Eryl actually shook with anger as she hovered over the field she had found Hecatolite in; her mind racing as she stared down at the unaware woman, watching as she padded about in the dirt. If one didn’t know better Hecatolite would appear to be a child pying as she “doodled” rge circles and lines on the ground… if one ignored the fact her tail was tearing rents into the packed dirt with ease, the dry earth parting with each swipe as if it was the finest sand.

  But Eryl knew better. Yet Again, Hecatolite had ignored even the most basic of safety measures, which really shouldn’t surprise her after letting the unstable primordial loose in the world without supervision! Then again, how was Eryl supposed to predict the btant disregard for the safety of this world and its inhabitants? Even in her wildest of predictions, ripping a hole in the divine barrier wasn’t even an option! She had, or believed she had, considered everything else.

  She even had a pn for if Hecatolite somehow actually turned Valor into a goat.

  But she had clearly underestimated the chaos that Hecatolite was willing to unleash, not to mention the others she dragged into this insanity! Ashmit of all the divine is on the short list of ones Eryl doesn’t need thinking he can just “pop” things around the world, mainly because of all the divine he is one who could actually do it.

  His mastery of spatial magic put him in a unique position to interact with the world in such a way that Eryl wasn’t sure the system would try and stop. If not for Hecatolite taking matters into her own hands and blessing him before personally ripping a hole in reality, this all would have been… significantly safer in all honesty.

  Ashmit was more than powerful enough to teleport any object as long as he could see it, and despite Amethyst’s reaction, moving something into a spatial storage is retively simple; it’s getting the items back out that most people struggle with.

  In theory the devil could just move objects “around” the world with his magic, even with the restriction of only moving things he saw; with creative use of a scrying spell, he could technically work around the system if he wanted. Thinking about it now… she can clearly see the loophole. If Ashmit were to teleport an object “across” the world, the system likely wouldn’t even notice, it would show up in the log of course but she doubted she would see it.

  The only thing that would trip the now obsolete protocol would be if he pulled an object into the divine realm from the mortal world, or vice versa. As long as the object itself didn’t cross between realms… the system wouldn’t try to stop it, the problem here is the fact that Ashmit had pulled the relic to the shared realm before teleporting it into the bag.

  The system had reacted to the movement across the barrier, Hecatolite retaliated, and now there is a hole in reality. One that thankfully she already had a fix for, a small precaution after Amethyst bounced off the divine barrier in the fight with the heroes.

  But now Eryl would need to write a hefty restriction on spatial magic just to keep anyone else from realizing the loophole, one that hopefully Ashmit himself doesn’t notice before she can restrict it. The st thing she needs is one divine being able to interact with the world, even ignoring the implications of letting a devil fling anything he can see though the mortal world, if the other divine catch wind of it…

  Her head hurt just thinking of the compints. For a bunch of divine they liked to whine if they thought someone else was getting special treatment…

  And of course, the fact it tipped the bance of power; she reminded herself, only slightly concerned about the fact that should have been first on her list of worries. If a single divine could interact with the world, it not only gave them an opportunity to instill their faith more easily, that’s not a problem, but could also interfere with other divine’s faiths… like dropping boulders on priests and followers… she really needed to write that restriction.

  She wouldn’t lose any sleep if Ashmit dropped a mountain on the holy capital but eventually, she would need to expin this all to Mother; and Eryl was already bending enough of the rules without needing the added risk that someone might get overzealous and accidently shatter a soul. Hopefully, the others will keep Ashmit from trying anything until Eryl can fix it.

  What she didn’t understand in all of this was Jaki. Eryl could understand Veritas, after all the two had interacted before when Pgue… Wolf, she needed to remind herself of his actual name so she could keep tabs on him in the system, stumbled upon that unique way to create undead.

  Why Hecatolite had “blessed” Veritas however… she didn’t know, and it was the least of her concerns. But how had she roped the meek Jaki into all of this? And why? Jaki was a decent gravity mage and had done a splendidly good job at keeping the moon in pce; but she was a minor god. a weak one at that.

