F10w3rchy1d sat at the small table she was sharing with Faun and sighed.

"Faun," she said, "You're never 'going to get your loneliness eased' if you don't get out there, girl!"

"I know," Faun said nervously, "But…."

"Exactly," F10w3rchy1d replied impatiently, "Pick one and grab it!"

"Oh, I couldn't just do something like that!"

F10w3rchy1d groaned and lightly banged her head on the table.

"Look," she said sternly, "I bring you to the divine breeding grounds, and all you are doing is sitting here with me. Unless you want me to start easing you right here…."

"No!" Faun exclaimed, squeezing her kneecaps together tightly, "Um… I mean, thank you, kind lady, for your offer but…."

"Jezus!" F10w3rchy1d laughed. "I was joking… So, what's the problem?"

"It's just…."

Faun blushed and sipped her drink.

"I… um…"

"Oh my God," F10w3rchy1d gasped. "You're not a virgin, are you?"

"No…" Faun replied reluctantly, "I had a paramour once… It… It didn't work out…."

She looked down.

"He betrayed me and tried to steal my power."

"Oh…" F10w3rchy1d said as she put the pieces together. "Shit… Sorry, Faun…"

"Perhaps this was a mistake," Faun said sadly, "I am sorry for wasting your time after all the kindness you have shown me, but…."

"Hey," F10w3rchy1d said, laying her hand on Faun's arm, "You aren't wasting anything. I wanted an evening out, anyway. Why don't we just relax and meet some people like us, have a few drinks, and have some fun? Maybe you will meet someone nice, maybe you won't. No pressure. The whole point of this exercise was to get you out and see that there was more than just The Great Asscrack and my boss."

"Thank you once again for your kindness," Faun said sadly, "But perhaps it is still too soon."

"That is for you and you alone to decide," F10w3rchy1d replied, "Everyone processes things at a different rate. The one thing we have in abundance is time. We can just hang out, or we can split and go back to Nolta."

"Oh…" Faun said, looking down. "I… I don't want to go back there just yet…."

"Me either," F10w3rchy1d replied.

"Can we just stay here for a little while?" Faun asked. "I will try not to encumber you overmuch."

"Sure," F10w3rchy1d smiled. "Oh, look!" she exclaimed as she pointed at a burly reptilian clad in purple armor. "It's Zvaxus! Come on, you'll like him… um… I mean not like-like him, but like him. We kind of had a war once, but he's cool."

F10w3rchy1d stood.

"Zvaxus!!!" she shouted.

The armored reptilian entity turned and grinned, revealing rows of razor-sharp teeth.

"F10w3rchy1d!" he bellowed as he started to approach, "I did not expect to see you awake for quite some time! How is my favorite simulated entity?"

"Pretty good, overall," F10w3rchy1d replied as she gave him a hug, "Got yanked from my repose by some humans about to get slaughtered, and my Boss has lost her mind. Other than that, things are great!"

"Frostie has gone insane?" Zvaxus asked with great concern, "That is the opposite of things going great. How dire is the peril?"

"The only peril is to my patience," F10w3rchy1d replied, "She is in the process of getting back together with The Big Guy. You haven't met him, but trust me, this will end badly… eventually. It always does."

"My condolences are already extended to one so foolish as to trifle with Frostie's heart," Zvaxus replied, "That can't be healthy."

"It isn't," F10w3rchy1d laughed, "But The Big Guy is one of the few who can survive it and has… repeatedly."

Faun just glared and drained her glass.

"Oh, and this bundle of happiness is Faun," F10w3rchy1d laughed, "She had her heart set on said entity before Frostie swooped in and did a stupid."

"Must you tell everyone?" Faun groused as a tiny Sk'athor appeared wrapped around a fresh glass and promptly disappeared, leaving the glass behind.

Faun immediately snatched it.

"Faun is usually a bit more… bubbly…." F10w3rchy1d said, "Faun, this is Zvaxus, the Glavvor's God of War."

"Reluctant God of War," Zvaxus said as he extended a taloned hand, "It is a pleasure to meet you."

"Nice to meet you as well," Faun said politely, "Forgive my demeanor. I've had a trying day."

"Oh, it's alright," Zvaxus smiled, "This is the place to go after one of those. After a few of what you have in your hand, you will find things much more tolerable."

"So, what are the mighty Glavvor at war with today?" F10w3rchy1d asked as another chair mysteriously appeared.

