I threw a little party for Gilles. It was a small thing, with a few of the gods he considered friends, and a few angels. His ascension was worthy of celebration, even if he, himself, did not want much of a party.

Very much like Randus had been, when he ascended to become a Pillar. He hadn't wanted anyone to know about it, though, so Gilles remained the First Pillar in everyone's mind but mine and Randus', the Deity of Dreams allowing his little sibling to have the spotlight while he, predictably, remained my close attendant. What would I do with him? It'd do him some good to take some pride in his own abilities from time to time.

Said butler must have sensed my thoughts, as he appeared right beside me, handing me a cup of steaming black tea. Meeting the Rival had given me cravings for it again, bringing up old memories as he had. I took an appreciative sip, reclined back in my plush armchair, and nodded my thanks.

"What are my new duties?" Gilles asked me as the party dwindled, the god of fire, Keegan, and the goddess of water, Inana, waving to those few who remained as they left my palace hand-in-hand. I raised an eyebrow at him as a chess piece on the board before me moved, an annoyed groan echoing from Inesa as she buried her face in her hands. Checkmate once again! Even if I did have to cheat to win this time – something she didn't notice.

I couldn't let my own kid beat me at chess. That would be absurd.

"New duties? You tell me." I said, giving him a hard look. I'd already described the inspiration for the eight pillars numerous times, he should be able to figure that out by himself. And, to be completely, bluntly honest, when I looked at him I saw something different than I had before. His aura had not only solidified, it had deepened, blending with the surrounding Four Realms to such a degree it was only second to myself and my first four children. His very divinity had undergone a qualitative change, the energy his soul produced still and stable, as steady and deep as the shadows he was born of, while being exponentially more beneficial to the Realms.

The truth was he had no new duties save for those he took on himself. His presence alone did what it needed to do. I just wanted to hear what he had to say about it.

"I…I can feel the Will of the Realms much clearer now." He said slowly, and I nodded, urging him to continue. "But what I feel about myself is more…complicated. There's only so much I can say about it, but if I had to say anything, it would be the one who waits, watches, listens, and learns while the world passes me by. I am not Aeriel who holds all the secrets the wind hears, but the mysteries I know are hidden even to her."

"You were already like that." Inesa pointed out, putting the chess pieces back in place.

"Yes, in a way. But now I feel even more like myself, if that makes sense. Like the prayers, and effects of the Realms that once plagued my soul and mind carry less weight." Gilles explained, stuffing his hands into the sleeves of his robes. Inesa nodded thoughtfully, a little spark of understanding going off in her chest, the fear the kept her from taking that step to becoming a Pillar lessening.

"Oh, so it's like cultivation for mortals. The more they ascend the cultivation realms, the more they shed from their souls and selves; all the toxins and whatnot that comes from living being purified, leaving only their true self behind." She reasoned. Gilles thought about that for a moment, then nodded with a small smile. It was like that. I would knew, I'd experienced the process enough times through the eyes of mortals.

"Good, but that didn't answer your question." I said.

"It did." Gilles denied, shaking his head. I raised an eyebrow at him, a smirk threatening to twist my lips upward as I watched him make his decision. "Matriarch, I have another question for you, if you'll allow it." I nodded to him, anticipating his next question. It would be about the Rival. Honestly, Gilles' ascension had tripped me up a little bit there; I hadn't expected him to be able to see past the protective barriers I'd put up. What did it say about my children's growth that they were beginning to be able to surprise me like that? I was still far above most of them, of course, but it left me feeling a little bittersweet…ah, where had the time gone? It seemed only yesterday he was terrified about asking me if he could court Elvira.

"Who is the Rival to you?" he asked.

"I don't know." I said honestly. "He's an old colleague, a terrible flirt, and absolutely shameless. A friend, I would say. A wildcard, I would assume." I glanced down at the Physical Realm, where he was gathering materials and supplies for some sort of ritual and to leave in secret from his family. It'd already been some time since our chat, so I was surprised he hadn't already left. But then again, time was weird for beings who had lived for such a long time. What was a few years, when we'd already been around for millions? Trillions, in the Rival's case?

