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    After helping Jessie adjust to her new species (and wasn’t that a weird thought to have), Callie and I packed all of our things and headed out to meet with my family for dinner. More than just Zeke, mom, Chelsea, and Celia though, I finally got to see all the friends I hadn’t been able to talk to during my time on Rackham. Cark, Cass, Mel, Bethy, Gabe, Felicity (my cousin, not the goddess), and even all the animals.


    My apprentice was also there, currently deep in conversation with…I closed my eyes in pain, groaning as I realized I was too late to prevent possibly the most terrifying event I could conceive of. Bella was getting along with Bethy.


    “Shane!” chirped my favorite terrifying vampire. “I was just talking to your apprentice. She’s so sweet. Not like, literally, at least I don’t think so, I don’t bite strangers, but she seems really nice! I’m curious though, why does she seem so…unconcerned. Daddy’s apprentices are always really twitchy. I’ve dropped this cup like four times and she hasn’t flinched once.”


    Bella blinked at her. “Wait…is that why you kept doing that? I thought you were just really clumsy.”


    Bethy patted her reassuringly on the hands. “Oh I definitely am, there’s nothing else going on. Don’t worry about it. Here, chew on this branch.” She passed her a small, slightly gnarled stick, and my apprentice looked at it in confusion before taking it cautiously.


    My sister, sitting between Bethy and Gabe, burst out laughing at our confused expressions. “It’s a Dryad thing. They have these special trees called freshwood, and they chew them when they’re distracted. Makes your breath smell like eucalyptus. Bethy has developed a weird fixation on them since we got here.”


    “It’s not WEIRD,” protested the vampire. “Proper dental hygiene is important. Daddy says that the speed at which your fangs can pierce through a jugular can be the difference between life and death.” She bared her fangs at us before flicking one of them proudly. There was a high, sharp ping like she’d flicked a piece of steel. "Just remember, no one is afraid of a predator with tooth decay.”


    The mental image of The Vampire teaching Bethy how to floss and instructing her on proper brushing technique almost broke my brain, but I pushed through it, forcing myself to acclimate to the absolute chaos that was Bethy as quickly as possible. “I’ll keep it in mind,” I said slowly. “Speaking of apprentices, any idea when we’ll be seeing Abel again?”


    She shrugged. “Alexis is still alive. Daddy said he doesn’t even cry anymore, which is pretty impressive. The last one lives under a giant rock last I heard. He’s afraid to come out into open air. At least he’s alive though. Only about ten percent of them survive.” At our collective horrified stare she paused, glancing up thoughtfully. “Oh, did I not mention that before? Oh well, doesn’t really matter now.”


    I buried my face in my hands, but she was kind of right. I doubted Abel would have backed down from a chance to learn at the feet of the strongest mortal in the universe because of a little lethal danger. Plus there was a good chance she was just messing with me anyway. It was always hard to tell with Bethy.


    “So, tell us about your solo adventures,” interrupted Benny, which was honestly probably a good call. This could go on for a while. “Did you get any cool stuff?”


    I perked up. “Oh a bunch. I got a token that can block a single attack up to god rank, plus some kind of rebirth ritual that cleansed some of the damage from my soul. Apparently it’ll be really helpful down the line.”


    Zeke looked intrigued. “A defensive token? That’s interesting. But I wouldn’t assume it can block ANYTHING below god rank. Nameless tried that.”


    “I mean, he IS still alive,” my mother pointed out. “So I guess it kind of worked.”


    “Who,” I asked patiently. “Is Nameless? And why is he relevant? I think you guys have forgotten how little I know about Ascendant nonsense while I was gone.”


    Zeke just laughed. “Sorry, I figured you might have heard of him from Bethy. Nameless is the eldest disciple of Black Sorrow. He’s one of her ten popes. She gifted him a defensive token when he Ascended to S-rank. He used it to try to kill Lark, and it went…poorly. Which is my whole point. ‘Anything below god rank’ sounds good, but a token is just an item. There’s a lot of wiggle room there. Lark tore it apart and fed on Nameless, ripping out a LOT of stats. He recovered eventually, but it wasn’t pretty.”


    “I didn’t know Lark was enemies with the Cult,” I said in confusion. “Like sure, he didn’t seem to like them at the conclave, but not to that extent.”


    My grandfather, who had been unusually silent (I realized he was just eating) swallowed a bit of steak and spoke up. “Nameless is…well, you could consider him kind of a precursor to Lark, albeit a much less successful one. Lark established his Domain and its dominance by destroying all the vampires in the universe aside from his own line. It was a massive undertaking that took him centuries to manage. But he got the idea from Nameless, who achieved his own S-rank in a similar way.”A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    “It’s why they call him Nameless,” my mother added. “He decided that he could become the most powerful version of himself if he was completely singular. So he hunted down and murdered every person who had the same name as him. After a while, people obviously stopped naming their kids that, and then superstitions developed and they stopped even SAYING it.”


    That was…extreme. “So he’s a lunatic?” I asked bluntly.


