"You know, just because Lian got you bumped up to goddess doesn't mean you get to pick on us. We're not mortals."

"You're stupid and philistine is what you are."

"Least some of us have a lineage..." Jure mutters under his breath.

"What did you say? I am the august daughter of the Judge, Lilan of the Scales and the Fire which burns anew!"

"By adoption," Vorvo sing songs, "of nobody's womb but the void." 

"Shut up and go back to work or I'm firing you!"

Jure throws up his hands defensively. "Okay, okay, let's just eat this kid and let Veles sort it out."

The empty altar seems to ask 'what kid.'

"Smooth," Vorvolaka says before taking off where the undergrowth has been freshly disturbed.

Terror apparently makes her much faster than she's ever been!

She is not, however, vampire fast.

Vorvolaka falls on her like a jungle cat. As she bites down on Malen's jugular, the sensation is less like pain and more like ice water spreading through her.

Screaming!

Dead. 

When she wakes up Down Below, Veles is craned over here. "Did ya eat the berries again?"

"There were vampire ghosts I am never making fun of Bina ever again!" she shrieks. "Also Sophia's a meanie head!"

"Vampire... vampire ghosts!" he sputters. "So Sophia was the one who headhunted my best spectres. Bloody thief!"

"She kept arguing with them about stories while they were trying to sacrifice me to something. She's horrible."

Veles doesn't seem to be listening. "They come strutting over here from the Old World, acting like having a yew dryad for a mother makes them gods, and then they leave the chorus without even giving me notice! So now I'm stuck with a buncha mortal-borns for company..."

"...The Old World?"

The rant has died down enough that Veles can hear somewhat again. "Where our mothers came from."

Mother is... She knows that, but not.

Mother is what came before.

The knowledge hits her like a vampire-ghost.

"There's another world?"

"Lots and lots. This one's I think the newest?" 

"That's... How do you make a world? Why?"

He shrugs. "Dunno, our parents made the place before they bred us. And gods make worlds so we may rule and shape them as we like, duh."

"Wait. Can you do anything?"

"Probably."