"Can you give me some animal traits?" Kylnar asked. "Fox, specifically. I'd do it myself, except I'm not as talented at aether magics as you are, and if I tried it, my body would end up tearing itself apart because the genetics don't match the body. That's a rather painful death I'd like to avoid going through again."

"You've tried?" Cyrus asked, and Kylnar nodded. "Fox ears and tail?"

"Yes, please."

"I can do some fangs as well, for your canines," Cyrus told him. "And adjust your physical attributes to enhance your senses and strength."

"Go ahead," Kylnar told him, then paused. "Cyrus, how come you never adjust your own body's senses? Your godly senses are more sensitive than most, and I know it bothers you. It's possibly why you're so averse to touch, you know."

"It itches, not having my natural state," Cyrus shook his head. "Even if my genetics change, I can feel the adjustments. It takes time for the aetherial residue to fade. The longest I managed was about a week before I gave up and reverted things."

Reverting things was much easier, and while it left aetherial residue, it wasn't attached to his makeup. That made it much more tolerable than the residue attached to his makeup from changing himself.

"Ah," Kylnar said. "Well, I'm not sensitive to it like you are. Go ahead and make the changes, please."

"Remove your shirt."

Kylnar obeyed, and Cyrus had him sit sideways on the chair so that his back was exposed to the younger god. Cyrus placed his hands on Kylnar's back and began to channel his magic through aether, adjusting Kylnar's makeup and genetics.

The older god's ears melded into his head, hair growing in its place as if it had always grown like that, and a pair of triangular, white fox ears grew atop his head. The god's hair turned white, and a thick, bushy fox's tail began to grow out of his back just above his crack, pushing down on the top of his pants. Kylnar was made a little bit faster and stronger physically, his senses adjusted to have a more fox-like proportion. His canines grew out a little, turning sharper and deadlier.

"Done," Cyrus pulled his hands off the older god. "I didn't change that scrawny frame of yours. If you want muscle, go work out."

"Rynovar tells me the same thing!" Kylnar laughed as he pulled his shirt back on while sitting on the chair properly. "I don't mind not having much muscle. Thank you, Cyrus."

Cyrus nodded, then pulled out his tablet and began looking at his messages.

"Do you mind if I use the connection to leave, rather than out the front door?" Kylnar asked. "This form is mostly to screw with Rynovar, and it's probably best if it's not seen by the mortals."

"Suit yourself," Cyrus answered as he shot off another message.

"Have a good day," Kylnar made his way into the kitchen, then vanished.

The world was covered in pathways which could be used by gods and other greater beings to travel between locations quickly, and Cyrus's shop wasn't located in its spot by chance. Several pathways met together in the kitchen in the back, which made it quite easy to travel across the world in a flash.

The only time Cyrus used the pathways was when he needed to quickly travel to his brothers due to whatever they were doing at the time or when he needed to get somewhere else because of them, such as the warehouse where they had stored the cotton balls. Otherwise, he used cars and planes for nearly all travel methods.

Thinking about planes, Cyrus remembered that he needed to book a flight north so that they could visit the Blessed Peak. After booking the necessary tickets, he continued his work. At dinnertime, he put his tablet away, changed the disc and recospheres for new ones, then closed the shop and made his way upstairs to begin cooking dinner.

Only once the smell of the seasoning on the chicken filled the air did his brothers and Lyda come out of the triplets' bedroom. The quartet were fully dressed, and Lyda moved awkwardly, as if in pain.

"That was fun," Lyda told Cyrus. "But I don't think I'll ever do that again."

"I figured," he answered, then looked at the triplet which had approached and was sniffing him. "If you guys had enough time to take a shower and relax, then one of you could have gone downstairs and covered the shop, Owen."

Owen sniffed by Cyrus's hand, and the older brother raised an eyebrow.

"I smell the libarus flower," Owen stepped back and stood up straight. "Kylnar came by?"

"He did?" Max asked.

"Why didn't you let us know?" Luke asked.

"That's what you get for having sex rather than watching the shop," Cyrus commented. "Now shoo."

"The libarus flower?" Lyda asked. "Kylnar? As in Lord Kilnar, the god?"

"Yeah," Luke answered. "He comes by every now and then, usually to order something or drop something off. Sometimes, just to chat. The libarus flower is a flower that only grows on Rynovar's island. It has a subtle scent, but lingers even after you scrub a few dozen times. Kylnar uses extract from it in his shampoo and body wash."

"Which makes it strange that the smell is on your hands," Owen said. "Did you touch him?"

"His back," Cyrus answered.

