The Big Meow

“Yet suddenly,” Rhiow said, “here you are, the greatest power in the Worlds save Iau – as you would have us believe – holding up your side of this little chat and not bringing your power to bear on me. Because you need me for something. Because you suddenly find that the rats you turned loose to gnaw at the roots of the Tree for your amusement are instead about to bring it down on top of you. Because the game you set out to play has without warning turned far more serious than you ever dreamed. And now only through the willing cooperation of mere mortals, paltry things made of matter with souls stuck inside, can you keep the worlds that have been your playground from being destroyed, and yourself and your Mother and all your sisters and all the hosts of Heaven from being devoured by something as much more powerful than you as you are more powerful than us.”

A long, long silence then.

“So I’ll take that as a yes,” Rhiow said, and went back to washing.

The quiet all around her was most ominous. But Rhiow kept washing. She was not the most passionate player of hauissh, but she had the wit to know when she was sitting in the best position she’d ever held in such a game, and she intended to enjoy it.

She put her leg down and paused for a moment as if considering where to wash next. “In any case,” Rhiow said, “I wouldn’t want you to be overly concerned. I think Urruah and the boys have our solution sorted out now.”

Their little plan? Amusing. Even satisfactory, on the merely physical level. But it won’t work without Me.

Rhiow was instantly intent on not revealing the effect this declaration was having on her, particularly the word “satisfactory”. “You would say that, of course,” Rhiow said, “to save face, if nothing else.” She regarded one forepaw and started licking it idly.

The Outside One has managed minor breaches into our realities before, sa’Rraah said. But these have always been merely local: one universe or another. And always it has been driven out, and the breaches sealed. Eventually the Outside One came to know that only with the active assistance of one of the resident Powers could It break through right across the sheaf of sheaves of worlds, and make the breakthrough permanent. Even so It would have to put forth all Its strength. For if It failed, It would never be able to make such an attempt again, and must remain confined to the Outermost Darkness forever.

Rhiow started washing the side of one paw, then scrubbed behind her ear with it. So?

So even as junior a wizard as you should understand that there’s a spiritual component to this problem, said the Lone Power. It can’t be omitted from any potential solution. The One Outside, insofar as such a vast unliving negation can be said to want anything, wants to be a god. As part of our agreement… I suggested that It could be shown how. Therefore, as It attempts Its incursion, it expects me to confer upon It…

“Godhead?” Rhiow said. “Oh, come on!”

I had some training for the position, sa’Rraah said. Our worlds’ cosmogony had a different prospective direction once, before our Royal Dam overreacted to something I invented.

Rhiow rolled her eyes.

But I was being trained as a possible replacement for Her, the Lone One said, in case the rigors of running a universe should require such. Didn’t you know?

Rhiow thought this sounded very like a lie, and remembered who’d also come up with that invention. “I didn’t,” she said. “But what you’re suggesting is that the One Outside expects this gift from you… and you have in mind to give It something else entirely. The opposite of what it’s expecting.”

Whatever. I’ve certainly convinced It that It needs to become physical before It can be a god. The Lone One shrugged her tail. That’s such a popular trope, after all.

“And It swallowed that?”

We’ll soon find out.

“That’s a pretty glib answer for such a tall order,” Rhiow said. “Maybe the tallest order anyone’s ever seen. And what proof can you offer me that what you say is true?”

None that your tiny mortal brain could hold, the Lone One said. But even you have to admit that what faces us now is worse by far than anything I might inflict on the worlds by Myself. Yes, My agenda remains. Yet if this course of events goes forward, there’s an end to agendas for all of us, and for all time. If I play hauissh with the Queen and the worlds to their detriment, well, that’s My business. But what’s trying to happen now would end all games in the same darkness. There’s no profit in that for Me.

It all sounded very smooth and too-plausible until the last word. And there some claw of certainty snagged Rhiow’s ear and held her still a moment That selfishness, that certainty that the world could be drowned in darkness unless it suited Her plan, rang absolutely true – regardless of how much sa’Rraah mostly disliked truth, her divine Dam’s invention.