After distributing the translators and data chips, Lisa felt like she was going to collapse. "Now, continue forward. On the horizon lies Whitesun, the first city-seed on Illudis. There, you will be received by Juserin, leader of the verdora." Having said this, Lisa gave Bath a knowing look. In front of the two thrones spawned an enormous monarch butterfly. As it beat its wings, countless other normal-sized monarchs emerged and took flight. Soon, the entire throne area was covered in a fleet of orange-gold butterflies.

When the butterflies dissipated, Lisa, Bath, and even the thrones were gone.

---

Bath and Lisa made their swift retreat into the lake, remaining there for a few minutes until the vanguard departed. After Bath sensed that none remained, the two of them emerged from the water: roiling waves of blue streamed off of Lisa's electromagnetic bubble, while Bath flew out of the water like an arrow, dimpling its surface.

As Bath looked at Lisa, he compared the figure before him to the woman he saw her become all those years ago, when they were both still children: the differences were glaring. The Lisa of his imaginings had gushed carefree independence and a genuine love of life.

'She...is unhappy,' Bath realized bitterly, perturbed. However, Bath truly had trouble understanding why: he had given Lisa unmatched power and influence. What else could she want? As he looked at her, he began to deeply ponder this question before realizing it might be easier to just...ask.

"Why are you unhappy?" he asked bluntly, eyes narrowed.

Lisa flinched as though struck, then turned around to face him. "Unhappy?" she murmured weakly. "Why? Do I seem unhappy?"

Bath's words proceeded unrepressed. "Yes. I think...I might know why."

Lisa's eyes crinkled as she beheld Bath. 'He looks so serious, like he's a kid trying to figure out why leaves are green, or the sky is blue.' Lisa missed this side of him, the one that shone through when they were younger and Bath was still so clueless about the human world.

"Does this stymie you?" Bath asked, gesturing vaguely to the entire visible area. "Putting on the airs of a goddess?"

"No," Lisa replied firmly. "I'm fine."

The corners of Bath's mouth turned downward. "Lisa, I don't think you understand COTD's own message: self-determination. You shackle yourself with this made-up identity of Asil, COTD's Church."

Lisa frowned, hair whipping around her face as wind blew off the surface of the lake. "What are you getting at?"

Bath sighed, his face emanating a feeling of ancientness. "Why are we conquering the universe, Lisa? So you can be unhappy, frozen into the portrait of a goddess?" Bath shook his head in a severe gesture.

Lisa recoiled slightly, her mouth's frown transforming into a confused slant. "People won't follow me, the real me," she insisted. "They'll follow what they expect: They'll follow Asil."

Bath's face suddenly softened completely, a genuine smile lighting up his features. He floated over to Lisa, then pulled her into a side hug. She snorted, then bopped him lightly on the arm. "What?" she groaned, confounded by his change in demeanor.

"Is there anything we can't do?" he asked softly, his voice melding into the wind.

Lisa's eyes widened slightly; she repeated, "What," although this time, her voice was small, the question practically dissipating upon contact with the atmosphere beyond her mouth.

He looked down at her warmly. "Be yourself. Me, I'm naturally a cold, ruthless predator." Lisa looked as though she wanted to argue, though quieted herself. "I am ruthless, unbridled power. What is the Church?"

"Serenity, patience, generosity" Lisa replied.

"What is Lisa?"

She gave him an awkward look. "I don't know," she answered, a hint of anger in her voice. "What eighteen year old knows who they are?" she muttered dejectedly.

"Then why limit yourself to what you think the Church should be," Bath murmured, his right arm wrapped solidly around Lisa's side. He looked down at her, his eyes sparkling with the reflected light of the water below. "...When you have eternity with me to find yourself?

Her jaw dropped slightly, and her eyes unfocused at his words. "But...then I've been going about everything...it's too late," she finally stated. "I can't turn back now."

Bath chuckled. "Listen to yourself. Why do you care what these worms think?"

