Carl arrived back to his childhood home a few hours later, his face was white-washed and just as grief-stricken as they had expected.

"I know this isn't a good question, but how did it go?" Klaire asked as she and Kyubi wrapped their arms around him.

"She spoke to me eventually, asked if I could do anything to bring them back, I told her honestly I could do the same as I'm doing for the others and she told me to drop dead with them.

Then she burst into tears and asked me to kill her, then refused to go to the faction and then she walked off into the darkness.

I have no right to force her to live, I couldn't help but feel like stopping her would be playing god, so I created something to keep an eye on her and released it to her."

"Well, I suppose at least she let you do that." Kyubi said, before looking at him with slightly more than empathy. "Unfortunately, Carl. You have some explaining to do. Tell us about these imaginary friends of yours."

"Imaginary friends? Oh, wait, is this something Joseph said? He tried gaslighting me and Mum into thinking I had them back in the day, it was pretty out of character for him but he was a kid too I guess."

"Carl, the names he heard you mumbling. Morpheus, Amaterasu and the fallen king, which in case you didn't know is a moker used by Samael. Every time it happened, you had that book in your hands, which we now know was penned by the son of Change and Creation and brother to the fundamental laws."

"Even if it was in fact Ishtar that wrote the actual book, he was the one that wrote the fabrication, he may have asked Mind to embed something in its pages..."

"Have you warned Sis?" Carl asked with growing worry.

"No, we didn't want to do that without your opinion. We were worried that if we did, it might make her feel like she has no chance of learning about her origins, we tasked Tiamutael and the immortals to watch her passively."

"Right, yeah, good call. I'll send her a heads up, but I'm not gonna stop her from reading it. Whatever... Hm. I think I need to tell Nergal as well, I said something I don't quite understand to him as well, let's stay here today and get our sense of time back and head to his realm tomorrow."

"What did you say to him?" Kyubi asked curiously.

"Sorry, I don't want to keep secrets, but he was pretty upset I knew about it and I'd rather not spread secrets I don't understand." Kyubi started pouting as her curiosity was teased, but they all agreed it was the right call.

"Well, if you don't mind, I think I'm going to go and explore. I want to explore this rock that everyone's been fighting over." Gillian said before jumping up and asking if anyone's coming with him.

"If you don't mind, could you come with me first? I want to apologise to everyone here, we likely worried them when we were here last." Grenda admitted.

"Sure, anyone else?"

"Not me, I'm going to be going somewhere else."

"Blanc's as mysterious as ever." Gillian sighed, a little disappointed he still needed to fight Blanc for any details on anything.

"I'm going to go to a place Carl told me about while we were training with Lillim, Bluecap Keep. My kind are rare, but full bluecaps are actually pretty common and yet I never met one. I want to correct that."

"I'm going to, I doubt you know this Gil, but Earth-born lycans actually owe the blucaps a pretty sizable debt. They let us share their mines when the cullings got bad and we needed to regroup and repopulate."

"Nope, didn't. Tell 'em I said thanks." With that, Gillian left, leaving Carl to ask the others if anyone knew exactly what he was looking for.

"Don't be dumb, he's looking for something to make you feel like this wasn't for nothing." Kyubi answered with the addition of tickling the end of his nose with the end of a tail.

"I'd rather you guys didn't get involved with that. Chances are it's a goose chase I've set myself on, best case scenario will put whoever finds it in danger, worst case scenario and I lose my ability to care about humanity that much sooner."

"For what it's worth, I think I do remember Tsukuyomi saying there was something we weren't supposed to do on earth, but it's not very clear in my head. I think I might have asked him to erase exactly what because I got tempted to do it."

"Wow, Celestial fox impulse control is terrible." Scylla teased as she stood to leave with Blanc and Sophie.

"Hey! Terrible implies we have any at all and I assure you, we most certainly did not." Kyubi huffed with enough melodramatic indignation that the others couldn't mistake it for genuine.

"What are you three going to do?" Sophie asked as they headed out.

"We're going to get all the gossip we can about Carl, see if any of it seems enlightening. Carl's going to stay away, need to be sure they aren't going to clam up just because he's there."

"I guess I'll hang back and read a book and prepare dinner when it's ready."

"Righto, I might go for a run in fox-form when we're done, want to join me if I do?"

"Sorry Kyubi, I have had quite enough of running the last few weeks, I want to be lazy for the day..."

With that, Carl found himself alone, the book he had in mind was the one Jupiterran had seen to it that he received. The issue was that he had felt the eyes of just about every immortal he knew on him since they left and he didn't want to do anything suspicious.

With that in mind, Carl decided to sacrifice his dignity and look as suspicious as possible in the most obscene way possible and lay on the bed and, after looking around a bit, withdrew the book covering it with a sensory blocking aura.

He donned a depraved grin as his only cover and began reading, holding the expression like his life depended on it.

Carl, I hope you are able to read this and are able to find something inside that helps you administer appropriate action. I have been under constant watch since your first meeting, subtlety isn't my compatriots' strong suit however.

I want to make this clear, I do not agree with you unconditionally on anything, but I can no longer tell myself that we are anything but a blight on humanity.

I don't have the time to tell you everything, but after much thought, I have decided the best story to tell you is the story of the anniversary. That was when everything changed, when our respective factions became unified and we all swore allegiance to Gilgamesh.

It started nine-hundred years ago, on the hundredth anniversary of incursion day and the day the system was installed into almost every being in existence.

We had all amassed our own armies at that point, I was still relatively young however and had lost to several immortals, which is why when I received a mysterious summons by someone calling themself "The Hero-King Of Mankind", I was happy to see someone with more hubris than myself.

I left my right-hand in charge, a man that had been at my side through almost every horrific battle I had fought, and answered the call.

As you can probably guess, it was Gilgamesh.

We arrived there and almost everyone's reputation preceded them, the nine human warlord as those of us aside from Sol were known.He was there too, but he was unknown for the most part, though we had all heard the rumours of the walking sun.

The moment I arrived, I knew my place in the hierarchy, I was barely fifth in terms of physical combat and as I lacked a separate soul from, I was dead last in every other aspect apart from intelligence and charisma.

We had all for the most part crossed paths with at least one of the others, but most of those interactions were short-lived and blood, the only one I actually respected there was Marsian.

Gilgamesh didn't ask for allegiance however, he demanded it, his superiority was clear. In the end he wasn't asking us there to talk or debate, he was laying out an ultimatum and the choices were to obey and live or deny and die.

He didn't even wait for us to actually agree, he just started to tell us the structure of our new alliance.

We didn't have our current aliases back then, but that was when we received them and I hope you appreciate the significance of this gesture....

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