"Oh?" His brothers asked in unison. "Giving him a massage? Are you going to finally respond to his advances?"

"I was manipulating his genetic makeup," Cyrus answered. "I need physical contact for that."

"You mean like what you did earlier?" Lyda asked.

"Yes," Cyrus answered. "It's not the first time he's asked me to change something's makeup, though it is the first he asked me to change his own."

Cyrus felt sure that part of the reason Kylnar wanted him to change the older god's makeup was to study the spell itself. He didn't ask, though, so he couldn't say for sure – for all he knew, Kylnar really did want it solely to mess with Rynovar. As the god was a god of research and studies, however, Cyrus wasn't ruling out that Kylnar wanted to witness the spell in action.

"What did he want you to do?" Owen asked.

"Give him some fox traits," Cyrus answered. "He also has an order for copies of recospheres. I have the lists downstairs, by the machine. Make sure to fulfill them in a timely manner."

"Will do, sir!" The triplets responded in unison, pounding their left fists to their chests at the same time.

Cyrus sighed as he continued cooking dinner. It finished a few minutes later, then everyone sat down and ate. When they finished, Cyrus set the triplets to deal with the dishes, then walked over to their TV and opened up their recosphere storage. He opened up the player and set eight recospheres into it, then moved to the couch and picked up the remote.

"What did you put in?" The triplets asked.

"One of the ones he had was the fourth movie, I already converted it."

The triplets laughed, and Lyda decided to join Cyrus on the couch, though she made sure to not sit too close. They spent the rest of the day watching the movies, the triplets retiring around midnight, Lyda having long-since fallen asleep before then.

When morning came, everyone awoke to Cyrus cooking breakfast, having continued to watch the movies through the night.

"Did you sleep at all?" Lyda asked as they sat down to eat.

"Probably not," the triplets answered in unison.

"Cyrus can go for a few days without sleep," Luke told her. "Then he'll allow his exhaustion to catch up to him and pass out for ten or twelve hours."

"His longest streak is sixteen hours," the triplets said in unison.

"Actually, it's thirty-one," Cyrus muttered, causing the triplets to laugh.

They finished eating breakfast, then the triplets got to work taking care of the dishes.

"Come on," Cyrus told Lyda after she changed outfits. "It's time to go."

"Go?" She asked. "To the Blessed Ones?"

"No," he answered. "Back to Madam Mara's Restaurant."

"I thought you were going to accompany me?" She asked. "Did you change your mind?"

"No," he answered. "You should probably tell your boss you're going to be gone longer than you expected, though."

"Right," she realized.

Cyrus led Lyda back to his car, then drove to the airport. They went through the check-in procedures, then waited for their flight, which went smoothly and silently, with Lyda in a seat a few rows back, Cyrus on the window seat of the pair he had reserved for himself.

He knew that Lyda was amused for some reason, but decided against asking her why. If she wanted him to know, she would tell him. There was always the option of tapping into her head to find out the source of the amusement, but he decided against that.

They landed at the airport and hailed a cab to the restaurant. When they entered, the male bartender from the night Cyrus had been there to meet up with the finder greeted them from behind the counter.

"Welcome back, Lyda," he said. "Did you do what you'd gone for?"

"Yes," she answered as they approached the bar. "Is Madam Mara in?"

"Not at the moment," he answered. "She stepped out for a few minutes, but she'll be back soon. Did you really?"

"Yeah, why?" She asked as Cyrus sat down and grabbed a nearby menu.

"Madam Mara said," the bartender told her. "That you were leaving with him to go seek the Silver Oracle. If you completed that…"

"We did," Lyda sat on the seat beside Cyrus. "Much to my shock. I had worried a little that he might sell me to the sex trade, or lock me in a basement and just keep me for himself."

"I'd not do that," Cyrus looked at the bartender. "Chicken and fries, a cheeseburger and fries, mozzarella sticks with marinara, onion rings, and nachos with cheese, no other toppings. If she needs to pay for her order, add it to mine."

"Just a cheeseburger and fries, please," Lyda told the bartender.

The bartender left, returning after a couple of minutes, then took their drink orders and filled them.

"Are you pulling my leg?" He asked Lyda. "The Silver Oracle is a myth."

"She's actually rather beautiful," Lyda told him. "She lives in a reality marble. I don't think I'd have ever found her if Cyrus hadn't taken me there, even if I had all the money in the world."

"The signs of how to find her exist," Cyrus muttered. "If you find the right thing, you even get the exact geographical coordinates to the entrance we used."

"So are you doing the quest as well?" The bartender asked him.

"The quest is for mortals," Cyrus took a drip of his hard cider. "Not for gods. If I wanted to go up to the island, I could."

