Bending down, I ran my hand along the edge of the flawless circle.

The forest which had just gone through a massive fire was still burnt and decrepit, with only a few hints of it re-growing just yet. Yet amidst a world of charred black, was a circle of healthy green. One that wasn’t just growing flawlessly, but seemingly only doing so within its own little world.

I felt the way the grass just… ended abruptly. Not a single blade of grass was beyond the circle, and the reason wasn’t very obvious.

Although the forest had been terribly damaged, it wasn’t as if the soil had been destroyed or tainted. A few feet in any direction around the circle were tiny little hints of the forest returning. Either in the shape of tiny blades of grass, flowers or weeds, or in little twigs of freshly sprouted trees and bushes.

So it wasn’t as if the ground was ruined. It had been hurt, thanks to the fire, but like all fires did… it left behind an abundance of resources and nutrients. More than enough to give birth to the next forest that would soon grow with haste, likely once this winter came and went and the soil had a chance to be really watered.

Yet still the circle of grass didn’t seem to be growing outward at all. It was now past my ankle, a few inches up my shins, and the way the healthy blades of grass looked so thick and firm told me that it was likely one of the healthiest patches of grass I’d seen in forever. As if someone had been nurturing it, even. Typically one did not see such healthy grass in the wild, and even more so never saw it in a place like this.

“Yet no divinity…” I whispered as I stopped messing with the edge of the grass circle. I glanced around again, at the nearby remnants of trees. Most were just charred remains, but a few had already started to sprout new branches and leaves.

Taking a deep breath, to see if I could smell anything at all that stood out, I wondered if I should just let it be.

I had ran a little out of my way to come here, on the way from Lumen and heading to the western coast, but I had felt as if I had a good reason to do so. I had wanted to verify, if able, that this… fire, this monarch that Renn’s saintly friend Elaine had a prophecy about, had been Stance’s doing.

The timeline didn’t outright make sense, but it could be reasoned away with Stance’s insane ramblings. He had been… weird, even way back in the day. So his addled mind mistaking how long he’d been doing stuff made sense to me, or at least could be explainable.

Yet… he had not said chicken, had he? He had said bird. Although chickens were birds, I had a rather heavy assumption Stance had not had a chicken in mind when he had spoken of it. If his intent for the monarchs he had been creating was to have them search out fellow gods for him, since he couldn’t reach them himself, why choose a bird so unsuited for the task…? Especially if he knew his powers had been weakened, and thus so too would be those he summoned? Though he had also made a crab for crying out loud… Maybe I was just reading too much into it. Because I feared the worst, and that fear wasn’t allowing common sense its rightful place.

My only hope was that Elaine had been the one mistaken. And that had made sense to me. A saint, a human one no less, making a mistake? Not really knowing what she was seeing in her dreams…? Yes. Very believable.

But…

“She had said giant,” I whispered. Elaine had made that very clear. That the chicken she had witnessed being born had been huge. As tall as the trees, if not taller.

And Stance had said the bird he had created had been tiny and weak. Insignificant. Like the rest of his creations.

“Either way the answer is bad, isn’t it…?” I groaned as I stood and looked around.

If Stance had been the one to summon this supposed chicken monarch… it would relieve me, because that meant I didn’t need to worry about it anymore. Since he had destroyed all his monarchs. But, that meant Stance had been around far longer than he had claimed. Not months, but years. Which meant I couldn’t trust or believe any of his other ramblings. So who knew what else he had done in that time period. Who knew the severity of his influence upon the world. Even a god that was crippled, as he had seemed, could have done a lot of damage to the natural order. Enough to warrant my time and efforts to track down such anomalies and deal with them. Even though the better of the options, it was still a terrible one.

And even worse… if Stance had not been the one to have summoned this chicken monarch, which had burnt such a huge swath of forests and also killing many… like Angie’s family…

“Then another god is in play,” I whispered.

I had hoped to come check on this area where I assumed the god had summoned the monarch based off the circle of untouched ground, near Angie’s home, to find something to relieve my worries. To convince myself that no other gods were here, and especially not doing things as wild as summoning new monarchs.