  Was it because her domain is technically parallel to one of her own? Lust and fertility are… somewhat reted? But Jaki’s focus is on motherhood itself, there is a small part of it reted to conception, but Jaki’s religion preaches a more… conservative approach. Opposeed to the “X47” religion that… runs a whore house. Hells one of the “services” Hecatolite’s “church” offers is contraceptive magic; a direct opposition to a fertility god if one looked at it objectively.

  So, on top of fixing the hole in the divine barrier; a non-problem if she was honest, not that it wasn’t important, but she had already started the process and as long as the protocol worked as pnned it should be fine in a day or two. Eryl needed to create, write, and implement a restriction on an entire school of magic; a timely process if nothing else given she needed to be careful not to interfere with anything but that one specific application of the magic… that she didn’t know how she was going to restrict yet.

  Then she needed to have some very stern words with a group of divine she hadn’t expected to be foolish enough to actually go along with all of this.

  Sofria and Soter were one thing, but Ashmit; he was the devil of pride for a reason and for him to let Hecatolite bless him? More or less agree to help her for seemingly nothing… did he know what she was? No, if he did, I would be getting notification of an all-out war in the divine realms by now.

  Nothing Eryl could think of would escate the situation in the divine realms faster than one side realizing they had a primordial bolstering them.

  She would also need to message Veritas… Eryl actually trusted Veritas to not abuse the newfound power; she did feel bad for anyone breaking a contract in the future. Hopefully that necromancer Hecatolite had… kidnapped, for ck of a better word, abides by his contracts to the letter given Veritas’s interest in him.

  And Jaki… Eryl already felt bad about having to confront the goddess. Thankfully she won’t have to watch the other woman have a melt down or she doubted she would be able to reprimand the terrified bunny kin. She can already see it, she will send her message, Jaki will panic and Eryl will get a message back filled with tears and apologies once the other woman composes herself enough to actually read what Eryl sent. And the terminals will read them out loud now.

  The more she thought about it the longer the list of problems she needed to address grew, only adding to her building anger as stared down at Hecatolite as she inspected the… enchantment? Maybe it was a portal to a bck hole, Eryl wouldn’t be surprised at this point given how everything else has gone today.

  Would Hecatolite open a portal to destroy the world? Eryl couldn’t be sure, because on top of everything else, Hecatolite had done the one thing Eryl had explicitly asked her not to do. She had tampered with Eryl’s system, even broken part of it. Eryl had asked Hecatolite, more than once, to not tamper with or break parts of her system… It was a btant insult, to just disregard that simple request.

  Sure, she had just repced a prompt, adjusting the description of a relic was hardly the worst thing one could do; but the way she had done it was excessive.

  Hecatolite hadn’t “rewritten” the prompt, she wrote it in Overseer then rammed it into the world with no regard for the system at all. She destroyed the entire protocol for relic creation, ripping right though that part of the system when she force introduced that abomination of a relic to the world.

  Eryl will need to spend hours recreating the protocol from scratch, the only saving grace here is that it’s such a rarely used protocol; after Valor ascended and gone on a spree creating relics for his followers there hasn’t been a new relic in this world since… well, Hecatolite arrived.

  The protocol for cataloging relics is hardly one Eryl would call crucial to the system, but the fact she had carelessly ripped it from the world shows her ck of awareness!

  No, she was aware of it, Eryl was sure of that. Why else would she add that line to the description? “don’t show Eryl”. That one line is what really pushed Eryl over the edge in all of this. It’s why she had stormed out of Agos’s office and spent hours scouring the city looking for Hecatolite in a nearly blind rage.

  On top of everything else, the fact that Hecatolite would insult her like that. Did she really think Eryl wouldn’t notice an entire protocol being deleted, or a relic being forced into her system? Or, did she just not care?

  It… actually hurt more than Eryl thought it would, the fact that Hecatolite would just ignore her one request and then… try and hide it like that! The fact she had explicitly asked them to not show it to her was enough to prove Hecatolite just didn’t care.