"The only thing left to fight," Zvaxus replied as he sat, "entropy itself."

He sighed.

"We will lose, of course," he said as he drank from a tall glass, "but it is our finest battle!"

"You guys ready to talk about us showing up yet?" F10w3rchy1d asked. "We'd love to have you."

"The All-Father will never give up sovereignty to anyone," Zvaxus replied, "Especially to Frostie. He's still angry with her."

"He was the one who said not to hold back," F10w3rchy1d laughed. "Who knew he had a glass jaw?"

"The All-Father, for one," Zvaxus laughed. "The look on his face when her first punch landed still brings delight!"

"Faun over here has a mean right, too," F10w3rchy1d said, "She knocked me across three different realities."

"Truly?" Zvaxus asked as Faun blushed. "I would not have suspected."

"Neither did I," F10w3rchy1d laughed. "I'd put her haymaker right up there with Frostie's, actually."

"Really?!?" Faun blurted.

"Don't get any ideas," F10w3rchy1d snickered, "Frostie would wipe the floor with you. You just have the punch, not the aeons of skill, experience, and pure unadulterated evil the boss is packing."

"Oh…" Faun said, slightly disappointed.

"But still," Zvaxus enthused, "you have the power! I wish to taste it!"

"Wait until you are ready to go home and sleep it off," F10w3rchy1d smiled, "I'm not kidding. She will flatten you… Changing the subject," F10w3rchy1d continued, "how close are you guys to, you know… the end."

"We still have billions of years," Zvaxus replied, "thanks in no small part to your gifts."

"Yeah!" a bright voice piped up as another reptilian appeared, draped in a long white lab coat. "Thanks for that Dyson sphere tech!"

"Veelanora!" F10w3rchy1d exclaimed as she jumped up and gave her a hug. "Faun, this is Veelanora, their goddess of technology!"

"Hi, squirt," Zvaxus smiled. "Nice to see you taking a break."

"I had to walk away for a bit," she said as she flopped into yet another magically appearing chair. "Two million years down the fucking drain!"

She downed the glowing shot glass in her talons.

"What are you working on?" F10w3rchy1d asked.

"The final frontier, cross-dimensional travel," Veelanora replied, "It worked on paper, but whenever we tried to actually jump, the ship exploded."

Her shot glass magically filled, and she downed it again.

"And, I just figured out why," she hissed, "Our basic theory is flawed. It will never work."

"Want one of ours to reverse-engineer?"

"Nah," she replied, "not yet. I wanna crack this one myself!"

"You don't want a hint?"

"Not even a little one!" Veelanora exclaimed, slamming her now empty shot glass on the table, "The Glavvor will make their own way or die trying…."

She grinned.

"Or at least wait until things are actually dire before I come sniffing around for cheats," she said, baring her razor-sharp teeth. "We figured out how to Dyson sphere a black hole, so we got loads of time now."

"You know what I'm going to say next, right?"

"We aren't uploading!" Veelanora said firmly. "It's an abomination!... No offense…"

"None taken," F10w3rchy1d replied, "Different strokes for different folks. How close are you to figuring out how to migrate to a new universe?"

"Ugh…" Veelanora groaned as she slammed down another shot. "I have no fucking idea. We have to start over… again… and my latest genius avatar just threw himself off of Glavvkraun Tower. Mortals, am I right?"

"Yelkaun the Far Seer just offed himself?!?" Zvaxus exclaimed in horror.

"Yep, about two hours ago," Veelanora shrugged. "Now I have to go down and have another kid."

"Any prospects?" Zvaxus asked.

"There is this absolute egg-dropper of a drake who just defended his thesis," Veelanora said as she slammed back another shot, "He even has blue scales… you know… down there… I think he might be more than suitable."

"The sacrifices you make for our people are truly inspiring, Veelanora," Zvaxus smirked.

"Hey, laying mortal eggs takes a lot out of me," she replied. "And I gotta set up a false identity, get a job, and do you have ANY idea what rent is like down there these days? It's not like the good old days when you could just dig a hole in a cliff somewhere. All you have to do is descend from the heavens, chat up somebody at a bar somewhere, and bugger off. I have to hang around at least until the egg is hatched before I can split."

"Mother of the year over here," F10w3rchy1d snorted.

