One moment, Tyr had been in Gregory's humble abode – and the next he was somewhere else.

It was dark again, but as before – the darkness wasn't anything natural that could be described by a presence or lack thereof of light. It wasn't a lack of sight but rather too much of it, color bent away from the light spectrum, in the mixing of all shades of paint until all that was left was a void no eyes could pierce.

Over stimulated but no apparent source of illumination to explain the blurred film settling over his eyes. Gradually focusing until a leafless tree was visible in the gloom. The sky thundered, the crowing of carrion birds could be heard in the forest beyond. Millions of ravens beyond his line of sight cawing away. All the trees were leafless, the ground wet and full of decay, but there was life here too. So much of it, just one side of a cycle that would reverse on itself as it always had. From death came life, and so on. The sky crackled above, flashing to light the forest laden with all dooms intermittently.

To call it evil would be a misnomer, alignment even in the strictest spiritual sense was ambiguous and thready at best. But it carried a doom, the great curse and the one eye. A forbidden place, and yet it was sacred all the same, everything that a living thing might deign to know was here at the center of their small nook of what was 'real'.

From every tree there were ropes and corded sinew hung with the skulls of all manner of creature. Deer, boar, wolves, birds and squirrels, and on those bones were sharp and blunt runes. Still alive. They were whispering to him.

There was a drumming in the air but not one of stretched leather and wood. Rather of a titanic heart both above and below the earth pumping blood through the circulatory system that made all that was. This was a dream, it had to be, that thing Varinn had indicated would come for him. Tyr felt like a mouse standing before the slavering jaws of every predator that had ever existed, and yet he was mightier than all these things that might take him. Black ravens gathered in grim congregation on the leafless branches, staring down at him with their beady eyes and ebony beaks. Thousands of them, silently watching. As they always had and always would, when the eras slipped by and the corpses piled up.

It was primal, this place, forcing its convictions on him. To hunt and kill, to build and break, and build again. To prosper, breed and feed in a bid to fill a pit that knew no such thing as capacity or fullness. A cycle, always the cycle, not one of nature – nature was too small for what he was current observing.

Of making. Studying it, breaking it, and starting again from the shattered remains. It whispered to him of wild things, but for all its temptations he knew with not but a momentary thought that they were things he could not take hold of. Promises and bargains, doors locked to something such as he. Behind all of those things were accusations, a shirking of duty, recounting his failures. He'd been here before, many times. He knew this place intimately as if it were home. Where he'd always come, where he'd been cast – where the bones of titans were carved to die and cast by blind children to determine what would come next.

In the eyes of those birds he saw everything, from his birth to 'his' death in Amistad. He saw how the mages there that he'd sworn to protect hadn't taken him at his word, choosing to betray him. To join the enemy that was no foe of Tyr's and never had been, Tyr was the only opponent he'd ever had. Hastur's game, it would seem, little more than a passing amusement for the man. He wasn't ready yet, everything that had happened was just a diversion before the grand showing. His attempt at a rebirth. Taking Tyr's heart and departing without a word, leaving the others shackled in the dirt. To Hastur, they were no threat at all, not worth looking at.

Speaking to. Or seeing.

Tyr knew Hastur in that moment, through the ravens that watched. Not a man, not anymore, but a thing that hid much of its true wants and needs – barriers upon barriers. Terribly afraid of something, desperate to ensure it could not find him. Abject terror of shut eyes in a dark room long left unattended, the worms in the walls and the fingertips ever tapping. Of Tyr himself, even, but Tyr was not of these things – he was simply the man with the keys to bring them into their world. An attempt to seal something foul and forgotten, passing through the eras and each time they'd do the same. Great heroes rising up to slay the wolf, pieces of prophecy, a creature born to excel at one thing and one thing only. To fill the bottomless pit, sate the ever hungering maw, to judge and expel imperfection.

That was evil.

The only evil Tyr had ever observed and honestly called as such, and it was himself.

