Even walking, I could still not feel the ship beneath my feet. I wasn't falling overboard, which was for the best, but I didn’t know how to feel about the implications. That either all of this was happening inside my head, or I’d stepped into some magical realm between realms. I was also starting to realize how uncomfortable it was to hold a duplicate of my own hand. My skin was soft, warm … but that it was my own still made me a bit sick to my stomach.

I’d only been able to take Lilly of the Fog’s hand because she wasn’t entirely me. Just ... similar enough that I knew what comforting gestures she needed. However, it was easy to lose this perspective as I walked next to my reflection.

“Why do we feel this?” Lilly of the Fog asked as we walked.

I felt a guilty heat fill my body. Immediately, I tried to pretend that I had no idea what she could be referring to. “What do you mean?”

Lilly of the Fog turned to face me, her sad eyes seeming to pierce into my soul. She knew; of course she knew. She was feeling the exact same thing.

After all this time … why did it still feel so dangerous to treat myself with any amount of kindness? To look at myself with anything but loathing?

I could only shake my head and reply, “I thought I’d been making progress. I guess I didn’t realize ... how bad it still was.”

Lilly of the Fog seemed to mull on the words. After a while, she said, “It reminds me of something. Do you remember that enby we dated? Who said they would happily sleep with their clone if they ever got the chance?”

We had thought that we’d be safe with another person who was queer. Even with other friends we’d made through the community.

We’d been … naïve.

I shook my head. “At least we no longer make plans to battle any hypothetical duplicates of ourselves to the death. So maybe we're a little better than we used to be.”

The quiet went on a while longer.

“Why aren't you mad at me?” the Lilly of the Fog asked, like she'd been secretly waiting for me to beat her senseless since I'd arrived.

I thought about the question ... not entirely sure myself. When I'd first arrived, when I'd kicked the ocean, I'd been so angry. By this point, however, all those emotions were entirely gone. All I could say was, “I guess this doesn't feel ... like a punishment anymore.”

Lilly of the Fog stopped, seeming to work up some amount of courage. Finally, she said, “It was me."

I stopped to look at her, confused.

"Not the bigger World," the Lilly of the Fog clarified. "The me inside of it. I'm the one who did this to you."

Immediately, the vision Qasven had shown me sprang to mind. "Maybe ... you knew Zolreya would leave us?" If my soul had been trying to save me from anything, I couldn't imagine anything else as important.

However, the Lilly of the Fog shook her head. "I ... didn’t know Zolreya was planning to leave. I didn't know that Namali or Daava or Aamalyn would need to go into the storm with us. I just ... needed help. So the storm came ... and Kavtagro found you for me.”

I nodded, trying to test and feel if this knowledge was enough to make me feel any of my previous anger. Maybe ... maybe I just didn't know how to be angry at something like this. Much like Xania capturing me, it now just felt like ... something unfortunate that had happened.

"It was easier to be mad at the god I imagined was meddling with my life," I said, the only words that seemed to make any sense to me. “Not someone who needed me. And ... either way ... Zolreya’s worth it.”

Instead of just accepting this, however, the Lilly of the Fog then asked, “But ... what about Xania? We care about her too, don't we? We're just going to leave her?”

My breath caught in my throat.

"And our new teacher, Qasven?" the Lilly of the Fog asked, shaking her head like none of made sense to her. "She's giving us a second chance to be a real sorcerer! And Raathgur? And Tab?"

By this point, the Lilly of the Fog was spiraling, and it was hard to stay empathetic enough not to get sucked in. She then looked down at herself and said, "What about us being pirates?"

"Pirates?" I said, forcing a laugh. "We stole like ... one thing before we broke just about all the important bones in our body. We're not even good at it!"

"But it ... feels right," Lilly of the Fog said, her unbridled sincerity difficult for me to handle. "For the first time, we're doing something that we love. We feel good being pirates. Even if it's silly."

It was getting to be too much for me to handle, suddenly confronted with all the questions I'd been avoiding. Ever since that moment in the circle-dragon camp. When everything had started to feel okay again. My tone sharper than I meant, I blurted out, "Can we just deal with whatever's here? Before we worry about all of that?"

