At about five minutes after midnight, I walked in a furious march through the corridors of the Temple of Blades. I wasn't happy with the plan that Erika had laid out, but after she told me all the variables, I simply could not see another way forward.

I could sense it, now. Ciel'ostra's power had been part of the spiritual background of the town, and it was missing. As I approached the Bell of Ciel'ostra, I felt that its power was degrading fast; without the Goddess to support it, it would fail soon.

A touch of flame empowered it just enough for my purposes, and also had the added benefit of unlocking it for me. Furious at myself, the world, and Ciel'ostra, I let out my rage by punching the bell... which hurt really really badly and probably just about broke my knuckles.

The bell rang, very loudly. More than just that, when it rang, all those who heard the bell were woken from their sleep--more than half the city, I was sure, and all of them could hear my voice, clear as day.

"To Arms. The City is under attack. Candidates for Murn's successor, meet at the Bell." I paused, wanting to say one more thing, but... it wasn't my place to.

Of course, the city wasn't under attack, not yet, but it would be a matter of minutes, not hours. I was already starting to feel something reaching in this direction from... I shook my head. Don't think about it.

The first one to get there was Ulia. As I suspected, she was a climber, and she scampered up the side of the building somehow, almost sneaking up on me, but I turned to her, and she approached.

"What is going on? How did you get out?" Ulia measured me, and this time, there was no friendship in her eyes, none at all. "Who are you, really?"

"I am a friend to the Goddess of Blades," I said. "I swear that on my life. I must... speak with the gods for a minute. I must speak with the five of you. It is urgent. Do not let anyone leave." I paused. "Please. You have no idea how important this is."

Ulia glanced past me towards the peak of the Temple. She must also, I thought, feel that something is wrong.

"I am on your side," I insisted. "I swear on my life, and on the God of Eyes."

After a minute, Ulia nodded, and I knelt down. I would need all of my concentration for this.

A moment later, I appeared in the chamber of the Council of Gods. I... knew, intuitively, that many of the gods there were aware of me, or quickly became aware of me, but they all chose to pretend to be sleeping.

"I will not have it," I snarled quietly, then again, louder. "I will not have it!" I slammed my foot into the ground, making the floor ring with the same sound as Ciel'ostra's bell. It filled the space, but... the problem was never that they didn't know I was there. "I will be heard!"

The muscled god who served as a judge was already sitting upright, and merely opened his eyes to look at me. I looked him in the eyes, and saw a tired kind of acceptance there. Next to him, the small god who has toyed with me when I was here for my naming lifted his head from where it had been resting on his fist, and scowled at me. Two more faces I did not know stirred, but all had the same kind of eyes.

Eyes that said their decision had already been made.

"You knew!" I didn't need to, but I was so sick of the charade that I floated up off the floor until I was no longer beneath any of them. "You knew that she was going to die, and you did nothing. What will happen when the necromancer gets her Key? Are you really not concerned with what will happen?"

"We do not meddle in the affairs of men any longer, Xethram." The judge looked at me. "We... are aware. But once the Necromancer has been Named, she will be brought here to answer for her crimes, and we will destroy her. Until that time, until she is named, she is no true goddess, no threat to the world." He had a pained look. "It does mean sacrificing Her, and Her city."

"As well as me, and most likely Your daughter." I turned and pointed at Xenma, who was still keeping his head down, although he was there, I knew. "You know that as well as anyone, don't you?"

Xenma raised his head to look at me. His twisted, ugly visage might have been on the verge of crying... or it might have been snarling at me. It was difficult to tell exactly what he was thinking.

"I can prevent it," I said to the room, trying to project confidence, confidence I only had because a drunk woman had showed up in my room in the middle of the night. Confidence that was, to say the least, shaky. "But I need help."

The room was still. I looked around, but most gods and goddesses on the Council simply put their heads back down and feigned sleep, although I sensed they were still there--and perhaps could not leave, not while I had summoned them all.

"She was already preparing a successor," I said. "We can get the key, but I need to be able to hide her. I need strength... and a knowledge of how to hide from such an enemy. A divine enchantment, something." I could tell my voice was shaking, could tell that my argument was finding no purchase.

Then, as I had hoped, Xenma stood, but when I turned to look at him he did not meet my eyes.

"Do you know what it is you promised me, Xethram?" he asked, and I felt my heart skip a beat.

I had not thought about it for a long time. I was... only dimly aware that there was a promise I'd made, in the first moments after I was given my Key, a promise that somehow had been binding, in a way I wasn't entirely clear about. The memory was... stripped from me. As I tried to focus on it, it evaded me.