Lisa bristled. "Worms? They aren't--"

Bath raised an eyebrow. "Fine. But my question still stands: why do you care what they think?" He withdrew his arm, then made a gesture to the sky.

"Sky's the limit?" Lisa snorted dismissively.

"Think," Bath said; as he did, ripples of electricity broke out over the clouds above. Soon, the entire sky above the lake was crackling with electricity. "Higher."

The electricity flashed and cracked, like a giant whip. Suddenly, everything above was clear; Lisa could see the sky, even a smattering of stars, despite the distant glow of the sun. She looked over at Bath, only to find him gazing intently at the stars beyond, a quiet peace falling over his features.

"My greatest fear," he muttered softly, "is reaching these heights, only to be lost...and blind. Trapped." He then averted his gaze in a grudging fashion, locking eyes with Lisa. "Isn't it cruel," he continued, "imprisoning World Devourers, black holes embodied...in black holes?" His eyes gleamed. "Likewise, isn't it cruel, incarcerating a goddess in a prison of her own--and others'--expectations?"

Lisa ran her tongue over her dried lips, then swallowed, wishing she had water to wet her mouth. "I suppose," she finally said.

Bath moved so that he floated in front of Lisa; then, he placed both of his hands on her shoulders, as though he wished to draw her into a formal dance. "So, Asil," he murmured, the seriousness in his features almost...melodramatic, "What now?"

Before Lisa could respond, Bath grinned devilishly. In a flash, he was in the form of a small dragon, gliding towards the ground. As his feet met ground, his form shifted into that of his white wolf.

Lisa grinned, her eyes glinting with mirth. She ignited the burners in her feet, using them to accelerate to Bath's position. She walked over to his side, then placed her hands on his sides. With a trivial exertion of strength, Lisa hopped up onto his back.

"Let's see Illudis," Lisa murmured.

"Hmm?"

"You asked what next," Lisa chided. "I wanna see Illudis. It's supposed to be beautiful，if the encyclopedia is anything to go by. Though, considering that it was sourced from the verdora...it might be biased."

Bath sneezed, his snout puckering up. Lisa giggled as she patted his head. Their pace was about that of a car on a highway, allowing them to appreciate the scenery as Bath ran past. Aside from its many lakes and violet grassy fields, Illudis had numerous canyons and cliffs. In these steep rock faces were typically clusters of hundreds of small caves, giving the rocks the semblance of bisected bee-hives. The entire planet's surface almost seemed to resemble an uneven, cracked piece of concrete: flat, but broken, with different elevation levels throughout.

"Illusta...the mountain is artificial, isn't it?" Lisa murmured after their second day roving over the planet. While they had discovered a few mountains--generally the result of volcanic activity--none approached Illusta's--Whitesun's--mountain in size. The mountain was, undoubtedly, the tallest structure on the entire planet.

"I'm still unsure," Bath replied. "It looks natural, and is made out of the same odd rock many canyons are made of...Though it isn't volcanic in origin."

Lisa nodded. She hadn't found anything in the encyclopedia about the mountain's geological history, but figured Juserin might know.

As they continued over the surface of the planet, Lisa found that she was much more alert than before, sitting on her temporary throne. Then, the sun had felt like an oven, the many verdora who came to see them inconveniences to sort out. She'd dismissed these kinds of thoughts from her mind, but in reality, they were still there.

Now, on Bath's back, traveling through this new, beautiful world...she felt a sense of contentment. The sun was now a beautiful lamp illuminating the landscape, as though the world of Illudis deserved--demanded--to be seen.

"Bath," Lisa muttered, "maybe we should try slowing this universe conquering thing down a bit."

“Enjoy the scenery, stop to smell the flowers?"