    “Completely insane, yes,” my mother agreed. “Not all of the cult’s popes are, of course, but totally nuts. He’s also very petty. When Lark stepped into S-rank using a similar method Nameless took exception. Hunted the vampire down to fight him. He’d been S-rank for quite some time by then, but Lark grows fast. Nameless used the token to defend himself, but Lark is…well, Lark. He chipped away at it and eventually got through.”


    I blew out a breath, shaking my head in amazement. “Damn, Bethy, your dad is hardcore. Also, wait, you said Black Sorrow has TEN popes? I thought the Church and the Cult were basically equal in power?”


    “We are,” said my grandfather with a grin. “In case you forgot, I’m a demigod. So are Judgement and Moonlight. We can each fight the Cult’s popes two to one.”


    My apprentice, having been apparently unaware of a lot of this information, just kind of gaped at all of us. I don’t think she’d realized she was eating dinner with a pair of S-rankers, a pair of A-rankers, and the daughter of one of the most legendary Ascendants who had ever lived.


    My grandmother rolled her eyes. “Please don’t get him started. He’ll go on for hours, breaking down the individual strengths and weaknesses of the Black Sorrow Cult Popes and how he would deploy Church forces against them in the event of all out war. Which, I might remind you all, would be BAD, since we’re already in one of those, and the Cult is on our side.”


    “With friends like those,” muttered my grandfather, and I had to admit I agreed with him.


    Celia sort of wilted. “I know,” she admitted sadly. “They can be…terrible. But I did grow up there, and some of those S-rankers helped raise me. There are plenty of bad apples over there, but not everyone in the Black Sorrow Cult is a monster. In the end, trillions of people live under my mother’s reign, and you’ve met very few of them. The Heartrippers aren’t exactly the Cult putting its best foot forward. But it isn’t like the other factions don’t have less savory sub branches. The Orphans come to mind.”


    My grandfather scowled. “The Orphans aren’t indicative of the way the Church works. Absolute doesn’t listen to anyone except the Lord. And I’d appreciate it if you didn’t bring them up in front of the kids.”


    She sighed, nodding apologetically. “You’re right, I’m sorry. That was petty. We’ve had this argument so many times my part of it has become routine. Forgive me?” She put a hand on his arm and they smiled at each other, and I got a glimpse of what kind of love motivates you to blow up a planet and pretend to have killed the daughter of a god.


    “Anyway,” said my grandmother after a moment of awkward silence. “Not everyone in the Cult is a psychopath. Nameless and Deathwish are both…problematic. But Silence is a thoughtful and kindhearted person, and Dread has a wonderful sense of humor. I hope now that my mother has finished her tantrum you all might be able to meet some of the people I grew up with. It’s always better to have friends than enemies, I say.”


    I wasn’t so sure, but I wasn’t ruling it out. She was right that there were trillions of people in the Cult, and that not all of them could be bad. Plus, my dad’s family were about as shady as it got, and I got along with some of them. Black Sorrow herself wasn’t going to be on my birthday card list anytime soon, but I wasn’t against meeting some of the popes in a controlled environment. I wouldn’t be recruiting any Cultist A-rankers for this competition though. There was a long way to go before I’d trust any of them.


    It also highlighted a difference in worldview that I’d long since noticed in high level Ascendants, and one I’d even been finding myself being sucked into. To Ascendants, life was a story. Things happened, some bad, some good, and almost all dramatic. But if you wanted to get ahead, you couldn’t take it all personally. Stories were best left in the past. When everything everyone did was dramatic and important, holding grudges over minor (from their point of view) incidents just took up too much time.


    My dad binding Zeke, Black Sorrow all but conscripting me into a possible suicide mission. Both of those things, to a mortal, would be unforgivable. But it was hard for me, even now, to hold it against her too much given how things turned out. It was just one more way my mortality was slipping away, and that my personality was changing as I became less and less human.


    Oddly though, I didn’t mind. As a tradeoff for all the amazing things I could do, a little sensitivity seemed like a pretty minimal price to pay.


    We ate dinner as it was brought out, a four course meal made by my grandmother''s chefs, and my wife insisted that my cooking was better, despite literally everyone knowing she was lying. I squeezed her hand and sent a pulse of affection through the bond, and she beamed at me.


    Benny regaled me with the experiments he’d been doing, working on both his Path and his Inventing, even trying to manifest effects from his items into his Path of the Dracolich to upscale the effects. He’d envisioned the Path as a sort of combination of Inventing and techniques that I was interested to see come to fruition. Chelsea told me about her training with both abilities, Bethy raved about spending time with my grandmother, and Cark and Cassidy filled me in on the places they’d stayed during the training.


    All in all, it was a wonderful dinner and a great chance to catch up with everyone. Sadly, all too soon it was over, and we were informed that we would be meeting with Tasha and the council the next day to attend the ceremony that would mark the beginning of the tree search. With that deadline hanging over our heads, we bid everybody goodnight and headed to bed. It was going to be a big day.