"Of course you wouldn't," he said after a moment. "Like many godly contracts, the point is not the words, it is the sense, the Truth of it. I promised that you would only receive your key if you would be Worthy." Xenma hopped over his desk and landed on... a fake plane of air, a false ground that he used as a convenient mental image, after which he floated up to my level, and I floated down to his.

"You were only permitted to come here if you would be worthy of being my daughter's husband," he said, quietly. "Xethram--Your name was Ry-an, I believe..." I blinked, finding it hard to believe that he had managed to mispronounce my name, but let it go, "...I am an awful father, and a worse god. But the reason why you won our argument, before, is one simple truth. All that lives, dies. What is important is that which remains--our legacy." He gave me a toothy snarl, and his teeth were uneven, edged in filth, and his beard was ratty and moldy.

"I killed, so many, young god, that you would not believe it. I killed so that people would hate me, and I fed off their hate. As god of storms I wrecked this world since the time of the Founders and fed off of the cruelty I created. And as time has moved on and sorcerers became more powerful, people feared me less, and I have grown ever more ashamed of my past, of the things I have done so that I, above all others, may survive."

"And then came a woman." Xenma's fingers curled into fists, and he squeezed them so tightly that if he were not a god I'm sure he would have drawn blood with his ugly, ragged-looking nails. "A woman I did not deserve, and I stole her, and she chased after me until she died. Not out of hatred, but to protect her daughter. My daughter. I played games with her, thinking that she was no more than a monster, like me... but she was not."

"I have lived for my daughter, Xethram." Xenma unclenched and raised one hand, and held it in front of him, and an orb appeared there. "Swear on your soul that you will protect her until your dying day, that you will live for her in my place, and you may have all of my power, all of my knowledge, my key, my godhood, my soul."

My face screwed up at that. I... liked Alanna. I had every intention of protecting her, anyway. And I understood the medieval mentality of marrying people off because it was the "right thing to do." And unfortunately, I needed that power. But.

I started to open my mouth, but somehow the petty small god who had played with me before sensed what I was doing and smothered me with a giant mental finger. "You will not call her here," he said, and I did not understand why or how. "This choice is yours, and yours alone."

"Please," said Xenma, holding his orb out to me. "Take it, protect her."

But I was already angry, already desperate, and I was not in the mood to be toyed with. The Eye of Condemnation came to me, and I turned to glare at the petty god, putting entirely too much power into considering what I had to work with. I focused all of the power and all of the enchantment just on pushing back that heavy weight that he pressed down on me with, and it let up. I could sense that while he was surprised, it wouldn't last, but it didn't need to.

"Alanna," I breathed, "I summon you."

The halls of the Council were meant to be used. Speaking her Name here was a form of magic in itself, one that was potent enough to resist the meddling of even the council members themselves, and somewhere, Alanna was pulled from her reverie, against her will, until her Avatar stood among the Council. Her Avatar, her goddess form, was radiant, but in this place, even I--definitely the least of the gods here by an unimaginable distance--could see her true form clearly. The effect of the light she gave off simply... paled in comparison to the magics here, and seemed to vanish.

She looked up at me, at Xenma, and her face twisted as she saw Xenma holding out his Key. She floated up, but the petty god was not having this interruption, and I felt an immense wave of pressure pouring out from him.

"How dare you? How DARE you?" The petty one snarled, and the desk in front of him tore apart as he started to move forward. "You do not command this place, and you do NOT--"

The judge grabbed him by the scalp, dragged him back from the floor, and gave us a vague wave as if to say, "Just get on with it."

"Father." Alanna, I could tell, was furious. "What are you doing?"

The look he gave in return was full of guilt and suffering. "I am sorry, my daughter. But it must--"

"He wanted me to swear an oath," I interrupted, "to protect you forever. As though I should make such a promise without talking to you first." When Alanna turned to look at me, I raised my eyebrows, feeling frustrated. "Forever is a long time. I am sure you as much as anyone do not want to be bound forever, certainly not on a whim."

"No." Alanna looked back at her father. "I will not sacrifice my father for my own sake, nor yours." She paused, and looked at me. "What happened to--"

"She is dead. The Enemy comes for her key. I need help. But I will not take it without your permission." At that point, as I considered just how much I really did need that help, and that I really did like Alanna, as much as I knew of her, I was ready to be accept the shotgun-wedding bargain to a beautiful woman in order to save our lives. But if he wanted to make that bargain, he'd also have to convince her.

Alanna looked back and forth between the two of us. "Men," she said with a snarl. "Father, I don't need your protection."

