Today’s finally the day. It’s a very important day, too, and I’m super glad that the weather is all nice. Yep, all Sun, just like usual, except without any of the all too frequent sandstorms, which is always nice. It’s been a good couple of months since that day Tanathos and Olya left on their little trip and we stayed back to play Poker with Cassandra. She had her stroke of beginner’s luck, but it was all too apparent that she just didn’t have any game sense at all. Soon enough, she was drunk out of her mind from all the punishment swigs we had all agreed to do, but I quickly had to cut the game short after Shaid started suggesting we play strip poker. Seriously, she just got used to wearing clothes, and you’re gonna do that to her? What an idiot…

That being said, when the very much tired Olya and Tanathos returned back from their trip a few days later, the two of us got a large earful from the Old Man after he found out we taught his daughter to play card games. Turns out either she completely forgot we told her to not speak of it, or she’s just really bad at keeping secrets. Either way, Tanathos had punished us harshly by making us work on the new town hall that was being built. Oddly enough, it didn’t have the pyramid shape I had originally suggested, and was just your standard block house. But hey, even that’s better than a lowly tent.

“Now that I think about it, we really outdid ourselves on the Town Hall, didn’t we?” I boasted as I pointed it out to Shaid, “It’s got a good base infrastructure, the walls are made of sandstone, which really ties the colors of the surrounding sand together, but on the other the marble floor tiles on the inside seldom get any sand brought in from the inside.”

“Right? I was just thinking the same thing, actually.” Shaid agreed with me wholeheartedly, “Really, amigo, if it wasn’t for us helping them out, who knows how the building would have turned out by now.”

“It would have been the same, bozos.” Olya snickered, “If anything you two only helped patch it together a bit quicker because the quikkas still didn’t have any food yet, so they didn’t have as mucb energy.”

“Oh boy, here comes Mister Architect, acting all cool because he won a stupid contest between us.” Shaid rolled his Eyes.

“Hey! It’s not a stupid contest, we made a bet to see who out of the three of us would help design and build the most buildings in the quik, and I won fair and square!”

“Yeah, we really shouldn’t undermine his achievements, Shaid.” I tried to deescalate the situation, “No matter how you slice it, the numbers speak for themselves – The infirmary, the barracks, three houses and another greenhouse. That’s just incredible, coming from just one guy’s head.”

“Hrmph!” Shaid turned away, “I mean, I do agree that he’s made Havana a way better place to live in than before, but it’ll pale in comparison when our roads and streets get properly built! One giant project is infinitesimally better than even a thousand smaller ones.”

“I don’t know about that one, brother Shaid.” Tanathos popped in to check up on us, “I think the three families that now get to sleep in comfy beds instead of tents would beg to differ on that one.”

“Old Man!” Shaid pointed at him, “Were you waiting behind that wall the entire time just to make this flashy entrance?”

“What? Hell no, brother. I just got here from my business trip with the materials to make the next batch of buildings. See for yourself what you need.”

“Ooh! Awesome! You got a ton of the items I listed for paving the roads! And you got us some proper tools too! Thanks, Old Man!”

“Heh, compared to you three busting your asses on building up Havana from scratch, I’m hardly doing any hard labor…”

“Don’t be like that, man.” I patted Tanathos on the back, “Without you, we’d be stuck working with only some sand and sandstone. Trust me, you’ve been a great help to us.”

“Is that so? Well, I’m delighted to hear that, brothers.” He smiled earnestly, “By the way, where’s Cassandra? There’s something important happening in just half an hour, so please find her and bring her with you to the town hall. Be sure to invite anyone else you meet to join us as well.”

Hm? I wonder what he’s talking about… Right now, Cassandra should still be working on tilling the fields in one of the greenhouses, so getting her shouldn’t be that difficult. The quik still hasn’t reached a point where finding a single person would be that difficult, after all. Sigh…

“Cassandra!” We called out to her in one of the greenhouses, “Oh, there you are.”

“Hello.” She stopped her work on the field for a second to address us, “Nice to meet you again.”