  “Eryl…” Hecatolite surprised excmation snapped Eryl’s attention to her, only then realizing that she had been drifting towards the other woman.

  Had I really been so lost in thought I didn’t notice? She blinked as she hovered just above Hecatolite, staring down at her with her hands balled into fists. Then again, she wasn’t surprised she had been lost in her anger, even now her heart thundered in her ears as her hands shook by her sides clenched into fists hard enough for her knuckles to pop.

  “Hecatolite,” Eryl all but growled as the other woman’s name fell from her lips like a curse. It didn’t really matter at this point if she had lost herself in thought or not, she had come here to put an end to this chaos; she was going to make Hecatolite listen to her this time and…

  Eryl froze as she actually looked down at the other woman, finally taking her in as Hecatolite… flinched.

  Eryl wasn’t surprised that Hecatolite was filthy, again. Even the fact she was covered in blood didn’t strike Eryl as odd, she did see the half-eaten deer hanging from a tree on the edge of the field after all. But something about Hecatolite was… off? the nagging sensation causing Eryl to scan the other woman from head to toe as she tried to pce it.

  Hecatolite stood shifting her weight from foot to foot, a rge tri-fold hat propped lopsided on her head swaying precariously as she fidgeted. Her disheveled snow-white hair cascading out from under it as it flowed down around her shoulders weighed down by… rge patches of reddish-brown globs spttered throughout the ends of her hair.

  Her blood-stained shirt, which was a lost cause at this point, hung loosely from her shoulders that were drawn up nearly to her ears as she folded her hands behind her back. Her tail, which was normally a maelstrom of movement, curled around her not moving as it wrapped loosely around her body as if… shielding her?

  Her legs were bare, her pale skin on full dispy below where her shirt hung at mid-thigh. That did cause Eryl a moment of confusion given she was… pretty sure the small woman had been wearing pants when she left… and shoes? But now her toned legs were fully bare, covered in dirt from the knees down.

  Eryl watched as Hecatolite’s legs… rippled, she could see her thighs tense as her knees bent ever so slightly; her tiny feet digging into the dirt, toes spying out as if gripping the ground. Looking only at her legs… she was like a coiled spring, ready to fire off at a moment's notice.

  “How… was the meeting?” Hecatolite asked, pulling Eryls eyes up from her legs to stare into her wide eyes.

  Her hazy red eyes were fixed on Eryl in a wide-eyed stare as if she couldn’t believe she was there, the nervous look on her face was contrasted by the drying blood caked on her chin; though the blood drew Eryl’s eye, she… wasn’t smiling. In fact, she was frowning as she chewed her blood covered lip, holding her lip between her jagged teeth in such a way Eryl was surprised she wasn’t biting through it.

  She’s… nervous? Eryl blinked. Hecatolite has always been a ball of chaotic energy even at her most subdued; Eryl couldn’t remember ever seeing the other woman stand this still. The other night on top of the world tree her tail had shed about as if she was incapable of standing still. But now as their eyes met Hecatolite froze completely, her eyes wide as Eryl briefly wondered if she had stopped breathing.

  And the sight caused her to pause, only then realizing… she may have made a mistake. One that she only recognized because she had already made it twice before.

  “If you meet her in anger, you’ll only get anger in return.” Himari’s words pyed though her mind.

  Eryl had shouted at Hecatolite in the halls of the council chambers and the small woman had met her rage with a simmering anger of her own as the two fueled the fire between them in an argument that… accomplished nothing in the end.

  Then she had confronted Hecatolite again and the other woman had run from her, letting Eryl chase her until the burning rage subsided and the two fell into bed together… There was the small fact of a world changing revetion before they defiled the world tree, a small detail Eryl has steadfastly ignored.

  Eryl… wasn’t stupid, or at least she liked to think she wasn’t. But here she was, yet again rushing to… what? Yell at Hecatolite? It hasn’t worked before so why would that change now just because they slept together? Why had she let herself get so worked up that she just repeated the same action over and over again, rushing out there without even thinking of what she would do when she found her?

