My name is Acarus, the Divided God, and the others have no idea what I have done. Betai called for a meeting of the Twelve upon Aphos Mons, the dark side of the sun. It was the only truly neutral ground of Mythopoeia. As custom dictated, the gods appeared in their avatars, but for me, that left an open question. During the Second Age, I had been foremost among the Exalted, and I had nearly forced them all to bow to me. The Maker, however, had dictated my defeat.

Betai had sundered me, and my blood had fed the world. I was in the Tellurians who ran wild in the Golden Empire in the last heartbeats of this age. I could hear what they heard, taste what they tasted, an infinite banquet for an infinite mind. One or more princes of Telluria could have acted as my avatar for this gathering, but it would have been a slight to the august personages of my all-powerful kin. Betai and Bemoi were here as their most personal selves, a man, and a woman. He enjoyed wearing the aspect of a mortal king wrapped in ceremonial plate. Kingdoms would be beggared by all that orichalcum so intricately jointed into his panoply. She wore a silk shroud, her eyes sewn shut. Bemoi was all the more lovely with me inside of her. My heart Betai had cut out and fed to her to keep me from regenerating. But that only meant I had spent the intervening centuries at his side, listening in her body, poisoning her. She was as much mine as his now, and he didn't see.

Then there was Shesh, an immense crab with an old man's face. It always made me laugh. Yog, true to form, retained the shape of a plains bear, while Sing showed off her stripes as a Therian woman. Elali, Mog, and Nyarlathotep wore human guises of surpassing beauty, though my conception of beauty is more inclusive than most. Elali was an eternal boy, Mog a brutal warlord, and Nyarlathotep an obese bartender. Avaea was a goldfish floating through the crowd, and Haram, still at odds with Betai over the loss of his feet, had not made an appearance.

That left me, Acarus as Bolaerian, mother of Wyrms. I could have thrown back Betai and swallowed him whole. Bolaerian's body was the closest I would ever come to regaining my original majesty. Jang, of course, was crawling over me in her cicada guise. What a perfect partner she had always been. Instead of hating me for what happened after the Titanomachy, she blamed Betai, as she rightfully should. Our partnership had been ever fruitful, as the swarms of infected jinni could attest. Thousands of glinting bodies marched across my own. Though they should have been incinerated by the heat of my scales, our old friendship protected her.

"I call to order the Omnium Gatherum," Betai said, his voice carrying across the vast epicarp of the dark side of the sun. All eleven of us formed a circle around the rim of a bleak crater, and though Haram was not present, he surely listened.

"This council is convened to discuss the crimes of Acarus," he went on, "who has persisted in disturbing our holy order in these our final days."

As if to emphasize the importance of his concerns, the sun shook beneath us. Nothing could cause a quaver in the world tree save the waking of one of the Primordials. The moon herself was stirring. Soon, she would descend from her perch and devour the world as the Maker had designed.

"Wasting time to the last," I said, "true to form, Lord of the Blinding Sword."

Betai ignored me. "Listen all, to the charges laid against her." He placed a hand on the hilt of the blade I had mentioned. "Conspiring against the Maker's Amor Fatis. Corrupting the avatars of the jinni and seeking to escape the bounds of our ark. So witnessed."

"So witnessed," echoed Mog, his bloodthirsty stooge, and Elali, his faithful protege. Bemoi merely nodded, as all knew that she would support her partner like the battered spouse she was. That was four, which was enough for an inquiry. Betai, fond of rules as he was, found in our congress a comforting playground. Unsurprising that he would return to that comfort in his final hours.

"How do you plead?" he asked me, dark eyes brooding out of a bright face. So serious. Why so serious?

"I am guilty," I said, "of course."

There was a collective moment of surprise. They had expected me to resist, to argue, to lie. I was, after all, known as the Prince of Lies, but the hour for deceptions had passed. They could do nothing to me that wasn't already done. Why not enjoy the farce?

Shesh dribbled seawater out of his slack face. "What do you mean, Acarus? You agree with the Lord?"

How pitiful that the Master of Storms had been reduced to calling another god Lord. He had been among my supporters once, and now he was cowed.

"I do not agree to anything," I said, "but I present myself for the mercy of the Twelve. You all have seen what the jinni do to our world, to our ark, to us. Am I alone in not desiring to accept it?"

"Amor Fatis," Betai intoned. "We follow the Maker's way, wherever it may lead. This is an end decreed in the very warp and weft of the Mondial, in the patterns of the stars. Who are we to resist it?"

"We are gods!" Black flames spilled from my mouth and pooled like a liquid in the half-light of Aphos Mons. "That is who we are to resist it!"