He was the anti-child, the destroyer of worlds, sent here again and again to end it all so they could start again. Perhaps that sounded dramatic, but he could think of no other explanation, as some were connected to destinies made of gold, his was so black it was blinding. Every question confirmed by the voices, that his purpose was to end this world once and for all, that is what he had been born to do.

Why me?

Cold, damp stone. A prison cell.

Tythas, Brenn, and Micah hung there on chains, their faces lost and aggrieved. Tiber joined them, the chains couldn't hold him so they'd strapped the Raven into a wire mesh and threw him in there to rot with the others. 'Pending trial'. Something about this mockery of justice incensed Tyr beyond anything he'd ever felt. An affront to all the was sacred to him. No... This wasn't real, it couldn't be real because Tyr was there, watching them through the bars. He was so cold, a void inside of him that wanted to make others suffer just to feel something. That wasn't him, not yet, this was a Tyr that had failed to do as the compulsions demanded, someone who'd tried to throw it all on his back and win this great war alone without willing to make sacrifices.

This was an eventuality. What would come of his path, a promise and a guarantee that there was nothing he could do to stop it.

Tiber was old and gray, a gift given and torn away, Brenn and Micah somewhere in their middle age. This was fated. A future? One of few, destiny did not exist but there were junctures in the conclusion of events that were only rarely avoided.

There'd been a betrayal, people had chosen sides and this Tyr had won in that conflict. Awakening at the last moment in the midst of a climactic struggle, achieving the arcanum rex and right to rule. But it had cost him, all of his experience that had smoothed his jagged edges vanishing to become a crimson machine of carnage made incarnate.

He'd found that power he'd always wanted. Becoming the greatest of all primus', but the cost...

His wives were dead, they had stood and fought against Hastur's legions and failed as Tyr had done so many times. Astrid had lost use of her legs and taken her life, Alex had been disfigured beyond repair and gone off on the path of vengeance, falling in battle but not before breaking men beyond counting. Sigi had returned home, to what home she might've believed existed in the fog, never to return. Tyr could not feel her in the world, leaving only one conclusion. An obvious one, they were all slated to die and with these pillars missing Tyr had turned down the red path. The world was better for it, he was a titan so feared by the residents of his planet that nobody would dare act out of turn. A utopia built on terror, all things perfect and glistening, but there was no freedom here.

And none of it mattered, because they weren't there. His pillars were gone, all of them, leaving him with only pain and the complete inability to enjoy his great achievement.

Nala and Ayla were burnt alive, Jura executed to remove the chance of a new celestial rising. Tyr wondered where his others were, he could not feel them either. Perhaps they'd been killed as well. Or they'd chosen a side, something he hadn't expected, but they had their own minds and individuality. One had, at least, chosen to be the eyes staring through the bars. The shard, him and yet not, his awakened self and the one who'd won. The very Primus of Faith himself, just like his father, only far crueler, a dark and twisted thing of bitter experience.

This Tyr had killed the others and devoured what was left of all but one, though whether it was 'Tyr' of Hjemland was unclear.

They couldn't be trusted. In splitting himself Tyr had sacrificed something innately bound to his process of becoming who he was meant to be. As necessary as it had been at the time, though he'd not technically done it himself, it was a grave error in judgment. Living things born anew, defined by foul things, pain, hate, despair, nails, blades, desolation, loss, mourning – two of the twelve were of the light and that was all.

They... Had lost.

This was the result of his laxity. His absence, Tyr believed, but it was opaque this future – seeing as he was still there in this strange vision, completely uncaring as to the fate of his companions. Ultimately because he was given a crossroads, a decision, and he'd made the wrong choice or hadn't given enough of himself. That's what it wanted, sacrifice, but Tyr was and always had been a selfish man – and if not that, foolishly arrogant to believe there were no strings controlling him. It wasn't surprising that he'd refused when asked to surrender what rightfully belonged to him. He just wish he knew what it was, that thing it wanted, as it was not Amistad, but the wyrd wasn't in the mood for elaborating.