But nothing here calmed those fears. I had hoped to find the circle dead, or at least growing wildly in all directions in the way a normal patch of grass would do so. Either of those options would have confirmed that even if made by divine power, or influenced by it, it was no longer doing so.

Now though…? Now I had no choice but to accept the fact that the circle of grass was an anomaly. Not natural. After all these months, it should either be dying out or growing outside its circle. Yet it wasn’t.

Which meant if Stance had done the deed, as I hoped, his power still lingered. Unlike the hearts of the monarchs he had summoned with his own power. Which were conflicting facts.

Was it just coincidental…? Were the hearts the oddity or had his condition affected all of his powers similarly…? If so you’d expect the circle to have returned to the natural order, at least within reason, with his death. Right…?

I couldn’t sense any divine power here, but it had been a long time since the act had been done. But I had not felt divinity even last time, had I? I hadn’t. Not even as remnants of the fire had lingered around me, I had not sensed any divine power. But that was sometimes normal, especially for the very small abilities and powers they used. An odd quirk of their abilities was sometimes divine power just… didn’t linger after being used.

Still, there was no denying the circle, now. Back when I had first found it, I hadn’t dismissed it either, but I had still withheld a tiny bit of hope that it had just been… circumstantial. A fluke.

Well…

Glancing down at the flawless circle of bright green, I shifted and sighed.

No denying it now.

Glancing at a nearby clearing, where once a home had been, I studied the layer of rubble. It had collapsed ever more into itself, but it was still obvious what had once been there. A home.

He could have done it.

Stance had hated non-humans. Despised them. Saw them as flaws to be fixed.

If he had happened upon Angie and her family… he might have summoned a monarch as to take care of them. Many of the gods had done such a thing, instead of doing the deeds themselves. They had the cruelty to slaughter even women and children, but did it by hiding behind their creations. Had Stance been the kind to shy away from killing with his own hands…? I couldn’t remember. All I remembered of him was that he had liked to perform plays, and had chosen the side of the humans.

Him doing this was possible. It could have happened, even if I couldn’t reason the actual steps that had transpired for it to do so. It made sense. At least to me.

Stance, in his supposed search for fellow gods, had happened upon a family of non-humans. Disgusted, he summoned what at the time had been his attempt to bring forth a powerful monarch. One that sequentially used its powers, its fire, to burn them all alive… and inadvertently burnt down hundreds of miles of forest in the process.

Yes. Very plausible.

“Then… how did Angie had survived it?”

Even a newborn monarch, when empowered by its creator to accomplish such a specific task, would have been powerful. Far greater than Pinchie, or that lizard. Or even that lion that Renn and her friends had dealt with. Just how had that small girl survived its wrath?

Sighing again, I wondered if I was just spinning my wheels.

I’d already asked Angie what she had seen and experienced. She had been thrown into the nearby river by her mother. To escape the blazing inferno. She had not mentioned a man, or even a giant chicken.

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Which was weird too… maybe. Angie was just a child, but she was level-headed. Not stupid at all. I found it unlikely that such a girl, even during such duress that the fires had likely brought upon her, would not have noticed a giant chicken raging around and spewing flames as it did…

I’ll need to talk to the girl again later. After I dealt with this ship that was supposedly going to be sunk…

By a monarch no less.

Reaching up behind my head, I scratched at the back of my neck.

Another oddity. Though one I doubted Light or Renn had noticed.

A monarch? In the sea…?

That should be impossible.

I had it on good authority, from my turtle-friend, that none were left. At least, none that were of any worth noticing. None greater than the basic fish they swam and co-existed within the sea, at least.

Part of my agreement with allowing that giant island of a turtle to exist was that she was to alert me to any monarchs in the sea. If not able to kill and destroy them herself, she was to let me know of them and their location. She was also supposed to let me know the moment the underground volcano…

“Wait…” I groaned as I realized something important.

That volcano! “That’s the reason, isn’t it…!?” I went from scratching the back of my head to slapping my hand on my face and groaning.