"I – do you know of my suspicions about your past?" Gilles asked, and I nodded.

"I share them." It was a relatively new development, but I was starting to get a clearer picture. Earth being a nexus realm, my own role in raising that planet, the choice to make me an Origin Deity... at first I had written it off as mere coincidence; my soul must have had the spark to be an Origin Deity, and I had been chosen because of that. But what if it wasn't? What if there was something more? All the other Origin Deities had been far more powerful than I, at the time of them being chosen, as far as I was aware. I hadn't really noticed it until recently.

What piece of the puzzle was I missing?

It lay just out of sight, hidden behind some sort of fog that even I could not see through. As far as I could tell Mr. Boxes had nothing to do with hiding the information from me; it was simply because I was not ready to understand it. Which was something that would have to change.

"You have not come up with an answer yet, then," Gilles said, deflating. I shook my head sadly at him. "Then I have a request. If possible, I wish to see the One World."

"I will bring you to the next meeting. It will not be for a little bit, but, while I cannot promise you anything, I can at least try. It will be good to build up some better relations between ourselves and the One World – using karma as an anchor point to help spin us out of the way might be our safest option." I explained, nodding to myself. Gilles drummed his fingers together, then nodded. I stood and laid a hand on his shoulder, patting it comfortingly. I knew he wanted to ask about my past lives, but that was not something I would share unless he actually asked.

Inesa huffed, swiping the chess pieces off the board and into a silken bag, apparently deciding she didn't want to play anymore. Judging by the way she shot me a little glare, she must have figured out I'd been cheating.

"Thank you for indulging me." He said, and I felt a pang of disappointment at his response.

The Rival had stirred something in me. I wanted to talk about my past with someone...

"Of course, Gilles. You are welcome to bug me anytime. Now, enjoy your party. I will leave an incarnation here, but the new regions are nearly in place, and my true self must go oversee their positioning." I told him, then paused, taking a deep breath. Threads of karma spread all about me, the silver strings of fate piercing into Gilles like spears, reaching out to try and bind to someone else; his counterpart. "If you would just do me a favor?"

"Yes?"

"Be watchful of Solana for me. I cannot be the one to answer her call if she asks for help, but…maybe you can." And with that, I replaced my true body with an incarnation, appearing above the new regions, watching as they were drug into their final positions.

It was almost time to drop the barriers between them, and let life truly flourish inside. At least that should help keep the mortals occupied for a while…at least, once they get over the brewing conflict in the Physical Realm.

***

The Rival sat in his little home late at night, his parents sleeping downstairs and his twin sister sound asleep in a room next to his. Honestly, the size of housing in this world was much nicer compared to some of the other places he'd been; partly it was because longer-lived people tended to build bigger, more comfortable things to accommodate their longer lifespans, and partly because said people tended to not have as many kids, so space was readily available.

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This was why he liked young civilizations, especially young space-faring civilizations. Cultivator space-faring civilizations were even more rare; typically the universes which housed cultivators or other Xianxia-esque systems were huge worlds, generally singular and utterly massive. If they did have what could be akin to space, it was usually so rigorous that only those of the Immortal tier and up could venture out into it, effectively nullifying any chance for entire civilizations to become space-faring.

That was part of what made the Four Realms different than most others. The Rival hummed to himself happily as he finished his ritual, putting his hands together in a ritualistic pose to help force the qi within his body to obey. His meridians were weak and malnourished, not because his body lacked talent, but simply because he had neglected them. That was what made the ritual necessary, and the hand sign helpful. No matter how much experience he had, difficult things were difficult, and impossible things were still impossible. Rituals made the normally impossible, possible.

That didn't make them less painful. But pain, he could endure.