"The Maker has made his will known," Betai said.

"Has he? When was it you spoke with our Maker?"

"The Codex is clear as to our relationship with the jinni. Both those who visit our world and those who dwell within the void of stars."

The Codex, the sacred book of law left behind by the Maker. Alone among the Twelve, I was also one of the Nine, a Primordial, though I hardly resemble my former magnificence. My history, and my death at the hands of Betai himself, gave me a perspective on the Codex that the others did not have. That, and I had actually spoken with the Maker. Who among them could claim the same?

"The Codex is no more," I said. "The Maker came to me in my exile and spoke to me of the void behind the stars. It is not a void! It is not as you believe."

"Heresy," Betai unsheathed his diamond sword and pointed it at me. "Do you all not witness this heresy?"

The goldfish swam between us, growing huge and fat to occupy the center of the circle, and speaking in the voice of a man. "I would hear her speak. Do not pretend that you have all not wondered at the nature of the void and the jinni who dwell there."

Avaea was not an ally, but he could always be trusted in his neutrality and his naive commitment to reason. Betai held the Blinding Blade low at his side, seeing that the others were not willing to execute me yet. "You have already pled your guilt," he said, "Say your piece."

The goldfish withdrew, and then all eyes were upon me.

"You all know that there are many arks, hundreds of worlds like our own, and on each of these arks there are gods who were born like we were born, who share our long histories. But they are not exactly like us, because this ark was special. This ark was the laboratory of the Maker; like a cosmic alchemist, he experimented here. The rules, the Codex, are not exactly the same as in other arks. That is one reason why we are now being destroyed."

"I have suspected as much," Avaea said, and there were signs of comprehension among the others. "But what of the realm beyond the void?"

"The void is artificial," I said. "It is a barrier to prevent us from joining the other arks, and from joining the ark of the Maker and the jinni."

"The Maker has no ark," Betai said. "That is heresy again."

Yog, the plains bear, lowed thoughtfully, and Shesh clacked his chitinous claws. Nyarlathotep, who had been imprisoned by Betai for a crime far smaller than mine, was philosophical.

"Not an ark then, but the sea in which our arks rest. The Maker and the jinni must dwell somewhere when they are not here. I would call it the sea."

Betai looked at his brother with disgust. "The Codex is clear. The jinni sleep in the void beyond the stars until they take up an avatar here, and the Maker dwells nowhere and everywhere. He is in all things."

"How do you know this?" Avaea was addressing me. "Do you claim you’ve found another Codex?"

"The Maker visited me." I rose before them as a great serpent, looking down from a hundred feet above the circle. My eyes shone as red stars, and Jang's swarm glittered across my long body. "He asked for my help."

"Speak no more lies." Betai's tone was dangerous, "I will not allow it."

"We spoke of many things," I continued, ignoring the threat. "I learned that in their other world the jinni are weak and mortal, and they come here to dream themselves heroes. I learned that the Maker was like them in body, but in spirit immeasurably great, for that is how he conceived of our world and all that's in it. He sought immortality in his creations because he knew that otherwise he would die."

Betai would have struck me then, the Blinding Blade filled with light beyond light, but Bemoi stayed his hand with her own.

"I would hear her," said Lady Death, my own heart beating in her stomach. "It will all end soon, and I would hear."

I was allowed to continue. "The Maker knew that his body in the sea of the jinni would soon die, so he sought to create a home for himself here, a place both in and apart from the world that could travel between the stars like the jinni themselves. It was a ship, and he called it Eternity. I was not allowed within it, but he used some of my substance in its making, as well as the other elements of this world. And I learned from him many things, including the ambition of which I am accused. You say that I have corrupted the jinni, and it is true. That I have sought to escape the ark, true again. Like our Maker, I wish to be immortal. Being Divided already, as you made me, it was not so difficult to Divide further, to give myself to the jinni as I gave myself to the Maker to bring his ship to life. Those I infected will carry me into other arks, and there I will live on." Jang was ensured continuity as well by her alliance with me, but there was no need to share that detail with the Twelve.

"I know your crimes," Betai said, back in his element as judge and jury. "That is why we are here. All your blasphemous talk does nothing to expunge your guilt. If anything, your violations are made all the worse for it. And we have already made accommodations. Jinni moderators have taken word of your monstrous heresy with them to the other arks. You will be expunged wherever you are found."

Inwardly, I smiled. The measures Betai had taken to thwart me were well within my expectations, inconsequential. I had a moderator of my own to ensure that some of my spawn survived. Acarus and Jang would live on together as a beautiful terror in another world. Even if they were eradicated, every egg purged, that would not matter, because they had been a distraction to begin with. This conversation only assured me that they did not know. Betai didn't know! How I wanted to laugh at that moment.

