Bright and sunny, Val had entered a scene of the past over one hundred years ago. Two groups of gods that she knew congregated in an expansive field.

Val set her eyes on one god in particular, or perhaps she should consider him a demigod in this vision. As a young teenager, Arius looked incredibly cute.

Short and willowy, he had yet to hit his growth spurt or put on muscle. As he had told her earlier that night, Arius was indeed a natural redhead, much more tinged in orange than his present, true red hair color. He had the sides of his jaw-length hair pulled over his head in a clip. Beyond that, he had a smattering of freckles over his nose. He was the quintessential ginger kid, and Val just wanted to slap both hands on his cheeks and squeeze his face inward.

It was rather funny for Val to think of Arius as adorable. At his apparent age of fifteen years old, Arius was only three years younger than her current age—much closer in age than how he looked at twenty-five or was actually over a century old in the real timeline. He looked entirely normal like any mortal as a young demigod.

However, one thing kept the young Arius from being positively adorable. His facial expression looked zombified—empty yet mixed with a quiet anger. His brown eyes would be big if not for the way that they narrowed.

On one side of him, he had his dragon slinking around him. Urru hardly amounted to half of his size when fully grown.

On Arius’s other side, the hand of an adult god rested on his shoulder. The golden god of life and medicine Ludovico accompanied him.

Across from them stood a second group of immortals who were more familiar to Val. Arius glared at them, his chin tucked low in a display of distrust.

Tavras, as always, looked the same in the past. In his company were the teenage versions of Iharu and Fangarus. As twins, they appeared to be around the age of seventeen or eighteen, only a few years older than Arius.

“Well, let us do our introductions,” Ludo said cheerfully with a clap of hands. “I am Ludovico, the god of life and medicine. You kids are both free to call me Ludo.”

“Thank you. My name is Fangarus. I go by Fang. This is my sister—”

“I’m Iharu!” she blurted out. With a punch into his arm, she snapped lowly, “Let me introduce myself, Fang.”

The duo was the same as ever at any point in time, it seemed.

Likewise, Tavras and Arius were the same even before they had warred against each other in the Serpent’s Circle. A live wire arcing with electricity could practically be seen between them, drawn from one eye to the other. The young Arius did not blink nor did Tavras.

“Um, Tavras,” Ludo said, “would you like to introduce yourself next?”

“There’s no need. I already know everything that I need to know about him.” Arius spoke with such sass, though it was hard to take him seriously with his young, still-changing voice.

Val wanted to snicker at her vision.

Neither Arius nor Tavras blinked as they continued their hostile contest.

“Well,” Ludo said with a wince, “that is Tavras. He is the god of water who shepherds the sea. Tavras, this is Arius and Rakurruakanthor. The dragon only speaks Fire Tongue fluently at the moment, but Arius has been teaching him Marivanch.” Turning his kindly gaze down to Arius, Ludo tightened his hand at his shoulder. “I trust that you will translate for Rakurruakanthor?”

At first, Arius did not respond. His face maintained that soulless expression as he stared at his opponent.

In the end, Tavras ended up blinking first and casting his gaze down to his feet.

The two of them had definitely started their feud when they had first met, and Arius had beat Tavras even back then from the looks of it. It was rather pathetic that a millennia-old god would pick on a young, teenage boy.

Arius did not seem to mind. The slightest smirk pinched onto one corner of his lips. Then, he started speaking in a language that had an eclectic mixture of syllables like the quick pops and quiet roar of fire.

Urru made some commentary in reply which Val could not understand. Some bright flames licked along his chops—truly the sound of fire—and with that, he was done speaking.

Next, Iharu snapped loudly, “How is he our brother if he looks nothing like us? He looks pasty. He would burn to a crisp just standing under the sun!”

Tavras laughed heartily while Ludo flitted his eyes down to Arius, more concerned for him.

The blunt observation did nothing to faze him. Arius stood there stoically.

With the next thing, Val’s attention glazed over at the boring speech.