He grit his teeth, sheer will holding in the pained whimpers that threatened to escape, his blood boiling and bones aching. The candles that surrounded his little ritual circle flared as they absorbed what little qi he could offer – then flared brighter as he started sacrificing his life-force.

Good thing about using life-force in a cultivation world, he thought through gritted teeth, blood seeping from his nose and eyes, flowing down his face to pool below his crossed legs. Is that it can easily be replenished. That was literally the point of cultivation, after all – to make one's life a perpetually-regenerating resource.

The Rival grimaced as his bones began to quake, flakes falling off and joining the blood flowing out of his body. His pores ripped open, sending quakes of pain shivering through his entire body. His teeth ground together so hard they might crack, his organs screaming out at him to stop whatever it was he was doing – but he powered through, never making a peep so as not to wake the others in the house.

Energy poured into him from outside the ritual circle, the natural, ambient qi of the universe helping to fuel this ritual. And slowly, under his watchful gaze and through the sweat of his blood, another body began to form.

The blood that pooled beneath him trickled forward, slowly condensing and coalescing, absorbing the fragments of organ and bone that he willingly sacrificed to from exact replicas of said internal structures. He grit his teeth, willing the ritual to continue, his consciousness fading ever so slightly – and then it was over. Darkness tinged the corners of his vision as an exact, nude, replica of himself sat before him.

"It's a good thing Fae are tough bastards, huh?" he muttered to himself, spitting out a glob of blood and snagging a potion that sat just beside him, downing it in an instant. The relief wasn't immediate, but a cool, soothing sensation radiated outward from his throat all the way through his chest all the same. He found that slow-acting potions always tended to make things better in the long run, at the cost of having to endure more pain for longer. Now can the really hard part, though.

Slowly he reached inside of himself, touching on that little thing he called a soul. His qi was slowly replenishing and, as he examined the little thing resting in his chest, about where his heart would be, he fashioned what little remained into a crude sort of knife. It wasn't his real soul, of course, but a tiny fragment of his true being that, with a crack and sharp lance of pain that drew a whimper from his mouth, he cut a chunk off of.

And without any further prompting, he shoved it into his clone, using his qi as a mediator between the soulless body and himself. It was momentarily disorienting, to suddenly have consciousness in two different bodies, but it was something he quickly reoriented himself to.

It would be weird until he cultivated high enough to split his mind in two, until that point he would just have to deal with it if he wanted to have the freedom to search for Sylvia without any unnecessary interference. He'd already sensed some eyes upon him, after all.

And if it were anyone other than him, this sort of method to avoid detection would be impossible. Cloning was a very advanced technique, after all.

***

The next morning one of the Rival's bodies slipped away, having healed enough from the previous night's ritual to be able to warrant moving, though any sane doctor would advise him to spend more time resting. He chuckled to himself as he slipped away, his other, freshly-made body, incapable of cultivating, sat down for breakfast with his sister and parents.

Sylvia had actually chastised him about this quite often. Methods of self-harm and all that. What the hell did he care what he did to his body, if next life he'd just get a new one? He could be cruel to himself every once in a while, even if he did admit that having a healthy body felt so much nicer than one amped up on drugs.

Ah, that'd been a fun life. Sex, drugs, rock and roll, and a hot psychologist who not only played hard to get, but actually was hard to get. Ah, the fun they'd had together! Him bragging about his successful music career and skill, her digging into his mental state like a ruthless surgeon and actually finding something, him telling her he actually remembered his past lives as a joke and her not only taking it seriously but dig some truth out of him, her actually convincing him to take better care of himself, and then that one time he managed to get her drunk and she still didn't sleep with him…

Right, that's why he'd been smitten with her. Wonder how she'd changed?

It'd been long enough he'd actually had to try to remember bits of that lifetime. She had to have changed a lot, too, all things considered. Even with an eidetic memory, things got lost when there was so much to sift through.

