Charles sat across from his sister while she examined a scrap of cloth underneath her glasses.

The original pair of glasses had been created for her by her patron Saraswati, the Hindu goddess of learning and knowledge. After they returned from South Wales a couple of weeks earlier, they were one of the first things Charlotte had upgraded with her new powers.

The piece of material had come from the otherworlders he and Kira had picked up earlier that day. They had just gotten done creating the forty-seventh town connected to their network when they encountered them.

Most of those towns had been on the North American continent. Charles had a quest that said the gods would help them retrieve their parents if he created or helped create at least fifty towns on his current continent. So, that’s what he was doing, all while working towards figuring out a way to accomplish that goal himself with his sister.

With the help of the space station, locating groups of survivors was no longer as much of an issue. It just depended on how fast he could create them. Of course, that didn’t mean he ignored the other continents entirely, just somewhat.

His focus was on his home territory, but if he saw a large group of people in need from the space station, then he acted. Which is why, even at their current forty-seven, they still needed another eleven towns to complete his quest.

Of course, that was assuming that they believed the gods were able to follow through with the promised reward. Which both Charlotte and he had been doubting for weeks now.

The problem was, he hadn’t been making any headway in establishing a ‘Zero Door’ to his parents either. Wherever they had found themselves, it was some place not at all conducive to the current normal operations of the spell.

“Where are Kira and Alli?” Charlotte asked suddenly, sliding a finger along the rim of her rightmost lens. The action increasing the magnification, the more she slid her finger.

“Alli is with Myri, same as always. And Kira is showing the three kids around our humble little town.”

“Has Alli said anything more about what she wants lately?”

“Thankfully, no,” Charles muttered.

Charlotte wearily pulled off her glasses and pushed the scrap of cloth away. “I’ve never seen anything like it, and I have no idea how her spell works either. Everything about their magic and the makeup of the material inside their suits is foreign. If we didn’t already know they were otherworlders, I would say this right here, cements it for me at least.”

He grunted, annoyed at her for bringing the previous subject up.

“I have a theory about Alli, and of a young, confused girl. Would you like to hear it?” Charlotte stood up and tossed the scrap of material to him.

“That’s random, but sure. Please, wow me with your psychoanalysis of the inner workings of Alli’s mind.” Charles crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair, while they ignored the rest of the people inside the lab.

She shook her head. “Don’t be like that, I’m being serious right now. No psychobabble here, just some simple observations. Now, do you want to hear what I have to say or not?”

He sighed and uncrossed his arms. “Fine, sorry, tell me what you’ve observed.”

“A girl, or husky in her case that was starved for affection, one that clung to the first thing that provided her with safety and stability. You replaced the absent Myri and then took on a different role for her as she began to change through your shared connection. As your animal companion Alli grew smarter, and her emotions developed, becoming more complex.

“Then the connection between your souls happened and everything became jumbled for her. However, the point is, everything positive in her life up to Myri coming back she attributed to you.”

Charles felt his skin ripple as gooseflesh formed on his arms. “You’re saying that she was never actually in love with me, but simply had a massive, what, daddy complex? And now that Myri is back, things are beginning to equalize?”

It made sense in a weird, twisted way that had him almost sighing with relief. He had not been looking forward to having that kind of relationship with Alli. Especially not after the last couple of weeks. Ever since she had found Myri, she had spent most of her time in her younger, mostly human form. Seeing her like that just made him see her as a daughter and nothing more.

Charlotte shrugged. “Maybe, I’m sure there’s an actual term for it, but I promised no psychobabble. Either way, she became inordinately attached to you while she was still forming who she was, her personality. Now that Myri has come back into her life, and you have proposed to Kira, everything she thought she knew has been thrown into chaos. She is essentially having to redefine herself right now.”

“So, what you’re saying is Alli is having to figure out if she was actually in love with me romantically or as family. While also seeing where she fits into everything going forward. In the meantime, she has latched onto little Myriam with a vengeance.” Charles finished for his sister.

She nodded. “That’s about how I see it, yeah.”

“This is why I used to hate dealing with people. They’re so confusing,” Charles grumbled.

“Yeah, but you wouldn’t trade any of them for your boring life from before, would you?” It was a rhetorical question, she knew he wouldn’t. He loved all three of those girls in different ways, they were a family.

“Go on, I need to think what you’ve said over. Besides, I think you’ve kept the class downstairs waiting long enough.”

Charlotte was teaching some people how to use the various CNC machines they had rescued and repaired. Some of them were used for making the basic runed items that were eventually turned into equipment. While others were more suitable for wood instead of metal. Each of them had their uses and nothing was wasted outside of these classes.

They didn’t have enough resources to waste. The world no longer had refineries or factories that would replenish everything they needed. He didn’t even know if Gaia would let them create some of those things again. It was probably better to work under the assumption that certain items wouldn’t be coming back.

“Yeah, why don’t you get on out of here and work on figuring out what’s wrong with your ‘Zero Door’ spell?” The frustration they both felt at their lack of progress leaked over into her words. “Sorry, you know I didn’t mean it like that.”

