“She’s hiding herself.”

“Definitely hiding herself.”

“Why?”

“Unless she is dead? I know you don’t like entertaining the idea.”

“She isn’t dead.”

“If she is, she isn’t as dead as most corpses.”

“She isn’t dead.”

“I don’t think we can say that for certain given everything we know. In fact, what do we even consider the state of death? The point at which the body ceases function? When Tenebrael claims the soul? Or maybe when—”

“She isn’t dead because her mother came back with her father and brother. They claimed to have met Kasita and to know for a fact that Alyssa is still alive.”

Companion raised an eyebrow, turning her eyes to face Irulon. She sat there for just a minute, staring with gradually narrowing eyes. “How do you know that? And how do I not know that?”

Irulon grinned, feeling the confusion across their shared link with each other. There was a prodding coming across as well, an attempt at discovering how there was something hidden from her. With their souls entwined as they were, there shouldn’t have been any possibility of that. Yet here she was, watching as that probe slid right around a little mental compartment containing a few pieces of information.

Companion seemed to realize that there was something she was missing, judging by the expression on her face.

“Keeping secrets?”

“We’re coming up on the anniversary of when we found each other. I have a small gift for you that I want to keep a surprise.”

“A surprise,” Companion repeated, voice utterly flat. “A gift? You are my Irulon, are you not? Haven’t been replaced with some duplicate?”

“I admit. It was mostly a thought experiment that I developed through meditation while you slept. The discipline in not even thinking once about it while you were awake was tough, but it seems as if I have managed successfully. The experiment really only began because I was frankly exhausted with your attempts at engaging in dangerous situations for the adrenaline. You leaping off the balcony with nothing to catch yourself was the primary impetus. I woke in a sweat, adrenaline coursing through my body. I have come to realize that we require some separation of thought and mind.”

Companion closed her eyes, nodding in silent agreement. “Your decision to do so is far less surprising than your decision to present me with a gift.”

“It isn’t anything special and was primarily a subject to hide from you. And it has been working so far.”

“Then why hide Alyssa’s family?”

“Another experiment. An attempt to hide something from you that I’m actively learning and cognizant about as opposed to something I’ve been sneaking around with while you slept. I’ll show you how to do it later, of course. This whole endeavor would be useless if you couldn’t keep your irritating activities from me.”

“I see,” Companion said, nodding her head. “So… this gift..?”

“Later. It is human custom to give gifts on anniversaries. Not before.”

One last time, Companion nodded in apparent understanding. Yet Irulon had to hide some amusement at the irritated emotions coming from the former dragon. She kept perfectly poised, but Companion had been delving far more into the human side of herself as of late, which included far more expressive emotions. If only expressed internally.

Eventually, Companion turned away, looking back to one of Irulon’s viewing portals into the Endless Expanse, which covered the majority of the wall. It was the wall of Irulon’s bedroom opposite from the balcony. One wall that had been cleared away just for use with the viewing portal spell. It was far more advanced than the versions created earlier in the year, capable of showing off dozens of different angles all at once. Each individual viewing angle was able to be adjusted independent of the next, providing a nearly perfect view of whatever the viewer desired. A somewhat necessary feature given the random initial placement of every point.

“So we are looking here again because of Alyssa’s family, is it?”

“I wondered if anything had changed since we last attempted an observation.”

So far, nothing seemed different. Perhaps if they had Alyssa’s ability to actively detect angels, they might be able to see something abnormal. As it was, they were just looking in on an iridescent city of towers. An empty city of towers. It was all Irulon had ever seen of the place. Before she disappeared, Alyssa claimed that there were thousands upon thousands of angels all flying about the place like busy worker bees in a burgeoning hive.

After Alyssa disappeared, they had spent several weeks observing the place, wondering if something would change in the so called center of the universe. Alyssa’s note had suggested that she would be trying to connect with the Throne, after all. But nothing had changed as far as either of them could tell. It had been an empty world and it remained an empty world and it was still an empty world.

