AMBROSIAThis was indeed part of the Crest of Thanatos. I moved my hands around gradually forward, a move called Fan Through The Back. The Heart Eater withered and collapsed.

    I did not mind killing creatures, but... well lemme put it this way. I hunt. I fish. I forage. There''s something honest about the effort of earning food. Killing humans, well, I don''t eat them so it''s kinda murder. There''s something very sad about watching animals just fall over without a fight. It makes me feel kinda like the family pet or the old milk cow just left us. Even though the family pet just attempted to kill us.

    And yet, when we boarded the ship and made out into the open seas, the same thing wound up happening to the sea beasts. As we faced krakens, sea serpents, and even Nessie''s relatives, we got a ton of small treasures from raiding the creatures of their skin or bones, or internal organs. I would later sell these at the next town, making a ton of money. Although, the meat was no good, because the same magic that killed these beasts instantly also made their flesh rot extremely quickly. But I was devastated, trapped in a pit of depression. I sat on the boat, head down, ignoring the others. So deep was my guilt and sadness that I barely noticed when a giant sea snail headed towards the ship. Startled, I froze completely. I didn''t wanna destroy such a fine creature.

    Nevras saw me sitting down in a kinda gloomy funk. “Are you okay?” he asked. I shook my head, “How can you guys keep doing this?” He looked puzzled, “Doing what?” I pointed to the snail, which they were currently whacking to get to empty its guts because snail should not be eaten if was filled with nasty stuff. “You know,” I said, “this. Fighting critters, day in and day out. It''s exhausting. And it never seems to end.” Nevras said, “You remember when I was on the bridge at Phoenix, and there was that troll, and I just chopped it up?” This sounded vaguely familiar, “Yeah...” He asked, “Why do you think I did this? Because I was mad, right?” I didn''t know where he was going with this, so I agreed. But it was to be a trick question, “By the Eight Immortals, no! I didn''t feel anything at all. And that scared me more than anything. That I could be so cold to a big creature like that, which if I were to be honest, probably just needed money for food. But it wasn''t really about that critter. It was about what was happening with me. I was worried the whole time about meeting my dad after so long, and having my folks judge me. That troll just happened to cross me when I was already upset, and it was nothing personal, but something was on my mind. You know? So, what''s worrying you now? I mean, it''s good that you''re concerned about saving the critters, but it seems more than that.” The others had succeeded in getting the snail to empty its guts, now they were feeding it large quantities of grain. I continued to sit and watch, while my life played out for me. I''d never met my real dad, my mom had to give me up for some reason, and the foster people I could call my parents, “They died...” I sobbed, while Nevras asked, “Hmmm?” I straightened up. I wasn''t gonna be great during this battle, but I would help. Well, actually, I didn''t know what to do either, since they clearly had a plan, so I just yelled, “Yay! Good job you guys! Give me an S-N-A-I-L! What does that spell?”

    My friends, studied as they were in the fine art of French cooking, knew exactly what to do. Raiding some of the supplies that came with the ship, they tossed massive amounts of butter, and enough salt to give it some flavor (but not so much to shrivel it up like a slug), and fresh herbs. Azrael and Zoe used Fire spells, while Elias tried alchemy to burn the water itself. Greek Fire, he called it. In time, the nicely cooked snail was escargot, and we cut it into strips for later. Of course, the journey wasn''t to be quite so smooth.

    Before, we had been riding ships paid for at the dock, and charted by other people. And the first time we had used this boat, we just navigated along the coastline. But now, we were navigating on the open seas. Elias is brilliant, but without a compass, map, sextant, and the like, we were pretty much lost. Oh sure, it''s romantic to think of navigating by the stars. But to navigate requires pretty much knowing where the island is. As it was, the stars did point us north, but we were going to a specific island west of us.

    We drifted for days, getting swept aside wherever the wind and the sea took us. Beginning in the southern region of the Eastern Continent near Kirin, we headed due west but the sharp winds pushed us north to a strange island. Stacking our food and other belongings ashore, we tied our ship firmly to the crude makeshift anchor.

    The island was rugged and wild, filled with all kinds of scrubs and shrubberies. The rocky shore got rockier, until finally it ended in a sharp cliff on all sides. From the looks of it, the rock formed a sort of wall against lower plateau. It appeared natural, but something was weird about it, so I decided to look more closely. On the rock was the symbol of my Crest! Below this, I read the inscription, ?Only the Oracle of Tao''s touch can open this path.? Hmmm, we had better remember this island. In any case, we returned to our ship and weren''t much better off.

    NEVRAS

    After the snail, and the feast that followed, I tried to make time to spend with Ambrosia. As we were drinking and partying, it was too loud to properly talk to her. After waiting for about two hours, I finally poked her on the shoulder, motioning her outside. “What''s up?” she asked. I fully intended to tell her that it had been awhile since we had properly spent any time together, since we had even bothered to talk properly. I knew well the cause, we were in a rush to finish our quest, but still I wanted to at least have a good chat. I got as far as, “Hey, I''ve been thinking, it''s been awhile since...” before I got splashed in the face with a high wave. The ship rocked, and the moment passed as I tried to catch my bearings. She didn''t even ask me what I wanted to talk about, and I was so frustrated, I wouldn''t remember it anyway. The wind was pushing us off course.

    After we had headed to west some more, the wind sharply blew us off course again, and we found ourselves near the desert island that is Seikai and Goji. Remembering some of the boat trips we took, we tried heading north but just as we saw the island we were looking for in the distance, a violent storm came up.

    ELIAS

    It was a dark and stormy night. Torrential rains slapped from the bow and stern to well into the quarterdeck and the waist of the ship. Concerned about taking on water, I ordered all entries closed from the portholes to the top hatches. Aqorm carried this out, because of all of us, she was by far the fastest. We had just finished bailing any water from the deck when suddenly the winds changed again. Knowing what I did about barometric pressure, I didn''t like the looks of this storm. The high and low temperatures kept shifting, and I suspected a hurricane. Our ship itself was built sturdy, with ironwood (also known as lignum vitae) reinforcement even though the wood was heavy enough to slightly affect its ability to float, so I had no doubt our ship itself would survive. But it was a matter of our survival, so I ordered everyone to head below deck. A strong storm, I might advise being tied to the deck, but not a hurricane. I trusted the deck to hold up.

    Below deck, we sat in relative darkness while above us the wind howled, the rain pelted the deck monsoon-style, and the entire structure rocked back and forth. I had checked, the ship was built sturdy, if there was a weak point at all, it was that in order make the ship an effective sailboat...

    Sure enough. The mast of the boat, in order for the ship to be lightweight to actually move with the wind, had to be made from a less solid wood. This was the other reason I didn''t tie anyone to the mast. From my research into the materials, I fully expected it to be the first thing to go. A sharp crack above, and it went tumbling toward the deck. “Protect Building!” Azrael called, which appeared to generally consider this ship by that definition. A thin film about the color of plastic wrap (that is to say, clear) enveloped the ship, protecting it from the sudden weight of the mast. The ship was safe. For the next few hours however, the storm raged hard enough to shift the mast from the center where it fell, to port, to starboard, and back and forth for the duration of the event. At last, the wind settled. The ship was at rest.

    Opening the hatch, we examined the damage. Thankfully, damage to the deck itself wasn''t... extensive, but the deck was a mess. We spent the better part of the day organizing things that had been knocked around or smashed or shredded by the fierce storms, tossing out barrels or crates of food that had been waterlogged or the wood had rotted, throwing out some of the food itself that had been ruined by salty water, eating some of it regardless, and storing some in the cargo hold below in case of another storm.

    No such storm came, however. In fact, no weather, aside from hot sun and gentle gales, happened for the next week or so. This was good and bad, you see, for it gave us ample time to repair our ship, but while we saw the nearby island about seven miles away while the sky was clear, short of getting out and pushing we were stuck. With still winds and no mast, we weren''t going anywhere. It looked like the first order of business, then, was to repair the mast.

    Perhaps you readers of this log are under the impression that because magic exists, it can readily repair things like a large pillar of wood snapping. I am afraid that I must disillusion you people, for things are not as they seem in those fantasy genre novels. This is real life, after all.

    Strictly speaking, there are roughly two ways to repair a mast, short of getting a spare mast out. Using magic, the average person can repair a mast as easily as a severed limb, by joining together the sections and using a Reunite prayer. …I am certain you can see the problem here, already. Not only must the two pieces be fit together correctly (which in this case was already a problem, since the wood broke in a jagged pattern) but there was the small matter of pulling out what remained of the mast, and once repaired, pulling it back up and inserting it where it originally was, with a crew of only six people. Of course, there was the other way, which was to simply reverse time, but this only really worked for human events. For natural events, you had to either selectively reverse time, or worry about the mast breaking again anyway. And besides which, we had no sorcerer to reverse time, selectively or otherwise.