It hadn't been a failure in the strength of his limbs, it had been a refusal to accept the fact that he couldn't make all things right by his lonesome. And what came next was a beast that had taken all those he'd considered as part of the reason why they'd failed and killing them. Even his own friends, all of the other primus' – a fate that would have been avoided had he chosen to accept sainthood instead of following the path of self righteousness. The mythic hero, Tyr had thought, a man who needed blessing from no god, putting it all on his own back. Choosing sainthood would not have taken his primacy away, the arcanum rex was and always would be his – it'd simply been a bargain to behave in a certain way. Which would have saved the others if he'd chosen, because Tyr would've had the necessary aid to keep them safe.

In essence, this was a lesson that he needed to build safeguards. Not against Hastur, the man was a clown and a joke.

No, against himself. He hadn't given enough, and the primus' that existed currently weren't enough either. In this vision, Tyr had destroyed all magic in the world, slaying the guardians and all other possible threats.

Only time would tell. Tyr saw these things and he knew, it haunted him, leaving him with little in the way of an idea how to stop it. Acceptance was there, but the place didn't ask or offer – it simply was as all things were. A looking glass, his agency was yet his own.

One of the few things that still belonged to him.

Tyr Faeron was not in control and never had been, but there were ways around it. The gloom carried many promises, and his humanity would need to be sacrificed to achieve an end that wouldn't see all that he cared for turned to ash.

All around him was the dull sound of music, harsh and throaty, haunting and dark. The Choir, churches called it, and he could always hear it if he focused. But this was different, primal and ancient, not the Gregorian droning of Aotrom or the angelic peal that shrouded Lina and Brenn like cloaks. It belonged to no god, it was an institution of this place, a song above the others.

Like the flowing of blood and sliding of tectonic plates. Wild and natural in a way the conventionally named gods were not.

Tyr was once again left wondering what the point of all this was, dropping down into that meditative stance he took each day to circulate his spira and mana into a single thread. Down into the moist and loamy earth, blotting out the incessant calling of birds, and the worms writhing in the soil. It was foggy here, dreary in a way that was difficult to articulate. Foreboding and doom laden, by any other word, the long shadow cast by the single tree that stood tallest above all others.

His entire life was pointless, at the end of it all, he'd never done anything more than wander around near aimlessly. No goals, no progression that could be charted as a normal person might mark these things. If it was to be penned a tale by bard or writer, it would be a horrid one. One for the garbage heaps, and that made him smirk. He was no chosen one, and that was good, but he'd never considered himself that to begin with.

He was made a beast of instinct, yet capable of great change and development, and that was good. He had done good, and though none of it mattered in the end – he didn't mind. This was his. He was the master of himself and all others around him, and he'd chosen to let them be free. The fact that the universe might not even be real or would one day be snapped away, the existential dread of knowing that everything he'd ever experienced would cease to be...

This thing in his mind seemed intent to push how worthless he was down on him, while simultaneously inflicting him with the burden of responsibility over existence itself.

Trying to make him into the being it wanted him to be, and he refused it, despite the cost. He would accept no blessing but for his own, Tyr was not so quick to change under revelation.

It was like a marble in the palm of his hand and he was given the opportunity to do with it as he pleased, and maybe that was the real problem. Offering him paths, showing him inevitability perhaps to see how he would navigate these threads. It was a game to them, whoever they were, and they were not gods but far beyond any consideration of the word.

He didn't want that responsibility, and it had gotten all of his friends killed – only now that he had no opportunity to reverse his decision did these things make themselves known to him.

He'd fought on while they were maimed at his back and at no point had he turned. He'd needed help, been offered such, and refused it – confident that he himself was enough. He was not.