“As it so happens,” Ludo began, “people of fairer skin tone experience sunburn more readily due to the lower concentrations of melanin in their skin. Red hair also leaves an individual particularly receptive to the sun. Lucky for him, Arius happens to be aligned with fire, so the sun does not burn him.”

Iharu stood there with a dumbfounded look on her face.

“I think that we are more than old enough to know about that,” Fang began. “Or, at least I do. I don’t know if Iharu remembers what we learned about other skin tones.”

“I can’t believe you just explained white skin to me,” Iharu screamed at Ludo. Her ire flipped immediately onto Fang. “Of course I know that, you idiot!”

Tavras addressed Iharu’s real question with both a tone of happiness and accusation. “What Ludo was trying to bury under useless information is the fact that Arius is only your half sibling. You are not siblings of full blood,” he said, adding on, “thank the Weaver.”

“Uh, well it is still good to meet you, Arius,” Fang said with a broad smile. “You’re no less a brother to us!”

While Fang had said the polite thing, Iharu did not exhibit the same social graces. “What parent do we share with him, Uncle?”

“You share the one true mother with him, Mother Earth.”

Iharu’s face seemed to cross and knit for a moment. “Who looks more like her? Me and Fang, or him?” Already she had adopted a vindicative tone towards Arius that she had modeled after Tavras’s disdain.

“Sadly, it must be that child.” Alongside his words, Tavras pointed at Arius.

“In fact, Arius is said to look exactly like Mother Earth,” Ludo said, “only he has straight hair while your mother had curly hair.”

With a response discordant from her wishes, Iharu frowned and pouted. Fang seemed downcast too, though he tried harder to hide his disappointment behind a smile.

“Maybe if you are kind to Arius, he could tell you a bit about what he remembers of her,” Ludo suggested, “but how about we let Fang ask any questions.”

Tight smiles were exchanged between Ludo and Fang. They were the only two who would put any effort into making this meeting go over smoothly, aside from Urru who did not know the language at this point.

“I have nothing to say about her,” Arius snapped. “She was a failure and a disappointment. It is the only thing that is said about her now.”

Hearing such cruel words about his mother and at such a young age took Val aback. Tonight, he had mentioned something about watching her go insane, but otherwise, Val had no idea how Arius could be so cruel to his own mother.

A painstaking silence held across everyone. After the atmosphere became suffocating, a whisper of fire came from Urru into Arius’s ear. He whispered back in the language that no one else understood.

“Hey, I can speak the Plant Tongue!” Fang said with a great amount of cheer. Stooping down, he plucked up a thick blade of grass and held it in front of Arius’s face. “Would you like to know what this grass is saying?”

There was a long pause.

Arius simply blinked his glazed-over eyes a few times before deadpanning, “Help. Part of me was just dismembered.” Since he did so much as change the inflection of his voice, it was impossible to tell if he had meant that as a joke or if he had said it earnestly from a perturbed mind.

“Um, no,” Fang said slowly with a falling face. His grin pulled back up as quickly as he had lit it start to slip away. A honk sounded as he made the quack grass whistle.

Arius blinked. He gave no other response, not even a twitch of annoyance.

“No? Did you not like that?”

“You would think that I am the older one,” Arius replied.

“Fang is really annoying,” Iharu said. “Feel free to ignore him. If he gets on your nerves just kick him, or I will gladly do it for you. That was the lamest thing that I’ve ever seen.”

“Iharu!” Fang whined. “Do not encourage our brother to gang up on me with you. Both of you are a tough crowd.” Shaking away his failed attempt at cheer, he tried again. “Neither of us have seen a dragon before. Can we pet your dragon?”

After an exchange with Urru in the Fire Tongue, Arius said, “I guess that you can. He said that it would be okay. His name is Rakurruakanthor.”

While both Iharu and Fang drew nearer to Urru, Ludo saw this as an indication that they did not need supervision anymore.

“You kids are welcome to go off on your own,” Ludo offered, “just stay in sight. Tavras and I have some things to discuss.”

The two gods let the teenagers mingle amongst themselves. As much interest as Val had in Arius, she let the frame of reference for her vision drift along to follow Ludo and Tavras.