Companion idly adjusted the view of one of the panels, shifting the image to cross over what they both assumed to be the Throne. A location inside one of the towers with what could only be described as a throne standing front and center. A library surrounded it, from which books occasionally disappeared. It was really the only movement in the place, those disappearing and reappearing books, tomes, scrolls, and even stone slabs in some cases. On the few occasions where they had been able to see text on or in the books, they had copied it down. Unfortunately, it was all in the Enochian language. The tiny amount of which Alyssa had taught them was not enough to decipher anything meaningful.

Clasping her hands behind her back, Irulon paced back and forth in front of the array of spells. In truth, she didn’t know what she was looking for. Some sign of change perhaps. She had already spent a great deal of time watching nothing though, and was considering watching Earth for some sign that Alyssa had made it home. It wasn’t exactly what she planned on doing with the day, but she could take a short detour from her examination of ancient rituals to view a bit of her side-passion project. These windows to other worlds were currently top secret until she finished her examinations and propositions. Only Companion really knew about them.

Well, Companion, Brakkt, and Tess.

But maybe it was time to continue her thesis on the subject of other worlds, alternate realms, and higher planes.

It had been a while since she observed Alyssa’s home world. Her brother had insisted that she spend a great deal of time looking in on it, looking for Alyssa, immediately after her disappearance. But the world known as Earth was far too large. Even the advanced development of her spell with all its many viewing ports couldn’t find any sign of Alyssa. It didn’t help that nobody actually knew where Alyssa lived. All they knew was of the shape of the house from the building out near Teneville. And yet, it seemed like a quarter of the world lived in such houses. It was impossible to narrow down the actual location.

Not that her brother wished to hear anything of the sort.

Just as she was about to swap out the viewing spell for the Earth version, another of the books along the wall of the endless library moved. Normally, the books would disappear shortly after moving. They would vanish completely after a brief period of fading away. But this one didn’t vanish. It floated in the air, opening to a marked page. A finger slowly started tracing across the text in the book. As the finger shimmered into visibility, so did a hand, arm, and eventually a body.

“You see that, correct?”

“I’m not hiding anything from you at the moment.”

“That is Kasita.”

“It is.”

“She is staring at us.”

“Alyssa had mentioned that angels were capable of looking through the windows. Or that is what it appeared as to her when the Virtues found her.”

“But this is Kasita, not an angel.”

“Kasita went missing as well. It is logical to assume—”

“Ufu~”

Before Irulon could react to the giggle behind her back, she felt a hand clasp down on her shoulders. Her shoulders and Companion’s shoulders, across their link. There was a moment of panic and surprise before her breath got knocked out of her.

In the blink of an eye, Irulon found herself in the midst of an iridescent library. One with shelves that stretched on for longer than she could see in every direction. Even the direction of the shelves. No matter which direction she headed, she would end up walking alongside a corridor of books, tomes, scrolls, and even stone slabs. Companion stood at her side, head whipping back and forth as she tried to make sense of the world they had found themselves in.

For Companion, the effect of the place was far worse. Irulon’s mind could ignore the impossibility of being able to walk into the shelves and find herself moving down a corridor. She simply forgot the details that couldn’t work. Companion couldn’t do that. A dragon etched every memory they had into their very soul, giving them perfect memory. A memory that Irulon could easily tap into. At the moment, she was focusing her meditation on projecting her own mind as much as possible.

Doing so seemed to help. The moment she started, she felt Companion’s adrenaline production slow down.

Mildly.

“Welcome to the final mystery, Irulon. And Companion.”

Irulon looked over to find Kasita lounging in a large red chair that seemed to simply exist between the library shelves. Velvet carpet, velvet chair, even padded panels on the walls all covered in red velvet. If the rest of the world wasn’t giving her a headache, just the sight of this place would. Its decor alone was atrocious.

“Come. Have a seat,” Kasita said, pointing toward two chairs opposite from hers that had definitely not been there a moment ago.

