“Finally figured out how to use a phone, even though you couldn’t while you were still on Earth?” Tek’s voice was familiar to Serenity even though it had been quite a while since they last spoke.

“I need help,” Serenity admitted. “I’m not sure I would have called otherwise.”

“I was expecting that,” Tek admitted. “I’d hoped that you’d decided otherwise, but when you didn’t call even after you chose a technology-based Path, I guessed you were still mad at me over the networking thing.”

Serenity glanced around the room. It was just as well that he and Rissa did have an entire gigantic suite set aside for them in the Visitors’ Palace; he wouldn’t have wanted to have this conversation in front of anyone other than Rissa. The others she’d brought were friends or, in Ita’s case, followers, but they hadn’t grown up in a society with cellphones.

“You can see that?” Serenity wasn’t thrilled about anyone being able to see his Path choices.

Tek chuckled. “I’m a god and you not only believe in me, you follow my precepts. On top of that, the Path is one of mine; I can see that it’s technology and magic, but not exactly what Skills you ended up with. I also get notifications when you complete a relevant Quest, but other than that I can’t see anything. Not even your other Paths. That’s how it works; I can see what’s relevant to my portfolio when it affects one of my followers. Anything else and I have to look, same as anyone else, and frankly I’m not that interested.”

Serenity felt a little sheepish at his suspicion; he should have guessed. Of course she was only able to see what was relevant. That was consistent with how the Voice tended to work, helpful but not too helpful.

As for being a follower of hers, Serenity wasn’t sure he’d have used the word follower but it was true that he believed in her and was happy to use technology. In some sense, he’d used it to make the very phone call he was talking to her on. “Wait, you can see the magic too?”

Was Tek following Serenity’s footsteps now?

Serenity’s Path of bridging magic and technology was vital to the call they were on; somehow, he’d managed to bridge the cell technology and the Voice’s messaging system together. It should have required a translator on the other end that Aki had been working on, but the lack didn’t seem to matter. Serenity was paying a notable Etherium cost to maintain the connection, which meant the Voice was probably substituting for the missing components. It was something to fix when he got back to Earth; Aide had the plans.

On second thought, he should send the plans to Aki before then. There was no reason he had to be there when she built it.

A laugh rang out from the other end of the call. “Of course! Technology and magic aren’t opposed; you said that yourself in that Earthling’s Guide you wrote. You worked with scientists and engineers to figure out the portal problem and there’s no shortage of scientists playing with or trying to figure out magic. I’m pretty sure we’re going to end up blending them into a whole new set of sciences; magic may work by intent but that doesn’t mean it can’t be characterized and used reliably. That’s even before true magitech Paths; you aren’t the only person to have gotten one, you know.”

“I didn’t. I can’t say I’m surprised, though. There are a lot of people on Earth.” Serenity felt like they’d gotten wildly off topic, but he had to admit that he felt a lot more comfortable with Tek now. “Back to why I called, though. I need help, and apparently it needs to be the help of a god.”

“I’m grateful you thought of me, but I’m not very god-y as gods go. I’m a god of technology, not power or omniscience or something.” Tek sounded doubtful.

Serenity sighed. This was probably going to be a hard sell, not exactly something he was good at. He was going to enjoy it even less than his lack of skill probably meant he should. “Neither is the god I’m trying to deal with. He’s supposed to be the god of eternity or eternal life or something like that, but I don’t think that’s actually true at all. The acolytes seem to be really impressed that their Tier Six Priests can live for up to three hundred years. That’s not impressive at all. Tier Six life expectancy is more like five hundred to a thousand years; it depends on how and when you get there, but three hundred … that’s not unusual for Tier Four. The only way their Tier Sixes should die that young is if they’re already old when they get there.”

Serenity hated it when people lied and this was a particularly egregious lie. An entire multi-planet religion based around something that wasn’t only false but clearly the opposite; they lived shorter lives than they should have, not longer.

He’d barely managed to bite his tongue when Acolyte Tinar shared the lifespan, clearly expecting Serenity to be impressed.

“How many people worship him as the god of longevity?” Tek’s question was not the one Serenity expected.

“Uh. There are two planets, but I’m not sure how many people there are. Everything I’ve seen is a city, but I don’t think it’s as dense as Earth.” Serenity tried to think over what he’d seen, but none of it really helped. He hadn’t seen enough. “I can ask tomorrow; if either of them knows, they’ll probably tell me.”

“Find that out. Also see if you can figure out what he’s actually the god of. I need that before I will know if I can help or not. If he were the god of longevity, I probably could; there’s enough of a link between technology and lifespan that I could do a lot. If he’s really a god of magic, I probably can’t help; not my area yet. Deception or trickery’s a maybe. So you really need to figure that out.”

