It doesn't take long to clear the dungeon. Two small elementals of each basic type, two Iron Cobras, one Homunculus, and we're done. I py around with Attuned Mysticism, and capture both of the Iron Cobras; they're mindless creatures, and so the Command Undead spell puts them under my control easily. My summons are better, but I may use them eventually… or not. Whatever. The little girl only wakes up when we're done… I switch to female form, feed her, and she slips slowly back to slumbering.

  It's only after I get my baby fix and hand her back over to my servants that it occurs to me that having sustenance ready as soon as I swap means I'm still making milk when male; how does that work?

  We head back to town (which doesn't take long), and settle in for our lives of leisure (which in my case, includes carrying a baby around most of the time, so I can feed her when she needs it). When evening comes, and I'm in the library, Last Shadow suddenly reforms next to me… I guess we hit the twenty-four hour mark. I look at her and contact her mind, “How does it feel to be alive again?”

  She blinks at me a few times, “I feel… foggy? Like I can't think well?”

  I consider a moment, “Can you still fly without your wings?”

  She hops up a little and falls back down, “No…” her feathers ruffle a bit, and she looks around… she's worried.

  I nod, “I think you got used to the extra effects from my magic, and lost that when you died. Here…” I take the time to repce it all, including her armor. “How's that?”

  She considers, “Much better, thank you.”

  “You're Wel…”

  “I want your chicks,” she announces.

  That… that gives me pause, “Umm, what?”

  “Just what I said,” she tilts her head at me, “I want you to be my mate. You have gifted me horseflesh, you strengthen me mightily, are clearly very fit, and have returned me from the clutches of The Devourer.” She pauses, “He was a lot nicer than I was led to believe. Still. I have met no gryphon more suitable than you. Let's nest and make chicks.”

  I can Shapechange to fit, and there is a spell for the compatibility problem, but… “You are aware I won't bind to you in the same way you will bind to me. I will always be tempted by others, and it's very likely I'll….”

  “I'm only going to be upset if they're gryphons,” my Companion informs me, “You can have fun with the lesser species you keep around as pets, I don't care about them. I want your chicks.”

  But… but… “I'm not ready to be a…”

  She giggles in my head, “A father? A mother? And what's that you're holding, hmm?”

  I look down at the child in my arms, and back up at the feathered woman in front of me, “A wonderful little girl whose mother doesn't want her. I'm keeping the little treasure alive until my aunt gets here so I can hire her to run the orphanage I'll build for them.”

  “Do you hear yourself?” She pauses briefly as I blink amd pull my head back, “‘A wonderful little girl’ and ‘the little treasure’. You are confident enough in your resources that you're pnning to support… how many other people's children?”

  I fill the silence she creates after asking, “I expect a dozen to start….”

  “A dozen children… to start… and you are in a state where that's no big deal,” she audibly taps a talon on the ground… which is impressive, given the thick carpet in the way… I'm so gd Mom's stuff is self-repairing… “and you're already caring for one yourself. Can you really say you're not ready?”

  I pause a good long while, “I suppose I can't…” but… am I ready to ‘marry’, even if she's fine with me sleeping around? “This isn't a decision I should make quickly, however. I need to think about it, to feel my way through it.”

  She looks me in the eyes for a moment… hers are much bigger than mine… “Fine. I can wait.” She turns around, walks a short distance, and curls up in a corner of the room like a cat.

  The baby wakes up and starts cooing, I switch to my female form to feed her, pulling down my shirt. I smile as the little dy starts sucking: Nothing like it. I just smile at her while she nurses, and switch sides when she starts to fuss at me, which calms her back down… she goes right back to sleep when she's done. Such a wonderful baby.

  Frowning, I cover up, and slowly stand carrying her as I go. A name… she really needs a name. I should ask her mother. Last Shadow follows me out of the room, and when I step outside into the evening air, I hear a man licking his lips… right… I switch back. Thinking, I take a moment to order a new exotic military saddle and saddlebags for Last Shadow from my crafting minions, and ‘look’ around for Richard. I wasn't joking when I told Roger it was hard to spot a specific individual… ah, there she is… still in the mess hall. Okay….I walk that way, taking care to move slowly so as not to disturb the child.

  The sudden appearance of an invisible high intelligence humanoid just two hundred feet away on my mental radar abruptly changes my priorities: I put the baby on Last Shadow and shout, “Keep her safe!” as I use Share Spells to Dimension Door both of them out of there.

  Just in time, too, as the stupid evil gnome casts a modified spell, and a yellowish-green cloud of vapor suddenly surrounds me… I recognize it as a Cloudkill spell, and note that it's boosted with Mythic power… just before the lights go out.

