Although Val’s curiosity had been sated, she was left feeling emptier inside rather than satisfied. Now, she knew that Arius had almost killed Iharu quite intentionally on his part. She lay there in the grass and turned her head towards him.

Arius had either fallen asleep or he was trying to do so. Even in a resting state, the god of war had a dangerous aura about him. She likened him to a crocodile that could snap to life at a moment’s notice, though as far as reptiles went, he had actually been in favor with dragons in the past.

It looked like she would have to talk to him tomorrow, but Val figured it did not hurt to try saying something tonight. “Arius, are you awake?”

“Mm. Yeah?” Though he was aware enough to respond, he sounded more asleep than he did awake. His eyes stayed closed, clear about what he intended to do right now.

As unsettled as she felt, Val thought to keep her question short tonight. “Are you sure that you are happy about me being a stalker?”

“Mhm.”

She let a sigh heave from her lips. Hopefully he really did like to have her as a stalker, because Val would have some questions over the vision that she had just seen. Despite what Ludo had said to try to justify Arius’s behavior, she wanted to feel some amount of anger at his outright assault against Iharu. The god of life and medicine could easily have been trying to defend a delinquent teenager whom he had invested his energies. It was hard to excuse that kind of behavior from an objective, unaffiliated standpoint.

If Val had learned anything about gods from her time spent with Tavras, she had come to understand that a life in possession of significant power and eternal youth lent itself to a more complex personage. Before getting angry, Val would try to understand Arius first.

Even as she set her mind on this decision, she shifted around in discomfort instead of falling asleep. Arius’s presence left her uneasy, though she did her best to recall her gratitude in the way that he had gotten her out of an uncomfortable situation. At least she did not have to bear witness to Tavras and Evalaite’s argument. Foofy stayed at her side where she could pet him as her soothing friend until she fell asleep.

When sunlight bathed across Val’s skin the next morning, her mind stirred awake, but she had no desire to move her body yet. For sleeping outside on the ground hardened by the cold, she felt incredibly comfortable.

The sound of running pupper paws and snorting breaths brought her to full attention. First thing in the morning, something was going down for Foofy to be running about.

Val jerked up to a sitting position and twisted to catch a glimpse of that majestic Dobie.

His jaws contained a bright red thing while he ran at his top speed in her general direction. Foofy skidded to a stop in front of Arius who stood tall.

“Good boy!” Arius praised him but not too loud. It was almost like a whispering praise, cognizant of Val who slept nearby. He lowered his hands to accept the red object from Foofy’s mouth. Then, he said, “Go fetch!” and hurled the ball with far too much power.

The ball streaked through the air with a tail of red energy in its wake. Foofy went bolting after it with all the strength of a divine dog. Both ball and dog shrunk to dots on the distant, mountain landscape.

Her fingers rubbed at her bleary eyes. “Where did you get that ball from?”

Arius turned to her with a subtle, golden light in his eyes. “Good morning, Val! Foofy and I were just playing fetch. I made that ball with my ability.”

Of course he did. The powers that gods used in combat had many more creative applications than just destruction.

“Wow. Look at Foofy go.” She clambered to her feet to observe better. “Yes, Foofy!” Val cheered. “Come.”

After some seconds, he arrived back at Val’s feet. His nub of a tail wiggled in a good morning greeting.

“Yes. Hi! Good morning!” She gave him ferocious pets while Arius stood grinning nearby.

“Do I get a good morning?”

“Yeah, sure.” In part, Val balked as she fully realized that she had spent the night with him under the stars. “Did you sleep well?”

From her knowledge of him from her visions, Val recalled that he could not sleep well at night. That was eighty years ago when he had said that to be fair, but because of this, she did not expect him to respond as positively as he did.

“Yes! Normally I have trouble sleeping, but I actually slept well.”

Not much had changed for him in eighty years by appearances, so that made sense. Her heart nearly skipped a beat at that simple statement nonetheless. “Um, I’m glad.”

His smile stayed ever present upon his lips. “How did you sleep, Val?” Though it was a mundane question, the intensity of those eyes made her squirm in front of him.

This was her opportunity to inquire about the thing that had kept her awake for so long. “It took me a while to fall asleep, so I watched some of the past.” She focused on keeping her voice calm so that maybe they could have a productive, rational discussion. “You tried to kill Iharu on purpose. I thought that you had called it an accident.”

She stated the issue plainly, though Arius only seemed more thrilled.

“Did you really stalk that part of my past so soon after I had mentioned it?” Maybe he really did like having her as his stalker.

“Yeah,” she said, straight-faced, “I did.”

“I know that probably looked bad,” he said, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Let’s just say that I was a confused kid. I’m a lot better adjusted now.” Arius took the ball from Foofy and chucked it a crazy distance once again.

“Actually, I was always the nicest out of my siblings. We were raised to act like murder hobos.”

“Wait, what?” Val hardly kept herself from snorting a laugh. That was not what she had expected Arius to say.

“Yeah!” Rather than elaborating on his childhood, he went down a linguistic tangent. “I thought that’s a term that people use these days. Oh no, I just made myself sound old, didn’t I?”

Her eyes rolled around in her head. It was not like she needed Arius to explain, because Ludo had already alluded to all of this.

