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Vega Ironstar became immortal so she could help others, or so the pitch went. It was the ultimate expression of sacrifice, kindness, and being a daemon. It was a way to forever help humans in their short and unhappy lives. For the smiles on their faces and the legacies they wouldn’t leave behind otherwise.

She did it alongside her own ambitions too, but the humans and living forever were supposed to come first. Vega would die an old woman too without a special plate of ambrosia every week. She had to train her son in that. So she was a busy woman. Because of that, most humans respected that and wanted to be like her, except with the spectre of death looming above them. It was the greatest bond between two cosmic brothers, forged when daemons first discovered that humid planet.

But of course, some of her mortals would argue against it and their entire history. And they would die, and lifetimes were becoming a thing that passed in the blink of an eye for Vega.

In fact, her son pushed an errant mortal out of the house that morning!

She fainted, and Samhain was too busy with the new baby to catch her. That woman was dead for over twenty years and buried in the basement, and those who died stay dead. Of course, there were bad actors among daemon-kind who raised the dead for selfish reasons. But Vega, selfish? She hardly knew the word. Nothing wrong with the humans disputing it, she never identified with them anyways.

That girl was one of the worst they had to offer to her, but it didn’t start out that way. The town was full of nicer people than Vega expected, as if they were already used to daemons and their customs. And then there was her.

“I want to ask your son out…it’s been on my mind my whole life.”

Sheila Drudge, who spoke without being spoken to.

“Do you think this is a game of love? It’s a game of matchmaking and I’m the only player. If it’ll ruin your life then I’m glad to have ruined it.”

It wasn’t meant to be controversial. It did affect the rest of their friendship though, since Sheila could never leave their household. Their almost-familial relationship turned into one where they barely spoke at all. Sheila still painted portraits of the Ironstars and raked leaves outside and it didn’t seem to bother her. And if it did, it could end. That was the best part about death.

Powered by spite and the same ambrosia Vega and her family ate, that woman resurrected herself anyways. At least Screwtape was ready to deal with his unrequited lover. He never looked so angry and his patience with her during her first life was galactic in scale.

That patience would probably not be shared by her fellow daemons. They still had resurrection in the law as a punishable crime. She agreed even when her head was now in their line of fire.

Although she didn’t want to do it, the entrance to the garden of her judgmental peers was closer than anyone could have guessed.

In the house’s deepest chambers, there was a heavy door that Vega locked to her whole family. She said it was where she did her alchemy, which was true to some extent. Shelves of elixirs lined the walls of the secret room. She even kept a Philosopher’s Stone down there…no relation to any Philosophers she knew.

Her chamber was a warm room, an odd choice for a house in the muggy depths of Twinbrook. But it was dry, warmed and dessicated by a few torches that perpetually burned. Vega had plenty of things she could take with her, but those weren’t the most important.

“I need to look presentable,” she told her magic mirror. Her hair was getting dry from the stress of welcoming a new baby. “If I walk into the Philosophers’ Garden with my hair like this, it will be an even bigger scandal than Sheila is.”

“No prob, Bob! One headwrap from your bedroom comin’ right up!”

Why did she even program him to speak like that? Good thing that silk scarf from a New Orleans flea market turned out to not be a waste. Usually the people of Twinbrook didn’t care.

She figured that the philosophers would accept her better with a gift as well. Beeswax turned to gold would be easy to smelt into coins and golden threads for stitching clothes with.

Vega used to fear it, having watched her cousin get torn apart by a million golden shards with the same thing.

She was the master of alchemy that Vega swore to never touch. Meanwhile, her mind was going to be better suited to law and making decisions for daemons far above her. Joining the philosopher’s would keep Vega safe, but her cousin did not have that option. And she would never, dying on the spot instead. Vega tried to pick up the pieces and pour the contents of their shelves onto her. Something in them could heal her. They had science and magic on their side equally.

But even the forces of them combined could not.

One of her last memories of the Philosophers’ Garden was not of her induction into it or a winning mental argument. It was a funeral, where they all dressed in green in her cousin’s honor. She loved the forests where her human family set up their camp and the grass under her bare feet. Vega never carried the tradition of funerals on earth, but she said that two in her life were enough. The loss of her cousin was the worse of the two.

She missed those nights around their firepit when she spent summers with the only humans she knew. That connection would never be found again. But who’s fault was that but a cruel world?

In fact, she was forged to be cold about it, barely allowed to cry so Aunt Holi could have a shoulder to cry on.

It still made her chest tighten when she finished with her own golden trinkets. She was still alive, after all, as it seemed she was destined to be.

“I’ve always missed you,” she said to her stone, like it was haunted by the last person who used it.

Vega knew her way back to the Philosophers’ Garden. At least she didn’t pick the wrong door and end up on the lonely asteroid her uncle retired on. The garden wasn’t on an asteroid or anywhere tangible in space, which Vega preferred. She wouldn’t get whipped by a sandstorm or volcanic ash there. It existed in a void, in a hole in the seams of space, or even in the bowels of Hell if she had to explain it to a human. Springs and ponds existed without water and plants bloomed without any anchor for their roots.