He waved her apology away with a frustrated exhale. “I do, but there’s only so much I can do for now. I know that notification I got when we closed off that last dungeon said my understanding of mana had reached perfection. But I still have to learn everything about the individual spells.

“It makes the process faster, but it’s nowhere near-instantaneous. I’ve already increased my limit from three times a day to four with an additional always available home door. I’m making progress. It’s just going to take time. Everything takes time.” He finished tiredly.

“It’s the same way with my magic. I don’t have the advantage your runes gave you so I’m not quite to perfect understanding just yet. It made learning and understanding everything faster, but I still have to learn it.” Charlotte took off her glasses and rubbed her tired eyes.

“I’m just worried. We know that they’re alive, thanks to your threads but nothing else. They could be getting tortured, running from monsters, or sitting at a table drinking cocktails in some far-off world. It’s the uncertainty that’s getting to me.” She cracked her neck and put the non-prescription glasses back on.

“I’m more worried about Bob and whatever he’s planning with all of this. Why is he so fixated on mom? I mean, she’s alright as far as moms go, she’s ours after all. But she’s mom, you know?”

Charlotte rolled her eyes. “She’s a High Goddess. I doubt there is anything normal about her. Who can say if we even really ever knew her at all?” She finished in a soft, bitter tone.

Charles gave his sister a warm hug. “Don’t go doubting silly things. Those can all wait till we get them back and can hash it all out together as a family. Bob helped the gods to do this to Earth. He may even have given them the idea. Everything that has happened is because he wanted to find mom.”

“Which just brings us back around to doing what we’ve been doing.” She gently pushed him away. “I’ve got to get to my class. Go do your thing. I’ll talk to you later, and thanks for letting me look at that even if I didn’t learn anything.”

Charles wandered out of the lab and into the cold December air. A feeling of hopelessness lingered as he walked the short distance to his home. The nearby apartment building called to him as he drew near, promising a safe haven. He needed to get his head on straight before he saw anyone else.

Across the river, the tower loomed over the town. Its slightly out-of-phase existence made looking at it for long periods of time a pain. Everyone knew it was there, and many people made use of it daily.

Still, there were times when clouds drifted through it that he had to look up and remind himself it was actually there.

******

Tromping through the snow, he waved to a few of the kids having fun and walked into the apartment building and his apartment on the first floor. He dropped down onto the couch and closed his eyes for a few minutes to just think. The appearance of the kids on Earth and the three moving teddy bears was not something he had been expecting to deal with.

Now he needed to figure out a way to get them home, along with helping everyone else on this planet.

That thought brought him up short.

When did he become the person who was responsible for saving everyone? That didn’t sound like him at all.

He had always been more of the person who looked out for family and himself first. The rest of humanity just never fully registered. To Charles, they were non-entities. As selfish as it sounded, he knew his priorities, and people he didn’t know weren’t a part of that.

He had simply always lacked a certain amount of empathy for people he wasn’t close to. It was a personal failing, and nothing more. Not something related to the more recent revelations concerning his race. Even animals could show empathy for other species after all. He was just odd, nothing more, nothing less.

Yet here he was, doing exactly that. Taking on an impossible burden to save people he had never met, like he was some kind of superhero.

Why?

It made no sense to him, this wasn’t who he was before. So, what had changed?

Was it Alli, Kira, or Kate and their parents, possibly even Myriam? Had all of them been influencing his personality without him noticing, and if they had, did he even really care? People were alway affected and changed by the others around them, it was a fact of life.

Besides, so what if he was helping these people? At least it kept him busy, and for the most part, he still didn’t care about everyone.

His sphere of family and friends had expanded quite a bit recently, however. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing, either.

Just realizing that let an invisible weight fall away from his shoulders. He was only Charles, a man who was supposedly an ‘Unawakened High God’, whatever that meant, and nothing more. It was silly and beyond arrogant to think that saving the world was entirely up to him.

Sure, he had some advantages when it came to creating towns, but the gods creating their temples had mitigated that some. At the end of the day he was still just one person, and people were responsible for their own lives. That never changed.

What he was doing was a quest-given job, not some calling he had inflicted upon himself. He didn’t possess the naïve belief that everyone was worth saving simply because they were human.

He had never been able to identify with those kinds of characters in comic books and movies. They were always too unrealistic and unwilling to see the truth for his taste. He knew why the writers made them that way, but it made the characters almost alien to him.

People that altruistic didn’t exist, the world wouldn’t let them.

Charles sat on the couch for a while longer, letting his mind go in pointless circles. It was good to understand himself, but he hadn’t made any progress on the matter he was meant to be concentrating on.

The three kids and how to get them home.

He needed to talk to Gaia, or better yet, her champion, the professor James Wagner. Getting in touch with the necromancer had been tricky since they returned from Wales. As near as he could figure, the World Spirit was taking a very focused interest in the ‘Fledgling Yggdrasil’ that had appeared there.

He needed to talk to Scott. Maybe he had a way to get in touch with the man. It was a small hope, but it was all he had at the moment.

