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'Ax,' said Zeff as he continued staring out the window.

'Yes?' The reaper was clinging to his shoulder. There'd been some contention over whether or not Axiolis should accompany him or stay behind to look after the kids, but they'd eventually reached the conclusion that Zeff needed to have access to pan-forma in the battle to come.

'Do you think... that everything that has happened to our family might be... some sort of divine punishment?'

The reaper was quiet for a time.

The question had come out of nowhere, it felt like. His mind had been largely clear until it just popped in there. Moreover, it had been years since he last talked to Axiolis seriously about anything spiritual. He'd been quite comfortable with his secular worldview, and even now, he didn't feel particularly different about it.

But...

Maybe he'd been thinking about it, on and off, for a while now. It would've made a kind of sense to him, he supposed. And perhaps, it would've explained the inexplicable. If only a little.

The reaper's slowness to answer surprised him, though. Axiolis had always been quite upfront about how he still believed in the old water god--and about how he didn't care if he ended up being the last one in the entire world who still held onto that faith. He always said that it was a travesty that the modern Rainlords had let go of their roots by allowing such old and cherished beliefs to slip away from them.

So he would've expected Ax to jump at that question, to tell him that yes, of course it was punishment--or whatever else. In a way, it might just vindicate everything that the reaper had been saying for years.

But Ax didn't do that. 'It is the eternal folly--and yet also the eternal responsibility--of man to struggle for an understanding of the divine,' the reaper said.