The Lilly of the Fog didn't reply.

Fuck.

When I could finally make myself look at her, I noticed tears streaming down her face. But she wasn't just fragile, of course not. Any version of me would have been pissed too.

Lilly of the Fog finally turned on me and said, "Just go. I can deal with this by myself!" With a quick jerk, she took her hand from my grasp and ran into the mist. By the time my brain had caught up, she was gone.

I tried running after her; but it was no use.

“How did you manage to bum the World out?”

Startled, I jumped and turned around.

Leaning against some invisible surface was a familiar goat-god. Kavtagro. He had his bong in hand–taking heavy hits from the Mist itself.

My anger rose just at the sight of him. “Fuck off, Kavtagro!”

Kavtagro folded his arm obstinately. “You can't fool me, Lilly. Your insults and blasphemy are way more enthusiastic when you think I’m not listening. But when I actually show up, it’s like you don’t try just to hurt my feelings! Like you want to pretend you're not my BFF!”

I could only seethe in response. Unable to fathom why the literal god of this world couldn't understand that I didn't like him. Was it possible for a deity to have such little awareness?

Kavtagro sighed. “Nevermind all that for now. Apparently, the World wants you to go home now.” He extended the end of the bong toward me, like a congratulatory gesture, and said, “Your little argument with her aside, you've already done your little journey! Full of exploration and growth, where you learned it's okay to just be human.”

I looked down at the ground.

Kavtagro blinked a few times. "You ... did learn the right lesson, didn't you? At the first island ... you realized that you were also hiding your emotions, just like they were? Then you helped them fix all their silly alpha posturing through the power of free love and kinky sex? Right?"

"Yeah ..." I lied.

Kavtagro furrowed his brow, no longer seeming convinced.

"Okay, fine!" I said, throwing up my hands. "But you didn't see it! That President Derk guy was a huge douchebag! And I don't hide my emotions to make myself seem cooler! They're just ... a lot. I mean, you saw her!" I gestured out at the Mist to wherever the Lilly of the Fog had gone.

"Derk was supposed to be a lesson for a year from now, when-" Kavtagro stopped, shook his head, and tried to focus. "Fine, the first island was a bust. But surely, you met Hannah, as intended. The two of you hit it off, she made you feel human again. And you convinced her to join you on an adventure of romantic pervitude here?"

I looked down again, replying barely above a whisper, "She ... told me to never speak to humans again." I raised a finger, remembering something that might helo. "But, I did bring someone with me! A woman named Tab? From the first island?"

"You ditched Hannah but brought someone from the first ..." Kavtagro stopped, his face dropping into a sort of horrifyingly mundane despair. He slid down the invisible post he's been leaning against, until he was sitting on the ground. "And on the island of the circle-dragons ..."

I swallowed uncomfortably, already beginning to see the pattern. "I ... started a revolt. And ... brought the circle-dragons with me too."

Kavtagro nodded hopelessly, as if this were now par for the course. "And ... I'm just going to assume you didn't free the Guggles on the island of the minotaurs?""

"I ... blasted them with my magic ..." I replied, feeling the true extent of how bad it all seemed, in retrospect. But, of course, that wasn't all I'd done. "Then I pulled a pirate raid against Hask Farms. So ... they might not be very happy with sorcerers for a while. Or the circle dragons." I put my hands through my hair, like it was only now hitting me. "So it looks like the circle-dragons attacked the minotaurs. So ... they might go to war."

Kavtagro twirled his hand, as if it were the best he could do to get me to tell him the rest of the things he didn't want to hear.

"And I fell in love with the minotaur who branded me," I said, biting my bottom lip.

Kavtagro placed his bong to the side and gradually keeled over until he was lying in the fetal position. From there, he let out a pitiful groan. "I told the World that this was a bad idea."

I nodded a few times, unsure what I could possibly say. The best I could manage was, "I tried too ... to tell you ... when this all started."