Lisa cracked a grin, observing as a herd of Illudian grazers munched on a blue-violet heather look-alike. Like most of Illudis' animals, the grazers had six legs. Each leg ended with thick, rugged pads that were nearly as hard as hooves. Instead of the two maws of the verdora, the grazers appeared to have two upper faces, with a second pair of eyes and ears on the back of the head symmetric with eyes and ears on the front. They had one, enormous, sideways-oriented mouth that hinged open and low to the ground, snapping shut like twin scythes to collect the heather.

Bath, too, appreciated this slow trek around Illudis: while he had already devoured essentially all of Illudis' extant lifeforms, he hadn't spent any time viewing their behavioral patterns. While on Earth, he had all the time in the world to observe the behavioral patterns of everything from single-celled organisms to dinosaurs. Sometimes, he even took on the guises of certain, more interesting lifeforms. He only began to demonstrate this behavior in the past hundred million years; before that, he hadn't seen any point, limited by his own intelligence and primitive desires.

Whenever he engaged in this practice, he always came away with a better knowledge of the species in question. While he wasn't taking on the appearance of one of Illudis' wildlife, observing its species was still an excellent way to increase his knowledge base.

"Sure," he replied, "we can take our time."

"Great!"

"...Only until you get bored," Bath sniggered. "A thousand years from now--"

Lisa gave Bath a swift karate chop to the neck, interrupting his speech. Bath whined, as though injured. "You're such a little drama queen," Lisa grumbled. "Who woulda thought?"

Bath let his tongue loll out of his mouth, tasting the air as it ran over his taste buds, enhancing his already superior sense of smell. "You smell the air?" he asked expectantly.

"It smells like...salt," Lisa replied, sniffing. "Have we finally found an ocean?"

Bath picked up his pace, following the scent of salt until...

"Wow," Lisa exclaimed as Bath emerged from a patch of foliage, his inertia nearly teetering them off the edge of a cliff. "It's beautiful."

A strikingly green ocean lay before them, its waves crashing on a gray, fine-grained, sandy beach. The entire waterfront was teeming with verdora attired in thin, evidently water-proof robes that almost matched the conservativeness of their standard clothes. Instead of the long, drape-like, closed sleeves of typical verdora clothes, these bathing suits had skin-tight arms that, surprisingly, revealed the verdora's large, padded hands to the elements. Their faces were covered by goggles that, unsurprisingly, included drapes covering both maws.

The bathing suits were beautiful, each made of a different, elegantly-patterned cloth. Lisa and Bath watched them from the isolated cliff. When they had roved around previously, Bath had avoided populated areas, namely the planet's up-start city-seeds. Actually, in his initial sweep of the planet, he had missed this stretch of coast entirely, and thus hadn't known to avoid it.

Seeing Lisa's awestruck, beaming face, he was happy they'd come.

"I've never really seen baby verdora," she laughed, squinting her eyes. "They're so small; they look like little ghosts with those bathing suit draped over them like sheets." The babies, lacking the coordination of their parents, ran around on six legs instead of the two expected of polite company. Because of the nature of their suits, they often tripped and fell into the water, only to raise their heads above the surface. As they did, they snorted sea water, flipping their veils unceremoniously over their goggles. Blinded, they would often whine in terror, only to fall back under the waves and repeat the process until their parents' intervention.

"These suits are design disasters," Lisa observed, giggling at the expense of the verdora babies and flustered parents. "You'd think they would've given up by now on propriety...especially when at the beach." People certainly had in most countries on Earth.

Bath waved his tail. "There's a certain charm to the suits."

"Yup, it's somewhat admirable to see all these sapients vastly complicating the act of swimming and sunbathing," Lisa noted, "if the latter is even possible."

Bath snorted. "I didn't pay attention to human societies for most of their existence," he began, "but humans have had some disastrously inconvenient fashion trends."

Lisa's laughing only increased. "Fair, fair." Corsets immediately came to mind...followed by foot-binding; recalling the grotesque process of breaking a woman's foot and reshaping it sobered her mood. She cleared her throat. "Still...Nothing beats going to the beach in a bikini and sunbathing."

