“It has been far too long and you have yet to come visit me, so I am visiting you,” I announced as I appeared in the Heaven Realm, crossing my arms and pouting at Inesa as she moved about in her little garden. The goddess of light looked up at me from where she trimmed a tree, using focused beams of light to cut off small branches and other such things. Normally she did it with shears, but the swelling of her belly had made her a little more cautious; it was actually cute.

  But also tied into to why I was here to bug her, so soon after she had returned home from meeting Solana. She hadn’t come to visit me ever since she’d gotten pregnant, not even to announce it! It was very rude. I demanded justice, and to exercise my right to squeal like a child at pregnancy-related news! It was a little late for that last bit, but that was besides the point. Inesa smiled patiently, shaking her head, a strand of brown hair falling in front of her face as she let the light die on her fingers and slowly walked over to me, weaving through her vegetable garden.

  I watched her, keeping my pout going full-force and shooting my biggest sad eyes at her. Genuinely, I was a little hurt she hadn’t come to visit yet, even if I knew the reason.

  “You already know what my ultimatum was, until you ruined it just now. I’m wasn’t going to announce it to you until you quit that silly little game between yourself and Xing Wu. You need to actually talk to the man.” Inesa said, setting her hands on her hips and giving me her best approximation of a glare. All it really did was make me want to pinch her cheeks, my fingers itching at my side.

  “I can’t. He could walk into my palace right now and try to see me,” I protested, quelling that feeling by twisting my fingers together.

  “You would try to suppress him with your aura,” Inesa countered, crossing her arms across her chest.

  “And if he really wanted to, he would push through that to rise up and punch me, just like he claims to want to.” I countered back. Inesa opened her mouth to protest, but I raised an eyebrow at her to challenge that. We both knew he was just stubborn enough to do it; at this point he and I were playing a game between Men. If he came directly to my palace, he would lose, even if he punched me. If I came directly to him, I would lose. It was indeed that simple.

  “You and your silly games,” Inesa complained, pressing the heel of her palm to her forehead. “Why are you insisting on doing this?” I furrowed my brows, cocking my head to the side.

  “Because if I don’t, I’ll lose? And since when has it been ok to lose to my children? Most importantly, it’s because I find it amusing. There’s little better reason for someone of my power to do something like this. If I have to, I’ll just disguise myself and visit you and your kids as a rabbit or something.” I said with a dismissive wave of my hand. “Imagine that. Your kid, growing up playing with the Origin of all creation, and knowing me as a bunny rabbit.” At this Inesa giggled, one hand reaching down to place itself over her stomach protectively. Warmth bloomed in my chest as I gently moved over, wrapping her in a tight hug.

  “You’ll be Grandma Bunny,” she said, hugging me back. I squeezed her a bit more, rocking back and forth.

  “I am excited for you,” I told her genuinely, despite the fear that colored a corner of my heart. What if the defenses went wrong? We were coming up on the collision, I could feel it in my bones. Each day brought us closer, and though there was time yet, it felt like there truly was not much. Not to one such as I, who counted centuries as minutes, if not seconds. “It will probably be a century before the little one is born, though, and I am impatient.”

  “I was starting to wonder,” she confessed, pulling out of my grip. “I have been pregnant for longer than even immortals, at this point. It is no burden on my body, but…I, too, am eager to meet her.”

  “Her?”

  “A mother knows,” Inesa nodded sagely. I ruffled her hair fondly, having not peeked at the gender myself. Some things were better left as surprises. “Her name will be –“

  “No, don’t tell me,” I interrupted, placing a finger over her lips. “You and Xing Wu both have opinions on the matter, and I will not let you use me to settle the fact. If you tell me the little one’s name, I will end up thinking of them that way, and the universe will conspire to name them. Hush, you little manipulator, you,” I chided, pulling my finger away and waggling it at her. Inesa flushed a little, smiling as she stepped back.

  “I learned from the best. But the name I want is –“

  “Nope!” And I immediately teleported away before she could even think about shouting it at me. Inesa giggled, already turning to resume trimming her tree, while I watched from afar, hands clasped behind my back and a small smile on my face. It was only a few minutes longer before Xing Wu appeared in their garden again, wrapping Inesa in a hug, none the wiser I had been present. And Inesa said nothing to reveal it, content with his company.