"Oh yes," Kavtagro said with a few meager nods, the truth in this statement only seeming to make the matter worse for him. "You most definitely did." It was like ... he wasn't even angry ... not even disappointed ... only horrified.

I was starting to feel a little bad for him.

Kavtagro managed to look at me again with a sort of hopeless stare. "Can I at least convince you to let me just teleport you home? Before anything worse happens?"

I swallowed and took a deep breath. "Well, if I'm still allowed the whole free will thing, I'd kind of like to stay on the path I'm on. The Lilly of the Fog ... she said she brought me here because she needed my help?"

"Of course," Kavtagro said. "I had a plan for all of it. Fun life lessons, kinky adventures, an arc that would have made it easy for you to settle this last bit by the time you arrived here. It would have all been so perfect."

"Sorry," I said, pressing my thumbs together.

With a snap of his fingers, Kavtagro opened a black portal next to me. "That'll take you back to ... wherever the World ran off to." He took a deep breath. "Before you go, will you be a pal and bring me my bong. Fixing all this is going to be oh so very stressful."

I looked down to see that it had barely fallen out of his reach. Still, I knelt to put it back into his hand, like it as the least I could do. "I'll ... think up some really nasty things so say about you for when I get home. Okay? Bestie?"

Kavtagro gave his best effort at a smile before bringing the device back to his lips.

Great.

Not only had I bummed out a second god, I know longer even knew if I had the emotional tools I needed to face whatever was ahead. Still, there was nothing left to do except step into the black portal.

The whiteness peeling away like grift-wrap containing something ... decidedly darker ... trapped inside.

-O-

When I emerged, it was on an asphalt street in the middle on nowhere. Pines looming overhead, sand blowing at my feet. I ... knew this place. Except for the shadows that fell over everything like the fog from before. And the blood-red moon hanging in the sky like a rotten fruit that hadn't yet fallen from the tress. The Lilly of the Fog was there too, staring up at a hill I could not yet force myself to face.

It’d been that way ever since the last day I’d stood on this street. And I let out an involuntary shudder.

When the Lilly of the Fog noticed me, she let her head hang and whispered, “I’m sorry for leaving. It’s just … hard … being in this form. My body hurts, there’s a pressure in my head, and everything feels so … sharp.”

I nodded, knowing exactly what she meant. “Let’s just … get this the fuck over with. So you can get back to being a pervy planet, and I can get back to being the melodramatic one.”

The Lilly of the Fog offered her hand, looking at me hopefully.

I took it ... even if I wasn't quite ready to move forward.

However, the Lilly of the Fog did not seem in any particularly hurry, either. “We left something behind ... something important. It ... hasn't stopped screaming since we fled.”

“Left something?” I asked, the memory seeming to permeate a gloom through even my bones. "We left everything, except for what was in our suitcase."

It took me a moment to realize what she meant. And even then, I didn't want to admit it aloud. The continued screams of utter terror and rage deep within.

I'd felt it ... nearly slip out of this place ... for only a moment. Twice now. Once when I'd stood over President Derk. The second time was when the guggles that had attacked me and Xania. Millions of tiny screams—caged in a little cell in the back of my head. The ones I kept caged with what now felt like a bubble.

This place.

“I ... don't know how you're not running away,” Lilly of the Fog said beneath shallow breaths. “Everything frightens me when I am us. Sleep … solitude … companionship. But especially this place. I am a god, and yet-”

I squeezed her hand and shook my head. “Hey, you're here too.”

The Lilly of the Fog shook her head, clearly indicating that ... she didn't know how long she could say.

I clenched my jaw, having to force myself not to become agitated like I had before. "This is why we are so harsh with ourself. Why we can't give ourselves an inch of compassion. This place would have killed us for it."

The Lilly of the Fog's eyes widened a little more. "If we are too soft here ... we die.” She let out a gasp, the truth in those words somehow even more chilling than the wind around us.

I didn't like that those had been our options ... more times than I knew how to count. And especially here, on this street, where we almost hadn't made it out.

Lilly of the Fog paused and let several more tears fall down her face. “I think … I think I know what we have to do to get out of here.”

A shadow had fallen over her face.