“R-Right, well, I guess you could say that in this context, but you usually say the second part when you haven’t seen the person in a long time.” I made sure to correct her grammar before moving on to the topic at hand, “Your pops came back a couple minutes ago.”

“Padre!” She jumped for joy, “Can I go see him? Oh, but I still have to finish work…”

“No worries, sister Cassandra.” One of the other quikkas reached out to help her, “I will work for the both of us, so go see brother Tanathos.”

“Ah, about that.” Shaid interjected. “Tanathos said there’s gonna be a meeting at the town hall, and everyone has to be present, so all of you can come with us.”

At this piece of news, Cassandra was absolutely ecstatic. Immediately tossing the hoe she was holding and giving all three of us a hug, she took me by the hand and started yelling for everyone to hurry up to the town hall. Confused and unsure why she was behaving this way, the three of us turned to the other quikkas, who were all grinning from ear to ear at us.

“If you do not know, it is not our place to reveal.” They smiled.

Okay, now I’m kind of confused. Not worried, per se, as it seems everyone here is in high spirits about whatever is going on in the town hall. On the other hand, we trust everyone here, especially Tanathos, so it’s definitely not an issue of being scared or anything. I think…

***

Walking through the small but friendly quik of Havana, we could slowly but surely see all the people we had helped throughout our stay here join behind us as we were getting dragged along by the very elated Cassandra. The entire experience was very warm, and I don’t exactly know how best to describe the unity and anxiety I was feeling in the moment. None of us knew why everyone was showering us with smiles, but since everyone looked so happy, we felt an odd urge to smile along as well.

“Ah, there you three are!” Tanathos was preparing something on the central praying altar, “Now, come forth – brother Shaid, brother Schnell, and brother Olya.”

“Whoa, someone getting married or something?” Olya joked.

“I don’t recall ever getting that friendly with any of the girls here, so that only leaves our dear amigo Schnell here.”

“Wuh-Me?!” I swerved my head to meet his gaze, “I don’t have anyone like that either! C-Come on, Tanathos, give it to us straight, man!”

“Heheh, have no fear, brothers. It’s a momentous occasion for you all today, but not that momentous.”

“Dammit.” Olya stuck his tongue out with a smile, “Well, as long as it’s momentous, it’s gotta be good, right?”

Stepping in front of the table-like marble altar in the center of the room that was situated right underneath the giant convex ceiling window not too high up above us, we glanced at each other, once again feeling a bit unsure about what was going to transpire. The surface of the table was a bit hot, given the window was shining down directly on it all day, but we grit our teeth in fear of offending the Havanans in some way.

“Precisely.” Tanathos had us come closer to the altar, “Now, brothers, extend your hands to the praying altar, and repeat after me.”

“Hm?” We turned to each other for a bit before just shrugging and going along with it.

“Ouroboras, stop the time and create the World around us.” He started off his chant.

“Ouroboras? Did I say that right?” I turned to the other two, “Uhh, stop the time and create the World around us.”

“Teach us to love others, as you one day will as well.”

“Teach us to love others, wait what?” Shaid went to ask a question, “As you one day will as well? Don’t you mean As you once did as well?”

Glaring back at him, it seems Tanathos didn’t quite appreciate his query. Yikes, it seems like Shaid’s curiosity was once again his undoing, but thankfully I waited for him to inevitably ask the question all three of us were all too eager to pose. Now he’s the one that stepped out of line, and not me.

“Ouroboras!” Tanathos started closing off the prayer, “We beseech you, accept us in your understanding arms, and show us the way! Liem!”

“Ouroboras!” We raised our voices instinctively to match his, “We beseech you, accept us in your understanding arms, and show us the way! Liem!”

By the time we were halfway through the final part of the prayer, I could faintly notice the smell of burning meat. It was kind of nice, not to mention nostalgic, as it reminded me of the steak mother would prepare for us back home. Hm? Steak? Since when did we get meat in Havana? Looking down, I had finally realized from what the smell was coming from. Directly into the back of our hands, the lights from the convex window above us had converged and started burning all of our hands.

“Yeowch!” I lifted my hand away as I started frantically blowing on it in a shallow attempt at stopping the pain, “What the…?”