"I have been a bad father, Lily," he said, and tears rolled down his face. "You have forgiven me, time and time again. You are worthy and beautiful in a world that is not. I searched this world for decades to find a man who might be worthy of you and I found little. And then... there was this Bargain. And I thought that this, finally, could give you rest, and you could stop worrying so much about mortals--"

"I was a mortal!" Alanna--Lily?--snarled at her father. "I know you have forgotten it, father, but we live our lives searching for anything to give us strength in the darkness, to give us courage and wisdom. We are searching--mortals search over and over for a place in life and the gods can give it to them. I am not going to spend my whole life putting myself above others! I am not like you and I will never be!" Alanna sniffled as she finished, and I saw tears in her eyes, trembling in her hands.

The argument was having an effect, and although it was masked, I thought I sensed power transferring from other gods here to Alanna. As I looked around the room, my attention was drawn suddenly to one god in particular--or rather, the skeleton of a goddess, one pretending to be not merely asleep but dead. And yet, I realized as I looked at it, it was clearly not true. And when I thought back to the vision Erika had showed me, of this council long ago, I recognized her face.

That skeleton was the woman I had argued with in my own mind, when I had been fighting against a corrupting feeling that I was more than human, that I should leave mortal concerns behind. The woman who had whispered things into my mind, fueling my doubts... all the while sounding intelligent and rational, as though her whole attitude was saying I wasn't. The woman who I'd gotten a momentary glimpse of, as she sat in a posh fur coat made of soulflame, drinking more of the stuff as though it was wine.

Her face was there, in this seat, in that memory. And the more I focused on that skeleton, the more I sensed a link, the more I could tell that I wasn't wrong.

"You," I said, and I knew she felt the accusation in my voice.

When that skeleton raised its head, the whole room fell still. It remained a skeleton--bereft of features, little more than a fragment of the past, and yet... and yet it moved, and its eyeless sockets fixed on me.

"I know you," I said, and although I felt dumb saying it, I forced myself. "With a wave of your hand you could make this all disappear, and yet..."

"AND YET WHAT, YOUNG GOD?" The voice that echoed from the skeletal mouth was the kind of voice you expected from a skeleton--not from a posh woman sipping wine. Still, while I flinched back from the roughness and intensity, and the stench of death that came from her, I stood my ground.

"...You spoke with me before." I knew I was changing the subject, but I thought the chances of convincing her were very slim, and I had to try another tactic. "If you--"

"YOU ARE INTERESTING FOR A GOD, I ADMIT," replied the skeleton, "BUT MY TIME ON THIS WORLD IS OVER. THERE IS MUCH I CAN DO, BUT I WILL NOT FIGHT FOR YOUR KIND. YOU HAVE NOTHING YOU CAN GIVE ME, AND I WILL OFFER NOTHING WITHOUT AN EXCHANGE."

I studied her, trying to grasp the mental image of the woman sitting alone by the fire, and I realized that the image changed, as though reflecting some reality I wasn't aware of--she was sitting on top of a fur-covered bed, her sheets all made, again, of silver and ashen soulflame, and glaring at me, naked where her body was not covered in sheets.

And as I stared at that image in my mind for a long moment, I was captivated not by her beauty or the power radiating from the image, but by the color.

"You're lying," I said, and I realized that I was half-consciously lowering myself to the ground, no longer seeking to put myself above her or anyone else. "...you love this world."

The skeleton eyed me, and I knew for a fact nobody else present understood what was going on, but I could swear that what I had said was a Truth, a real religious-capital-letter-T Truth of this world. That somehow, in spite of everything, that Truth was important, a part of why the world was the way it was. I didn't quite understand it... couldn't really put a finger on it... but I sensed it, and I had absolute faith in that sense.

The silence that came my statement was profound, but I felt someone trying to shake me awake on the other side, knew that time was running out. I shook my head. "I don't have time," I said, and somehow, I had an odd instinct, one that I... simply chose to accept. Instead of begging her, I... bowed to the skeleton. "I apologize for waking you. I will have to proceed without your help."

"WHAT--"

"Alanna, Xenma, I have no time. Whatever we decide, we must do it now." In a flash, I joined them. "The city is in danger."

Alanna cringed, and I knew it was unfair to ask her to decide the entire rest of her life in an instant, but Xenma saved us the trouble. "Take it," he said. "I won't make you swear. But... protect her."

"Father..." Alanna looked at him, and me, and I could tell she could kind of see, kind of knew, that the pressure on my end was real. "...I love you," she said quietly.

He reached for her, put his head atop hers, giving her a tight hug to say goodbye... and then forced the second Key into me.

Many things came into me in that time, but the greatest were green flame, ashen flame, golden flame... and a myriad of connections to the magic of this world. In an instant, I was no longer merely Xethram, God of Eyes.

I was the God of Eyes and Storms.