  I pivoted, letting this incarnation fade as I allowed myself to focus more intently on the one coming directly to my palace and true body; Solana. The great fire bird was hesitant, yet shot through space all the same, accompanied by Keilan and Gilles both. It had taken some time for them to convince her she needed to visit me, nervous as she was. The Rival stayed back in the Heaven Realm, talking with my other children still. My old friend's posture had relaxed even more after chatting one-on-one with Alexander, the conclusion he had come to intriguing me; he danced around the subject, never quite admitting what he was thinking while hinting that something had truly been realized.

  A very large part of me wanted to try and read into his thoughts, pick out whatever realization he and the Mad Scientist shared, but Monkey Wrenches were among the few things I could not easily see through. Their very nature, and the fact they were protected in many ways by Mr. Boxes himself, denied my sight to a degree. I could certainly see through it, but the Rival seemed intent on not sharing, and if I truly believed his conclusion was imperative for me to hear I would have dug it out of him. As it were, I could let it slide. For now.

  “Ma’am,” Randus said, appearing beside me, popping out of his realm of dreams to bow slightly. The butler-god waited for me to turn my attention to him before announcing our guests. “Keilan, Gilles, and Solana have arrived. I do know how you’ve been looking forward to it,” I pat him on the shoulder as I stepped past, my true body traversing the distance from my meditation room, where I had been resting, to the grand hall instantly.

  The large doors to my palace were flung wide open. Solana stared at the art and walls in incomprehension, currently in her Fae-like form as she was, still wrapped in a blanket. Keilan stood just behind her and to the side, Gilles on the other side. Both men met my eyes silently.

  “Statera – I mean, My Lord – er,” Solana stammered as she noticed my presence, her heart overwhelmed by all the emotions she had gone through, all the changes she was still feeling, nerves and anxiety flying through her mind like the wind itself. I did not let her finish her sentence. My other children had already said what needed to be said; there was only one thing left for me to do.

  I crossed the distance between us in three great strides, giving her time to back away if she wished. She did not, watching me approach with fiery golden eyes as I pulled her into a tight hug, my heart trembling with emotion, eyes burning as I squeezed her.

  “It is good to have you home, child,” I whispered into her hair. “Welcome back.” Solana shuddered once, arms reaching up slowly to return the hug.

  “You never left me, did you?” she asked, squeezing.

  “Never. And I cannot tell you how proud of you I am,”

  And Solana cried.

  And I hid my own tears.

  My child had finally returned home.

  If only we had more time…

  ***

  The Rival looked up from where he was playing cards with a few angels and members of the Heavenly Host as Solana returned. She had been gone for a good while – at least a few months, while she caught up with Statera – and now returned with the Karmic Lord Keilan and her brother Gilles by her side. She had returned to her small, puffball of a bird form, keeping the golden feathers that marked her as a divine phoenix, and looked…put out? No, she looked excited, but sad at the same time.

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  “Sorry, fellas, but it looks like my time here is up,” he said, slapping his cards on the table and sliding his winnings, a mixture of spirit stones and precious metals that truly held no value to him, into the pot.

  “Come back any time if you want to keep giving us your stuff, y’hear?” one of the Heavenly Host members, a cute girl with glowing white skin and eyes of molten silver, taunted, shooting him a wink. He shot her a grin and waved as he retreated from the table, meeting Solana’s eyes questioningly.

  “I will be going to the Karmic Realm with Keilan, to learn about my powers,” she said softly, chirping slightly. The Rival nodded, rubbing his shoulder.

  “Sounds like it could be fun. I need to stop by the Physical Realm and talk to the Mad Scientist, then I’ll probably try to make my way down to the Karmic Realm.” He mused, scratching his chin thoughtfully. He needed to talk to the Mad Scientist to confirm his theory; he was stumped, at this point, about Statera’s past lives and figured just asking her was going to have to be his next approach, but what the Mad Scientist had realized was something he could actually confirm.

  “Then we will be going our separate ways, then,” Solana asked softly. The Rival met her eyes, nodding slowly and allowing his perpetual laid-back grin to dim into something a touch more serious. They had travelled a long time together. To him, she was a friend, and a shining example that even lost souls could be redeemed, a reminder he had desperately needed. But ultimately, she was a blip, a momentary companion in his obscenely long lifespan. To her? He was probably her closest friend, someone who had travelled with her for most of her life. He had been there when she ascended to Immortality, then again when she ascended to godhood.

  Which was exactly why she needed to leave, and find new friends.