    We wound up recutting the mast so it was straight, then assembling the frayed shards together and reuniting them, then uniting that to the mast itself as it lay on the ground. Since we didn''t have a way of pulling the bottom of the mast out ourselves, we slowly chopped thin circles of wood and carried each into position, reuniting them there. What I would have liked to have done was the exact reverse of this, moving the mast back into position a bit at a time. However, the sail at the top of the mast was at least 20 ft above the ground, probably closer to 30. None of us had magic powerful enough to exceed what our bodies themselves could lift by that wide a margin, much less to hold such objects aloft for that height. We needed a different solution.

    As we now had an intact mast, Ambrosia used her super-strength to boost the mast to a somewhat vertical position. She wasn''t strong enough to move it, but she held it up diagonally with both hands. This was a good start of course, but not enough to move it into position. Aqorm used geomancy with the wooden boat to draw up wood energy enough to create vines. Zoe also used her magic to make vines, and with the help of some good yanks, we got the mast upright. But it took effort from all of us to scoot it into position. Eventually, we had a mast back together, and we tried to head toward the island. But it was more difficult than I thought.

    The Divine Border is not really a single island, as I described it. Rather, as we got closer, it became increasingly clear that there were actually two islands here. One was an island surrounded on most sides by cliffs and rocks, aside from one small entrance blocked by a border. Above that island, however, is an island made not of soil but apparently solid cloud. This was the island of Heaven. I had read many theories on how exactly the cloud held together, but I honestly I had no clear idea.

    As we approached the island, we noticed that the tide was in reverse of its normal pattern. Normally, as you readers are familiar with the beach will know, tide travels from the ocean to the shore. But this rocky island beat the large sailing ship with waves, pushing it back before it could get closer. The wind itself pushed us away, the closer we got to the island. What a mysterious place.

    GOD

    The island of Heaven was formed under unique circumstances. As you may know, the worlds in this universe are made of all manner of strange things. Planets of ice, planets of gas, even dark planets like TrES-2b, all of these are made from various forces pushing matter together in such a way that it remains in one piece. Planets are not all round, some are flat, some are even square. There is an image in people''s heads that all planets must be the same shape, but some planets are made of diamond or actually on fire or orbiting backwards, so nahhh...

    Elias, despite his research of many books, has only a small amount of understanding of the rules of science of long ago. He could probably tell you some about gravity and electromagnetism, but not about cohesion and surface tension. I made the land of this area by playing with such forces. By altering the normal molecular structure of these water and air molecules, I made clouds that are thick and solid enough to walk on, which had a spongy texture. I called this Water III, because I had already made water that you humans know of with its tendency to turn into ice. But there was also Water II in the planet of Alpha Septim 38x, with its reddish tone and tendency to boil at much lower temperature. I gave this island its own exertion on the tides of the land below it. I gradually added some rock and minerals and plants to sit above this cloudy water, so that the inhabitants of this land could mine and could farm using techniques of hydroponics, since these clouds were rich with not only water but nitrogen and a number of other nutrients. They grew crops under my guidance, they made weapons to sell to others and to defend their borders, and gradually this land, cut off from the outside world became a land where the inhabitants lived peacefully, high above the rest of the New Earth.

    You may notice that I said “inhabitants” not “people.” For the people of Heaven are the seraphim and the common angels. Before you start visualizing men and women with feathery wings, allow me to stop you there. Angels and demons, strictly speaking, are Nephilim. They were once one race. Long ago, angels looked more like three-headed six-winged beings with faces of lions or eagles or the like. Or they looked like a giant wheel with eyes. Or they looked like things beyond my ability to effectively explain without dedicating paragraphs of this story just describing one feature. In human form, they looked like beautiful yet frightening men or women with prismatic wings, long tails, halos, and eyes that could see anything. The point is, at one period, humans were in regular contact with these pure-blooded angels known as seraphim. This is is distinct from archangels, but we''ll get to that later.