Of course that was the reason for Light and the rest coming back…! Why hadn’t I noticed!

Because I’ve been neglecting the world around me lately. Terribly so. That’s why.

“Idiot…” I took a deep breath and let it out as I wiped my face and shook my head. I really was!

That had to be the reason! The real one! That volcano had been foretold by Celine. That it’d erupt, not just destroying half the southern islands but sending the world into a harsh few years of strong winters. She hadn’t outright known when it would happen, just that I’d be there to see it. Which was why she had warned me about it. She had hoped I’d protect the Society when it happened, since she would be gone by the time it did.

“Thus their five year plan to prepare. And why they’re focusing so much on religion and the church,” I said as I crossed my arms and nodded.

Yes. That made so much darn sense. They planned to prepare for the aftereffects of the volcano, and then use the years of discord and struggle to renew their influence via their faith. It made so much sense it made me sick.

I could verify this very easily. I could just make a trip to the turtle, after I dealt with the boat.

“She’ll just say this is my fault, for not performing my duties properly…” I groaned as I stepped out of the circle of green and headed away from it. There was nothing more I could learn from it, or the area. All I’d done by coming here was waste time, in a way. I’d confirmed nothing, and learnt nothing. At least, to a point.

Still… it was somewhat relieving to now know the real reason Light and the rest had returned.

Although the volcano exploding was going to be a pain, since it’d cause a lot of damage… and likely uproot many of our members, as well as the turmoil it’d cause within the human societies, it was not that big of a deal.

It was just another part of life. There were floods. Fires. Plagues and wars… and occasionally? Yes, even a volcano’s eruption.

“So Renn had just been an afterthought…!” I said happily as I left the bison’s old home, heading back west.

How relieving! How utterly wonderful! I’d been trying to ignore it, since it was so silly and terrifying at the same time, but I admitted I had thought of it. That they had returned solely because of Renn. Or well, her children, at least. But now? Now I was confident that wasn’t a factor at all!

They had fled the devastation. Or well, the soon to come devastation. Light had likely foreseen the volcano in full. Most undoubtedly even knew the day it’d happen. Probably even knew the extent of the damage, too…

“Wonder if that was why they had chosen Lumen…?” I wondered. It had been kind of odd that they’d abandon Telmik so readily. Here I had thought it was their way of expanding their influence, but maybe not? Maybe Telmik was going to suffer badly during the event…? If not from the volcano’s eruption itself, maybe the fallout…? It wasn’t too far from the ocean, after all…

Picking up my pace as I began to run through the remnants of the forest, I wondered if maybe I should interfere in Renn’s plans for her northern settlement.

That far north would suffer terribly under a volcanic winter. It’d be hard to grow food, and thus even the wildlife will be affected. It might even get to the point that a famine breaks out in that whole region.

Though there were ways to prevent that, at least for our own little community. But why go through such lengths when you could just move southward or eastward a thousand miles and avoid most of those troubles entirely? Though I suppose I shouldn’t plan on that. During such events, even the regions not under permafrost ended up dry and desolate. Droughts were common in the regions warm and dry during such a freezing, weren’t they?

But I also didn’t know the full extent on how bad it was going to get, did I? Celine had simply said it would cause a multi-year winter. That I’d need to be extra cautious during the aftermath, since our members will mistake their own capability and their own supplies. There would be people who would think they’re safe, with a few years worth of stored food and resources, only to find they didn’t have enough for one reason or another.

Like usual Celine’s warnings, her prophecies, which she told to me when concerning serious life and death matters, were still not enough. She had told me just enough to prepare, and know of it, but not the full story…

Granted with Light back though, I’d be able to hear of it in more detail. To prepare better for it, even, with not just the better knowledge but their help. Or well, Renn could, by acting as my buffer.

“That’s years from now,” I said as I rounded a huge fallen log. One that was severely burnt, but already had moss growing on it again.