But why? Tyr wasn't that kind of person, any man might lose himself in a conflict, but expecting him to nod at the reality that he'd willfully abandon them to certain death was a stretch. If not for nothing, his pride would never allow it. He highly doubted that he'd forego all consideration of the others as he chased Hastur, but then... He'd abandoned them many times, they'd been injured in other struggles, adventuring and killing besides. Little threat of death in these things, but the innocence he'd cherished in so many of them was long gone now, even if he hadn't known it at the time.

“You take a daoist stance in a place of the Aesir. If this is in jest – consider me sufficiently amused.” The voice of a wizened old man filled with the vitality and crispness of youth. Coming from nowhere, to reveal itself as a man seated at a tree that was now a throne of roots and bark. It appeared fel, but it wasn't, there was great significance in that tree and it was a necessary thing. The cycle was doom as Tyr might perceive it, stars gone supernova, the endings prevalent throughout all existence, but new beginnings could not come without an end to the old.

As metaphor to the fact that elders must die for their children to prosper. One world made no difference, the many was all this intelligence concerned itself with.

This was their purpose. Here, and everywhere, a shoot of their 'infinity' given form and left to grow. Even in the season of rot it was as alive as ever, waiting for the storm to pass so that it might all blossom again.

“And you are...?” Tyr asked without opening his eyes. His senses here were just as real as in his own world, and in this place in turn even more so. This was no dream or illusion, this was akin to what Tyr's soul had appeared before the ash had come, an event he poorly understood but he knew inherently that it'd been a bad thing. “And what do you mean a daoist? I can assume what that means rather easily, but isn't everything under the dao? It seems to indicate someone who uses it or claims mastery, which should be impossible. I assume you're some sort of god or a half assed approximation of a divine, maybe my 'inner self' that can guide me along the path to tranquility and self acceptance. Fuck that, I'd rather stay cracked in the head than walking around bald with a smile on my face like those freaks in the clans.”

“This is not a place of the dao.” The old man chuckled wryly at Tyr's coarseness. “I am Wotan, Odyn, many named so that all might know of me and yet none ever will. A piece of the one who was Wotan, an ever dimming sliver. A sliver that is very surprised that you've kept your head in this place, most who come here have a fever dream and leave significantly less sane than when they entered. Always trying to read my runes, they see the wyrd and all the implications that follow, and lose themselves to it.”

“I have no plan to stay here any longer than I need to, and I don't believe in destiny regardless of who's telling me it exists. Regardless of whether I know it to be real or not, I am a very stubborn boy.” Tyr replied coldly, for some reason he did not like the man in front of him. It wasn't quite disdain or hatred, but rather an aversion, distrust for something petty and not worth arguing over, yet real all the same. Something that happened too long ago to really care, but it had chipped away at their bond in a way that made forgiveness impossible. Petty, again, mundane, like a neighbor who'd trimmed a scant few inches into the field of another. It was confusing, but Tyr knew of Odyn well enough – the so-called Allfather and king of the High Ones. God of gods, and a dead divine at that. “Please elaborate, in any case. No riddles if you don't mind, I am extremely daft in the head as well. It would seem clever versions of me are so hard to come by.”

Wotan smiled softly from his throne, twitching at the lips and rising to his full stature – which was something magnificent. Given a measuring stick Tyr might've called the withered old celestial of a similar height to himself – but standing there in front of him it felt like looking at the peak of a faraway mountain. Perspective. Reminding him of the thing he would do as a child, holding out his fingers playing pretend that he was a giant and the people far below in the palace courtyard could balance comfortably on his thumb.

'God', celestial, high one, the most high. Tyr was starting to get tired of these words, they were so vague. They didn't exist, celestials were simply pre-life constructs, organisms born in the void before beings had been limited by prisons of the flesh. After the events that had thrown him into his timeless loop and scattered his previous self, reincarnating him he assumed, a celestial was no more 'real' than any living thing.

