The voice of a God rained like hellfire across Tulian. The world itself shook with the force of every word, driving the city's inhabitants to their knees. Light of every color and every shade began to suffuse the air in a great column, more vibrant than the sun and all its rays. Almost everyone present prostrated themselves, kissing the ground or whispering prayers. Many were so overcome that they shivered under the boiling sun, while others were openly weeping, the backs of their hands pressed to the ground, open palms begging for the barest recognition of a God.

  You have sought truth, and you have brought it to the masses.

  You have fought against Evil. And you have fought with Passion.

  You–

  "Yeah, yeah, I get it," Sara hollered, moving towards the column of light. She shook her sword at it. "Get to the fuckin' point."

  Sara didn't think she could have produced a more horrified reaction from the city's popuce if she had detonated a nuclear bomb in the bay. Many looked up from their worship to stare at her not in shock, or even incredulousness, but outright fear. Fear of what she was saying, of what the Goddess Amarat would do to her in turn, wondering if they would get caught in the bst.

  Amarat's oration continued to thunder, her Presence threatening to boil sea and stone alike.

  My Champions are not Warriors. They are envoys.

  Yet with Power wholly unsuited to your Quest, you have succeeded.

  Your reward will be great.

  "See, that's more what I'm talking about," Sara decred, stomping up to the edge of the light. She somehow got the sense that it pierced the whole pnet through, radiating out into the gaxy and beyond.

  Sara stepped into it.

  Her flesh began to burn, reknit, and burn again, and for a moment she saw all the world as Amarat did. Each speck of dust, each atom that composed it, and all the unnamed things which composed each yer thereafter, singing in a single concert. The weaving fingers of Divinity plucking their way through all reality, altering fate in ways which would not bear fruit for a million years to come.

  "I've read what the Champions get as rewards," Sara said. "History books are chock-full of the stuff. Magic swords and glorious steeds. Impenetrable armor and knowledge of spells unfathomable to all mortalkind. A lot of them, from what I can tell, want to go back home. That's the kinda shit you want me to ask for, right?"

  The Reward of a Champion is theirs to demand.

  "Okay, cool." Sara didn't feel any pain as she walked deeper into the light, even as it exerted force enough to shatter worlds. "I've got a few ideas, but they're not that basic bitch shit."

  Though Sara couldn't hear it, she could only assume Evie was frothing at the mouth. As far as the safety-minded woman was concerned, there wasn't much worse than actively antagonizing a Goddess.

  "When you brought me to this world, I saw the world the way you did." Sara stopped just before the center of the light, staring ahead, as if she was looking the divinity in the eyes. "You took my body apart cell by cell, atom by atom, and built it anew. You molded my soul like cy. There is nothing– nothing– you can't do."

  "Then I got to this world, and I read about the other Champions. About the history of the Gods. And a lot of it was pretty much like I expected. Like the myths back on Earth. Some great hero would be born, live, and die, and to honor their death, they would be immortalized in the stars. A new consteltion created just for them. It's poetic. It's pretty. It's great propaganda."

  Sara took a deep breath.

  "But unlike everyone else here, I know what that means." She turned her head upward, looking into the light. "With all the effort of a twitching finger, you moved stars. Sor systems. Boiling masses of hydrogen and iron and the impossibly intricate dance of whirling pnets that surrounded them. You reached back through time to do it. A thousand light years away, a thousand years ago, you shifted them all, and you did it a dozen times over, all to honor one tiny little human."

  "So no, Amarat, I'm not going to ask for a sword. I'm not going to ask for armor. I'm not going to ask for anything for myself at all, in fact."

  Sara stabbed her sword deep into the street, leaning hard onto it, jaw clenching.

  "I want you to destroy the colrs. All of them. And I want you to do it from the very beginning. I want you to unmake them, Amarat. I want them to have never existed at all."

  You know not what you ask.

  "Oh? Oh?" She raised her wrist, shaking the enchanted band that was cmped there. "You think I don't fucking know?" She stabbed her finger at Evie, barely visible from within the swirling mass of color that surrounded Sara. "You think I don't fucking know what I ask?"

  Gods are beyond you. Beyond everything.

