Down by the river, Val and Foofy looked to Arius and Tavras for direction. She was going to model her abilities, but she did not know which of them wanted to receive her attacks.

“So, aside from Past Insight and Keep the Peace, what abilities have you been working on?” Arius strolled away to put some distance between them.

The situation reminded Val of back when Tavras had tested her abilities. A smirk rose to her lips with a cock of her head. “Can I show you?”

Arius grinned in return. “Don’t hold back. You can’t hurt me like Iharu.”

Bouncing on her heels, Val anticipated a friendly fight. That was only if Arius would do anything against her at all. Since she only had two attacks, Val warmed up with the weaker one. With her own feet planted, Val sent out a Mind Blast against Arius.

He stepped one foot back to brace himself against the hit. Aside from that, Arius simply stood there and took the brunt of the force. Loose dirt and grass blades rushed by him. The ends of his hair blew back with the wind. All she did was make him look good.

With a pleasant smile he said, “You can create telekinetic energy. Nice.”

“That’s all I can do with it,” she admitted.

Arius shrugged. “It’s a start.” In her opinion, his voice sounded slightly muted like she had already disappointed him.

“My other attack is stronger!” she promised.

Next, Val prepared her best move against Arius. Whether she had adequate moral ammunition against him, she was not so sure anymore, but she wanted to impress him quite badly.

When she launched Divine Judgement at him, her energy came out as a gentle, glowing stream. That white light swirled around him and appeared to enter him.

“What was that supposed to do?” Arius lifted his arms to examine himself as if he could observe the change.

“Um, I don’t know. That did nothing,” she admitted. “Let me try again! I promise that it will be stronger than before.” Her attention switched to an easier target for Divine Judgement: Tavras.

Its strength amplified a hundred times over. A thick whip of white energy slammed into Tavras’s chest and threw him into the air. He landed backwards into the river where he stayed sitting.

“What was that for?” Tavras held his arms out in innocence.

Meanwhile, Arius laughed lower in volume yet more uncontrolled than his usual, perfect laughs. One hand covered his mouth while he did so.

A corner of her lips pressed upward. Val assumed that to be his genuine laugh. His faux laughter must have been well-rehearsed for her not to have noticed until now.

As much as he liked water, Tavras did not seem to find the situation as amusing. The flow of the river changed course and rushed all around him, straight for Val.

“Crap.” She had not exactly become any stronger since her time on Tavras’s Paradise, so she was prepared to become a drowned cat. At least those were better than a drowned dog.

Arius beamed towards her and threw up a more powerful impulse than Val could manage. His red haze broke the course of the wave. Then next, he formulated a shield to keep them dry.

To Tavras, he shouted, “I do believe that Val did a good job modeling her ability for me. Let it go!”

Surprisingly, he listened to Arius’s suggestion. The river water stopped pouring out for them.

Tavras stepped out of the river while drying himself off. The entire time, his eyes bore into Val. “Seriously though, what was that for?”

She shrugged, as she did not see the need to explain herself in full. “I’m still mad at you.”

“Yet, you have no problem with him.” Tavras gave an angry jerk of his head towards Arius.

Since he looked slightly confused, Val jumped in to fill him in. Upon explaining Divine Judgement’s basis in morality, Arius’s eyes slowly brightened.

“Is that somehow an objective morality?” he asked.

“There is no such thing,” Tavras snapped. “You have only appealed to the rampant emotions of an eighteen-year-old girl. Don’t get too full of yourself.” More quietly, he huffed out, “She might decide that she hates you within the span of a day.”

“At any rate, that’s good enough for me!” Arius smiled down to Val. “I think that eighteen-year-old women can have a great foundation in morality.”

Blinking at him, she tried to discern his meaning. There was not a hint of sarcasm in his voice, but at the same time, he could not be serious. On the off-chance that he meant the compliment, Val let his acknowledgement warm her heart. Even so, she knew her own shortcomings.

One particular memory burned at the forefront of her mind. She had been brash enough to attack Tavras when he had tried to reject her.

Refocusing on the matter at hand, Arius asked, “What else can you do?”

“That’s it.” Val hardly dared to look at him.

“Okay, so you can create movement with your mind and generate a visible energy. Does it stay fluid like that, or can you change its appearance to look more solid?”

She did not know why that would matter, but Val responded, “Yes, I can do that.”

To demonstrate, she brought up a shimmering wall with Divine Judgement and slammed it into Tavras. More ready this time, he dodged it by dashing to the side with a burst of water. “That was a nice try. You missed me!”

