydon Cizen… The God of Death that was once mortal. The god trying to resurrect his people in the heart of the God Contest. If that’s all he was trying to do, then why manipulate Xavier?”

  Milly hadn’t needed to inquire about Cizen. Once Bestian let his guard down, the proud uncle couldn’t help but brag about his nephew.

  “Did you know Taydon was the youngest graduate in Core Research Academy’s four-hundred-year history? At twelve years old! His father was so proud, rest his soul,” Bestian said excitedly. “At fifteen, he was the first to engineer a synthetic virus, which he used to deliver drugs directly to infected cells. It changed the very face of medicine as we know it. But you probably knew that.”

  Milly shrugged. “I’m not really up to date on medical stuff, sorry.”

  The expression Bestian gave her was akin to her saying she liked to kick puppies. “Well, my dear, wherever you came from, your education seems to have been a bit lacking. Tonight, I’ll write a letter to the Headmaster of Core Research Academy to have you enrolled. We can’t have you walking around the capital without a proper education, can we?”

  Milly laughed and accepted his offer, if only to make Bestian feel better about her circumstances.

  “Well, for the unenlightened, at twenty-two, Taydon used his virus to cure Sagely Disease. A year after that, it was Sickness of the Worm. They threw him a parade after that discovery. Have you really never heard of him?”

  Milly shook her head.

  “So strange. He’s a living legend of the Archipelago, and that’s not just his proud uncle talking. There’s not an Oriane in the Alliance who hasn’t been touched by his brilliance. You really are from a faraway place…”

  “He just sounds… too good to be true,” Milly admitted. She recalled Cizen from Hephaestus’s memory orb. The God of Death had shown a hint of the curiosity Bestian praised, but it’d been buried beneath cold cynicism and long simmering anger. The man’s body had reflected a cycle of decay, and Milly thought she could smell the stench of death even through the projection.

  “He may be a legend, but he’s still a man,” Bestian laughed. “He was always a serious child – a trait that continues to drive him even into his twenty-seventh year. Utterly focused on his craft, but you’ll never meet a man who holds a grudge as deeply as Taydon. He’s also a lonely man, preferring the company of his viruses to that of other Orianes. Or at least that used to be true, until Syune hammered her way into his heart. She’ll bring a balance to his life that he’s been lacking for so long.”

  A screech in the distance roused Milly from the memory of her conversation with Bestian.

  And then Syune died, and Cizen became a god. How long can a god hold a grudge, if that grudge is against those that killed the love of his life?

  Hephaestus words from the memory orb returned to her.

  “What happened in the final battle – it wasn’t Oracle’s fault. And it wasn’t yours, my dear friend. It was just the four of us left, and Syune… Syune just didn’t make it.”

  “Oracle and Hephaestus… were they Orianes too, before they became gods?” Milly wondered. “A final battle… a war that claimed their people? How long has Cizen been trying to bring them back?”

  It was an answer she wouldn’t find at Research Station Omega. If these were the souls of the Archipelago dead, they had no memory of a war. Perhaps that was a kindness imparted by the God of the Dead – to remove memories of such a time and bring them back into a world of peace.

  After all, war changes people. And Orianes.

  The screech grew closer, and Milly glimpsed the soaring beast in the distance. She rose to her feet and shot a bolt of fire into the sky to attract its attention. Her Obsidian Fists formed across her knuckles and lightning arched between her fingers.

  “Yah, war changes people,” Milly uttered as the beast came into range. “War changes us all.”

  * * *

  Cizen watched as Agon – God of Contests – took a final breath as his virus destroyed what remained of the ancient god’s mind.

  A grim sense of satisfaction washed over the God of the Dead as the Agon’s body slumped over. The god hadn’t been another innocent bystander, like Pinga and so many of the others. Before he’d passed the torch to Hephaestus and Oracle, Agon had been the best game designer in the pantheon.

  He had been their game designer.

  The final battle had been borne in Agon’s imagination, and it had killed the woman he loved.

  Only five gods remained alive in God Home. His vengeance was nearly complete. The last to die would be the High Lord – he who was responsible for all. Once Cizen watched his life drain from his eyes, it would finally be over.

  He would finally be able to see her again.

  He would be able to see them all again.

  Cizen strode away from Agon’s corpse, leaving it on the cold floors of God Home to rot for all time.

  The Non-Canonical Aftermath: