Unending and I had taken a seat at a table in one of the taverns. From the moment we’d come through the doors, the Dainians’ eyes had settled on us, filled with wonder and curiosity. No fear or apprehension. They were just eager to find out more about who we were and where we’d come from. GASP had not made it all the way here, and no other travelers had come around—except for Shezin.
One of the barmaids found the courage to speak to us about an hour later. We’d only ordered drinks to have something on our table, and I’d paid with small pieces of gold I’d learned to carry with me. Precious metals had value pretty much anywhere in the universe, so I always had a small pouch filled with silver, copper, and gold, just in case. The Dainian girl was two heads above me, but she was slender and genteel in her motions. Unlike the others, she sat at our table with a wide smile.
“Welcome, strangers. Are you enjoying your drinks?” she asked confidently, as if we were but tourists coming in from a guided tour. As if she’d seen the likes of us before. She hadn’t, but you’d never know it from her easy charm.
“We don’t drink, but we figured we could at least be polite and try to blend in,” I said, mirroring her bright expression. “You are hospitable. We thank you for that.”
“You don’t seem wary of our presence,” Unending replied, watching her closely. “We’re not of this land.”
The girl shook her head. “No, you’re not. But we’ve always believed that there were others out there. Our astronomers have studied the skies for a long time. We know the planets close to ours were once inhabited. It’s not that big of a stretch to assume others are, and that someday they might find us. Is it?”
She was incredibly bright, and I found myself in awe of her. Other nations had first recoiled at the sight of our ships descending from the heavens. It had taken weeks—months, in some instances—to convince some of them that we hadn’t come to do harm. Yet this Dainian girl wasn’t just aware of her world and her solar system. She was aware of visitors eventually coming from other realms.
Unending chuckled softly. “You’re brave. You all are, for that matter. We’re clearly not of this world, yet you let us sit at your tables. You come and speak to us. I commend you.”
“What do you think of our land so far?” the Dainian girl asked.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. “Different from ours, but beautiful. I’m Tristan, by the way. And this is Unending, my wife.”
The girl beamed, straightening her back as she gave us her name. “Embry, they call me. Embry, daughter of Starn. I’m just a barmaid, but I brew the sweetest mead and I cook the best pies on this side of the river.”
“We’re explorers,” I replied. “We look for new worlds to study and understand. Our intentions here are peaceful, in case you or anyone else might be worried.”
“Shezin always tells us to be open to the unknown, for wonders will come of it. I suppose he was right,” Embry said. “I used to deride some of his teachings, but recently I have understood that his word is the truth. The absolute truth. Do you have a god in your land? What is your world like?”
Unending and I exchanged brief glances. “We have nations of creatures with different powers and exceptional abilities, but they are not worshipped as gods. We are all equal before creation and death, even those of us who are presumably immortal. Is Shezin your god?”
“Yes. He’s the well-wisher of our people. He makes sure we prosper. That our rivers never run dry. That our orchards are bountiful,” Embry said. “He is immortal…” Her voice trailed off as she picked up on something I’d just let slip. “There are immortals among you?”
I nodded. “I’m immortal. Though I can be killed in a small handful of ways. There is no such thing as absolute immortality. Death comes for us all, eventually.”
It sounded grim, but I had to start debunking their myth. I didn’t trust Anunit’s account of Shezin, but I certainly didn’t agree with someone posing as a god purely because he was harder to kill than most. It was wrong. Embry fell silent, perhaps not knowing what to say next. I might have succeeded in planting a seed of doubt in one person’s mind. It would not be enough to sway an entire nation.
“Our world is simple and green, with forests and lakes, deserts and oceans,” I said, then proceeded to tell her a little bit more about Earth first, then moving on to other realms of our GASP alliance. It took me about an hour to list the planets we’d been to, along with details of what they were like, but I definitely had Embry’s attention—and not just hers. Before I even realized it, our table was surrounded by other Dainians who listened to our stories from other times and worlds. They hung on every word, savoring every image I conveyed.
The Dainians were entranced and eager to know more.
“But enough about our realms,” I said after a long pause, looking to Embry. “Tell me about Shezin. How did he come to be?”
Embry grinned. She knew this part of the story, it seemed. “Shezin came down from the moon one night. He walked barefoot down its rays and reached the ground. And when his foot touched the dirt, our land was blessed.”
“He came down from the moon,” Unending sighed, having trouble concealing her disdain for embellished myths, especially since she knew exactly where Shezin had come from, and it wasn’t a moon.
“Yes. The first one. The other two appeared when he descended upon our lands,” Embry continued. “The heavens rejoiced at his arrival to Dain, so they gave us two more moons to guide us through the long nights.”
It took us a while, but we managed to learn more about Shezin and the miracles he’d performed. Apparently, he hadn’t simply appeared and established himself as a god here. He’d taken the long and winding road to godly stardom, telling people he’d come from the moon. When they had laughed in his face, not believing him, he’d moved on, living in one city or another for years on end, doing the odd job and helping those who couldn’t help themselves. A good Samaritan, so to speak.
“He performed his first miracle on his twentieth year in Dain,” Embry said, while the others nodded slowly in agreement, each of them remembering the stories they knew about Shezin. From what I could tell, they didn’t just worship him. They loved him. And it didn’t quite match the stolen and fearful glances that Unending had mentioned earlier. “He made the dry lands of Alhara green again. No one had ever seen a blade of grass anywhere on that wide and crackled brown field. Not a single mouse had taken residence in that dirt, for there was nothing to eat. Even birds steered clear. Alhara used to be known as the Deadlands before Shezin arrived.”
“How was this miracle performed?” Unending asked, curious. We’d already exchanged several impressions telepathically. The more Embry told us about Shezin, the more we believed that he was a false god, using the tricks of Reapers to fool these people. That brought a troubling realization—Death had given him death magic, not just immortality. Her sin was infinitely worse than Unending’s where Erethiel had been concerned. And worse, Death had denied everything.
“He got down on his knees, and with his scythe, he drew circles on the ground,” Embry said. “The circles shone like the moons in the sky, and soon the grass emerged from between the deep dry cracks. Within two weeks, Alhara was a lush savannah with tall trees and wildcats sharpening their claws on their stone-like bark. A small river found its way down from the mountain, and a city soon sprawled on both sides of the water. It is one of our biggest now.”