"Want to go?"

"Wait, what?" Lisa squawked, drawn out of her temporary melancholy.

"Down to the beach, now." Bath waggled his shoulders, rocking Lisa back and forth. "What's the point of being a deity if you can't do whatever you want?" Bath asked.

"But..." Lisa looked down at the beach in horror. She couldn't even fathom what they would think if she and Bath showed up and started sunbathing. However, considering their conversation from a few days ago that sparked this entire planet-wide trek...

Lisa sighed as she recalled the question that started it all: 'Why do you care what they think?'

Why did she? 'Because!' the naturally insecure teenage part of her blustered. 'Because...they're going to be judging you! Looking at you like you're the weirdest goddess they've ever seen! Thinking that you must be an imposter!'

She closed her eyes, as though placing a dark curtain over all her misgivings. As she opened them again, she huffed once, then assented: "Fine. But only if you sunbathe with me!"

Bath let out a small, wolfish howl of agreement. He shrugged his shoulders, giving Lisa the hint to dismount. She swung her legs off, landing gracefully on the cliff. Bath morphed into his human self, though instead of wearing his typical COTD uniform...he donned a pair of American-style swim trunks.

Lisa had seen him in a bathing suit before, but not since they started realizing the Big WD. She found this unprofessional side of Bath extremely refreshing, having only seen him recently without his uniform when in one of his non-human forms.

She looked down, surprised to see that she, too, was now wearing a bikini perfectly mirroring that of the last swimsuit she wore in Bath's presence: yellow, with navy polka dots.

"Ready?" he asked, grinning deviously. Lisa took his outstretched hand and followed him as he descended the cliff in long strides, sliding down the cliff's steep incline when they lacked adequate footholds. They reached the base of the cliff in under a minute; from there, they walked to the coast, relishing the feel of sand and reedy purple grass under their feet.

They didn't say anything, not bothering to announce their presence. They simply walked into the crowd of startled verdora like loud, touristy Americans on vacation, laughing and reminiscing about life on Earth. Lisa, in particular, thought Bath's stories about people's discontentment with his dragonleaf toiletries hilarious.

The verdora present no doubt recognized the duo: all verdora were aware of the recent COTD takeover. However, in reality, most verdora hadn't realized exactly what COTD conquering their planet meant. Like Juserin, they couldn't fathom what these...deities were.

Whatever information or impression they'd had about COTD's Church and Dragon was, of course, turned on its head by the duo's arrival on the beach. The verdora present, lacking any kind of precedent for what was happening, initially watched Lisa and Bath in wonder and shock.

Bath pulled a towel out of thin air, spreading it onto the sand. Lisa, extremely aware of the awkwardness following their arrival on the beach, self-consciously lay down on the towel. She closed her eyes, though found that she was unable to relax with the unnatural silence of the beach front. She heard Bath set up his own towel next to her and lay down, the gray, white-flecked sand shifting under his human form.

To Lisa's relief, after a few minutes of palpable silent uncertainty, the verdora children broke free of their parents and rushed toward the water, tripping over sand on their way. This reanimated the adults into action as they chased their kids down, the arrival of Lisa and Bath seemingly forgotten.

After twenty minutes, as before, the sounds of the beach rebounded with life and conversation.

"See?" Bath murmured after a time, "we can do whatever we want."

Lisa tsked, pushing up her Bath-fabricated sunglasses. "We're the center of practically every conversation," she retorted. "We can't do whatever we want without making a stir," she corrected.

Bath smiled at the sky, his eyes, like Lisa's, closed. When he and Lisa first resolved to go on their tour of Illudis, he had withdrawn all of his essence into himself. Now, his human skin, human body...was all he had to sense the world.

"Good thing," he continued, "we don't care what they think."

Lisa sighed, wiggling her toes against the sand. "Good thing." She turned her head to the side against her towel, frowning. 'If only.'