Tavras stood at the side of the table with an ungodly scowl on his face. “What do you take me for? I may not be a master strategist like you, General Arius, but what in the Nether is your angle? All I see is a cat playing with a mouse. I do not like you. I do not like spending time with you. If this is all leading up to you trying to capture or kill Val, then let’s cut the chatter and fight each other already.”

Arius sat with his back straight, prim and proper, while his eyes also narrowed, unamused. “Just sit down already. I will tell you what is going to happen.”

With a livid roll of his eyes, Tavras took a seat roughly at Val’s side.

Reclining back in his chair, Arius arranged himself into a relaxed yet formidable presence. “First, I am here to help Val conceal her identity better. It is in my best interest for her to go undiscovered—" As great as that sounded in Val’s opinion, he never got to finish.

“What?” Tavras’s voice broke in rage. “Do tell: how does this align with your goals at all?”

“It just does. I do not need to state my intentions to you because neither of you are in a position to refuse my help.”

“This does not make any sense. I understand that you get special treatment as Suvier’s favorite son, but he would not forgive even you for this,” Tavras spit. “You do not do anything unless it benefits yourself. Tell me again Ravager, why would you help us?”

Arius leaned forward and struck his fingers down onto the table. “Maybe I am not as horrible of a person as you like to think that I am. Dare I say that I am capable of empathy, and helping people, and doing the right thing simply because it is right?”

A curt laugh came from Tavras’s lips. “Yeah, that would be impossible.”

Much to her surprise, Arius stayed genuinely serious, straight-faced, and angry as he stared at Tavras. He gave no fit of a reaction.

“Unlike you or Suvier,” Arius said, “I do not believe that the sins of the father are the sins of the son. For this reason, it is my goal to grant the traitorous child sanctuary even if my father would scorn me for doing so.”

Again, Tavras laughed in his face. He doubled over in his cackles until he had to wipe tears from the corners of his eyes. “How in the world did you come to believe that, if I may ask? You are living proof of wicked blood! You were evil ever since you were conceived, destined to become a miniature Suvier in every way.”

Over that insult, Arius’s eyes turned a deep, blood red. Despite this, his voice stayed even albeit dark. “I will say this again. My reasons do not matter. If I wanted to hurt Val, I would have already.” Slowly, he put extra care in the enunciation of each word. “I am here to help.”

While Val only had a vague idea of what they were really talking about, she garnered two things.

Firstly, her father must have been some kind of evil god or demigod. The sinking of her heart could be felt, knowing that he had been more than a terrible, absentee father. The man must have been immoral enough that the other gods wanted her dead simply for their relation. That certainly seemed extreme, but maybe Val could see that if only she knew what atrocity her father had committed. With all of the power allotted to deities, some people with divine blood could do truly horrendous things.

Without any real information, she felt hopelessly confused. Val was lost to whatever fallacies that her own conjecture would produce. For this reason, she focused on the other thing that she did know for a fact.

Secondly, Val observed the extent of Tavras’s hate for Arius, blinding him to the point where he would put her in danger. He even thought that the God Supreme was evil, all because he had the god of war for one of his sons. The consensus of scholarship on the gods agreed that Arius was depraved as would be expected from a god of war, but that should not impede the choir from singing the glories of Suvier, their righteous God Supreme.

Maybe Val should adopt a jaded worldview too, if the God Supreme had ordered her death simply because of her relation to her father. Even so, she did not want to harbor ill thoughts in her mind. Arius was the God Supreme’s right hand for a reason, and he would see to correcting any lapse in judgement that his father had made. Val liked to keep some faith in the Pantheon that she had always believed in, so her feeble voice picked up.

“Tavras, I think that you should put your rivalry aside for a minute. Arius is clearly trying to help us.”

The reddened hate in Arius’s eyes diminished. The warmth of his gaze flitted to Val with a tight smile on his face. “Yes, you’re right—"

“Do not speak at this table when you know nothing about the situation!” Tavras boomed at her.

Refusing to shrink back, Val cried out with equal fervor. “How am I supposed to know anything if no one will ever tell me anything?”

Foofy had been marching around, stressed from the argument. He now crept over to offer comfort to Val at her outburst.

Her trembling hands went to the base of his ears and rubbed them to soothe both of their nerves.

“Wait,” Arius said, pointing between Val and Tavras. “I thought she had learned how to obfuscate her thoughts. Does she actually have no idea what is going on?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” Tavras said with a big sigh. “It was the only way to keep her mind safe from enemies.”

Jumping up, Arius turned away with both hands on his head. “Here is yet another thing that you did wrong! I cannot stand your insolence. You would think that I am the millennia-old god and that you are only a century old!”

“Oh, really?” Tavras said with narrowed eyes. “What was I supposed to do? Tell her the truth about everything so that her mind could be bludgeoned by more powerful gods and demigods?”

“You teach her a proper Mind Shield!” Arius cried.

“Again,” Tavras said, throwing out his arms. “How was I supposed to do that? I cannot teach a Mind Shield. Iharu tried her best—”

In response, Arius yelled incomprehensibly before returning to words. Whatever issue he took about Val’s ignorance, this fact had clearly been a breaking point for him. “The only reason why her Mind Shield works is because Iharu’s mind is as much an animal as your mind is the ocean! Maybe if you had not enslaved a demigoddess with incredible mental prowess, you would have had someone to teach a proper Mind Shield.”

“Oh no,” Val whispered.

The first reference to Evalaite had been made. It looked like they had devolved to this. With a groan, she let her head fall against the table and prepared to endure a shouting match.