  And now she’s standing here staring down at a clearly nervous primordial without a pn. All she knew is if she yelled Hecatolite would either run for the hills and Eryl would only catch her when she got bored, or she would meet her anger with… world shattering revetions she doubted the other woman even remembered she knew.

  So… where did that leave her? What could she do? Hecatolite was nervous, and to Eryl that was all but an admission of guilt in and of itself; Hecatolite knew what she did was wrong but… now what?

  Eryl closed her eyes and took a deep breath, she needed to… talk to Hecatolite. Not yell, not lecture, but talk to her. to get her to understand, “Hecatolite,” she said again, trying to keep her voice even as she closed her eyes, steadying herself before continuing. “You and I need to talk.”

  The sound that came from Hecatolite was… unnerving. A surprised whimper that rattled Eryl as her eyes snapped open only to see Hecatolite staring up at her with her mouth open in surprise, her rge eyes wavering as her voice trembled, “are… you dumping me?”

  “What?” somehow the conversation that just started had already gotten away from her, “why would…”

  Hecatolite stepped closer to her, the movement terrifyingly fluid despite the clear distress on her face as she grabbed Eryl’s shirt. “Why? What did I do? Was it the deer I ate? I only ate a tiny bit of its soul… or the hat? I thought it would be ok because it only asks to use a box, I didn’t break any…” Hecatolite started to ramble as Eryl blinked down at her in shock.

  “Wait,” Eryl grabbed her arms, holding a trembling Hecatolite at arm’s length as she tried to think. “Hecatolite, why…”

  “You said we need to talk,” Hecatolite cut her off with a whimper, “that’s never good, ever. I know I’m not the best wife, but… is it something I did?”

  That was a strange question, Eryl was indeed here because of something she had done… but looking down at the trembling woman, Eryl had a creeping feeling she was missing something. “Why do you think I would want to… dump you?” she shook her head to stop Hecatolite from replying, “forget the… we need to talk, ok? Just tell me what you think you did that was so bad I would leave you?”

  Hecatolite whimpered again, “I don’t know.” She sniffled as she shifted, her eyes darting around as if looking for the answer.

  Following her eyes Eryl finally looked down at the ground, the rge enchantment stretching out around them. “And what is…”

  “Don’t look!” Hecatolite shouted as she broke free from Eryl’s grasp, flinging herself to the ground as her tail shed out as if trying to erase the crude drawing, “It’s a surprise!” She excimed as she scrambled to erase it.

  Wait… was that why she was so nervous when I arrived? Eryl thought as she watched Hecatolite freeze as she seemed to think of something.

  “Wait, is it the enchantment? I had the box check it I swear!” she sprang to her feet and rushed to Eryl as she summoned a terminal to her hands, “tell her, tell her that I had you check it!” she said frantically shaking the terminal, that did in fact turn a bright green as it tried to confirm what she was saying.

  And then it clicked. A piece of the puzzle that was Hecatolite sliding into pce in Eryl’s mind as she stared down into her hazy red eyes brimming with bck tears. She has no idea what she did, does she? The question washed over her and Eryl’s whole body rexed as a ugh nearly bubbled out of her.

  She had been convinced that Hecatolite knew exactly what she was doing and did it anyway. After all, how could she not? She was a primordial, a being older than the system itself? And therein lies her problem.

  Hecatolite is a primordial, Eryl accepts that. but she isn’t one of the “primes” as she knows them; one of the four pilrs that rule all of creation. Nor is she the all-knowing Mother system that has access to the database of the entire universe. She wasn’t even an old divine… And Eryl needed to remember that, and just that slight shift in her perspective… changed everything.

  Eryl got hung up on how old and powerful she is, causing her to ignore a very simple fact. Hecatolite never “learned” what was normal. And if Eryl thought about it… it made sense in a way. Common sense for a mortal was different than common sense for a divine; but even the oldest most eccentric divine soul… was mortal at one point in time. or so Eryl thought at least, it might be different for the oldest divine?