Aphos Mons shook again, the death tremors of a world.

"I motion that we move to sentencing," Betai said.

"Carry," Mog agreed, grinning around his tusks.

There were enough votes to pass my censure, the others either agreed with Betai or were bored and wanted to see blood before we all joined the void. It did not matter if this part of me died, this Bolaerian. I knew there were other Bolaerians on other arks that would go on. But though the other Acaruses were me, they also weren't. They hadn't shared my experiences or my consciousness. We all began the same and then diverged. That was why I'd had to find a way to escape, not just Acarus or Bolaerian, but me, this iteration of myself. I would be changed, yes, but life was change, and I was the god of vicissitudes, among other things.

Betai moved to strike me down. The Blinding Blade became impossible to look upon as he prepared to cut me in two. Again.

Jang screamed. Millions of cicadas buzzed and piped their song, flying from my scales and descending upon the Lord of Lords in a vast tumult.

>>

Betai, the Lord — (Human, Exalted)

Celestial Level 9

Zenith — Fire — White/Red

(Body — 2,384,183/2,384,183)

>>

The god in orichalcum armor leaped through the cloud of insects in a blazing spiral. Vast swathes were seared away, but there were always more. Jang felt no pain, and she hated Betai. Sections of the swarm pooled into semi-solid forms—strange, alien schools that acted as distinct entities—and he was beset on all sides.

If I interfered, then the rest of the Twelve would have had to interfere as well, but as long as the contest was fair it was permitted. Of course, it wasn't really fair. It couldn't be.

>>

Jang, the Burned God — (Hive, Exalted)

Celestial Level 9

South — Air — Brown/Yellow

(Body — 1,220,000/1,220,000)

>>

Our avatars were all fixed at the highest possible level, but there were hidden realms of power beyond the sight of jinni players. We were all celestial, but we were not the same, and as much as it pained me to admit it, Betai was foremost among us for a reason.

None could defeat him.

The swarm shifted and morphed as Betai dueled its creations. Jang’s schools of independent insects were scattered and scorched only to reform and renew the attack. His armor was covered in probing cicadas, beetles, ants, all looking for gaps to attack. He had summoned a full helm to protect his face, but the visor was a weak point. Being that they were both gods, many of the tricks and cheats they would normally fall back on in contests with jinni were useless. They couldn't manipulate reality here in Aphos Mons as they could in their own realms, or in the broader reaches of Mythopoeia. Nor could they use the Words of Making and Unmaking on each other, for they were both immortal beings written into the fabric of the cosmos. The only way to destroy one of the Twelve was to replace them, and only the Maker himself was capable of such a fundamental change in the Codex. My own Dividing had been a part of the Maker's will, otherwise, it couldn't have occurred.

So, they fought like mortals: with tooth and claw. Betai's holy fire was not as effective as he expected, because Jang had been changed by her long association with me. We had rubbed off on one another. Otherwise, the contest might have ended already.

Suddenly, the swarm moved, collapsing on itself with Betai at its center. She covered him completely, layer upon squirming layer so that the light of his Blinding Blade was perceivable only as a shuttered glow of warmth, like a brand fresh from the forge and hidden behind a screen. Millions upon millions of teeming bodies, of fluttering wings and spastic limbs, crowded into a vague mountain or a dark egg. This was the way that honeybees defeated giant hornets, a heat death, a smothering. It went on for long minutes, and I wondered if I had been wrong, if Jang might in her fury defeat the undefeated king.

Then the egg cracked, and light poured forth in a lightning pattern. Jang's endless body sloughed off in sheets of dead insects, and soon Betai was free and largely unchanged. He hid his health from me, suggesting that he was weaker than he appeared, but that might have been a pose to lure me into false confidence. Jang crawled away in her multitudes, her avatar nearly destroyed.

The sun quaked again. Far away, in the boughs of the world tree, Lunaris finally woke. To those in the world below it would appear as if the moon was breaking apart, when in fact she was only stretching her slumbrous limbs. We all felt it as she began her descent, climbing the world tree like a gecko might climb a tropical branch. All of the Twelve had other eyes in the world and in the sky, and for a moment the bickering between us could be forgotten before the majesty of Armageddon. This was the end of the world.

"Acarus!" Betai shouted. "No more delays. I will do what I should have done in days of old and cut away your mind instead of your heart."

Bolaerian was a black wyrm hundreds of feet in length, and we had a belly full of fire. I released it in a liquid torrent, purple and black, a hungry burning shadow. Betai parted the stream with his blade, a golden-masted ship plowing forward, forcing me to retreat.