I’d say at least five. Since Light seemed to think it’d take that long for the rest of her people to get here from the other continent. I doubted they’d try to sail across the open sea during a volcanic winter, or at least I’d hope they knew better than to do that. Especially in this region. If it got that cold, a lot of ice would form even out there in the open sea.

It was always something though, wasn’t it? Such was the world, I suppose. To always be active… even if not in a kind way.

Eventually I found a path. One that was a bit muddy, likely from a recent storm. I ran along it, heading for the distant flush green I saw far ahead of me. Where the burnt forest ended.

I planned to round southward, bypassing Telmik entirely, as I passed through the Nation of the Blind. I’d head for Vorli through one of the forests in the south, one of the last real ones before the desert took over. Doing it this way allowed me to avoid the major roads and all the settlements. It’d allow me run at my more normal pace, since I didn’t need to worry over being seen by anyone.

It should only take me a few days to get there at my pace, as long as nothing distracted me.

Plus it gave me a little time to ponder. To think. To remember.

Also, even if I didn’t like it, a little bit of time away from Renn was probably a good thing. Not only was her presence obviously disrupting my own focus, I had been treading dangerously close to fulfilling that prophecy. Renn had been… very adorable lately. The kind that made me forget some of my own rules, and even a few of her own.

The worst part was I didn’t even really see anything wrong with it. Have children with Renn…? Sure, why not. They’d likely be as adorable as her. With her as a mother, they’d probably turn out half decent too. I’d not have the same troubles so many others did, like Lilly and Nebl, thanks to the type of person Renn was. At least, in theory.

Still… as much as I’d be okay with doing so… I still feared it. In ways I couldn’t understand.

Because something very serious hasn’t been brought up about it yet, though mostly thanks to my own doing. No one else’s.

Something that needed to be addressed. Something that needed to be taken into account, and questioned.

Something that should outright invalidate the prophecy concerning Renn and her children, at least to a point.

It was something I needed to bring up. It was my duty, and responsibility, to do so. But I feared doing it, in the off chance of speaking of it actually made it real. As if by ignoring it, I could somehow negate it. As if to make it not exist, simply by pretending it didn’t.

I almost had brought it up. A few days ago, at that little fishing village. When Lilly and Renn had been asking about the hearts, and gods. After I had verified Pinchie was gone, and his heart empty and devoid of divinity like the other hearts from the monarch’s Stance had made.

My answer about the god’s infertility had been rather dangerous. I almost hadn’t believed I had said it. But by doing so, by answering and talking about it, I had remembered an important detail. One that now was eating me up inside.

As far as I was aware, I could not have children with Renn. Or any non-human, or human, for that matter.

It was something that was likely impossible. Something I didn’t have definite proof of, but I did have several thousand years of data to back it up.

I wasn’t like Renn. I’ve had relationships. I’ve had more than my fair share. And not once, ever, has a child ever resulted from any of them. A statistical impossibility. One that was even further backed up by… well…

Everything I was and am.

So in theory, there was no way Renn and I could have a child.

Yet they were all so bloody confident the child would be mine… Renn doing so was one thing, for obvious reasons, but why would Light have the same confidence? There would be no reason for them to lie about it. They could just reason it as us adopting someone, or something, if that was the case. Even Celine had been confident the child would be mine, supposedly.

Sighing as I ran, I allowed my mind and heart to writhe and worry.

Gods returning. Impossibilities happening. A potential world-threatening event looming on the horizon… My wife becoming too adorable to ignore, too.

To me these fears and worries were far more important than a ship of hundreds of souls. Or the Society, and my desire to step away from it. But who could blame me? The reason I wanted to step away, now, was because I simply wanted to spend my time on Renn. The woman who I not only loved, but might just be able to have children with? What idiot wouldn’t focus his whole attention on someone like her and not the fools who made my heart and head hurt all the time?

But that was exactly what I shouldn’t do. Since going that far, indulging in her to that level of degree would just make her mad at me. I’d lose her that way, without doubt.

Which made me realize something absolutely hilarious.

“I’m becoming my father…” I groaned as I picked up my pace, as rain started to fall as if to cool off my head. It didn’t.

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