It was a simple matter of stepping into a pathway and using it to travel up there. Only gods could do that under normal circumstances.

"Uh-huh," the bartender said disbelievingly. "And how would you do that? Airships can't draw close to it – Rynovar shielded the island against aerial approaches. Anything which draws too close has a tendency to be repelled. Birds can make it, but there are records of air wizards attempting to fly there and finding their flight magics failing once they hit a certain point. One nearly died because he didn't manage to recast it quickly."

"Their fault for trying to cheat," Cyrus said. "As a god, I have other means available to me."

"He really likes to play the god card, doesn't he?" The bartender looked at Lyda. "You had to put up with that for a day and a half. Anything else about him that's a bit off in the head?"

"I'm right here."

"I know," the bartender glanced at him.

"Actually," Lyda said. "His brothers are even more insane than he is. According to Cyrus, his brothers are quite fond of putting wrapping paper on buildings."

"That was your brothers?" The bartender asked. "Did they use a time spell, or-"

"They slipped out of time," Cyrus said. "And I punished them quite thoroughly for that antic."

He paused for a moment, then shook his head.

"I need to punish them for the chickens," he muttered, then pulled out his tablet and started typing on it.

"He is a bit off in the head, isn't he?" The bartender whispered to Lyda.

"He's a lot more powerful than you'd expect," she told him, deciding not to mention that one of the three gods ruling the world apparently paid Cyrus casual visits.

The bartender shrugged, then made his way to the back to collect their food. When he returned, Cyrus was still engrossed in using his tablet, but began eating the moment the food was placed down, not taking his eyes off his tablet for a single moment.

"You've seen how powerful he is?" The bartender asked.

"Considering his brothers fear him," she said. "And they're powerful time wizards who can reverse time on hundreds of objects at once? I'd say he's quite powerful."

"They don't fear me," Cyrus muttered.

"After I discovered what a foursome with three guys is like," she looked at him. "We were talking about you, Cyrus. They admitted that the only reason they haven't done some of the things they want to is out of fear of you.

"They didn't say," she said when he gave her a confused look. "That they were scared of your anger. Just that they were frightened of your punishments for causing too much chaos or too many problems for people. They were going to dump the cotton balls in a bunch of pools, but said they really wanted to dump them into the river that flowed beside your city.

"Actually," she paused for a moment. "They were pretty insistent that you rarely ever got genuinely angry, just frustrated and annoyed. I'd asked them several times about your anger, and they said that they don't know what would happen if someone truly pissed you off."

"They're really scared of me?" He asked.

"Yeah."

"Good!" He returned to using his tablet. "Maybe that'll keep them behaving as much as they are."

"Cotton balls?" The bartender asked.

"They apparently had a few million of them," she told him.

"So they convinced you they were time mages?" He asked.

"No," she answered. "I saw their time magics myself. One of them said something which set off Cyrus, and the two of them slipped out of time while he beat the daylights out of his brother. Then they returned, and Cyrus made him restore the shop. Watching everything return to their places and mend, damage undoing itself, was quite the surreal experience."

"What about Aunt Lena's place?"

"That," she gave Cyrus an amused look. "Was a different type of surreal."

"Aunt Lena?" The bartender asked.

"It's what he calls the Silver Oracle," she said. "They apparently met years ago, though he never told me how he figured out where she lived."

"It depends on who you ask," Cyrus muttered.

"So," the bartender says. "Let me try to sort this straight, Lyda, okay? His brothers are time mages, he's more powerful than them to the point they're actually a little scared of him, he knows the Silver Oracle well enough to be on a first-name basis with her, and took you to meet her?"

"Yeah," Lyda answered, then hesitated for a moment.

"Yes, you can say what you're thinking."

"We're going to Blessed Ones next," Lyda told the bartender. "Apparently, the reason they've never issued a challenge for the quest before is because you have to receive a letter from the Silver Oracle first and present it to them."

"It's tailored specifically to the person she gave it to," Cyrus said. "Only they can receive the challenge from the Blessed Ones from it. To anyone else, it's worthless."

He thought over it for a moment.

"I suppose it could count as a collector's item," he muttered. "But what sort of value would that be? An item that could only be used by a specific person, and useless to others?"

"You certainly seem a collector," the bartender muttered.

"A very handsome, helpful one," Lyda told him. "Cyrus agreed to accompany me and pay for the trip, out of the kindness of his heart."

"Aunt Lena told me to."

"She suggested it, not ordered it."

"Close enough."

"Lyda Marris!" A deep, male voice exclaimed, startling Lyda and the bartender.