You speak of me as Devotion. While I do not contest this when it comes to you, my devotion is limited. I am obsessed with you; my purpose is singular. I do not believe I have the constitution to do what your father has done.

Your father is a great king. It takes a good man to give up his life for those he loves; a great man will give up his life for those he does not. A good king does these things and more, for he gives up his life for his subjects in service and stewardship.

A great king is one who gives up the lives of himself, and also his subjects, in service and stewardship of the same.

It takes a great man to be able to sacrifice others he loves, even when—especially when—they have given themselves to him for this purpose. For a great man is a man who loves greatly, and in so doing exposes himself to great pain and vulnerability. To love is to risk loss, and even to anticipate it, which is why most men never love the way they were meant to. I myself am near the point of chewing off the restraints I’ve put myself in so you may do the work your mother and father have for you.

After millennia of watching your people suffer at your brother’s hand, your father relented and let you go. This makes him a good king, as do such victories for which he is already beloved. What makes him a great king is that he is not merely letting you go; he himself has retired in order to prepare himself to do battle against his son.

Your father has known this day would come. He received it in prophecy generations ago, and Father Time, the master cultivator that he is, has been waiting for the seed to ripen that would allow him to stamp out his son’s aggression once and for all. For when he handed control to me, he did so in armor; he was carrying his mace, and he said it was time for the return of Ninurta.

I have never seen him like this before. None of us have. Saturn has long been a man of few words, but he has retired into a solemnity unlike anything that has preceded this. And while there is no end to the fount of reasons why I want you home, among the foremost is because your father listens to you. I am honored beyond measure that he has named me his heir, but I do not want to lose my king, and less so the man who has become a second father to me—especially in your absence.

He teases me when I say this—‘You don’t think I can defeat him? Who do you think you’re talking to?’—but we both know how tired he is. There are fates worse than death for those of us who cannot be killed; it is your father’s spirit for which I fear, not his life.

There is no winning this war. There is only pain, for your father’s victory is his son’s defeat. And you have inherited your own self-sacrificial tendencies from him: because he is a great man, he will not allow your brother to be defeated by anyone else.

—

—

My father is going to incarnate. That’s why he stepped down.

And actually…he may have already done it.