  Eryl could count on one hand the number of souls she knew of that were from before the lost era, obscenely powerful ancient divine that ruled over the oldest worlds; but those souls still had to grow into their power, learn how to use it properly. Even if they don’t “remember” what it is like to be mortal, they still have ingrained skills and preconceptions learned while they grew.

  The primes didn’t “grow” into their power but had all of history to test and learn how to utilize it and control it… Hecatolite though? She had been sealed away for…. Billions of years in a harvester world after, what Eryl could only guess, was a very bloody war. Then she arrived here, in this world with access to her power unrestricted, surrounded by powerful mages and gods… the only true measurement of a “normal soul” Hecatolite has been her own sister, a soul that could now, in theory, go blow for blow with the elder gods of this world.

  Eryl should have noticed it before, after all she knew Hecatolite has always struggled to “hold back”. She shattered a man's spine by running into him while trying to capture him in what she described as a friendly competition.

  But now it made sense while looking down at her as she waved a terminal frantically though the air while rambling about… whatever Hecatolite was rambling about now, the list of her preserved wrongdoing was armingly long; why she was swearing she didn’t mean to mug a guy… best if she didn’t think about it.

  “Eryl…” Hecatolite’s voice was weak as she stepped closer to her, the hat on her head falling away as she pressed her face into Eryl’s stomach. “I’m sorry.” it was barely a whisper, her voice muffled against Eryl’s body; yet it rang in Eryl’s ears as if it had been a scream.

  All of Eryl’s earlier anger vanished the moment Hecatolite looked up at her, bck tears streaking her cheeks and Eryl’s chest tightened. She had… made a mistake, she had overreacted and rushed here in anger only to cause… this. “Hecatolite,” she wrapped her arms around the tiny woman, keeping her voice low as she held her. “I am not dumping you,” in any other situation she might have thought this was funny. An admin coddling a primordial while reassuring them they weren’t breaking up. But now all Eryl felt was… foolish? Shame? Stupid, so stupid. She thought while silently promising herself to be more understanding in the future.

  “Promise?” Hecatolite sniffled as she buried her face in Eryl’s stomach.

  Eryl’s arms tightened around Hecatolite, squeezing her as she reassured her. “I swear. And I am so sorry for making you think that it wasn’t… I didn’t mean to upset you.” she sighed, “I should have chosen my words better…” she winced a little as she failed to come up with what to say, “we do need to talk, but it's not about what you think.” She let Hecatolite go, kneeling before the other woman could protest. Now eye to eye with her Eryl took Hecatolite’s face in her hands, running her thumbs along her cheek to wipe away the tears.

  Biting her lip Eryl tried to think of a way to navigate teaching Hecatolite about the world, about what she had naively thought was common sense… Then it struck her, Hecatolite had already given me the perfect way to do that hadn’t she… running her thumb along Hecatolite’s cheek Eryl scraped some of the blood from her mouth. “You and I need to talk because you had a lot of questions for me, didn’t you?”

  The smile that grew on Hecatolites face was hesitant, she knew that wasn’t what Eryl meant; she wasn’t sure what she had done wrong, but Eryl had looked… mad. Even madder than the other day; even now Hecatolite could feel the tension radiating off of her as Eryl tried to act calm, but Hecatolite knew better.

  Her ears were still down, her jaw clenched, and power bubbled out of her in a steady rhythm… Hecatolite didn’t know what she did wrong, but she would find out and then never do it again if it upset Eryl this much.

  Looking up into the night sky, Hecatolite took a deep breath before asking her first question, “why do people say that bunny fixed the moon but there’s still a hole in it? And can people heal rocks?”

  And for the first time Eryl and Hecatolite just sat and talked, no world changing events, or universal secrets shared; they strolled zily around the field outside of the city until sun rise while Hecatolite asked an endless stream of questions and in-between questions Eryl tried to teach her how to be just a little more… understanding of the world around her.