  “Seems like it. I’m sure we’ll meet again; you can’t get rid of me that easily,” he joked, winking at her.

  “You did keep your promise. You told me you would help me find those who had killed my old friend the priest, and you did. You have been through a lot with me, because of me. For that, I thank you, student,” Solana said, bowing her head slightly. The Rival grinned at her, and shot her not just one, but two thumbs up.

  “Always, my friend! And hey, if tall, dark, and handsome over there bothers you just give me a holler! I’ll sic Statera on him,” he promised, pointing to Keilan. The winged man in question shifted uncomfortably, his thick tail curling at his feet.

  “I understand you are teasing when describing me, but it is very weird to be called that by someone older than Mother,” Keilan told him. The Rival cackled while Solana cocked her head to the side in confusion, clearly not understanding what they were talking about. She didn’t know about his true nature, after all, despite their time together.

  He gave it ten years before she figured it out. Statera’s kids were annoyingly perceptive like that.

  “Will you need help getting back to the Physical Realm?” Gilles asked, stepping forward to lay a hand on the Rival’s shoulder. He shook his head.

  “Nah. Reika built those stairs between Realms, right? I’ll just take those. I still want to explore a bit more, after all,” he told the deity of shadows. The pale man nodded once, thanked him for taking good care of his sister, bid farewell to Solana, and promptly teleported away.

  The rest of Solana’s farewell was relatively simple. She chirped and cried a little. He sniffled too, once or twice, not denying that he would miss the prideful little bird. Then Keilan took her away, and he was left in the Holy Palace alone, and completely unsupervised.

  For once, he did not take obscene advantage of that fact. Partly because he was never completely unsupervised thanks to Statera, but partly because he did want to know the answer to his question, his humble realization. That little niggling in the back of his head that told him he had to check it out. Figure out what was happening. So he walked.

  He walked through the grand marble halls, their ceilings reaching so high they might as well have been the skies. He passed by members of the Heavenly Host, that naturally immortal race who were as noble and just as Elvira herself; riding winged beasts and training in gleaming silver armor. He chatted with spirits and angels alike as he walked, and waved to the Empress of Heaven herself, the Goddess of Divinity as he left her hallowed halls, descending the long, long staircase to the base of the Holy Mountain.

  The yang qi was dense here, so dense he had to hold his breath lest his lungs become saturated with the stuff. Each footstep down the stairs felt weighted by boulders, the weight conversely lifting significantly the further he descended. Clouds drifted in the skies far below, the entirety of the Heaven Realm laid out before him. The light of the Realm Sun and Lunar Star shone off of the endless landscape, canyons deeper than entire planets and mountains taller than continents ranged off into the distance. Magic beasts roamed far off into the horizon, barely visible even to his qi-enhanced eyes, cities forming of powerful, heaven-touched souls.

  It was beautiful, in its own way. Almost completely self-sufficient, too. Bits of yin were floating up from the ground below, mixing with the yang, keeping it just on that teetering edge that kept it from turning to pure Yang, and therefore starting the downward journey to yin.

  And Elvira’s presence ranged throughout it all, her holy white light suffusing everything.

  The stairs to the base of the mountain stretched on seemingly endlessly, but he took his time, greeting those who passed him and denying any offers of transportation. He could not take this the easy way, lest he miss something.

  It wasn’t until he reached the base and found the bridge between Realms, the relatively unused staircase that rose from the highest branch of the Life-Giving Tree to the lowest part of the Holy Mountain that he took a quick break. The staircase itself was ringed in magic, dense trees growing around the cloudy stairs, no wider than a single person, as they cut through the fabric of reality.

  The Rival studied it. The link. The little line that allowed the transfer of souls between Realms in a way that the Spirit River did not. To his knowledge none had used it yet besides Xing Wu, who had sprinted up it in his search for Inesa. He walked the perimeter of the hole cut in the Realms, prodding it, testing the edges – they were stable, far too small of a hole for it to be an issue. The steps themselves were covered in moss, despite the cloudy substance that comprised them, and sang of ascension.

  He knelt beside it for nearly a year, studying its structure. Only when he was satisfied did he descend.

  The stuff of Heaven made up the first bit. It was the same solid, cloudy substance he was used to seeing from afar – at least, after the first few hundred miles of solid rock and ground that made up the ground itself. It sang of purity and holiness, divinity and yang, just as its master did. Just as Elvira’s own aura did.