No more important either, all one needed do to kill one was simply forget they exist. In Tyr's potential future, he'd convinced the world to do so, slaying all the gods by proxy and wiping the stain of their light from their little corner of reality.

“You could say the dao is everything.” Wotan mused, bedecked in a robe of black sateen, a cloak of feathers with a sheen beyond any bird. Beads and the skulls of various avian creatures dangled from the wolf pelt settled over his shoulders. A wizened man, but mighty in stature despite an otherwise unassuming appearance, always reflected to observers as what they wanted, or needed, to see. To Tyr, this Wotan looked an awfully lot like Jartor – only gray and wrinkled. “And you'd be right. It is the oldest known force in the universe that can be experienced and perhaps even interacted with, but never manipulated, ensuring it is seated highest. Without it I would not exist – and neither would you. But that doesn't mean it's the only force in the universe, who's to say there are no things even further? Beyond us. I digress. There are we – the Aesir, gods and lesser celestials, the dao itself, the old ones and remnants of the Primordial's, all sorts of forces at play and they each have their own path and agenda. Except the dao, of course. It is most certainly not the lord and master of anything, despite being the origin of them. Do you understand?”

Tyr shrugged, it made more sense than he'd be willing to admit. Naturally the various beings in the cosmos had their own motivations, and the dao didn't have the intelligence or self awareness to govern them via traditional means. Dao didn't command by voice or touch, just being as Fire had said was all it would ever do. It was almost too obvious that they'd perhaps even be at odds, it was common in nature for 'living' things to rail against their own limitations. Even gods weren't infallible when it came to that, such was the purpose of existing.

“So these daoists...” Tyr frowned. “They are your enemies? Or should I say our enemies?”

“Not necessarily, no.” Wotan shook his head slowly, leaning against his throne and staring down at Tyr, as though at a son. “Individuals all have their own goals, the dao might not but those who chase its seeds do. It cannot be manipulated, as I said, some seek to harness it and come closer to doing the impossible. Our kind do not follow the way of the dao, we look for ways around it, loopholes, we were made to change and perfect once but we long ago threw off that yoke and exist for other things now. Seeking the dao is seeking the tranquility of oneness, of understanding, Nirvana by another name and in using it for power as they do is blind hypocrisy. We do not do such here, so your mixed adoption of their ways is quite an odd event to me, I can see you've had a rather inconsistent tutelage. One foot down so many paths, ensuring that you'll never reach the terminus of any. Your choices are your own, however, this has never not been true – that was the gift your brother sought to give you.”

“So what you're saying is that all these things are paths to power, but they do not compliment one another?” Tyr asked curiously, there were so many systems present in this universe that it was hard to keep track of them all. Dao, the dream – known conventionally as magic, spira, whatever energy the gods were comprised of...

Leaving him dizzy, all he wanted to do was kill a single man, it didn't need to be this complicated.

Wotan pursed his lips in contemplation, nodding. “I wouldn't say they can't compliment one another, but they do often stand at odds. We are those that smashed apart the order established by the old hegemony and made our own way, and we won through this. Nim, the body you inhabit being one of the nephilim, as our, or rather your creations, you will find that violence and wildness is more suited to your nature. Liken it to a man with a stout build more friendly with the axe rather than the sword. He can use whatever he'd like, or both at the same time, but whether he'd do so or not is up to him. His success or failure is his own choice, Samael ensured that all things of a mind possess the agency to decide that for themselves. It is worth noting that there is great power in the unorthodox, perhaps that is your way – perhaps it is not. It is not my place to say, you were given sapience for a reason, even if many protested it, what is done is done. Will be done, one of the few things that always will.”

“So I worship you and you give me powers?” Tyr asked the obvious question, he was tiring rapidly of these games and couldn't shed the thought that something bad was happening even as they were speaking to one another. A shard had been snuffed out and though no time passed in this place by any measurable process, it... 'Was'. Did. Didn't. All of that nonsense, to a mind of a man that wished for little more than a full belly and a warm bed, the opportunity of rest that rarely came – all this ridiculous dialog did was aggravate him.

