“I just think that they created this problem. There is more they could be doing to help us, is all.” She finished weakly.

He snorted and had to hold himself back from patting her on the head like a child. “You’re assuming they care enough to even notice we’re struggling. The gods are all thousands of years old; Gaia, I would assume, is even older by far. There is no telling how much or little they actually think of us and our needs.”

Kira glanced over at her friend suspiciously, turning the heat down underneath the burner while she did so. “What’s going on Sierra? I haven’t heard you talk like this before now. What did you see?”

“It’s not about what I saw in a vision. It’s about what I’ve seen, period.” She stood from the couch and held her hand out to Charles to help steady her. Her vision wasn’t completely back just yet. “Just think about what happened today, Kira. Our group, full of quite possibly the strongest people on Earth, struggled against a single opponent.”

“I still don’t see how that has anything to do with you reacting like this.”

“I’m reacting like this because I’m scared!” She shouted. “Sure, we had everyone there this time, but what about next time? Or the time after that? What about the towns we can’t reach in time?”

Charles pushed her hands onto the back of the couch and went to retrieve the plates from the cupboard. “What about them? Like I said before, they should have been training more. If they fall to the ordinary monsters, then they have no one but themselves and their own negligence to blame. We can’t be everywhere at once.

“Look Sierra, I understand why you would want to push the responsibility for all of this onto someone else. However, at the end of the day, their lives are in their own hands. Not mine, and not yours. We can help, but we aren’t the ones ultimately responsible for keeping them alive and safe.”

“If you want to have a greater voice in how things are run though, I’m sure mom would appreciate the help.” Kira began dishing out portions onto the steaming tortillas she had taken from the oven. “You could help how the towns shape their policies.”

“I…” Her brows furrowed in thought as she looked away. “I’ll need to think about it. Working with the kids has been keeping me busy, but this is something that I believe needs to be done as well.”

“You do that, right now though, let’s eat!” She held up a plate of soft tacos, just as the front door opened.

“That smells good,” Myri drooled, her eyes locked onto the plate.

“Don’t look at me. She’s the one who knew that it was time to eat,” Silvi explained before anyone could blame her.

Kira narrowed her eyes and shook her head. “Wash your hands, you know the drill.” She quickly served up some more of the meat and veggies onto the tortillas for the girls.

The two hurried from the room while the three adults sat down in the small living room.

Sierra was blinking furiously as her eyesight cleared up little by little.

“We should sell some spices to ‘Pantheon Mercantile’ before we run out and see if they’ll start selling them in return.” Charles joked.

It was a habit that the god-run store had displayed. As soon as they sold them something for the first time, then they would start selling their own knock-off version of it, but not before. It had worked with weapons and clothes, though only the basic versions of each so far. If you wanted the mana-enhanced versions, then they still needed to be handmade.

The only things they wouldn’t start selling is anything with electronics in them. For whatever reason, even in their currently broken state, those remained firmly within the hands of the humans instead of the gods.

“You joke, but that isn’t a bad idea. We’re going to run out of some of these things eventually.” Kira muttered around a mouthful of deliciousness.

“Where do you think they get everything they sell? Do they own factories and mines somewhere, or are they just willing these things into existence?” Sierra asked, with a little more decorum, making sure to swallow first.

It was something that Charles had always wondered about himself. He knew that some of them could create things like that, but did they really just spend all of their time making things for the store? That didn’t sound like something a god would do.

It was one of their new life’s great mysteries. It was also something that he simply didn’t care enough about to ask or investigate himself. It was destined to remain a mystery as far as he was concerned.

“Who knows? As long as it works, that’s enough for now.” Charles pointed to the plates still on the counter as the two girls returned.

Sierra nodded with an agreeable shrug and let the topic drop as Myri and Silvi joined them.

Krystal knocked on the door a few minutes after they finished eating and took Myriam with her. The little girl was already nodding off next to Silvi in a food-induced coma.

“Are you going to be alright?” The worried mother asked her daughter and future son-in-law, making sure Silvi and Sierra knew they were included in the question as well.

“We’ll be fine as long as we don’t run into another weird one like Ahriman,” Kira assured her mother.

“Uh, huh, and now that you’ve said that, it’s almost guaranteed to happen. Don’t you ever learn?” Krystal scolded her daughter while hefting Myri into her arms. “Whatever, just be careful.”

Kira glanced at the others when the door closed behind her mother. “You don’t think she was right, do you?”

Charles scratched at his nose. “Well, I mean coincidences happen an awful lot, you know that.”

“Yeah, maybe we should be careful when we go down to the next site then.”

After an effusive round of nods from the others, they gathered up the dishes and had Charles give them a quick clean. Then, with that out of the way, they all headed back towards the observatory and waited for Gaia to finish updating the system.

A couple of minutes after they settled into place, Kate, Beth, and Inara wandered in as well. The entire party was ready for action whenever the time came.

They waited, staring down at the planet down below for a few minutes before Kate finally said something.

“It’s been over an hour already.”

“Well, why don’t you tell Gaia that she’s behind schedule,” Beth suggested with a roll of her eyes.

“Children please,” Charles began after listening to them bicker for a couple of minutes.

They rounded on him with twin looks of fury, their eyes flashing with indignation at being called out like that.

It was right then that everyone’s sense of the world momentarily slowed and then returned back to normal. There was a soft ding in each of their ears, followed by a notification appearing as the system came back online.

If you are reading this message, then congratulations, you have survived long enough to see the system back online. All functions are now usable, and I will not be bringing it down again. All future changes and upgrades can now be made without taking it fully offline a second time.

– Gaia

It was a quick and simple message from the grand spirit of the world herself. It told, well, hinted at why she had taken it down, and that they could expect future upgrades. It said nothing as to what had actually been modified this time around.

“Well, that’s a rather anti-climatic message. It almost would have been better if she hadn’t said anything at all.” Sierra grumbled.

“I wouldn’t go that far, but it certainly left a lot to be desired for sure. None of the messages from the gods have ever been exactly overflowing with information.” Charles said as he walked over to the now working telescope controls on the window screen. “Now let’s see if we can find a town in need of our help.”

“Now that you mention it, the messages and notifications have all been rather basic in nature. Why do you think that is?” Beth wondered as they crowded around behind him.

“Originally, I think they were all generated automatically, so they might not have been able to do more than that.” Charles flicked from one visible town to the next. “After Gaia took over, the messages gained more flavor, but not much in the way of detail. She was busy and struggling with the mess she had inherited. Maybe that will begin to change in the days ahead.”

“A lot of these towns look like they came out better than we expected or were never even touched,” Kira said, before wincing as a completely destroyed town near the edge of a growing forest came on screen. The smoking remains of people and monsters alike glowed within the torn walls.

“I see a few hobgoblins, orcs, and bugbears down there. The last time they all worked together was when a champion was leading them. I wonder what it was this time.” Charles muttered.

“I’m more curious about what broke the wall. Even using swarm tactics, those monsters couldn’t have destroyed it that quickly.” Sierra pointed out the sobering thought.

“Yeah, let’s keep looking. There might be one that we can still save.”

“Oh, is that?” Kira began as he stopped on a town currently being attacked in the eastern portion of the country.

“Yeah, Harvard, and another of those big kraken things.” This one had crawled inland just to attack the school campus turned town.

“Should we help them? I don’t see a fallen god down there.” It was a question that had the potential to change everything without them even realizing it.