  But they are not beyond me.

  To do as you ask would change all history.

  I would be opposed. Fought. Weakened.

  Sara's eyes bulged wildly, an astonished sputter forcing its way through her lips.

  "You would be fought? Weakened?" Sara smmed her fist against her chestpte, spraying blood from her dripping wounds. "Wouldn't that just be so fucking horrible? Wouldn't that just be fucking awful, to have to sacrifice something of yourself to do something worthwhile?"

  I am a God. The echoes of what you ask will st until the final star flickers to nothing.

  "LIKE I GIVE A FUCK!" Sara roared. "I- how- you're a fucking GOD! How do you not understand this? Are you just that much of a fucking coward?!" Sara whirled, throwing her hand out at the devastated city. "Look at this! Look at every little fucking cosmic speck of it! They gave everything! EVERYTHING! For YOU! For YOUR Champion! You think they give a fuck? You think they care what happens a billion goddamn years after they're dead? Watch their neurons bounce, cunt! Watch what they feel! Breathe it in, taste it!"

  Life is but the briefest stint of the Immortal Soul.

  All who have suffered will invariably become more.

  So it has always been.

  "What? Fucking WHAT? What do you mean, they'll have a good life after– after they're fucking dead? How does that fucking work? Some kind of fucking arbeit macht frei bullshit? Fuck you! You're a fucking god, and you allowed this to happen for MILLENNIA! No! I'm not giving you a fucking choice! There's some secret fucking God going around putting the other Gods under their thrall or whatever the hell, and that's so big a threat to you that you summoned up a Champion, I'm the only fucking reason anyone on this godforsaken fucking rock knows that! I've saved your fucking life, and-

  YOU! WILL! ATONE!"

  Sara stood deep in the radiance of a God, chest heaving, her head swimming as she fought the urge to pass out. All the world had fallen silent as fury tore out of her lungs, not even the whirling birds daring to so much as squawk.

  And then Sara inadvertently fell back a step, barely able to raise a whisper.

  "Also, bring my dad here. I miss him."

  For the longest time, there was nothing. Just Sara gulping down deep, desperate breaths.

  A Passion befitting my Champion.

  Reality fractured. Sara experienced it. She would remember that it had happened. She would even remember what it was like to be there at the very center of it.

  But she could never gain much from that. What happened was so beyond her as to be nonexistent. She remembered something, but the space in her mind in which the memory sat was opaque. What occurred was simply not something she would ever be able to conceptualize, much less understand. The work of a God.

  And then the light was gone, and Sara stood on a pile of loose rubble, two lives lived.

  She was aware of all that she was aware of before. Of the year she had spent with Evie at her side, colr glinting, as inescapable as the pull of gravity.

  But she had lived another life, and it was no less real. One in which Evie wore a colr, but a lesser one. Not the make of a God, but of Man. A colr with fws, with imperfections, one which they had, a few short days before, finally discovered how to break open. Garen had helped them. She had appointed him to the Tulian Academy for the purpose. He had discovered how to shatter the ancient enchantments, but the war had pressed them forward before they could do so, and so Evie still wore the colr.

  And neither life was less real. She had lived both. For the st year, she had lived simultaneously, two lives in one body, and it was only now that the veil was lifted from her eyes. If she had not been the one to make the demand of Amarat, she would have believed the new memories were truer than any other. It was an impossibility, a paradox, but one that her mind could accept as easily as it could the most basic principles. She felt as if her head should be splitting from the agony of trying to comprehend what had occurred, but there was nothing there.

  And then, with a shock, she saw a head in the crowd. A man in his te fifties, what little hair he had left long since faded to a pallid gray. He sported a prominent pot belly covered by an untucked fnnel button-up, two sizes too rge, hanging loosely over his cargo shorts. The buttons were done up wrong, one slot off, the entire shirt lopsided and crinkled.

  Sara sagged, stumbling forward, only stopped from colpse by a strong hand at her back.

  "That your pops?" Hurlish asked as she hauled Sara back onto her feet.

  "Yeah," Sara breathed. She started to raise her hand, ready to shout and wave.

  Then she gnced at Hurlish.

  At her prominent, obviously pregnant belly.

