“So first off,” I begin my story, “My mother is temporarily filling in for… she uses ‘Life’ as the title, but she's more commonly known as ‘Blessed Mother’, ‘Font of Life’, ‘Mother of All’, ‘The Progenitor’, ‘First Mother’, and simir.”

  “Wait…” Wesley crinkles his forehead, “You're saying that the orcs, elves, halflings, et cetera are all worshipping the same….”

  I nod when he trails off, “Under different names, but yes. There's one pantheon of my retives on Mom's side of the family, each of whom fills some role or other in the cosmos, and every one of them goes by different names depending on who's worshiping them. Regardless… she had me by the son of the prior Life, who was under a diabolic contract that made him supernaturally attractive. That got tangled up with Mom's curse from the prior Life….”

  Bearcw frowns, so I expin, “Mom was the Comforter's prophet at the time, and the old Life was trying to kill her brother indirectly, so she cursed Mom to be a woman to mark her so she could have her own champion go after my mom indirectly…” I pause at the look on everyone's faces, “...divine politics and rules are annoying, I make a point of being VERY polite and mostly quiet at family dinners, the deities mix with mortals sometimes, and yes, my mother used to be a guy. Regardless…” I take another breath, “That tangling of the divine curse and diabolical contract resulted in my strain of lycanthropy coming into being. Mom and the prior Life's son both got… something like the infected strain you three have… and I ended up with… well, a sightly suped up ‘natural’ version of lycanthropy. My libido is a bit higher than most folks’, and when I infect someone it manifests immediately… but other than that, it seems normal. All men want me in my female form, everyone wants me in my hybrid form… it rocks. Well, except that every time I get it on with someone….”

  “They catch it,” Roger picks up, “like we did.”

  “And where did all that power you have otherwise come from?” Wesley is frowning, but that's not exactly a change.

  “Mom,” I'm being marginally deceptive here with that one word answer. It's true, but most will assume it's a factor of my lineage, which isn't entirely the case.

  Bearcw considers, “Why isn't this more common? I can't imagine we were your first. Umm. First three? Whatever. You know what I mean.”

  I shrug, “Usually Mom cleans up my little indiscretions. But I'm not at home anymore,” while true, that's not the reason, “and that's less feasible. Anyway, that's the summary. Shall we get on with trimming this pce?”

  “Fine…” Roger spits at me, “Let's do this….”

  We loot the bodies and work our way through the rest of the dungeon… which is now pretty sparsely poputed, although we find no shortage of evidence that there were previously monsters all over the pce. Roger finds most of the loot stashes, I point out a few he misses, and after we're done emptying the pce (including killing the “boss” by the dungeon heart), we head back out.

  With it being quite te, we make camp in my house by the dungeon. Once everyone is asleep and I'm alone, I get a “call” from Uncle C.

  “You realize I saw enough. Death is my domain, you killed an awful lot of monsters, and so not only did I see rather more than I wanted to, but I also heard your expnation… you stretched the truth considerably, you know.” His voice carries the chill of the grave… and yet, I always find myself rexing when talking to him. He's such a kind, gentle soul. I fully understand why Mom set up his new alias.

  “Yes… I can't exactly spill all the divine secrets, now can I?” And… Here it goes, “Are you going to tell Mom?”

  There's a long, tense pause, “I'm not going to volunteer it as things stand,” I find my shoulders releasing tension I didn't know they held, “Some lessons can't be taught, and you'll never learn them if he keeps insuting you from the consequences. That said, two things:”

  I knew there had to be a catch… Uncle C continues, “First, your grandfather never rescinded his instructions. If Life asks, I'm not going to deceive him at all.”

  Lovely… my tension returns as he continues, “Second, while I'm supposed to avoid directly meddling in mortal affairs and am not permitted to stop such, I despise murder. If your spawn come to my hand by way of yours - even indirectly, and I will know, as it's my domain - I WILL stop and have a chat with my sister. Is that understood?”

  “Loud and clear,” and I mean that.