It was magical, even if the greatest minds of daemon-kind were there to find the tangible causes for all of it, debate over it, and pen laws for its spaces.

Usually, the garden was a busy affair. Before she left, it bustled with discourse, hearings, and worshipping Savazhiva-ma. Her toothy idol was in the corner and Ma was the only deity everyone smart could agree on, or at least the ideas of.

Music filled the garden’s vacant spaces, and every philosopher who arrived was greeted by their superiors. Obviously there would be a scholarly schism within a few minutes of it, but arguing was healthy. Otherwise they would be tightly-knit and kind like Death’s acolytes.

But there was none of that any more. No reasons or turmoil in sight.

Vega got dressed for nothing.

“Only the second worst thing to happen here,” she mumbled.

Vega hated many things, but wasting time was one of the most heinous of them. And yet she wasn’t able to figure out who was wasting more time: her or the absent philosophers. When would anyone catch her up about new discoveries? What else turned into a supernova? What new maps were drawn? And of course, someone would ask about the immortal lifestyle. She was looking forward to that and didn’t know who took it away.

And even worse were her own emotions, which never bubbled up unless it was displeasure. Now Vega wallowed in that every day. The rest were foreign and she wanted to throw herself into the well in the center.

Speaking of the well, it usually stayed still unless someone was swimming through it. Even a philosopher could get rowdy, but unless this was a horrible surprise party, who was there to do so?

She always had a fear of the new host of law and order…

“Oh dear, I knew there would be a lot to explain.”

Even with her eyes covered by large sunglasses, Aunt Holi was a face that Vega would never forget. She was the only other one who wanted to be the at the funeral, though she got over what happened a lot quicker. It was her daughter, but someone she also never saw. She dropped that child off with her father and left in the night.

And to be fair, she wasn’t Vega’s favorite relative. But one who could tug at her heartstrings? For sure.

The only problem was how Holi usually arrived with dignity and dressed in long gowns. She did like to take vacations, though. Someone was taken from her private island in the rebuilt Maldives or the seas of Europa. At least she still had her youth that Vega couldn’t retain. Even Holi’s brother Pilona was becoming a weary old man too. But sometimes what stayed depended on what was valued. Holi’s asset was always being dark, fashionable, and shiny.

“How did you find me? What does this mean about…I didn’t resurrect her! I didn’t mean to do any of this, and I hate this place now, and–”

She could only run away. It wasn’t a huge garden and she risked falling off the edge of it and into a wormhole or a limbo for dead stars and fading daemons. But there was always a game of Go.

It was a hard game to play alone for most, but Vega was used to knowing every move in advance anyways. That made Sheila’s resurrection that much worse. If she just let Marco’s line die out or if she threw her urn into the river, then it all could have been avoided. But she had no sign to do either.

Otherwise, she improved Twinbrook. Just ask anyone who wasn’t Sheila. Or Sinbad. Or Zo with her seven kids, but she seemed to love them…

“Isn’t it interesting, how being surrounded by eight in this game is a loss. Yet when eight of you surround a village of Earth, it is what improves the lives of many on earth,” said Holi. Her Go army took one of Vega’s stones.

“Well, it’s not lost on me,” she said. She held her breath, with her cheeks straining and puffing out. There was a lot she never discussed with Aunt Holi. The argument over the dynasty went by in a whirlwind.

There was a lot of physical pulling right after a goddamn funeral, but at least it was fast.

From the words of Uncle Pilona: “Would you waste a brilliant mind on Earth? Don’t do this to us, you’re not meant for that kind of work.”

But the winning argument came from Aunt Holi: “Nonsense, you’re the only person who can continue V’s work, and it fits perfectly into being an immortal. All the plans about healing and moving past metal scarcity isn’t a waste of a mind in the slightest.”

“Mining is the only thing we do.”

“This isn’t about our business at all…”

With her interest in mining well into the negatives, Vega ended up scouting out locations to live in on Earth. It took her to a swamp and penned a story that was supposed to last a lot longer than it did. She had a great-great-grandson of all things, but it was supposed to be more.

A town surrounded by eight, as Holi said.

“V’s probably disappointed in me,” she said. Vega took to the ground and sighed hard. She still couldn’t bring herself to cry about it, but it was the closest she ever got.

“You had to have gotten far,” said Holi.

“My grandson has a grandson.”

“Then nothing’s lost. Let him into your basement to figure out your secrets.”

“Secrets that killed your daughter? And I can’t even warn him–”

Holi took a seat on the ground next to her, putting an arm around Vega for the first time in a while. It made Vega shed one tear. “Apamiveka, dear, you also like chess, another game where eight different classes battle.”

“Do you think he’s ready for this?”

“We don’t have to tell him about V.”

“I have my concerns, he’s only an infant. And now there are some bad influences I never thought would come back,” Vega said.

“Surely your family wasn’t that dysfunctional. I did abandon my daughter after all.”

“It’s a long story I need a PR tour for…”