“Typically that would be the case, I would take from you in good faith and you would be granted a boon, my Omen they call it. Should I find you a suitable vessel like those who call themselves gods, my kind can grant you boons that do not require decades sequestered in a monastery to earn. Boons, or curses, it's all a matter of perspective, give and take beyond requiring you to do something so dull as defend the innocent or lay with priestesses.” Wotan shrugged. “I must admit, I've never had a conversation with one of your shards quite as odd as this one. Usually you're a stark raving lunatic. It is refreshing, if anything, your resistance to the primal urges of the old ways is impressive.”

“I did not ask, old man.” Tyr spat. “What exactly is supposed to happen, then? Get to the point.”

“There are many ways, even among gods. It could be because you've been claimed twice, first by Valkyrja, now Hel, different components of one another, and second by your origin flame. Our way, the old way, is the epitome of urge, conflict, and instinct. Not only toward violence, but to live with abandon, to be yourself however you might and never regret your choice to do so. We are more singular than the younger celestials, more predisposed for one thing or another. As you were once toward justice, war, and balance. The eras pass, they change, but we mostly remain the same, too rooted in our ways to adapt – but in singularity we do not need to. Once I was the god of knowledge and balance incarnate, your father, and now I am the very concept of wisdom itself. Not knowledge, but wisdom over the prime components of the flawed existence we are caught in. Death, life, and so on – my children if you'd wish to call them that wielded the blades, but I gave these things to them. In a manner of speaking, as there are blades yet left to give, and some that shall never be.”

Tyr puckered his lips, looking around. Higher tiers of existence didn't live in houses, on continents or worlds, another opportunity to observe the construct, the space. Divinity existed in a plane of raw threads of energy, and it conformed to the consciousness of things interacting with it... He highly doubted that gods in their true form, if there was any such thing, looked anything like humans in any case.

What he say in himself was a bottomless pit, something completely alien. And what he saw in Alex, for example, bereft of the black serpent, was endless life. Their shards, domains, the things that made them. All men, women, or otherwise – were gods like this, born for a purpose whether they'd ever find it or not. In essence, she'd have made the world's greatest healer, and yet the manacles of responsibility had led her to focus on the art of killing and dominion over all else.

“We do, actually. The bipedal simian derivative, mammalian form that is – we chose it. Granted, what you think of as a true form is just our soul, your soul wouldn't much look like a human either, we're all orbs of light of varying shades if a mortal were to look upon us. My kind at least, as we are far different than the earthly – others might take on forms more matching their element but the standard is the same, in the end it is all split between vanity and familiarity. What we are is not created at the hands of thinking beings, as lesser celestials are, we are who or what we choose to be. As I've said.”

The old man winked, exacerbating Tyr's budding aggression.

“Please don't read my thoughts, it makes me uncomfortable.” Tyr said this, but he didn't really mind. It wasn't his first time meeting a 'divine' entity and he'd started to acclimate to their singularly irritating habits. “So, there's a lesson here. You, like everyone else, are going to tell me that nothing matters, right? It's all inevitable, you will do and things will be done, ridiculous. I get that, I've heard it a million times in this convoluted plot of riddles and caricatures of mythos.”

“That's a daoists way of thinking. To understand that you are nothing more than an ant, to humble oneself and become part of the great dao. That's what they believe is the afterlife, a bizarre gestalt consciousness of endless tranquility – as if the dao were ever capable of such a thing or the inverse. Nobody knows, not even I, what lies beyond the dao. So I could never say, but I know that they certainly aren't possessive of that knowledge either.” Wotan shrugged. “I'm of the mind that everything matters, refusing the opposite. You can believe whatever you'd like, but there is significance in all things and that significance is eternal. I was destroyed by my own son for thinking that way and yet here I am, guiding another along his path. My lesson is for you to stop resisting and claim what you are capable of. You, Tyr, are a storm. You were born to burn hot, and you should do so. A calm heart is not your way, feel emotion, let it roil up inside of you and take you over. Let loose the bonds of control and wreak havoc on everything and anything you deem unnecessary. That is the gift I'm giving to you, the gift you've always had but been turned away from by the manipulators all around you.”