  I come to in a small room with thresh on the floor, oil mps, a polished oak desk, a few leather chairs, a polished wood bookshelf full of nicely bound books, marble walls… and a man in a bright red suit on the other side of the desk. He’s got bright red hair that is moving like it is fire, and casting the shadows to match. Ebony horns grow out of his forehead and curl back into a seemingly endless spirals. Skin bck as coal frames the twin voids that are his eyes.

  I've been to the family dinners, “Hi Uncle C. I'm guessing that I'm….”

  “Dead, yes.” His voice sounds like wind in a graveyard, “Good job getting the baby away.”

  Hmm. “I'm actually talking to you, so I'm guessing I'm not going to general processing?”

  “No,” My uncle chuckles, “You'll be back on your feet in a few days, so I don't need to bother handing you over to Judgement. Well, unless you're done with living. If you want, I can take you…”

  “No thank you,” I interrupt, “but between my Mythic ranks and my Mythic ring, I would have thought it would be just a day.”

  “Your ability to make yourself Mythic doesn't work while you're dead,” Death shakes his head slowly, “so while you are dead, the ring doesn't work and you don't have the standard Mythic Immortality.” He pauses, “but your regur ‘Rejuvenation’ that you've had since first level works fine. So you'll be up and about in…” he considers, “...six days. A little above the expected average of five from that ability.”

  “So I…” I gnce around the tiny room, “...’get’ to hang out here with you for nearly a week?”

  “No…” Death chuckles, “Time doesn't pass while I'm talking to someone here. When we're done you'll simply wake up in your repcement body where you fell.”

  I consider that a moment, “Which means you wanted to talk to me… and to Last Shadow earlier.”

  “Yes… I can speak slightly more freely here.” Death takes a breath, “That gnome who's hunting you: He needs to be stopped. Ideally I want to collect him without his normal paths for legal release, but that's negotiable. He keeps three Clones avaible at all times, and usually has four….”

  He fetches one of his books off the shelf, and starts reading it to me. The amount of information that deities have is CHEATING. Seriously, my uncle gives me the guy's home address, all four of his backup hideouts, where he stashes his backup gear, the name of every spell in his book, his normal daily loadout, his ‘combat day’ loadout, every item in his equipment list, all his skills, his ‘css levels’, his Mythic selections, the full names of everyone who works for him, their full builds, detailed descriptions of them, the golems he has guarding his hideouts, the changes he's made since Mom copied her maps into my library… everything that maybe, might, possibly come up in pnning to assassinate the guy.

  Then we go over it again.

  And again.

  And again.

  Then he quizzes me on it.

  I notice a few things in my miniature eternity in a tiny cssroom. Like… I can't see the page The Comforter is reading to me. The book is open, in pin view, in good light from my uncle's hair and the mps in the room… and I can't see the page. It's not bnk. It's not bck. It's not fuzzy. I just can't see it.

  When my uncle pauses to take a breath, I interrupt him, “Ah… why can't I…” I don't even know how I want to phrase the question. It's just that bizzare.

  He follows my eyes, “Ah, my books.” He pauses, “They're from Dad. They contain all the knowledge of this Fractal, and a lot from the neighboring Fractals. You're my champion, and I don't mind you seeing the pages I'm referencing… but they're a gift from Dad to me, and your Gift doesn't include access to them… which is unfortunate, as it would make this far simpler. So you can see I have the books, but you can't see anything contained within. No, it doesn't make sense, it simply is. Anyway…”

  “What about the door behind me?” I really want a break….

  Death stares at me with his twin voids of nothing for a bit, “It's this office, with a slightly higher ceiling, and the walls spaced a little further apart. It has the same door, which leads to this office, but again slightly rger… which in turn has the same door, which leads to this office, rger still.”

  What? “So… you have an infinite series of progressively rger offices?” That's weird.

  Death contemptes me for a bit, “No, on both counts. It's just the one office, and there's a point at which it switches to going outside and acts like a normal door.” He pauses, “I haven't stepped through.”

  Wait… something like this was in one of the csses Mom had me take… “Sounds like a setup for Graded Exposure Therapy.”

  As I crinkle my forehead, the demonic-looking person in front of me stands up, walks to his bookshelf, and grabs a book with a cwed hand. He opens it to another page I can't see, then nods slowly, “...that's because it is. Huh. Your mother calls it agoraphobia… and Dad was pnning ahead like always, setting me up to tackle it if I choose.” He considers for a while, “But you're asking because you need a break, aren't you?”

  No point in lying, “...Yes.”

  “Hmm. Well, I can't exactly let you outside for a stroll, but…” he goes back to his desk and pulls out a small ebony box with one of the Holy symbols for Aunt Luck on the top, “...here…” he speaks a word, and the box grows into a small table with two chairs and a deck of cards, “This was a gift from your mother. We can py a game or two….”

  We py a few games, and we go over all the stuff I missed on the quiz. Again. And then we repeat it until the third time I've recited the entire set of data fwlessly… because Death wants this guy dead, and apparently we quite literally have all the time in the world to pn things out….