Arius tried again. “My siblings and I were conditioned to be violent as you can imagine. We were way too quick to attack anything, albeit I was always slow on the uptake.”

He held both hands in front of himself like a picturesque scene. “When I met Iharu and Fangarus, I have this very clear memory of thinking that I would attack first for once.” Quickly, he shook his head. “I swear. The one time that I actually acted on that was the one time that I shouldn’t have—classic mistake.”

Val understood. It seemed too simple for a mistaken attempt at murder, but for a demigod raised on the Summit, perhaps it could be as simple as that. Since she wanted to believe him, she tried to offer him a smile.

Foofy had come back with the ball and went straight to her. His whole body pranced for attention, and she was more than happy to oblige.

“I don’t really understand how you could be so confused as to attack Iharu,” Val started, “but I suppose if you had a bad childhood where violence was the norm, that could make sense.”

“Do you know how plenty of gods have legends around them?” Arius asked. “The stories sound like they are made up—which of course some are—but some are not too far from the truth. I felt like I had one of those childhoods as a demigod,” Arius said, nodding along to himself.

To break whatever serious spell overcame him, he laughed and said, “I’m hardly old enough for any legends about me to have been popularized much. Plus, not everything would fit with Suvier’s narrative. People will believe whatever they think is fitting for the god of war and Suvier’s son.” The disdain was evident by the tone of his voice.

“I see,” Val said with pouted lips. “Remember to try not to hate your father too much until we sort out how much your memories have been altered.”

Looking either which way, Arius bobbed his head but did not look inclined to fully agree. “I think that the nature of my edited memories means that I am not able to just choose not to hate him, but don’t worry about me. I have not acted on my own desires pretty much ever.” He responded with a laugh almost identical to all the others, except this one had a more obvious, forced placement.

Val narrowed her eyes. The similarity to his other laughs only proved that he was good at faking a cheerful disposition. She focused her efforts on sensing his emotional state, much duller than the animated way in which he acted.

“What I’m doing with you is enough rebellion to satisfy me in that department.” His big hand landed at the top of her head and ruffled her hair. After the fact, Arius asked sheepishly, “Is that okay?”

Val pulled both hands over top of her head in an attempt to smooth out her hair. “Yeah, but don’t mess up my hair next time! I just got it back.” Feeling those long strands through her fingers, her heart beat a little faster because it was Arius who had given her the hair regrowth potion.

Their thoughts were in sync, because Arius brought up that exact point next.

“I’m the reason that you get to have your hair back,” he said, leaning in close to her ear. The breath of his whisper could be felt through her hair. “By that logic, I should be able to muss your hair however I want.”

“No,” she said with a tremor in her voice. Val shied away from him, but the smile would not leave her. This dynamic that she had with Arius as supposed soulmates was weird but good. She would be lying if she said that she did not like the attention, even if she had just met him the other day.

At last, her smile began to drop away as her thoughts wandered to a god who was more familiar to her. That god was Tavras.

“Val,” Arius ended up calling to her, “you need to throw the ball.”

“Oh, right!” She had forgotten that she had ever taken the ball from Foofy’s mouth, and now he sat there eagerly waiting to get it back. Val tossed it into a high arc so that its faint shadow grew in size as it went up. The ball or red energy could practically cross the sun.

All the while, Foofy ran so that he could leap and meet the ball on its descent.

“Good boy!” Val and Arius cheered in unison. She looked to him and laughed while he enjoyed their shared exuberance in a more subdued snicker.

More seriously, Arius said, “We have a bit to do today. You can demonstrate your powers for me right now, and then we could head straight to the appropriate point of entry to the Summit. We can have everything sorted out with your documentation before noon.”

Her thoughts remained on another god. “What about Tavras? Originally, we were all going to go together, right? He might worry about me if I disappear without him.” Her heart now raced with some anxiety, because Val was not so sure that Tavras would miss her presence in the genuine way that he should.

“Okay,” Arius drawled as he crossed his arms. “We go back to New Gate first and see if the geezer wants to chaperone us. How does that sound?” While he might have offered that, his expression did not look particularly happy over the words that had just left his lips.

“I would like that,” Val said with a fervent nod, but that depended upon one condition. “Will you and Tavras be able to act civil around one another?”

“Sure. I promise that I will only attack second, which means that we have nothing to worry about.” Arius cast his hands out around himself and said, “Tavras’s power is stunted while we are inland, though it looks like he wants to bring half the ocean over here.”

From the direction of the coast, faraway storm clouds brewed in an unnatural, dark mass. A small gulp slid down her throat, because Val would not look forward to seeing Tavras if this were the mood that he was in.

“I just wanted to make sure that you would be okay around him, since I know the history between you two,” Val muttered this and let her fingers fumble around in front of herself. With no such bad blood between Tavras and herself, she still dreaded seeing him once again.

Forcibly, she put some cheer back into her present mood. “Foofy, come!” While that good boy ran to rejoin Val and Arius, she looked up to him. “Would you take me back home now?”

“Yep.”

Once Val had hefted up Foofy into her arms, Arius placed one hand at her shoulder. By his power, he made them both lift into the sky to fly once more.