Scylla waited in the child's room as her mother gave her a bath. She looked out the child's window at the snowclad forests and frozen lakes of the Elemental Domain of Fire. The child's Phoenix Elemental, which always perched atop a nearby volcano, seemed to notice Scylla's gaze and her head twitched. Scylla waved to the Elemental and she went on preening the magenta feathers at the end of her wings.

  The door to the bathroom opened and Lady Peace came prancing out, wet feet slapping on the tiles. She was naked, and she looked very proud of herself. Scylla felt it was something of a tragedy that the child took after her father's side of the family. Dark brown hair and deep brown eyes, like a living tapestry of the war criminal Vaska of Veninmark. She had her mother's freckles, thankfully.

  "I'm old enough to learn religion now, right Auntie Scylla?" Lady Peace asked.

  "Aren't you forgetting something?" Scylla asked.

  The child considered this and it took a long time for the epiphany to arrive. As if the idea of clothing in the company of others was somewhat difficult for her.

  "Oh, my robes!" she finally said. "Mommy? Where are my robes? I'm going to be a real acolyte!"

  "That's not..." Scylla began, but the child stomped across the room to her ebony chest.

  Her initial attempts to put the robes over her head failed and her mother was forced to intervene. The mother, who had been just a girl in Scylla's eyes five years before, had grown into a full woman in that time. She had gained some weight and Scylla thought this was a good thing for a human mother. She calmly dressed her daughter in robes sized to her frame and then anointed her with the sacred ruby-studded black fishnet of the High Priestesses of the Flame.

  Once Lady Peace was dressed the mother left and she closed the door. The child shuffled up on the seat next to Scylla and she looked out the window at the landscape. She waved to her Phoenix Elemental and the huge bird seemed to nod her head in acknowledgement.

  "Let us begin, child. As is traditional among the acolytes in our religion, we shall start our religion lessons at the very beginning."

  "Yay!" Lady Peace exclaimed.

  "In the beginning there was only the Ideal World. A perfect world, both then and now. In the center of the Ideal World is the Throne of True Light, upon which many goddesses have ruled the Ideal World at various times."

  "Are there any gods or are they all girls?"

  "They are all girls," Scylla said.

  "That is the perfect world!" Lady Peace agreed. "I like girls."

  She'll grow out of it, Scylla thought.

  "Each goddess carries within her body two entities, which are a part of her yet distinct from her. These entities are called archons, and they are like smaller, less-complex versions of the goddess in which they live. This will be very important later."

  "Archons. Got it."

  "In addition to the goddesses, there are many lesser beings called souls, and there are both boy souls and girl souls."

  "Just like humans. And elves."

  "That is right. Now, these souls began to grow bored in the perfection of the Ideal World. Many souls sought to go on vacation to some imperfect world for a time, so they could better appreciate the perfections of the Ideal World."

  "I love vacations," Lady Peace proclaimed helpfully.

  "Indeed," Scylla said. "So did the souls in the Ideal World. The goddess sitting on the Throne of True Light decreed that a new universe would be created. This universe would be constructed from the bodies of six goddesses. These goddesses would bisect themselves into opposing Divine Powers, which would be guarded by the two archons. Twelve Divine Powers and twelve archons who became the soul-equivalents of the Elemental Queens."

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  "Did the souls like the world?"

  "The souls loved the world. However, the whole point of the world was to be a vacation place for souls, and therefore they needed to be able to return home to the Ideal World. Therefore, one of the Elemental Domains was chosen to host a portal to the Ideal World. The very first Elemental Domain, the Elemental Domain of Fire, was chosen. There, in the heart of a grand temple, was the Flame. An iridescent and pearlescent Flame of pure beauty and longing. It attracted souls with a beautiful and intoxicating melody that resonates with ecstasy. Souls that passed into the Flame would return to their true states of knowledge and being in the Ideal World."

  "Like moths to the flame."