  “Good,” the Comforter continues, “As for the other reason… congratutions on reaching your third level. Care to know what your mother assigned you?”

  “Yes, absolutely,” Always good to know what form my new power will take.

  “He's set you up for a strange trick that threw me for quite the loop when he used it himself: If you choose to worship yourself, you can mark yourself as your own high priest, and gain power therefrom… which is obviously weird, but your mother did that back in the day, and he expects you to do so now… I can absolutely understand why you don't worship the folks with whom you regurly dine.”

  “I'll do that.”

  “Hmm. He also set you up to take rather significant advantage of doing that… most of it is going to be passive items to protect you from a handful of things your mother couldn't handle via spells, but you'll find you can cast spells far more quickly and a bit more powerfully after you go through the hoops, craft basically any item you like, and if you think for a moment, borrow abilities… almost anything will be viable. She's also setting you up for making permanent servants… eventually. For now, that aspect isn't great. Moreover, you'll be able to manipute chance when you're involved; I expect you'll find yourself failing even less often, as long as you care about what you're doing.”

  Less often than I do now? Seriously, I already need to shoot at a target like ten thousand times before I'll miss it… not that many targets will take even one shot from me unless I'm using a crossbow or something where my srm strength doesn't matter. “Mom has always been paranoid, hasn't she?”

  “He has, yes,” my uncle agrees, “he wouldn't have survived opposing my sister if he wasn't.”

  “True. Anything else of note?”

  “Not really… just more numbers boosting… and that won't matter unless someone manages to strip you of your mother's graduation present, but I don't exactly see that as very likely.”

  “Thanks Uncle C. Out of all of Mom's siblings, I've always liked you the best.”

  “Not exactly high praise, given how a lot of them act around you, but thank you nonetheless.”

  “Yeah, well… still: You're a good man… person… deity… whatever, and I'm gd you're my uncle… even if it is technically by adoption of my mother.”

  Death chuckles, “My adoption, too. I've looked every one of my siblings up at one point or another… we were all mortal at first. Dad adopted all of us… and as there was quite a lot that came before He recruited the first of us, I'm quite certain He is fully capable of handling all of our tasks Himself: He gave them to us out of love, not need.”

  “He sounds like a wonderful man when you talk about him….”

  “...but it is kind of difficult to hold the kind of conversation with Him that you're accustomed to, yes. Believe me, I GET IT. He takes great pains to… simplify things… even when He speaks with one of us. I always feel like a child who simply doesn't know enough to understand: What He tells us to do so often makes no sense at all…” Uncle C sighs, “...but it's always for the best. I'm sure it's much worse for you.”

  I haven't had the back and forth at all… “Yeah. Anyways, thanks for everything.”

  “We're here to help.”

  I turn my attention away from the mental channel - if The Comforter has anything more to say to me, I'll hear it - and think a bit. Okay, so… worship myself, huh? At least I'm alone… hmm… maybe a song?

  “Alex! You're so great!Alex! We celebrate!Alex! You win my heart!Alex! Let's never part!”

  It's not actually very good, but… “Alex! That was great! You're my best worshipper,” my only… “truly a being crafted after my own heart;” because we're one and the same, “so I annoint your high priest!”

  I get a little cano oil, and pour it on my own head, feeling a little silly… until I feel a rush of power. Oh, wow. That actually worked? Nice!

  I think for a bit, contempting myself… oh, I get it. Huh. I look at my hands: Yes, I have two rings now, which will guard me from alternative forms of detection as well whenever I'm invisible, will let me use metamagic effectively for free, will come when I call, will revive me if I die… and between the two of them will let me tag some twenty two other people to survive dying. The two rings are quite redundant with each other; I have no real reason to wear them both at the same time… which is the point, I think. Use one and store the other, just in case someone has a trick that can destroy them.

  Yeah, Mom's paranoid.

  Shaking my head, I store one inside the steel frame of my bed, and head off to find my spawn… it wouldn't do to have them fall into Uncle C's hands due to simple carelessness….