Kira found him as he was getting ready to leave a minute later. “Well, those three are certainly confused about our world, and the bears are an amusing treat. Apparently, Alli can talk to them, by the way, so that’s fun.”

He nodded. “At least they’re not whiny brats, and they even knew how and why they ended up here. If not, how to get back. Their world does sound like an alternative version of Earth though. Like their path diverged from ours at some point because of the portals. I know it’s not that simple as there were already differences even before that, but the similarities are astounding.”

She shrugged and ran a calloused hand through her short, purple-streaked hair. “What are we going to do with them?”

“I was thinking that I needed to talk to the professor and get Gaia’s input on the matter first. As for the kids themselves…” He bit his lower lip. “Send them into the tower with your sister, Beth, and Inara? They’re all around the same age, it seems, it would be good for the girls to make some friends. All they do is go into the tower every day and shut themselves off from everyone else.”

“Can we trust them? I don’t like the idea of sending some potentially dangerous people to guard my little sister’s back!”

“It was just a suggestion, and I have no idea. They seem like decent, if somewhat guarded, kids, but at this point, you’ve spent more time with them than I have. I’m not saying they need to go inside the tower or anything either. I simply thought it would be a good chance for them all to bond and become friends.”

Kira was a tad over-protective of her little sister at times. She didn’t want Kate to go through anything even remotely similar to what she had. The towns all had their tenets in place that protected everyone while they were inside their walls. Unfortunately, as they had recently come to learn, that did not include the tower.

A member of a party had gotten greedy and attacked the others, hoping to get some of their items. It hadn’t worked, but the tenets also hadn’t punished the offender since they weren’t technically inside the walls of the town. It was only due to pure chance that another party had been passing by and seen the entire thing happen.

It had been an eye-opening encounter for everyone going into the tower. Now they knew they needed to be leery of everyone inside their party and that they met along the way. The atmosphere inside the town had changed almost overnight.

Charles cursed as he realized something. “I don’t even know if they can join the town and enter the tower. With everything else, we can just open the doors for them, but that won’t work for the tower.”

Kira chuckled. “Yeah, it might break whatever weird system they’re using, or fix it.”

He snorted. “Yeah, or it could infect ours and change everything. That’s why Alli was never allowed to go down to Alaria’s world. I wouldn’t be surprised if something has already started to happen either way.”

“You’re right, I forgot about that… You think that’s why the professor has been gone ever since we got back?”

“I originally thought Gaia was just really interested in the Yggdrasil tree that appeared, but you might be right. That does coincide with around when these kids arrived as well.” He groaned and scratched at his head. “You know what? I need to find Scott. Why don’t you talk to your sister and Beth, maybe introduce them to Zack, Zara, and Tessa if they agree to it? If we’re lucky, Inara will be able to talk to the bears as well.”

He had a feeling that more than one thing had happened that the gods hadn’t accounted for. Gaia had already been forced to iron out more than a few issues when she first took over everything from them. The dungeon fragments and the divine energy that had crept over from Alaria were a perfect example of that.

Everything was changing. It was just a matter of whether the World Spirit was able to keep up.

Kira kissed him gently on the cheek and took a step back. Her eyes were half-lidded in a peaceful expression. “Go on, I’ll talk to the girls. Oh, before I forget, Myri invited them over for dinner tonight. I think she thought the moving teddy bears were adorable.”

“Yeah, as long as you ignore the one that tries to stab everything,” Charles replied with a chuckle. He kissed her on the hand above the engagement ring and winked at her.

She was continuing to make progress battling her inner demons, and he, for one, was content to let her set the pace of their relationship. Nothing good would come from pushing her. He understood that even if she might be feeling ready to kiss him on the lips today, that didn’t mean the same would hold true the next day.

The reins of their relationship were firmly in her hands, and she understood that and trusted him. Just like he trusted her to not abuse it in turn. It was how things needed to be while she healed. In time, their relationship would change, maybe become more normal, or not. They would learn together as they went what the other needed.

He eventually found Scott not in the lab as he had expected, or even in the new apartment they had moved into above the one he shared with Kira. Instead, he was working in their old apartment above the lab and had converted it into a private chemistry laboratory of his own.

“When did you do all of this?” Charles asked when he saw the other man take a step back from writing his notes.

Scott jumped back in fright at the sudden voice intruding on his singular focus. “Don’t do that Charles!” He gasped, clutching his chest. “Ugh, you just shaved ten years off my lifespan with that move.”

Charles walked farther into the converted apartment. “You might want to lock the door next time, then. I waited until you were finished doing everything, but imagine if someone opened the door while you were playing around with something dangerous.”

Scott shook his head. “I do all those particular experiments downstairs still. I use this space for private projects Charlotte and James have me working on. They’ve come up with a few interesting ideas lately-“

He liked his brother-in-law. Although the man was somewhat forgettable, he made his sister happy, and that was all that mattered. However, he was a genius when it came to chemistry, which had transformed into an ‘Alchemy’ class and a trait uniquely suited for him.

“Speaking of the professor,” Charles interrupted him before he could really get going on his favorite topic. “I need to talk to him and Gaia. Do you know where he is or how to get in touch with him?”