    Humans at first were frightened of balls of flame and giant horrifying beings. But gradually, fear gave way to another emotion. You see, there are half-elves, half-dwarves, half-gnomes, etc. This is for a reason. Humans are massively horny, and will have sex with anything, no matter how weird or frightening. In fact, sometimes because of it. The humans mated with the seraphim, so what we now call angels are their offspring. Some of these remained in heaven, but others used their Script in a way that wasn''t right, granting selfish whims in return for favor. This created issues in the world I had made, for there were beings who had Knowledge of Good and Evil, but also had immortality and the gift of the Script. The Script is the ability to to alter reality with words.

    Even though the Script was often misused, this was not nearly as much a threat as eternity mixed with the Knowledge. For with Knowledge of Good and Evil, humans could deem their lives good or bad, and live in a state of Sin, not understanding that life was actually both good and evil. And they would be stuck in that state, with no exit. This would be like being punished forever, and I didn''t want this.

    And so, while this cloud island had originally sat just above the waves, I lifted it high out of reach, causing a massive Flood in the process. Each angel today, except for the Fallen or the seraphim, has an angelic counterpart. That is because I split these hybrids into angels and demons, giving angels Knowledge of Good while their demonic half got Knowledge of Evil. These altered the land where they lived, making Heaven a wonderful place, while Hell... well, it wasn''t as nice. There aren''t too many Fallen left though, most of those angels that rebelled against God were dealt with by Michael. They exist now only as summoned beings, having lost their physical bodies.

    The island of Heaven now exerts a defensive tidal reaction, where water moves away from the island wherever humans get too close. Only the dead are allowed entry into Heaven, and should someone somehow get past the barrier of wind and water around the island, they still couldn''t enter alive without a Divine Passport. Protecting the virginity of any remaining seraphim was top priority.

    AMBROSIA

    The winds and waters howled around our ship. Every time we tried to get closer, we got slapped back by a massive wave. We tried circling the island to find some method of entry, but it didn''t seem to matter. It was like the island had a giant arm that was grabbing the ship and moving it backwards. sea??h thё novel(F~)ire.net website on Google to access chapters of novels early and in the highest quality.

    After some planning, we tried splitting the party, and swimming towards shore in different directions. But as soon as we got close enough, some sort of mini-geysers tossed us safely back on the boat. Hmmm, something told me this wasn''t just a simply tide thing.

    As most people know about me, I''m not really inclined toward studying. I''m not an idiot or anything, but I tend to save the whole keen analytical stuff for Elias and Azrael. And yet, what was happening was weird and nothing they had likely read about. So I just sat and watched as the ship was driven back. I looked carefully at how the bottom of the wave started at one spot, and appeared to spiral around the island, rather than away as I initially thought. I tried to imagine this as one big hand sweeping around the island and found my hands were loosely mimicking the Brush Knee Twist Step from Alexander''s Crest. So, I tried doing the movements, without really trying to use my trigram tattoo, just the clean motions of turning slowly while moving. The wind that I felt nearby started to change, and the trigrams started to glow. Suddenly, rather than the waves being around the island, the waves circled around the ship itself. I was kinda scared.

    The ship kept moving forward, while the water spiraling around it kept edging back. I kept shifting my hands, even though they were becoming awfully tired. Aqorm and Elias steered the sailboat and managed the sails. Nevras sat near me and watched, while the others just looked at everything happening. The water and wind moved steadily back until the ship was on dry land. We tied our ship securely before I finally stopped moving my hands and legs. I was tired, so I sat down for awhile before rejoining the others.

    Ahead was a long and winding road up a rocky shore. Fisherman of a type I had never seen before had nets and harpoons and were scooping up their lot in baskets. From the looks of it, none of these were human. Nearby, some merfolk were trading their catch with some others. It was clear the merfolk were the ones who had done the trading, yet this beings seemed to have no trouble paying. There were men and women with wings reaching down to their lower back with white wings. There were creatures, I guess I''d put it, that filled me with terror to look at, for they had too many wings, or heads, or eyes. Some of them had eyes where no eyes should be. Some were nude, and some it didn''t seem to matter for their bodies were shrouded in fire or darkness or some kind of strange energy. Some just looked like balls of light with no features at all.