  "Shit," Sara whispered. "Shit. Shit, shit, shit, shit!" Sara turned around, hiding her face from her father, who was already asking bewildered questions to the still-kneeling citizens of Tulian. Sara put her hands beside her head like horse-blinders and crouched down, trying to hide her profile.

  "Hurlish. Hurlish, do you have a ring?"

  "What?"

  "A ring!" Sara hissed. "Goddammit. Shit. I fucking didn't think this through at all."

  "The hell's up?"

  "Her father's culture has some rather odd values regarding marriage," Evie expined, joining Hurlish at Sara's side. "She has mentioned in the past that one is expected to mark their marriage partners with a ring, if I recall correctly. And seeing as you are pregnant with our child..."

  "Oh." Hurlish started fumbling in her pockets. "Don't see what the big deal is, though. You're not exactly the type that cares if your kid's a bastard, right?"

  "I'm not," Sara half-agreed, "but Dad sure as shit is."

  "I do not understand, though," Evie said. "You have said many times that your father did not regard the traditional values of your society highly. Why would he care about this particur taboo more than any other?"

  "Because he fucked up and knocked my mom up two months into their retionship, only for her to break up with him a month ter and dump me in his p," Sara hurriedly expined. "The single dad life sucked ass, so he always told me to make sure I put a ring on it before I got knocked up. Literally the only thing he cared about when I got in a retionship." She could hear her dad asking increasingly salient questions, somehow already narrowing down the fact that he'd just gotten Isekai'd.

  Fucking never should have introduced him to anime, Sara bemoaned.

  "I don't have a ring on me," Hurlish announced, turning out her st pocket.

  "Neither do I," Evie said. "Much less three."

  "Shit!"

  Increasingly panicked, she scuttled over to the crowd of Tulian Guards in a half crouch, half run, making wild gestures. Bemusedly, Hurlish stepped between her and her dad, blocking the man's sight of her.

  "Rings!" She hissed at the Guard members. "I need three rings, one big enough for an orc. I need them now."

  At the sight of a Champion who had just finished berating her own Goddess pleading to them in such a state of disarray, the Guard reacted... predictably.

  Furious shouts went up and down the entire line, calls for rings of any kind to be brought forward. Sara tried to shush them, seeing as the commotion was drawing attention to them all, but it was no use.

  Thankfully, it at least worked. A pile of rings ended up getting tossed at Sara's feet as they were passed forward, of all makes and kinds. No one seemed to know why she needed them, but they certainly weren't going to say no.

  Feeling terrible for the inadvertent theft, Sara grabbed the two least-expensive iron bands she could spot, and then the only ring that looked big enough to fit on Hurlish's massive fingers, which was a regrettably fine gold piece. She tossed a few coins into the pile in return, probably far more than all three rings were worth, and then scurried back to her partners.

  "Hurlish will you marry me?" She asked.

  "Ha!" The orc ughed. "Sure."

  "Sweet," Sara said, slipping the ring onto her finger. "Evie, will you marry me?"

  "Of course, Sara."

  "Thank god," Sara said, slipping the nicer of the two iron rings onto Evie's finger. She slid her own on next, then straightened up, giving them both a quick kiss on the lips.

  Sara breathed a sigh of relief. "Okay, there. We're married."

  "Not by most standards, dear," Evie said with a smirk, incredibly amused to see her partner, her wife, in such a state. "There was no priest, nor legal officiation, nor–"

  "Oh, shut up," Sara said. "That doesn't matter anyway, because as far as my Dad's concerned, we got married..." Sara gnced at Hurlish's belly, hesitating.

  Hurlish's eyebrows rose. "Do you not remember when you knocked me up?"

  "...Sssevennn months ago?"

  "Oh, we're gonna have a talk."

  "Fuck." Sara finally stood straight, brushing her hair back and trying to swipe as much blood off her as was possible. About fifty feet away, her dad was already interrogating some poor fellow about whether or not magic existed.

  Using the st reserves of her body's energy, Sara finally allowed a beaming smile onto her face as she called out.

  "Hey, Dad! Over here!"