Yet Irulon only knew that because of Companion’s perfect memory. If Irulon looked through only her own memory, she couldn’t remember a time when the room and its three chairs had not existed.

Given that Companion’s pallor was turning more and more ill, Irulon had a feeling that she should be glad for that, even if it was a disturbing concept.

“We weren’t planning on talking to people so soon, but I’m my own person and wanted to talk to some people. I’ve only recently figured out how to properly change myself and the universe so that I can freely do… Well, this.” Kasita waved a hand around at the velvet room. “Seeing you two peek in here made me want to pull you two in for a little explanation. I should grab Brakkt too, but maybe we’ll start with a little girl’s chat.

“Coming in here should help Companion as well,” Kasita continued after apparently taking notice of the former dragon’s wobbly stance. “I’ve untwisted the space here. Things should be relatively normal. Though I must caution the two of you against running off for any reason. The rest of this world is not so kind. You might end up tripping into a space that pulls you into an infinite number of directions at once, killing you instantly. Worse, you might run into Alyssa.”

A million questions crossed between Irulon and Companion’s mind in the span of an instant. Even debilitated as she was, Companion sought answers.

But Irulon was the first to speak, wanting to address the final thing that Kasita said. The confirmation that Alyssa was here in the Endless Expanse. “Why would finding Alyssa be a bad thing?” Had something happened to Alyssa? Had she been corrupted into becoming an enemy? Some hideous creature worse than any monster?

“Nothing like what you’re thinking. It’s just that looking at her does strange things to people. I— Or rather, we think that there was a reason why angels and everything else from this world is hidden from mortal eyes. For Alyssa, it seems as if you can’t not look at her once you’ve laid eyes on her. And she apparently doesn’t look… right. Not sure if the same applies to Tenebrael. She hasn’t bothered trying to show herself off to any mortals.

“As for me…”

Kasita waved a hand up and down herself, causing changes that had always been there yet never existed. Minor alterations to her body, the kind expected of a mimic. Except… Just from a cursory glance, neither Companion nor Irulon believed that they were looking at a mimic. They knew how mimics worked. Their familiarity with Kasita had only increased that knowledge over the period of time where they spent much time together, poking and prodding at her.

“I’m the god of change,” the former mimic proclaimed in an edict of utter truth.

For a long moment, no one said anything. Irulon simply stared, watching Kasita as she crossed her knees and reclined in her own velvet chair. Although clearly no longer a mimic, maybe no longer a mortal, the Kasita that Irulon knew was still sitting right there. All the mannerisms were present. The little individual cues that she had, the way her lips quirked and the tone of her voice. The giggle she made in Irulon’s ear. She was smiling and smug, but not fundamentally different from what she used to be like.

Companion, on the other hand, was mostly standing in a bit of a stupor. Her eyes were closed. Leaning into their link, Irulon found a few confusing feelings rising to prominence. The first was worry and fear. The sudden situation change, the twisted and changing landscape that she could remember being different yet had clearly always been, and even the differences that Irulon noticed in Kasita and dismissed were causing extreme stress. At the same time, she was clearly soaking in adrenaline. The sudden location changed worked toward that, as did the scent of this place. It was something Irulon couldn’t detect at all without using their link, but this place was inundated with magic so thoroughly that Companion’s skin was tingling in an almost painful manner. Her breath, already magical, felt like it might just ignite without any conscious action on her part because of the saturation.

Irulon’s companion was torn between moving forward into the room that Kasita promised would be better and remaining where she was simply to feel the conflicting sensations.

Eventually, Irulon grabbed Companion’s hand and forced her into the room, not wanting her to damage her body while Alyssa wasn’t around to fix it.

“So, you’re some kind of god now?” Irulon said as conversationally as possible as she slowly sank down into one of the vacant chairs. She honestly didn’t know what else to say. It was clear that things had changed with Kasita and the way they had been pulled into this world certainly wasn’t something that Irulon could even begin to process how to do with the magic she knew. But still, what did one say when presented with someone claiming to be a god?