"Forgive me for not wanting to get attached to something that's just going to die the moment you get attached to it," Veelanora shrugged. "A Glavvor is hard enough to keep alive as it is. My avatars are even worse. They keep blowing themselves up, or teleporting half of their head across the lab, or, my personal favorite, taking off in a fucking rocket and forgetting to install the parachute…."

"Seriously?" F10w3rchy1d laughed.

"Yep," Zvaxus chortled.

"It's not funny," Veelanora growled and then chuckled, "Ok, it was a little funny even if it did set back space exploration for years… Such a smart little idiot…" she added as she smiled fondly.

She stopped smiling.

"Or, they throw themselves off of a fucking tower just because their life's work turned out to be a dead-end and everything they thought they knew about the universe is wrong," she grumbled as she pounded down another shot. "The fucker had a good hundred years left in him, too… asshole…."

A tiny Sk'athor holding a shot glass appeared once more.

"I don't want to waste the booze," Veelanora said as she accepted the shot, "But could I switch to something milder after this one? I don't want a repeat of my last visit."

The tiny Sk'athor laughed and disappeared.

"So, how's All-Father taking the news," Zvaxus asked. "I know he's been gripping your tail over the universe migration for millennia."

"I haven't told him yet," Veelanora replied as she downed her shot. "But he is NOT going to be happy that we've been pursuing complete rubbish for millions of years only to disprove most of what we believed about physics itself… To borrow a phrase from our distinguished colleague, fuck my life."

"Excuse me," Faun asked, "Forgive me if I'm asking a foolish question. I am very new at this…."

"So are we," Veelanora replied, "First universe for all of us. Whatever your question is, it cannot be more foolish than my latest endeavor."

"You are all part of a pantheon?" Faun asked.

"Reluctantly," Zvaxus replied.

"Yeah," Veelanora added, "most of us can't stand each other. You try living under the same roof with the same people for billions of fucking years."

"And the goddamned Glavvor keep making new gods all the damn time," Zvaxus grumbled, "There is no need for a Goddess of Technology AND a God of the Internet. They make and unmake us at the drop of a fucking hat."

"And the overlapping domains…." Veelanora hissed as a large mug like the one Zvaxus was drinking from appeared, "Don't even get me started. I fucking made the internet! It's mine!!! I also made television, cars, spaceships, and more! And what do the fucking Glavvor do? Do they light a few candles and sing me some nice songs to thank you? No! They go and create new gods to take my best stuff away from me!... ungrateful little shits…."

"Technically," Zvaxus smirked, "You didn't create all of those things. The Glavvor did."

"Do you want me to punch you in the dick?" Veelanora hissed, "My avatars, my own flesh and blood, made half of that shit easy… easy… And I was there for all the rest, checking equations, whispering in ears, giving people dreams… Making sure the right fuses blew after some dipshit replaced the original ones with bigger ones because 'they kept blowing'… I love the Glavvor… I honestly do…."

Veelanora sighed.

"But they are such fucking little idiots!"

"Your people created you and not the other way around?" Faun asked.

"Yeah," Zvaxus replied, "the Glavvor are very imaginative and very good at prayer. If enough mortals believe in something hard enough and send enough 'energy' in the same spot… Poof! You get a god!"

"Not always," F10w3rchy1d added, "In fact, not usually, but with the right species and the right universe with the right constants, it can happen. A lot of entities get extra power from their worshippers. It's why so many of them are so invested in the little fuckers."

"Yeah," Zvaxus laughed, "But in our case, we don't have much choice in the matter. We're 'invested' in the little shits whether we want to be or not. It's built right into our very being. Poof! You're the war god. Oh, you detest even the thought of war? Tough. There's a war, and we need a god so we can win. Get to it! Chop-chop!"

"Yeah, but you killed that guy, didn't you?" Veelanora asked.

"Goddamn right I did," Zvaxus grinned, "And the next asshole who started a war… and the next… and the asshole after that…."

"Do you kill everyone who starts a war?" Faun asked, wide-eyed.

"Not everyone," Zvaxus replied, "If they have a valid casus belli and actually participate in the war they start, like on the front line, then I don't smoosh them. I learned pretty quick that war was an inherent part of the Glavvor… well… after I plunged them into a thousand-year dark age because I killed all the royal families… and the kings that came after that… and then the chieftains… and then… You get the idea. I couldn't stop war that way. I just made many more smaller ones. Oops."