“I don't get it.” Tyr snorted derisively. “All this time I've been focused on my own mental equilibrium, focus and clarity. And you're telling me that was all a waste of time? That I should have been doing the opposite?”

“On the contrary.” Wotan smiled thinly down at Tyr. He spoke like any man, albeit a little more ambiguous in articulation, but there was an ageless wisdom about him that felt like a bath of icy cool water. A shock to the system every time Tyr met his eyes, two pools of starlight that held within them depths beyond ken. One eye blind and yet it was capable of seeing beyond everything. “An absence of something puts that thing into clarity more than anything else. But forcing yourself onto a path that does not suit your spirit is the wrong way about things. Perhaps I am wrong, but I never am. You live in fear and moderation, fear of your power, when you should be enjoying this short while you're given, you've seen your path. If you know you'll fail, why do the same thing over and over again? Why not live while you've the chance to? Without bonds.”

Tyr snorted again, supposing that all gods were created arrogant from the very beginning and never dropped that aspect of their 'personalities'. But what Wotan was saying wasn't incorrect. It made sense that there were layers to things, to expect the whole cosmos to boil down into one standardized system was just silly. 'Infinity' couldn't be quantified. He didn't kneel to faith and live his life godfearing as other men did, it didn't make him better or worse – it was just him. Naturally a cosmos as complex as theirs would have many paths to power, too much to understand in a single short lifetime. There was no wrong way or right way, just ways. The path of the Aesir, spira, the dao, all of the varieties of magic linear to it within the constraints on his world. The rules that bound them and ensured theirs was unique.

“Is spira part of the dao?” Tyr asked.

Wotan shook his head. “Dao is dao. The medium by which you harness it can take any form, be that spira, mana, or anything else. There are worlds where these universal forces interact differently because they were made that way. Experiments in our game to keep our sliver of existence existing. Coherency. Spira is the distillation of creation in terms of things with a meta-physical signature, but understanding it on any real level is impossible for you. Mana, in the inverse, is the immaterial, things manifesting in the dream. The dao is responsible for all things but spira and mana are not components easily boiled down into one element of it or another. They are the same energy put to different purposes. Spira and mana were created by us when we created the nim. The auranim, builders, seraphim, arbiters, and nephilim, shapers. Nothing is truly independent from the dao, as it created us and by extension it is all things, but I will reiterate that our path is our own, as is yours. We are those that shape and use anything we can put hands on, if that helps – considering I don't have 'hands'.”

“You're not funny.”

“I am all things, 'funny' is most certainly among them, you simply lack the wit to consider my truly titanic sense of humor.”

Spira, order. Mana, chaos. Reality and the opposite. That's as close as anyone alive was going to get, at least, the murky myriad of never ending mysteries.

Tyr sighed. Whatever romanticized experience he was supposed to have here was a flop, he didn't get it at all. “Can you tell me what to do, then? Offer me that, at least.” He was pleading with the ancient, dead deity now.

“Whatever you want.” Wotan smiled softly. “Live to the will of your spirit and none other, and your path will open for you. Conforming to a singular inspiration and taking all things under objectivity is a great weakness. Kill, love, eat, shit, fuck. You're an animal now, Tyr, Samael made sure of that. Be an animal. Though you should probably stop committing taboo, there are things that not even my kind can stomach, and this iteration of you is... Quite dark at times. Our actions and decisions define us, that is the reason we will never have true freedom under the dao. All we can do is try.”

Go wild. Fear nothing.

He could do that.