“Amigo!” Shaid turned to me, “This isn’t good! The Sun left a nasty mark on us! Ouch, this is so gonna leave a scar…!”

“Ow ow ow ow! Owieee!” Olya started rolling on the ground from the pain, “You damned tricksters! What the hell did you make us do?! Ugh, why did we have to make that window convex?! WHO WAS THE DUMBASS THAT MADE IT SO!?”

“Rejoice!” Tanathos lifted both his arms high up into the sky, as the other quikkas soon followed his example, “For our saviors have officially joined the Sun God Ouroboras’ religion!”

“You did it!” Cassandra gave all of us a hug once again, “You said the prayer, and the Sun God answered! Now you are finally one of us!”

“H-Hey, we’re gonna need an explanation…”

“HOORAY!” Everyone started jumping around the town hall, practically lifting it from the ground with how hyperactive they got.

Man, none of this is making any sense. Did we seriously just get baptized by Tanathos and were made to join a religion just like that? Hold on, but none of us expressed any wish to just change religions like that? God, I’m so confused!

“Wait just a second, Old Man!” Shaid started waving his injured hand at him, “What the fuck is this, amigo?! You’re telling me I joined some bitchass religion without even having a say in the matter? Well sucks for you, but we still believe in our respective Gods!”

“Hell yeah!” Olya cried out, still laying on the ground, “Selz and Pry 4 lyfe!”

“Please don’t refer to them as such…” I slumped down, “But seriously, Tanathos, it’s not cool for you to suddenly decide this for us. I mean, we can’t just stop believing in our respective Gods, y’know, the ones we’ve believed in since birth?”

“Why not?” Tanathos looked at us, “The Gods are not like women – You don’t have to settle for just one! Haha!”

I don’t really know what part of his joke was that appealing to me, or if it even was appealing in general, but something about it stuck with me. All our lives, we’ve been taught to live and serve under one God’s religion. Converting from one religion to another was heavily frowned upon, and having Four different Gods that the World believed in had naturally created a divide in humanity. Suddenly hearing from this somewhat older man in his forties whose hair had somehow already gotten all white, I don’t know, I was just… driven to tears, I guess.

“Ha.” I fell to the ground, “Ha-ha…”

“Schnell?” The other two looked at me.

“Hahahahahahahaha!” I started laughing maniacally, “He’s right! Why should we only believe in one God! They all supposedly exist, after all, so where’s the fucking harm!?”

“Eh?”

“Everyone here doesn’t give a fuck about the Great Wars!” I cried out, “Everyone here don’t give a shit about ethnicity, race, religion or nationality! They’re all one people, but they still took one good look at three random white guys, all of odd backgrounds, and they didn’t give a single shit as they fed us the little food they had left!”

“Yeah, they did…” Shaid started getting a bit emotional as well, “They taught us the beauty of creation, and for that I even converted to a Blue Iro. They made me appreciate the little things in life.”

“There he is, ladies and gents, Shaid! The man who thinks only of women, even in such a crucial moment!” Olya teased.

“How did you come to that conclusion, asshole!?” Shaid jolted at the accusatory words.

“Hm? What else could the little things mean in this context?”

At Olya’s insinuation, all the women present in the room looked down at their chests, before collectively turning to glare at Shaid. Well, I say all of them, but it seems the joke went over only one girl’s head.

“Psst, hey.” Cassandra raised herself on her tippy-toes just to be able to reach my ear, “What are they talking about?”

“Shaid has now earned the ability to appreciate any and all women, be they big or small.” I replied with absolute sincerity.

“H-Hey! Not you too, amigo!”

“Brother Shaid.” Cassandra stood face to face with him, before giving him a wide grin, “Thank you! Piel oscura and piel blanca are friends, and I’m glad you realized it!”

Confused, he turned to me for a translation, but seeing as no one had the heart to correct the innocent girl’s misunderstanding, I just smiled and gave him the thumbs up with a light chuckle. Well, it’s not like what she said was untrue or anything, so there’s really no need to correct her on the first place. Pfft!