I lashed him with my tail but took a cut in return. My arms and claws were not long enough to work around the sweep of that blade, for it grew in size and potency with every stroke.

But he was still a small creature, and I was Bolaerian, Mother of Wyrms. I encircled him, whipping my tail at his back and striking with my foreclaws simultaneously. He ignored my tail in favor of severing two of my talons. Ruby ichor flowed over my jet scales, hot as the blood of mountains, as my tail knocked him off balance and into my other claw. His arms were crushed against his chest, temporarily preventing him from wielding that terrible blade.

It was still too dangerous for me to bite him, so I unleashed another gush of wyrm fire. His armor and his mantle shielded him from the full effect, but at a cost to his spirit, and the Blinding Blade wavered. When my fire was spent, I wrapped my crippled claw around one of his legs and pulled with all of my strength. He struggled, but I felt that I was stronger. Had we been anywhere but Aphos Mons, his divinity would have overshadowed mine, but here we were forced to rely more on the physicality of our avatars, and he wore the body of a man. I felt the joint of his hip give way deliciously.

He let out a shout, not in pain, but the climax of a spell. The sword had wavered because his mana had flowed elsewhere.

>>

(Tetragrammaton — Celestial Incantation Level 9)

Calling upon the highest powers of Order, the Tetragrammaton is a binding fit for a Demon King, an Elder Dragon, perhaps even a god. Utilizing the authority of Hidden Names, this spell can trap the greatest spirits, if only for a time. Long enough to bargain against their impending freedom.

>>

Amber bands of mana fell around me in spiraling triangular chains. It began at my tail and wrapped upward until I was forced to release Betai. I writhed and bucked but struggling was useless. No jinni had cast the spell of binding, but the Lord of Law himself, and his Mantle was whole while mine had been broken. I could escape it eventually, but until then, I was at his mercy.

Betai removed his helmet, revealing a square, handsome face blistered by my fire. His whole body would likely look the same. But it did not matter, because he had won.

I wanted so much to laugh.

Far below us, under the warm lamp of the sunflower, Lunaris had crawled over the mountains of the Rim and was scouring the bowl of Mythopoeia. She was hungry after millennia of sleep, and only life and magic could feed her. It happened that she landed in Shaed, my poisoned jungle, and began taking in square miles of living ecosystems with her jaws. I was envious of her, in a way. I had never been as large, but I had been a Primordial once, before my shedding, and I remembered that titanic freedom, the titanic hunger. It was a beautiful thing, and I saw it through thousands of Tellurian eyes as they worshiped her and were duly devoured. My sweet children worshiped hunger. They had met their match.

"It is finished," Betai said. "You are finished."

"Can't you feel her?" I murmured. "She will take your golden city next. Your platinum spires, your virtuous sons—she will devour them all."

"So is the Maker's decree." The Blinding Blade was a captured star, vibrating with intense energies. He raised it for the killing blow.

"Don't you want to live at all?" I asked.

"My life is in the Codex. My duty is to this world. When it ends, so shall I. You have never understood that duty."

"No," I said, "I suppose I haven't."

He was going to kill me this time. Or rather, he was going to disable my mind, so that my Mantle continued to function in its fractured capacity without conscious direction. Not replaced, and not dead, a very creative workaround for someone who claimed to be bound by the Codex. It would be a sleep from which I never woke, and the ark itself would soon follow me into darkness. As Lunaris fed, Textumare, the Primordial dreaming at the bottom of the sea, would be stirred to defend what he considered his territory. It would be in that conflict that the curtain of our reality would fall. The story of our ark would be finished.

But it would not be the end of me. I had my fractal worms in dozens of jinni, many of them influential in some way. They would carry me on to their next grand adventure.

They had always been a diversion.

The real hope was in my child, my perfect, wonderful child, delivered by Isekel onto the Maker's indestructible ship. Eternity had been her nursery, but she didn't need it anymore. She. I. Acarus born again. Being a Divided program is difficult to explain to the singular minds of jinni. She was still only a child, and so the greater part of me that was her was still gestating. It would not serve for her fullness to be revealed too quickly. At her current stage of development, my little tadpole went unrecognized even by Nyarlathotep. I had been sure he would see me in her and try to stop what was to come.

He hadn't seen it, and now it was too late. He had even saved her and her jinni companion Lawlimi from destruction at the hand of, well, also me. He had killed them to save them, not realizing it was all a farce.

I didn't need to infect Lawlimi if he was already taking me with him to another ark.

My perfect child. Dragon's daughter.

Dokutsu.