As they walked out of earshot of the teenagers, the tension between Ludo and Tavras was able to come to a head.

“It would have been helpful if you had explained to Iharu and Fangarus who they were meeting today,” Ludo spit.

Nonchalantly, Tavras shrugged. “I did not want to give that child any more pomp and circumstance than he deserved. Why should we spend our family time together talking about a demon?”

Anger swelled in Ludo’s golden eyes. “His mother is still a sensitive topic for him.”

“I could tell,” Tavras said with a scoff. His arms crossed over his chest, and he leaned his posture back. “Also, I just lost a staring contest with that kid. He disturbs me. He isn’t right.”

Ludo shot a glare at him through the corner of his eyes. “If a staring contest mattered to you so much, I am surprised that you did not use your ability to keep your eyes wet.”

“I did.”

“Oh, well….” It was like Ludo had nothing to say to that, but he found some words anyway. “Arius is aligned with fire. Maybe his eyes do not get dry.” Ludo gave a big, indifferent shrug.

“Is that so? I say there is something evil about that child.”

“I already explained to you his background. Arius’s development has been stunted because he did not have a proper opportunity for socialization in early childhood. Frankly, I see that same issue in Iharu. It is a miracle that Fang has turned out as well as he has.”

Tavras’s face darkened with a scowl. “Do not criticize the way that I am raising the children. At least I have been here for them when their mother refused to take care of them. Alyvia could have come back for them at any time, but she chose that little demon instead!” The furrow in his brow only worsened, making a few, slight veins evident on Tavras's forehead.

A livid light arose in Ludo’s eyes. “If you want to blame anyone for Alyvia’s choice, then blame yourself. Someone needed to take care of Arius when he was young. She would have loved to go back to Iharu and Fangarus, but you refused to raise the boy.”

Tavras rolled his eyes around in his head and the frustration mounted in his voice. “I told her that I would take care of Arius!”

“Yeah, sure you would. You would take care of him by killing him. Maybe if your offer had been genuine back then, Alyvia would still be alive and well today.”

“The demon child that she bore drove Alyvia to her doom. She would have been fine if only she had abandoned him.”

“You know that is not true. Stop casting your own guilt onto the child.”

For a some long seconds, Tavras stewed in his silent rage. The oppressive weather reflected his mood. While the vision had started out sunny, storm clouds rolled in with powerful gusts of wind. Despite being fully embroiled in anger, Tavras shifted the nature of the conversation around Arius.

“Some little rain droplets told me that the child has complete immortality. Is that true?”

Ludo kept his gaze focused on Arius where Iharu and Fang gathered around to timidly stroke Urru’s broad nose.

Fang’s attention turned up to the darkened sky above. Looking back to Tavras and Ludo, he looked concerned but did nothing to leave his cohort of siblings and dragon.

Those watchful eyes of Ludo continued to supervise them. “Arius’s complete immortality is not something that I can confirm for certain. He has died two times so far, back-to-back.”

“Do you have any theories on how to kill him yet?” Tavras asked.

“No!” he snapped. “As a doctor, I do no harm.”

“And that’s a damn shame. You could just give all of the problematic gods cancer and be rid of the blight on the world.”

Taking his eyes off of the teenagers for the first time, Ludo glanced off to the horizon of rolling grass. “Thank you, Tavras. Never, could I have thought of that solution on my own. I will be sure to take your suggestion into deep consideration to remove you, one of the problematic gods.”

A cocked smile pulled up one corner of Tavras’s lips. “I’ll tell Leviathan to say ‘hi’ for me.” The subtle edge of a threat

Val recalled that the legendary Leviathan was the reason why all gods were forbidden from killing Tavras since he was the only one who could calm the raging ocean.

Shifting his position, he folded his arms above his head and whistled long and low for no particular reason. “So, what type injuries did the demon child sustain that could not kill him.”

“He had the majority of his body smashed, including his heart. The necessary parts of his cardiovascular system regenerated but not the veins to the extremities. Then, he had his head crushed immediately afterward. The skull reformed and brain function appeared to be normal. It was hard to tell because he was fully paralyzed with a compound fracture of the spine.” Ludo certainly did not spare any of the gruesome details. If he cared about his Hippocratic Oath as a doctor to do no harm, he did not seem to care much for medical privacy. “Needless to say, he has since made a full recovery.”

“Well, I am certainly proud of someone for trying to do the good deed!” Tavras cheered.

Val wanted to wince away from this vision all together. By the time that Arius had been fifteen, he had already sustained a more traumatic injury than she cared to imagine. It was Tavras who expressed his support for that senseless violence.

Ludo looked like he wanted to interject at Tavras’s cruelty, but the latter kept spewing it.

“Assuming that the demon does not have a limit to his number of lives, then I think that stripping his heart and decapitating him are some good options.”

“No,” Ludo tutted. “I only told you how hard he is to kill so that you would leave him alone. Stop this talk about killing Arius. You know the feats that I am capable, so if you cross a line, I promise that I will deliver his injuries onto you.”

Val’s mind lit up a little at the sound of that. Forget doing no harm. That seemed like an awesome ability for the god of medicine: Payback.

Continuing, Ludo said, “You will not harm a hair on his head!”

“Don’t worry!” Tavras said with a hearty laugh. “I won’t. It will be a clean cut, right through the neck—not a hair out of place.”

Ludo groaned from deep within his throat.

“Do you really not see how this is a bad idea?” Tavras asked, flinging an open hand out to Arius, Urru, Iharu, and Fangarus. “Suvier’s son is a disaster just waiting to happen.”

All of them looked like they were still getting along from over here.

While Urru had backed away from Iharu and Fangarus, Arius wandered to the other side of them. With his chin lifted high, he seemed to ask them something.

“I predict that it will be nigh impossible to kill him once he grows up,” Tavras continued. “He will be just like Suvier but compound the problem by however many lives that he’s got.”

Ludo shook his head over and over. “He is just a lost kid. Despite everything, he has kept the compassion that Alyvia taught him. Just wait and see. You will see the goodness in his heart in time.”

At that precise moment, the reason that had spurred Val to watch this vision had actualized. Out of curiosity, she had wanted to see when Arius had almost killed Iharu.

His signature, red arcs of energy, appeared in front of him. Arius could use that ability even back then. He formed an airborne scythe and sent it hurtling through the air.

The solid edge imbedded into Iharu’s neck before disappearing to open air. The gouge in her neck remained. Where her eyes ought to have peeled wide with shock, she only sputtered with an enraged look. Blood gushed from the open wound in her neck.

“Arius!” Ludo screamed. A heavenly light was cast from him, and it rushed towards Iharu at once.

Her limp body had already collapsed to the ground.