    We wound up making some decent Gold selling our aforementioned large sea beast parts to them. They didn''t have much use for the dead meat, as I say, but the skins they seemed would fetch a nice price, and they apparently wanted them in order to make clothing. The angels (?) traded with us, and it was then that I noticed they didn''t appear to have any kind of common currency with us. Rather than some Gold coins of different values, as most people used, they had some diary that they tore pages out of. “Okay,” I said, “I''m not really sure I can do anything with this...” The merfolk, noticing my blank stare, whispered something to the nearest angel. A ball of light materialized a small notebook and “handed” it to me (without the use of actual hands, of course). The mermaid explained, “This is a Record of Value. The Nephilim believe it is sinful to handle human currency, so they devised their own. Angels use these books to pay others, and accept payment. Watch.” She pulled out a feather pen, and scrawled out the words, ?A Value of 100, for A Gift, to __________ ? and after a moment my name appeared within the blank. She pulled pulled a section of the page from the book, and stuck it at the front page of my book. It stuck into the book as a page, as if sewn and glued on. “Huh? How did...?” I said.

    The mermaid explained, “These books are specifically designed to handle money. Each page is a day''s money, divided up into however many parts an angel needs. It''s kinda like tearing a check from a checkbook, only it''s basically their currency. Non-angels who hold this book can either tear out sections of this page to give to angels for something costing 100 Value, or we can write our own. You try. You just write the amount in Value, then whether it is for A Gift/Services Rendered/Goods Bought, then to _________. The book will know the identity and circumstances of the exchange, and will change based on circumstances. If you receive a gift, then tear out a slip to pay for a good, it will change what it says.” She handed me a pen, and said, “Pick out any fish we''re selling. Write how much you''ll pay,” and she told us the market price for her fish, “then it does the rest.” I wrote ?20 in value, for Goods Bought, to ___________ ? and the page gave her name as Alethia Skyscale. I was confused, “But... how does that work as a valid monetary system? I mean, I''m basically writing checks that I can''t cash.” Alethia shook her head, “Well, non-angels can use either the sheets that are already given or ones they write themselves, but normally only angels will accept them as currency. But banks can convert it to other money, because of a deal with God.” I was curious, “Oh? What deal is that?” The merfolk critter explained, “The deal where they don''t get struck dead by lightning for devaluing angelic currency. Here, this was a freebie for demonstration. From now on, though, you''d probably not want to pay us in anything but Gold. We accept Value from angels, but we can''t use it much until we convert it to our money. On the other hand, check the front page.” I looked at the inside cover, ?No angel is allowed to Value themselves, nor their own work, nor the price of their merchandise. An angel who writes a Value in this book shall hereby be punished by God with pain.? She explained, “You see? The angels accept our Value because we give Value to them, whether we can cover it or not. Since they cannot price goods on their own, how much we have is irrelevant, because the higher something is valued, the more they work with.” Well, that did sound like the money system technically worked. But... “wouldn''t people try to lowball them? I mean, something might have cost thousands of hours to make and they charge like 10 for it.” She shook her head, “That wouldn''t work. Angels often work in stores where ''marketing consultants'' price the goods for them. But also... this spear took about 100 hours to forge. Try pricing it at lower that the number of hours.” I did, and before I could finish writing, the 1 Value item that I priced suddenly jumped up to 100 Value. It knew. “I... see...” I said.

    After thanking the merfolk for their help, they swam away, having done their business for today anyway. The angels appeared to have a few strange seeds, but the minimum value that I thought to offer seemed to rise to absurd numbers, thanks to the countless hours spent trying to make whatever these things were bear fruit. Although it was no trouble in terms of what I could afford thanks to some weird monetary rules, the idea of paying that much for seeds that I wasn''t sure I''d be able to plant right now, still seemed too expensive. We continued on, assuring them that we''d check out their shops later.

    Ahead of us, the Divine Border office building came into view, to the left of which had a mountain pass guarded with imposing types, soldiers in gold armor stood at ready. They didn''t appear to be guarding closely, but as we tried to pass, we figured out why. A solid barrier bonked into us as we moved ahead. The guards laughed at us, and explained that nobody could pass, not no how, not unless they had a passport.

    We checked again at the office. As border buildings went, normally one expects a rigid concrete building with all kinds of special glass. But this appeared to be a building made of straw. And yet, whatever this straw was made from, it was clearly something I couldn''t exactly huff and puff and blow down. It was firmly framed, from the roof down.

