March from Darkness | ✓ (to be edited)

THIRTY-SEVEN

PHRER

Something was up.

I didn't know what it was or who it affected, but something was most definitely wrong.

In the end, God had adamantly reassured us that They had nothing to do with the creation of the Decrans, which I thoroughly believed. I also still believed that someone that worked with Them was the one behind this, but there was no proof of that yet.

Daraya had come back after traversing to wherever he went looking almost sick. When I'd talked to him about it, he had simply said not to worry about it. How that would be possible to do was unknown to me since it had become a habit to worry about him, but I tried to respect his wishes.

God had made up with Their Fallen son, at least enough that they could hold some longer form of civil conversation. Lucifer had even been able to meet his younger brother, Jesus, and his sister-in-law, Mary Magdalene. I wasn't nearly as up-to-date on Christian mythology as some of the other pantheons and gods were, but I knew enough to be surprised about the fact that Jesus had saved, and married, a prostitute. The Son of God was gracious, quite intelligent, and caring of the people that prayed to him and his Parent.

It was strangely heart-warming to see such a put-together being become as excited about having a new family member as Thor was about the bestowal of Mjolnir. I guess being a millennia-old creature did tend to have an influence on what exactly a person would get excited about. There wasn't much change in our lives; at least, not until recently.

It was hard to believe that Daraya had already been here for... almost a century in Mortal time and I was still getting used to his presence.

Time moved very quickly here, and I didn't really have the heart to tell him that he had been here for more than a few weeks. A year for the Dimensions was almost a millennium for the Plane, and while he could most likely handle knowing the change, I didn't want to risk part of him having some kind of existential crisis.

Speaking of the enigmatic First, I had yet to see him today. He'd moved into my room a few days ago after we came back from Heaven, but he had left before I'd gotten up today. Khatá was supposed to be visiting us later today to work with Sāma and help Daraya with getting control over his powers, and I needed to know where he'd gotten to.

After him getting kidnapped by Koralai, I was incredibly protective around him. Sāma, Sri, and Daraya had all said I was being paranoid, and maybe I was, but I had to know that he was okay, even if I knew for a fact that he could defend himself and hold his own in a fight against that bitch.

It was him trying to hold his own in a fight against Chaos that left me wary and very-nearly sick.

Neither of them was weak by any means, but their abilities were so evenly matched that they had seemed to almost cancel each other out during their fight in Chaos's dimension. I didn't want to see Daraya get hurt, or worse, because Chaos decided to be a prick and make a move when it wasn't his turn to do so.

I got up from my desk and opened the door to the office, walking out into the main lobby area. Talia was working diligently on something to help work out a trade agreement between the Norse pantheon and the Egyptians, but she stopped and smiled brightly at me when I walked into her line of sight. "How is everything going?" She gave me a thumb up. "You can take a break. It's already lunch."

She shook her head and signed, "I'm fine. I'm almost done with this paragraph."

"Okay, fine, but I expect you to be downstairs eating with Soria once you're done, okay?"

She nodded cheerfully before going back to her work. I knew better than to try and stop her in the middle of her work; she liked keeping to herself too much to want to be bothered. I'd tried it when she'd first arrived here, only to have her freak out on me out of anxiety. It wasn't pretty.