  When he reached the barrier between Realms, he paused again. Here, the stairs were rickety. They had long since lost the moss that grew upon them, now made of an entirely grey material that shuddered and shook as the grey barrier that separated the Physical Realm from the Heaven Realm, a natural construction, stretched and compressed in equal measure.

  He observed these movements for nearly a dozen years. Watching the flow, observing what few spirits he could see as they tried to press through, only able to slip through the cracks by riding the waves of the Spirit River. The Realms weren’t fully separated. Not yet. But he could see the signs. The way energy was flowing, the way Reika’s domain of change pressed against the barrier, making it more solid as it clashed against the solidity of the Heaven Realm, while Elvira’s domain did the same from above if for the opposite reason. None of them quite recognized it, in his mind. The way things were lining up, to be split apart naturally.

  Like cells, beginning to duplicate. The Rival spun on his heel, and resumed walking once again.

  He descended to the highest branch of the Life-Giving Tree, its leaves the size of gas giants, the storms that shook the peak nearly enough to tear his own body asunder, perfect though it was. The Rival smiled, and leapt from the edge of one of said leaves, allowing gravity to do its job and hurtle him toward Pangaea below.

  He did not look to hard at the galaxy swirling beyond the edges of the landmass known as Pangaea. He did not look too long at the Trees growing beyond that, creating a forest.

  He focused on guiding himself toward the Celestial Palace, where he knew Alanna, the Celestial Empress, and the Mad Scientist awaited him.

  He did not have to wait for them.

  The Mad Scientist met him.

  As he appeared over the capital city of the Celestial Empire, hundreds of floating islands chained together above a massive lake where two ley lines intersected, cities of mortals containing billions stretching around the chains that held them in place, the avian Monkey Wrench shot out of a window to greet him.

  Her eyes watched him carefully as he came to a stop just before her, standing midair, desperately searching his face for some sort of answer.

  “You did see it,” she told him, relief flooding her features. “I wasn’t seeing things.”

  “Oh you were definitely seeing things,” The Rival shook his head slowly. “Thought I will hand it to you, if it pans out the way it’s shaping up to be, you picked a hell of a universe to be a part of. That they’re already splitting, and the universe isn’t yet a billion years old? That's impressive, to say the least,” he allowed. The Mad Scientist shuddered, eyes gleaming.

  “Exactly! I can already see a difference from the others I’ve seen; each of the Realms are starting to form their own unique systems, almost like –“

  “A body,” The Rival agreed. The Mad Scientist bobbed her head excitedly.

  “Who knows, it could even result in a new multiverse!”

  “No,” The Rival shut that thought down immediately, shaking his head. “We’ve seen structures like this before, or at least I have, and they don’t go that far. Never. At best, this will settle into a section of universes, making Statera potentially powerful and a ruler of multiple universes, but not a new Overgod. So get that idea out of your head. If it were that easy to create a new multiverse, the Overgod would have done it years ago,” this deflated the Mad Scientist, though not for long. Her expression turned thoughtful.

  “It does beg the question, however, as to why the Four Realms and the One World are colliding in the first place? This is a valuable universe, and stable, too. You would think the Overgod would break a rule or two here,” she questioned softly.

  “I cannot claim to know what the Overgod thinks, but I can tell you this; whatever the reason, the two universes are colliding because of something someone in these universes did. That’s one of the rules. He doesn’t interfere with problems caused by internal decisions.” The Rival said bluntly. “That means neither you, nor I, nor the First, nor the Overgod had anything to do with it.” The Mad Scientist nodded, rubbing her forehead.

  “…I suppose we will have to ask Statera Luotian about that, then,” she muttered. The Rival nodded, but did not voice his true concerns.

  For he was uncertain if even she knew the true cause, or else she would have fixed it herself.

  Statera Luotian: Deity of Balance. Miffed they missed their chance to squeal at Inesa's pregnancy reveal.

  Solana: Divine Phoenix. Ex god of the sun. Has had a roller coaster of emotions these past few chapters.

  Keilan: God of Connections. Looking forward to teaching Solana.

  The Rival: Serial Reincarnator. Old friend of Statera's. Concerned, mostly, and hasn't had much opportunity to flirt with people recently. That weighs on his heart. So sad.

  The Mad Scientist: Serial Reincarnator. Chose to stay permanently in the Four Realms. Is glad she did so; this is going to be very interesting to watch!