Companion, breathing much easier now that she was in this small reading room, plopped herself down in the other chair far more casually. She looked—and felt—far more relaxed now. “You definitely taste different. Smell different. I don’t smell any of what you used to be on you now.”

“I’m good at changing things. Probably owing to my mimic nature. I’m different now because I really didn’t like my old self. This form is much better… it being far more suitable to navigating this place is also a nice side effect.”

“But a god?” Irulon said again, leaning forward. Until Alyssa’s arrival, Tenebrael had been the highest power that most people were aware of. Tenebrael was the deity of the world. The Juno Federation’s theocracy claimed that she was but a servant or monster of some other power, but the majority of Lyria didn’t buy into that theory all that much.

So to have claimed a power as high as Tenebrael…

“Unless we find something of a higher power than the Throne out there, then yes, I think god is an apt term. Alyssa doesn’t like it, but blagh to that. She still calls herself human if you can believe it. Fufu~”

“So she isn’t mortal either?”

“Oh no,” Kasita said with a hearty laugh, shoulders shaking. “Absolutely not. Alyssa is essentially the definition of omnipotence at the moment, even more than me. I grabbed some of the Throne’s power, but really, she’s the king of kings here. Yet… She sits about on the Throne all day, fretting about the morality of her actions while trying to figure out how to… be more like me, I guess.”

“Morality?”

“When you gain ultimate power over basically everything, you apparently start to worry about a whole lot of things. ‘I should stop all diseases,’ and ‘wars should stop too,’ or maybe ‘some parents aren’t kind to their children’ and stuff like that. But then she starts worrying about things like whether or not changing someone to be kind to their children is moral. She is highly opposed to mind control and rewriting someone to being essentially a completely different person is even worse. At the moment, we have Guardian Angels running around, trying to subtly guide things along a more gentle path. The more extreme cases she has delegated to Archangels, repurposing them—while she can be everywhere, technically, she needs the assistance. As I mentioned, people interacting with her tends to have a negative effect on their mental wellbeing. Which she also doesn’t like.”

“That’s…”

“Fascinating,” Irulon finished for Companion. “But you sound like you’re able to talk with Alyssa without trouble.”

“That’s correct.”

Companion beat Irulon to speaking. “Because you have the Throne’s power?”

“I see where this is going. The Throne is only designed for a single sitter. I’m essentially an angel at this point. A free angel. The only one so far, though Tenebrael is working on that problem for herself however. But to answer your unasked question, no. You can’t take the Throne’s power and use that to see Alyssa. Not without… significant changes. Ones that I think Alyssa would be opposed to at the moment. At least not before we have a whole lot more understanding about… well, everything. The Throne, despite being everything, didn’t exactly come with an instruction manual… as Alyssa likes to put it.”

Both Irulon and Companion leaned back in their chairs at the same time, both letting out a small sigh as they moved. Shame. She considered arguing, but Kasita was apparently not the one she needed to argue with. Judging by what Kasita said and how Companion had reacted to merely visiting this place, seeking out Alyssa was probably not wise. At the moment, anyway. If Irulon knew the current Alyssa at all, she knew that Alyssa was trying to figure out a way to be just a little more normal.

Eventually, they would come into contact with each other. When that happened, Irulon intended to have an entire series of arguments lined up for the benefit of tapping into the ultimate power of the universe.

Until then… “You can create anything?”

“I can indeed!”

“Tyrian wine? Imports have been poor lately.”

“Ah yes.” A pair of glasses featuring the richly scented liquor had always been on the table between Irulon and Companion’s chairs. “Slave labor, mostly using monsters. Guardians are disrupting the events, trying to convince the humans and monsters to be more equal.”

“Is that not under the umbrella of mind control? Influencing others against their will?”

“And now we’re arguing morality again. We believed that a convincing argument is influencing others, but not violating any deeper principles. That argument is merely being delivered by Guardians. But maybe you have a better idea of how things should work? Alyssa could honestly use the help… I think.”

“Adviser to the woman above all? How could I refuse?”