No matter how awkward Val would feel around Tavras, she would have to stand in front of him again. Within the next few days, her head tilted down towards the sand. "Hi Tavras," she said down to his shoes.

"Hey Val. I'm sorry for the delay, especially after… what we had talked about that night."

Her eyes peeled up enough to see that he also shifted away from her awkwardly. One hand rubbed at the back of his neck.

Since the two of them would head to the Summit, they said their farewells to Iharu and Fang.

"It was nice having the chance to meet you, Val," Fang said. "We only have each other and Tavras as family, so it will be nice considering you officially our brother, secretly our sister."

"You're better than our actual half-brother," Iharu spit.

Not wanting to delve into family drama, Val smiled and nodded. "I think that I will appreciate having you as my sister and brother very much." The memory of Rosamer flitted to mind, but she pushed him away just like she was supposed to.

Their hands stuck up in a wave goodbye. Iharu and Fangarus departed on one of Tavras's sea serpents back to their Preserve.

A second, larger one awaited Val, Foofy, and Tavras to take them to the Summit. Silently, they all boarded onto the sea serpent's head. Water swirled around them, encompassing them, as Tavras created a bubble of air for the sea serpent to swim at its full speed.

More so than the first time, Foofy seemed to enjoy himself as he gazed at the fish passing by them. He stood on all fours and tried to reach out a paw to his fishy friends.

"Tell him no," Tavras said.

"No, Foofy. Off!" Val tugged on his collar and tried to hold him back, but suddenly she had to struggle against the strength of a divine beast.

Since Foofy could only obey commands that he understood, she had to wrestle with him. He was now stronger than her, just as one would expect a male Dobie to outclass a thin, young woman.

Other than that interaction regarding Foofy, they said nothing else to each other.

"You are really quiet," Tavras said. "I had expected you to be happy to see me again, or at least angry."

"Oh, um." If not for the way that she had seen Tavras in an intimate context a few days ago--or more accurately, around a hundred years ago--she would have been extremely upset with him. Despite the fact that Tavras could not read minds, or at least not that she knew of, Val still put up her Mind Shield. She did not want him discovering that she had learned of his past relationship by spying on his time with Evalaite.

How creepy was that? With Insights of the Past, Val could spy into the romantic relationships of literally anyone in the history of the world. If she had any voyeuristic inclinations, she could watch real people like bad porn. The fact that this application had never dawned on her when she had developed the skill now made Val feel uneasy about her own ability.

"I really am sorry for the bad timing," Tavras said with a sigh. Since coming back from Gon, he seemed weary. "I would have let you know, myself, that I needed to leave, but I thought it would be even worse to call on you in the middle of the night after you had already gone back to bed."

"No, it was totally understandable. I'm sorry that the mortals had made such a mess for you to clean up." It must have been exhausting for Tavras to deal with the oil spill in his ocean.

"Yeah."

A new silence persisted between them.

Eventually, Tavras commanded the sea serpent upward. They breached the surface. As their bubble fell away to the open air, some spray of water splattered over them.

A massive island spanned in front of them so that water could not be seen on either side. It looked like they approached a landmass large enough to be its own country. The land rose up in hills and jagged rocks. At the very center of the island, a snowy mountain peak reached up to the sky. Blocky lines were evident across the cliff face like the appearance of a distant metropolis.

"Welcome to the Summit of Ascension." Tavras said. "The mountain at the center has a dumb name: Mount Ascent. That is the capital where Suvier the God Supreme sits in his Fortress constructed by his walls. We will not be going there. Newly arrived demigods are expected in the town of--you guessed it: New Gate."

Val tittered a laugh. While Tavras may talk about these places in disdain, she appreciated the simplicity of their names.

"Remember to not giggle like that. If you cannot sound more like a man when you laugh, refrain from laughing at all."

Her eyes rolled around in her head. "Ah, yes. I will be a stoic man." Val lowered her voice down to the more masculine variant that she had practiced.

"Do you remember your age?"

"Sixteen," Val said. Her actual age was eighteen, but she would pass off better as a sixteen-year-old teenage boy versus an eighteen-year-old young man.

"Good."

"Introduce yourself to me."

"My name is Valentine," she said, pronouncing her name in the masculine way. "Just call me Val."

"Keep your Mental Shield up at all times when we are around others. No one can get any hint that you might be a girl from your appearance, behavior, or thoughts."

Val nodded, a little more firmly than she would have if she could just be herself as a girl. "I'm ready."

The sea serpent dropped them off as close to shore as they could go. Once they had arrived on the grainy beach and Tavras dried them off, he turned his back to the land ahead of them. Tavras stared off to sea. His lips moved to speak but another language came out, syllables fluid like the babbling of water.

Once he finished, Val asked, "Is that the Water Tongue?"

"Yes. I was just telling the sea that I will miss it." Tavras tilted his head back to let his hair catch in the breeze. His eyes closed against the sunlight. "I hate going inland, the Summit most of all. I would rather be stranded in a desert without an oasis that sees no rains. I hate civilization. I hate dealing with people. After a couple of thousand years, you have seen the same struggles, the same stories over and over again. People on the Summit are the worst of all, squabbling with each other as if any of this matters. Some think that they know things after a handful of mortal lifespans." Tavras laughed curtly. "All of them are immature children to me, yet I have been bound to the most insolent rascal of them all: Suvier."

Val listened to him thoughtfully. What she must do to win his affections could not be more evident: free him whatever restrictions that Suvier had placed upon him. Now, it made sense what Tavras could not do. As one of the most powerful gods in the world, he could not take down the single most powerful god in existence.

She felt her cheeks lose color. Why had Tavras even bothered teasing her and making that deal with her, as if such radical change could actually be instituted by her?

Some blips replayed in her memory. At one point, Tavras had commented upon how her divine blood was dense, giving her the propensity to become a fairly powerful individual. So too, she had made more progress in the matter of months where other demigods and demigoddesses would have needed years. Exactly how thick did her divine blood flow through her veins?

If Tavras thought to groom her to do... what exactly? Free him? Overthrow the God Supreme? It would make sense why such a powerful god had taken interest in a random demigoddess such as herself.

She shook her head. Val had her head in the skies. She was dreaming about being something bigger than she actually was. That sort of thing happened to teenage chosen ones in prophecies, and Tavras had already confirmed that there was no prophecy about her.

Regardless, these must be the sorts of traitorous thoughts that she was not allowed to have in her head. Clearing her mind, Val swallowed hard and focused her eyes on the path ahead.

She would not think beyond her immediate goals for now: make her mark on the Summit and become a goddess. That would be more than sufficient for now. The rest, she could always figure out later.