    The inside of the border office was surprising, for it had high quality granite flooring and stiff metal frame. An old grandfather clock stood in the right corner, next to a water basin of wood and marble, with an old style sink. In the center of the room, a stove billowed up smoke through a chimney. Over towards the left corner sat a shelf of very old books, some of which appeared to be from before the New Earth. I decided not to read these as I didn''t want to break my mind. There were two tables perpendicular to each other to form a crude counter. One table had a man behind it who looked official signing and stamping paperwork. The other was filled with particularly large materials. On this one sat a world map written by fine runes which was currently displaying the inside of this exact building (obviously it would show the world once we got outside), and an extremely large book titled The Eternity Epic. Aqorm told the official, “Look behind you!” While his back was turned, she escaped with a copy of the world map. The official, an angel dressed in long black outfit and one of those funny hats favored by the Koreans of old (Elias called these durumagi and tanggeon but I didn''t know which was which), sighed, looking miffed at being tricked by such an obvious ruse, but shrugged and put up another map. As we had yet to approach him for anything, he simply continued his work. I looked at the other item on the table.

    “Don''t touch that!” said Zoe. I ignored her. Something about that book was very interesting. As I tried, and failed, to lift this book from its spot I realized this was arguably too much book for me. I opened and found that it was far bigger than it looked on the table, almost like the number of pages was infinite. As I started reading, I realized there was a strong pull to keep reading, and I hung on to every word. I read, ?The war in Isis raged on for decades, but one man dared to tell the generals to lay down their arms. The man''s name was actually never recorded, but later generations referred to him as Zhanshi Xianzhe, loosely translated as the Sage warrior. According to common accounts, when the warriors refused to surrender, Xianzhe simply touched their weapons, turning them into flowers. In a neighboring village, a young girl was learning her craft from a local herbalist. Carefully pounding fresh willow bark with ripened juniper berries with the mortar and pestle, she rubbed a poultice on the leg of the wounded soldier brought to her humble abode. Carefully, she leeched the toxins and taint of the cold iron lodged in his femur, creating life where before there was death. As one growing up in a small town, she had no reason to think that she would be anything more than a healer, but hers was a love to last for all time... ?

    Ten hours later, I had gotten to a really good part, as the two had finally met after lots of near meetings and plot twists and turns. I won''t give away everything, surely you''ll want to read it yourself! I read, ?Xianzhe looked up from his reverie, to find a woman staring back at him. Her face was attractive to look at, yet which spoke of a kindness beyond simple beauty. Here was a woman with a beautiful soul, and her hands, calloused with the effort of pressing herbs into rubs and powders, showed her love with every touch. And her name, her name was Reqing Mei, meaning beautiful spirit. ? I said with astonishment, “I can''t believe it took so long to introduce her!” Zoe explained, “The ancient people believed a name should not be given lightly, as it could define and control the person giving it. They believed names have power.” She explained to me about true names while I continued to read the epic.

    A day later, I had gotten near the end of their story, but the book seemed to be barely started. It was so sad, she had spent her life together and raised five children, but now they were both dying. I continued reading, ?The once great Sage was lying at the bedside, his powerful magic having failed him when he would have bargained for health and vitality. He had experienced a rich life, and he knew that death would likely bring a separation from his beloved. That was something he could not cope with. He knew the state of life and death, as it was the business of a Sage to know. Death would not be the ending of this story, as all creatures renewed their bodies, casting them off like clothing to be changed when the time was right. But, he knew too that with death came the erasure of memory, for no person could know too much of matters that lie Beyond The World. Thus, he could not bear the thought of forgetting the one who had cared for his heart, like she had cared for the sick, those many years ago. He had thought a Sage, with such wisdom as he had, would not need things like love, but he had been wrong about a great many things. A Sage, it turned out, had all the greater power because of love, for the cosmos relied on connection between concepts. As such, he was a sage because he had a heart capable of such love, and of taking this love in return. As his dying breath, he gasped out a wish to the heavens. Xianzhe wished that he could remember everything and that his Mei could remember him, and they would be reborn for all eternity... ?

    Zoe suddenly slammed the book. Just as it was getting good too! I pulled out my knife and waved it around while the others held behind my shoulders. I wasn''t being unreasonable, I tell you! It is completely sane to start brandishing a weapon over a book! “Ambrosia, stop it! You''ll die if you keep reading. You haven''t slept in days, and I imagine you''ve forgotten what day it even is reading this book.” She was right. In fact, I had to check my calendar to also know what month it was. It had all run together.