The Rival hummed as he practically skipped through the forest surrounding his once-home, gazing up through the trees and, for the first time in a while, feeling no pressure to relax as much as he could before he had to meddle with someone else's plan. This was going to be his life, and a long life it would be if he had his way.

His first order of business had to be increasing his lifespan and cultivation because of it, though.

That little ritual had used up almost the entirety of his remaining lifespan, after all. He only had a year left.

***

"Whoever the origin god is of this place knew what they were doing." The Rival admired as he sat cross-legged in a peaceful glade. Tall trees with huge, palm-shaped leaves swayed about him in the wind, a gentle stream trickling through the center of the golden-grassed meadow. Birds chirped. Somewhere off to his left an herbivore of some kind moved through the trees, a spirit beast of no real consequence. He let out a breath, the ambient qi around him left almost wholly untouched.

His soul made all the qi he could ever need to cultivate.

It was a fascinating process, and something he only ever really saw in high-tier beings. Gods were integral to many universes simply because they produced so much energy, energy that the universe needed to run on. But here? Even a little soul like his generated a clean, pure energy that could not only be used to cultivate, but would actively leak out into the environs, fueling the growth of the entire universe.

For a cultivation world, where usually people sucked up the energy like leeches and the universe could only sustain so many people, it was clever, innovative innovation. Fortunately, it was also fast enough to sustain him for now, so he didn't have to waste too much time cultivating. With a groan he stood, dust and dead leaves falling from his shoulders and head and bones popping as he stretched. It'd take a bit of time to reach the Sacral Chakra level of cultivation – an entire two realms above where he'd been at the Root – but now he was ready to start his search. There was no rush either, though, and with a small smile he started off toward where he knew a town was, and his ticket off this planet.

First thing's first, though; he had to go investigate the local religion. A world this young? The religion might not only be real, but fairly accurate. Mortals had a tendency to intentionally misinterpret things so it better fit their own ambitions and feelings, but with cultivators living so long, the Immortal population might even remember the age of creation.

I wonder if this place has learned of their Shadow yet. He mused, scratching his chin. …nah, I doubt it. Some of the older universes had yet to even handle those. The demon lord was a popular trope in fiction; some Shadows could never truly die, and this realm was still very young. He had to keep reminding himself of that.

The walk to town was a relatively short one, all things considered. Two days of constant walking, manageable in large part due to his newly-enhanced cultivation, but when he got there it was nothing like he remembered.

People ran about inside the tall walls, twice the number of guards he was used to manned the walls, while cultivators hurtled trough the skies above. Most notably, however, was the giant fucking airship floating above the city center, easily a mile long and half as wide. Power radiated from the wooden craft, stone formation circles fixed to the hull, while giant solar sails were furled up on the masts. The symbol of the Celestial Palace, an inverted mountain floating above a lake, flew on numerous flags, the towering power of at least three Immortals blasting from the thing.

This might work out for me. If anyone will know something about Sylvia, it's going to be the Celestial Empire. Maybe she'd even the Empress herself? She did say it shouldn't take me too long to figure out. Then The Rival's brow furrowed. He recognized this design. Where had he seen it last…? He wracked his memories, standing atop the hill long enough it started to become awkward, when suddenly it came to him. He'd been feeling something familiar here for a long time, he just hadn't been able to put his finger on it. A signature. An acquaintance.

"What the hell is the Mad Scientist doing here?!"

***

I slapped my forehead with the palm of my hand as the Rival skipped past one of my temples, one with a painting of me in both my male and female forms that was close enough to my actual likeness it couldn't be mistaken for anyone else, in favor of boarding a military vessel bound for the outer edges of the galaxy. He'd even enlisted, just so he could get aboard, and planned to desert as soon as he got the opportunity!

"This moron," I grumbled. "He hasn't changed one bit." Still as scatter-brained and flighty as ever. Well, at least that was part of what made him fun.

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