  Her father's head whipped around, squinting in her direction. He didn't have his gsses on, and he'd always been near-sighted, so Sara started walking over, Hurlish and Evie in tow.

  "...Sara?" He began to shuffle her direction, looking terribly confused.

  "Yeah, right here," Sara said, raising her hand. "Sorry, I forgot. I got a pretty major facelift."

  "Sure looks like it," he said, finally retrieving his gsses and perching them on his nose. His eyes widened. "Oh. You weren't kidding."

  He gnced to the right, eyes nding on Hurlish. He pursed his lips.

  "Um?" He elegantly inquired.

  "Name's Hurlish," she said, sticking a hand out. "Haven't named your grandkid yet."

  "Oh christ," Sara breathed, hanging her head.

  "Um, pleased to meet you– wait, what?"

  Evie stepped forward, bowing slightly. "And I am Evie, your daughter's other wife."

  "She- what?"

  Goddammit.

  "Are you an orc?" Sara's dad asked Hurlish abruptly, before pivoting to look down at her stomach. "Did you say my grandchild?" He gnced at Evie. "Wife?"

  "I have heard much about you," Evie replied. "And while we have just met, from the stories dear Sara has so fondly recalled for me, I expect I will be honored to call you Father."

  Sara's dad opened his mouth. Licked his lips. Looked at his daughter, who barely resembled the child he had raised, to the seven-foot behemoth of a pregnant woman, then to the diminutive cat-eared girl whose face appeared to be attached with putty and silly string.

  "Sara, honey? Um. What's going on? Are you..." Her dad trailed off as he looked her up and down. For the first time he began to note the wounds criss-crossing her body, the caked blood that was drying and cracking over her skin, the deep bags under her bloodshot eyes.

  Sara braced herself for sympathy. For concern. If time had kept passing on Earth, she had been missing for almost a year, only for her to turn up battered and bruised, as near to dead as someone could get while still able to stand on their own two feet. She readied herself to reassure him, to make sure he didn't try and drag her off to a hospital that didn't exist anymore.

  "Christ, girl, what the hell did you do this time? Pick a fight with a fucking wolverine?"

  Sara suddenly sagged. Laughter began to bubble up out of her throat. The burning rage that had consumed her for so, so long burst like a soap bubble, dissipating into nothingness. She ughed loudly, cackling, and she kept ughing, barely able to keep her breath. She bent over, supporting herself with hands on her knees, until eventually even that wasn't enough, causing her to fall back onto her ass, sitting in the middle of the ruined street.

  Her dad immediately knelt down, plucking and prodding at the cuts with one hand while fumbling in his cargo pant's many pockets with the other, trying to find the package of bandaids she knew he always kept on him. The thought of a single, tiny little bandaid being spped over her dozens of cerations only deepened her ughing fit, every cackle stealing the breath from her lungs until she was forced to fall onto her back, arms and legs spyed, ughing up at the blue sky.

  "She requires rest first and foremost," Evie informed him, kneeling to help him tend Sara's wounds, for whatever good it would do. "While you no doubt would prefer to speak with her yourself, I do insist that she be allowed sleep as soon as possible. I believe I will be able to answer many of your questions, if not all, Father."

  "Okay, thank you," he said, handing her a band-aid. It was still wrapped in paper, and Evie pinched it between her fingers like a particurly bizarre insect. "But don't call me father, that's weird as hell."

  "In my culture, it is an honor. As I have no remaining kin of my own, it is tradition to treat the familial bonds of one's spouse as their own."

  "Okay. Don't do it though. Here, look, you peel it like this."

  "Y'all know that ain't gonna do jack shit for her, right?"

  Sara listened to the exchange with half an ear, still ughing. She caught sight of Evie awkwardly prying apart the band-aid's wrapper, revealing a childish design, following her dad's instructions to sp it onto a gash eight inches long. The sight was too surreal. She couldn't stop ughing.

  In fact, she didn't stop ughing. Not until her eyes began to flutter, her body threatening to fall asleep in the middle of the street, even while she was still giggling. The entire city was watching her dispy with profound confusion, and a part of Sara thought she ought to try and keep up appearances.

  Ah, fuck 'em. I earned this.

  Sara closed her eyes, letting sleep take her.