    I looked at her. There were tears in her eyes. “The book ends after those two live thousands of lifetimes together, and it keeps adding to their story each time they are reincarnated. That book... It has killed many of my friends. They tried to read it, but kept reading and reading without sleep, without eating, and without drinking anything. Only I managed to finish it.” The pain on her face was plain. “But it gets worse,” she said, “each of those people mentioned in the book? They''re my reincarnations! Mine and Azrael''s. We spent each time trying to meet each other, only to have something interfere! Sometimes we were siblings, sometimes we were the same sex and couldn''t have a family, sometimes there was an age difference. If we tried to get together, a jealous lover would prevent our relationship. Or there was an arranged marriage. We never managed to make things work out, even with all our trying!” She burst into tears. I spent the rest of the afternoon consoling her, all while trying to resist the pull of this novel.

    At long last, we finally managed to talk to the official about securing our papers. “Ahem?” I said in such a way that it sounder like a question, “Can you help us?” The man, insufferable to the core said, “I don''t know, can I?” I glared at him, “May you help us? We want to enter the path behind this place. I''m the Oracle and I have a mission that requires...” He cut me off, “I''m sure your mission is very important, but as a general rule, you''re gonna have to die before I let you in. So, as interesting as I''m sure your story is, frankly, I don''t give a damn.” Rude! I tried a different tactic, “But... could you make any kind of exception? Could I prove myself or could I work really hard or could I...” He shook his head. “Look, I like you and all. But, do you understand Grace at all? You can''t earn your way into Heaven. I have to decide whether I grant your entry, you can''t just push and push and hope for things to come out all right.” I frowned, “So could you? I mean, I kinda need to finish my quest and can''t exactly go in without talking to God.” He appeared thoughtful, then he said, “Alright, I''ll tell you what. You know that castle you passed by just outside Kushiyama? You''ll need to go there, and you''ll need to bring back the heads of the creature cursing this place. I might consider it then.” Wait, but he just said Grace can''t be earned? So ummm, why so much effort on this quest?

    Then I started thinking about all of the effort involved in getting here, but now we were traveling back. Noooooooo...!!! Thankfully, he saw my look and nodded. “Don''t worry, look,” he walked us outside to a peculiar circle, much like the one I had seen earlier, near the church in Kushiyama, “this is a teleportation circle. Science tried to make one of these long ago, but succeeded only in the monstrous practice of human faxing. They''d take the rough data of a person, then clone them on the other side.” Seeing my horrified expression, he patted my shoulder, “Relax! This was made from thaumaturgy. It simply turns you into a ball of light, then sends you to an area where you''ve already visited. Just think hard about where you want to go.” I waited for some of the others to go, watching their bodies turn into a ball of light, then fly at high speed to the destination. “Don''t worry,” said the border guard, “I''ll make sure the ship is safely moored. It won''t go anywhere.” This was not what I was worried about.

    I felt a warm hand on mine. Nevras said, “Relax, we''ll step on the platform together. Okay?” I nodded, “That sounds good... but only if you go first.” I snuck behind him and pushed. “Ambrosia, you heartless bi....” I heard him say this as he turned into a ball of light and rocketed across the land. Yeah, nobody''s gonna make me do this, I''ll stay right...

    … Here, was what I was going to say, but Zoe grabbed me around the waist and dragged me in. The teleportation experience is, well an experience. I''d not tried it before, as I''d never cast any spells but my fear was basically erased. If you''ve never teleported before, I''d definitely recommend it. I''ll probably be first in line rather than having to be pushed. It may be hard to describe, but I''ll try. You turn your entire body into light, and anyone standing close to you also joins, so you connect to form a ball of energy, instead of two separate balls like you''d think. That''s what anyone watching this would see.

    Watching it, and being part of it, though, are two entirely different things. You see, while an onlooker just saw the two of us become one big ball of light, I felt free of my body completely. It was like being naked, only more profound, because I no longer worried about how much or little I weighed, my hair being messy, or anything like this. I could see in incredible detail and in high speed everything around like we were flying slowly. I saw the mountains, the water, and the forests, at the same time I saw clouds above. Everything was so intense and vivid that I wondered why I had ever wanted a body. And the intimacy! It was like Zoe and I were inside of each other. Yeah, like that, only way better. I felt her close to me, and I felt her memories. All of those former lives, and I knew she saw my past too. Yet somehow since we weren''t locked by our bodies, it no longer felt sad. Zoe was definitely a friend I would want to share everything with, and I would want to live close by to her if I ever built a house. We were now BFFs.