She brought up a pillar instead. The narrower structure moved faster and hit Tavras back into his beloved river.

Arius grinned the entire time that he watched Val’s second attack. “I think that I know exactly which god we should make your father on paper: Herrick.”

The name was familiar to Val as another incredibly powerful god, seated on the Pantheon. Herrick was known as the Metallurgist, god of metal and transportation. From her understanding, he was also supposed to be a cruel god. The other day, Tavras had mentioned him killing half of the demigods during the year that he had overseen the trials.

Before she could raise any of her own concerns, Tavras spoke for her. “Herrick is absolutely out of the question. You are not putting her anyway near his sphere of influence.”

Arius gazed on at Tavras, unamused. “Our options are rather limited. You do realize that right? We need a powerful, promiscuous god that resembles Val’s power enough to pass as his biological daughter. Herrick is the only one that comes to my mind. The appearance of her abilities and attack style will fit in well with Herrick’s children.”

Sternly, Arius crossed his arms over his chest. “Otherwise, do tell me, Tavras. Do you have a better suggestion for her fake father?”

“Yeah, I do.” Tavras nodded upward before saying, “What about yourself?”

Those words held in the air for a painstaking moment before he continued to explain the suggestion.

“At face value, both of your abilities look similar enough. Val’s energy output is like yours just reskinned from red to white.”

She had difficulty containing her slight smile, even despite Tavras’s tactless suggestion. Any way that her power resembled Arius would make Val happy—happy enough to ignore the implication.

As for Arius though, he gaped at Tavras. Slowly and loudly, he said, “No.”

Tavras opened his mouth to press his point, but Arius stopped him.

“No! Stop right there. Do not say another word. I am willing to help Val but not in that way.”

Tavras narrowed his eyes at him for some solid seconds. In the end, he let it slide. “We could always give Val a second haircut.”

Clenching her teeth together, she looked between Tavras and Arius. Under no circumstance was she going to pose as a boy again. Her true gender would be discovered sooner or later, so she required a more stable solution.

“How bad would being Herrick’s official daughter be?” Val waited to hear a response from both of them.

“Herrick tortures his children, and the more that he likes them, the more that he abuses them. He forces them to literally cannibalize their weaker siblings!” As per his personality, Tavras chose to rave about the worst things that he could possibly say.

To her ears, it was the same voice that had called Arius a demon child when the two of them had first met. This was all that Val could think about, so of course she dismissed what Tavras said.

Arius offered her a second point of reference. “Val, I can promise you that Herrick will not be allowed to exert his influence over you. If Tavras does not want to be proactive about your protection, then I will. I hold authority over Herrick and know how to deal with his type. I can guarantee that you will be safe from him.”

While Val appreciated Arius’s stoic reply, she wondered if she should be concerned by the fact that he did not try to deny anything that Tavras had said.

“It would be inappropriate for either of us to go after his children though,” Tavras countered. “She will still have to deal with all of Herrick’s spawn on her own.”

“They’re all mixed blood,” Arius sneered. “Only a select few would come anywhere near to matching Val’s power—"

“Ravager, you are confusing her power and her potential. Do you not see how weak she is?” Tavras said. “I only started to train her a few months ago! Again, Herrick puts his kids through grueling training—”

“They also start late like Val. She will grow exponentially over these new few months,” Arius said with full confidence. When he walked past both Tavras and Val, he kept his back turned to them. “I think that we are done here. Is this satisfactory to you, Val?”

“Y-Yes.” If she were completely honest, her knees felt moderately weak. With two gods seated on the Pantheon at her back, Val knew that she had nothing to worry about. She dismissed her fears and moved to follow Arius.

“If you choose to follow through with this,” Tavras started, “then I will not accompany you to get the documentation sorted out. I cannot get behind this.”

Her shoes flattened the blades of grass where she stood. Val stared at the ground while she fiddled with her fingers. “Thanks for coming to this meeting with me and Arius. I do value your opinion, Tavras. It’s just….”

The next words that came out of her mouth felt like they were sticking to her tongue and gumming up her jaws. “I really think that this is the best shot that I’ve got for staying on the Summit. I want to go through with this.”

The features of Tavras’s face tightened, scrunching up with more concern than disdain. “I wish the best of luck to you, Val. I will see you later, I guess.” A pained look had also entered his eyes, but he did not say anything else.

The ground became of great interest to her once again. Looking at Tavras, dejected like that, riddled her with too much guilt to hold his gaze.

Instead, she lifted her head and presented a tight smile to Arius.

He had a hand extended out to her in his usual offer. It was time for them to move on with the next step in establishing her new identity.