  "Unfortunately that is correct," Scylla admitted. "This wasn't the best design, because souls living in the new universe, who were ignorant of what lies beyond the Flame, grew fearful of it. They conspired to destroy the Flame. The empires of that world gathered their armies and they attacked the Flame, thus leading to its destruction. That universe became known as the Universe of Destruction."

  "What happened to that universe?" Lady Peace asked.

  "The goddess upon the Throne of True Light ordered the six goddesses who composed that universe to unravel it and start over. The place where the universe had been fell to ruin. It is now called the Outer Dark. All other universes invented afterward are located in this region."

  "Outer Dark. Got it."

  "Henceforth, it was decreed, universes would be constructed not from six, but from seven goddesses. And since that time, all universes have followed the same template. It is the template that our universe was supposed to follow, if things hadn't gone so horribly wrong."

  "What went wrong?"

  "We will get to that later. Much later, child."

  "Okay."

  "The first goddess is the Goddess of Imperfections," Scylla began. "She bisects herself into the Divine Power of Souls and the Divine Power of True Death. The two Elemental Domains created by these Elemental Queens contain the portals which allow ingress and egress of souls. The Queen of True Death grants souls access to some contextual memories before they pass through the portal. This helps avoid the fear of the unknown that led to the unraveling of the first universe."

  "Souls and True Death. Got it."

  "Next is the Goddess of Chaos. She bisects herself into Fire and Water. The Goddess of Foundations bisects herself into Wind and Stone. The Goddess of Connections bisects herself into Metal and Lightning. The Goddess of Order bisects herself into Life and Heaven. The Goddess of Freedom bisects herself into Light and Dark."

  Lady Peace started counting on her fingers. "That's only six goddesses."

  "That's right. The seventh goddess is the Goddess of Wishes. In theory, she will bisect herself into the Divine Power of Myth-Spirits and the Divine Power of Dreams. The seventh goddess brings magic into the world. For reasons that we will discuss later, this process was interrupted in our universe."

  "Scylla?"

  "Yes?"

  "What's a Myth-Spirit?"

  "A collective dream. We will discuss those Divine Powers if anyone manages to fix this mess. Now, there is one more thing I forgot to mention. Can you guess what that is?"

  The child considered this, mumbling to herself. "What is the Flame?" she finally asked. "I mean, here, in our world."

  "Good. That is correct. What I forgot to mention was that some souls, who were chased from their world by the forces of destruction, passed through the Flame just before it was destroyed. They took a piece of that original Flame with them, with the consent of the original Queen of Fire in that world. They fostered the Flame in their very souls, where it resides to this day. These souls are very rare. So rare, in fact, that every universe has exactly one such soul, called the Flame Keeper. In other words, there are only as many universes as there are Flame Keepers."

  "And Auntie Klara is the Flame Keeper."

  "That's right. You are learning quickly, child. Now, there is yet another thing I have yet to mention, though I have not forgotten it. That is the nature of elves, my own people. Before the Universe of Destruction was unraveled, a large tribe of souls was assembled and equipped with powerful runes, words from the language of the Throne of True Light. With these words they were well-equipped to survive the horrors of the Universe of Destruction. This tribe is my own, the tribe of elves. We always resemble the local life with very small but noticeable differences."

  She pointed to her big, pointy ears.

  "Can I be an elf?" Lady Peace asked.

  "No. Only the souls who returned to the Universe of Destruction became elves. At least, that's the word we use now to describe them. The elves carefully studied the Universe of Destruction and designed the template that we use now. Elves are tasked with guiding the goddesses into place when a new universe is created. Unlike the Flame Keepers, elves are not very rare, and many elves may join a universe. Possibly hundreds or thousands. But we all follow the same, extremely strict code of ethics when we join a universe. And this is the most important rule: elves are forbidden from establishing Elemental Bonds."

  "Has any elf ever broken this rule?" Lady Peace asked.

  Scylla sighed. "In all the history of my entire tribe, across all universes, it has only happened a single time."

  "Who broke the rule?"

  "It was my idiot brother," Scylla said. "The exiled elf who calls himself Kai."