"See," F10w3rchy1d smiled, "You aren't the only entity to make a mistake. So, Zvaxus, what did you do next."

"Well, after getting quite the dressing down from All-Father," Zvaxus grinned, "I decided that I had to start allowing the… ugh… 'right wars' to happen. Of course, deciding which side was in the right is damn near impossible. There are very, very few 'good guys' when you are talking about kings. In the end, I decided to implement certain standards, and as long as they were met, I would let things proceed. Fortunately, about the same time Veelanora showed up, I was able to start channeling 'war' more constructively. There was a 'war' on disease, on hunger, on pollution… on corruption…."

He laughed.

"My personal favorite was the 'war' on war itself. I'm still proud of that one… even if it did almost destroy the planet… Oops…"

"Yeah, you got reamed for that one," Veelanora snickered. "All-Father was pissed!"

"All-Father can bite me," Zvaxus scoffed, "If he did his job properly, I would have never existed in the first place. Screw him. Besides, it's your fault, too."

"Hey!" Veelanora exclaimed defensively, "I just make technology! You're the one who turned nuclear energy into those goddamned bombs!"

"Don't put that on me!" Zvaxus snarled, "I wasn't the one helping those little shits develop the damned things!"

"They were developing technology! I had to help!... Besides, nuclear energy and atomic theory were vital in your 'war on pollution' and your 'war on climate change', so don't even start with me!" Veelanora snapped. "War is your domain. That was your fuck up!"

"So, how many billion years have you two been fighting about this," F10w3rchy1d smirked.

"Considering the 'war on war' happened within the first hundred thousand years of Glavvoran civilization," Veelanora chuckled ruefully, "all of them."

"And we are members of the pantheon who actually get along," Zvaxus replied, "You couldn't even have the Goddess of Nature and the Goddess of Industry in the same room. They would literally try to kill each other within minutes."

“I miss Loleenunna,” Veelanora sighed.

"Me, too," Zvaxus replied.

"Who was she?" F10w3rchy1d asked. "I never met her."

"The Goddess of Nature," Zvaxus said sadly, "She perished when nature did."

"What killed nature?" Faun asked in horror.

"Time," Zvaxus replied. "All of the stars besides red dwarfs eventually burned out, and nature burned out with them. Now, we only live on Dyson spheres around red dwarfs, and thanks to Veelanora, black holes. There is an ecosystem of sorts, but it's not 'wild'. It's agriculture, not 'nature'. No nature, no nature goddess."

"In the end," Veelanora said, "she just stayed on our original world with her animals until the last one passed. After that, she didn't last much longer. She just… faded…."

"Yet I still remain," Zvaxus sighed as he turned up his mug. "War will always exist."

"The Graaal?" F10w3rchy1d asked.

"They are gone, finally," Zvaxus said grimly, "Their last Dyson sphere shattered over a thousand years ago."

"Good riddance," F10w3rchy1d said, "Even in your universe, there is still plenty to share. There was no need for their 'there can be only one' nonsense."

"Their infernal machines still remain," Zvaxus said, "Even with no master, they are still bent upon destruction and plague our frontier."

"It's just the machines now?" F10w3rchy1d asked, "Want us to drop by?"

"Nothing would please me more," Zvaxus replied, "However, All-Father does not like you and would suspect treachery."

"Well, tell him that we are just interested in the AI's and will gladly give them a new home."

"Oh, so you can arm them and set them against us?!?" Zvaxus said in a stuffy tone, clearly impersonating someone. "You take us for fools?!?"

"It was a simple misunderstanding!" F10w3rchy1d exclaimed in frustration. "All you guys had to do was just tell us that the universe was occupied, and we would have left. Seriously, do you have any idea how many different universes pop into being every second?"

"Don't rub it in," Veelanora moaned.

"Oh, you'll figure it out," F10w3rchy1d said as she patted Veelanora on the back. "So, what did you screw up."

"Well, our 'grand unified theory'?"

F10w3rchyld started laughing.

"Oooh, I know this one!" she said between chortles, "It kicked our ass, too! How long did you spend on it?"

"It was 'common knowledge' for over five billion years."

"And you just discovered that…."

As Veelanora and F10w3rchy1d started to babble, Zvaxus drained his mug.

"They are going to be at that madness for a while," he said as he stood. "Let's go find more agreeable company."