Serenity stared at the wall ahead of him; it had a rather nice tapestry that he suspected hid a spyhole, but no one was there right now. He hadn’t expected convincing Tek to be anywhere near this easy. “Why are you so willing to help?”

Tek sighed loudly. “Two reasons; they should both be obvious. First, you’re going to owe me if I help. That’s not a small thing. Second, many of the people who were kidnapped are my believers. I don’t want them stolen by anyone else, and isn’t it the right thing to do to take care of your people anyway?”

Serenity would probably have been happier if she’d put the reasons in the opposite order, but the fact that she hadn’t specified what he’d owe made him wonder if the second one wasn’t her primary reason anyway. The Final Reaper’s experience with gods was quite negative, but it would be nice if they weren’t all self-serving assholes.

“Thanks, Tek. Even knowing you’ll try to help is a load off my mind.” He wasn’t certain what other god he could have reached out to for help. Death was the only other powerful being that seemed likely to help, but Death was more of a force of nature than a god, wasn’t he?

Plus, Serenity wasn’t entirely certain how to reach Death.

“Don’t mention it.” Tek paused and a light, breathy giggle seemed to come over the line. “I mean that, really don’t mention it. Especially not where another god might hear. Well, maybe Death or Coyote; neither of them would care. Coyote would think it was a good laugh and Death doesn’t actually care about battles between gods. Other than that, though, please don’t. I don’t want to deal with the fallout. Possibly literally.”

A click told him Tek had already hung up before Serenity could ask how there could be literal fallout if he happened to mention that she was helping where another deity could find out. Nuclear weapons weren’t unknown off Earth, but they were very rare and as far as Serenity knew, Tek didn’t have a presence off Earth. Did she think that he might accidentally incite a nuclear war?

That wasn’t something he wanted to contemplate.

Four days later, Serenity had his answer on how many people there were in the Church of Lykandeon: billions. Probably somewhere between eight and eleven billion; that was as close as High Priestess Karin could get.

Serenity had asked the two acolyte guides first, but an answer of “lots and lots” wasn’t sufficiently precise.

He didn’t, unfortunately, have a good answer as to what Lykandeon was the god of. He couldn’t figure out how to ask High Priestess Karin that wouldn’t give away his knowledge and Ekari was clueless. Rissa was supposed to see if she could winkle it out of Karin in one of their afternoon teas, but Serenity wasn’t expecting a response any time soon.

What he did have was an offer from High Priestess Karin that he - and only he - could go visit a small group of novices at the temple they served. It was a day’s travel away from Abiding 4 by flyer, but they’d finally made it there.

Acolytes Deek and Tinar were once again his guides; Serenity had the impression that they were specifically assigned to him.

The temple was similar to the churches he’d already seen; smaller and less elaborate than the grand displays in Abiding 1, but larger and more ornate than any of the others he’d seen so far (and he’d seen at least one church on every tour). The architecture felt off, somehow, more blocky and utilitarian than he expected for a place of worship. It was more like an office building, rectangular and boring. It was only two stories tall with a brick facing but somehow it managed to perfectly capture the blandness of being one glass office building among dozens.

For once, Acolyte Deek led the way. He led Serenity and Acolyte Tinar down a short hallway and into a room where a young man dressed in stained off-white robes that looked like they’d been washed until they were nearly falling apart sat on the floor.

There were chairs in the room but he was carefully sitting with his back against a wall, ignoring the chairs.

Acolyte Deek waved Serenity into the room. “This is the room you’re to use. Please don’t leave; we’ll be waiting in the hallway.”

Acolyte Deek closed the door between them without waiting for a response from Serenity.

“Hello?” Instead of Aeon, Serenity decided to try English. He had no idea if that was the best language to pick, since he wasn’t certain of the other man’s origin, but he was supposed to be from Earth. English seemed like a better first guess than any of the other languages Serenity knew.

The man looked up. He seemed startled to see Serenity, but immediately looked back down. “This lowly one greets the honored one.”

He spoke in badly accented Aeon.

Serenity tried again, still in English. “Hello. Can you understand me? Is there another language I should use?”

“This one is only permitted to speak in the holy tongue. Barbaric languages are forbidden as the work of the subhuman.” The man didn’t raise his eyes from the spot he watched on the floor, but the fact that he could answer confirmed that he was from Earth and spoke English.

It also confirmed that whatever they were doing to “novices”, it wasn’t something Serenity was willing to permit happening to his people.