I returned to the village just an hour later, alone. Without the Deepseeker in my mind to keep everything working, the ancient ranger, Korval, had swiftly died. I carried his body out of the ship, found some woody mushrooms to make a fire, and I sent his body and soul back up to the Firmament. I didn't know who ruled up there, anymore. It surely had never been Palamun. But now, sharing a mind with the Great Father of my people, I understood something that he could never have explained to me, not if he had had a thousand years to lay it all out in terms simple enough for a primitive tribesman like me. The simple truth was this: none of us knew if there was really a God in the universe. We threw around the word god with little care as to its significance, never once considering that the things we were dealing with here weren't divine, and they never were. Palamun had not lied. I was not sharing a skull with a whole other person, and I didn't feel like my body belonged to someone else. I just felt… awake. I was awake for the first time, and I knew all of the things that he knew. I felt the immense weariness that he knew from being alive since before the distant precursors of my people came down from the trees. I knew the crushing guilt he felt at having brought such an inexorable doom to the universe, even though his part in it was so very small. It wasn't my guilt, but at the same time, it was mine. I was Volistad, the ranger, warrior of the Erin-Vulur and chosen champion of the Akkandaka, Joanna. And I was Palamun, ancient rebel god and Great Father of the Erinye. I was all of that and more besides. I was the Deepseeker.

To my new eyes, the village was utterly different than the little, peaceful home I had known as a child and fought to protect as a ranger. My eyes had been altered, just as my mind and body had been altered. Now I saw a system, a hive, a hundred interlocking pieces all working together in perfect balance to protect and preserve a fragile fifty-thousand lives. I understood then, somehow, that fifty-thousand wasn't enough for us to persist. I knew that though there might have been other tribes of Erinye hidden in the ice, chances were that the only hope for my people's future was a group of a hundred-thousand humans traveling from a distant star. We needed new blood, new people, a new culture, a new soul. If we could rid ourselves of the fear of the Elder Gods imprisoned below, we could become something so much greater than a frozen little tribe. We could make our own great wonders; make our own mark on the wide universe.

I returned to the Deepseeker’s- to my hut. I had only ever had a bunk in the ranger's lodge, and I hadn't even seen that in several weeks. It was strange to have a hut of my own. I hadn't thought I would ever have more than a bunk unless I was fortunate enough to catch the eye of a woman from further down in the mountain. Most rangers lived and died as such.

I pushed aside the door-flap and regarded the shape under the cloth that lay on my worktop. The dragon-pipe. The grenade launcher. The words of Joanna’s language no longer felt unfamiliar to me, though making some of the sounds was still difficult. The “fah” sound, in particular, was not well suited to a mouth full of fangs. I wondered how Palamun knew Joanna’s tongue, and abruptly a memory surfaced of a previous Deepseeker hunched over a console in the Heaven’s Hawk. He- I- was listening, feverishly, excitedly to a signal broadcast from impossibly far away. It was a signal from a place that was called Earth. A place that I remembered. Most of it was nonsense, an entertainment broadcast or something. But one thing had caught my attention. It was a news story, about the creation of the first "Strong AI." I remembered spending much of that particular Deepseeker's life- was it the fifth? The sixth? I remembered spending much of that life researching this concept; sure it matched with the concept my people had abandoned so long ago. It was the project I, myself was struggling to create. Then, sure that this world was a chance for me to end this ancient war, I sent out a signal of my own. Nothing complicated, nothing dramatic. It was a simple repeating pattern of tones, meant to catch the attention of anyone listening. As soon as I detected that the first scanning signals were coming back my way, I shut my signal down. I needed them to come to me, to bring this "strong AI" so that I could use it. I needed them to be curious. They did not disappoint.

I was just finishing stowing my armor under my bed when I heard footsteps scuffing the stone outside my hut. I rose and turned in time to see Joanna push her way through the door flap, her cheeks pink with exertion, her clothes and skin covered in a rapidly thawing sheen of frozen sweat. “We got the gun. Unfortunately, Barbas wasn’t there. We’ll just have to find him again. We-” She stopped and frowned. “What are you doing in here? I honestly came up here to see the Deepseeker so we could discuss his plan. Is he away?”

"No," I said simply. I thought about how to tell her, considered trying to divert her attention with a change of subject, but ultimately I decided against deception. I was in love with her, plain and simple, and I couldn't lie to her face. "No, the Deepseeker is not away. I am the Deepseeker now, and we do have a plan to discuss."

Joanna was confused. “Volistad, I don’t understand what you mean. You’re the Deepseeker? I know he casually threw away that line about making you his replacement, but you can’t have learned everything he knew in an afternoon. And where is he? Is he still in the village?”

I laughed. “Joanna, it’s alright. I am the Deepseeker. It's a little complicated, but if you let me, I'll explain it to you. But we should get some food brought up here. You've been fighting, and this is a long story. It's not the sort of thing you should sit through on an empty stomach."

Joanna’s eyes narrowed with suspicion, but she acquiesced, and after a hilariously awkward conversation with a passing messenger, I ordered some food brought up to us. When it arrived, we sat down, I made another fire, and I told her everything that Palamun had told me.