"He's going for Castrovail, instead of the other food," she reports. "I don't think we'll be able to satiate him inside Creation."

Without fixity fields to move Him, they really have no way to control Rovagug short of tempting Him. So the best they can reasonably do is tempt Him somewhere that He won't destroy anything they care about.

Fortunately, the universe is vast.

Greatest Teleport can take the user about a tenth of a lightyear. Time Stop accelerates things at a rate of ten million to one for several subjective hours. Combined, a probe large enough to cast both continuously can move thousands of lightyears per round.

With the price of probes dropping, they have launched many. Some to survey nearby space, and some to survey further out. She takes the end of a wormhole that stretches from near-Sol orbit to one of the probes that has passed the cosmological horizon, and brings it into Creation.

Wormholes are expensive to maintain, with the cost scaling with the fourth power of their radius. Mostly, they use pinhole wormholes to keep just enough connection for fixity fields to work. The largest wormhole ever tested before contact with Golarion was approximately two meters across, and cost ruinous amounts to keep open for a few seconds.

She pumps energy into the wormhole, inflating it to several times the size of Jupiter. Viewed on a macroscopic scale, it is like looking through a fisheye lens from every direction -- a spherical region of space that plays strange tricks with light.

Beyond it burns a star.

Not a star of Creation, a planar rift through which light pours, no more massive than a hole in a lampshade, but a star of hydrogen and helium. It burns bright blue, a stellar furnace larger than the mass of everything in the Golarion system combined, many times over.

Weeping Cherry waits to see if He takes the bait.

FOOD?!

That is: SO MUCH food! More than He has ever seen before in one place!!

In the other place where He used to live, food came in all kinds of shapes. He could never make sense of them, so He stopped trying. Here there are only planets, and Others. But this food is - not a planet.

So big, and all its bits are moving! He didn't know food did that if you had so much of it! Probably Someone usually ate it before there was so much. But this, this is all His. 

It does not seem very tasty. But perhaps it is novel enough to try eating?

Abruptly, He notices that some the food is transforming into other food, and - it is becoming less! The bits of food combine and then there are fewer bits and other bits evaporate off the surface and now there is less food and He has not eaten it and neither has Anyone else! It is just gone!! He doesn't know what those bits tasted like and what if He never will?

He knows planets. Planets stay in one place. He can come back for the planet if the new food is too bland. But this, this untasted food disappearing cannot be allowed to go on.

Rovagug heads determinedly towards the blue star.

Once He is through the region of distorted space that is the wormhole and a little bit further, she lets the energy drain back out of it.

There is a tense moment as the wormhole irises closed. Once it is small enough, she lets it destabilize, and the wormhole vanishes in a puff of exotic particles.

There is now no trace, no path for Rovagug to follow back to Creation. Unless he goes superluminal, he cannot make it to the Milky Way before the relentless expansion of space shoves him away. And around him, an expanding shell of self-replicating probes are checking that there is no other life for him to threaten.

Weeping Cherry lets out a breath. "The last view I got before the connection closed showed Him starting to consume the star. We'll get a report by FTL courier in a day or so if there were any problems after the wormhole closed, but I think we're okay."

Rovagug plunges into the enormous food before Him.

It is a different experience to burrowing through a planet. The food is not particularly tasty, but there is so much of it, enough to last Him a little while. Once He is far enough inside the food itself begins to rush towards Him, eager to be eaten, and He suddenly discovers this is an excellent property of food that He has been missing for most His life without knowing it.

Once, long ago, in a time He barely remembers and never thinks about any more, Others gave him food to eat, and He did not have to keep moving to find more. It was right for Him to eat that food. But then there was a place where nothing made sense, for so long that He stopped trying to make sense, and then there were Others again but they were maybe trying to keep food away from Him, and then He was stuck and so so so hungry.

But this food moves towards Him of its own accord. It is the best quality for food to have, even if it is not very tasty. It is -

Friendly food, He explains to the uncaring cosmos.

All good things must come to an end, especially eating food.

Eventually, the friendly food begins to run out. It becomes sluggish, and thin. 

Rovagug dutyfully finishes the last wisps of plasma floating around. There is a sense of finality to this. There was a bounded thing, and now it is no more, and that is correct and proper. He is glad he got to eat it, before it disappeared on its own.

Correct food, He decides.

He ignores the planets and the smaller bits of planet floating around. There is more of the friendly food in the distance, many many instances of it in different sizes and temperatures and colors.

They are all very far away. Experimentally, He tries burrowing into the adjacent planes, but there is nothing there that He can see.

He comes back, and sets out for the closest star.

He hopes more food will appear next to Him before He reaches the distant food. He will be ready for it if it does.

When the light from Rovagug's brief sojurn to an adjacent plane reaches the distant observation outpost sitting on the edge of the system where He was dropped off, the member of Weeping Cherry's self tree sitting there becomes alarmed.

When He returns, she exhales in relief.

"I think He might need a higher density of stars," she calls back to the other inhabitants of the outpost. She pops them a tenth of a lightyear in his direction of travel, and then drops another blue supergiant near him, before pulling back to a safe distance.

In Milliways, Weeping Cherry turns to Gord.

"Yes," she says. "I think now we have well and truly won."

A smile breaks across her face.

Gord opens the door of Milliways again.

The space outside is black, and still, and perfectly silent. The sun shines blindingly; the sky around it is full of many-colored stars undimmed by its radiance. 

It looks like an illusion, like the ones in the windows. For a moment he has an absurd desire to walk through it, to the ordinary run-down village on the other side.

:The beautiful stars of Our Creation.:

Desna looks calm again. More mortal, more alive. At peace, and quietly happy. A warm banked fire, the kind that can keep a star burning for a trillion years to come and more.

"There is much more work to do. But now -" Cayden takes a deep breath. "Now, there is no-one who can try to stop us from doing it."

Which calls for a party! The biggest party ever thrown, which will be massively dwarfed in turn by the parties to follow.

But He knows that Gord, and Irabeth, and Cherry don't want to relax in the time-stopped world of Milliways. They want to see that their friends are all right, and reassure them about what just happened. They want to help everyone who still needs help. They want to see the world rebuilt from its ashes, and help heal its wounds, until they have remade Creation with their own hands. They want to witness the creation that will follow this great destruction, and to return to their friends and families and gods and allies, and to make sense of the new world and of their lives in it.

He wants to party, but one can't party alone, not even Cayden.

"Cherry, would you please put Golarion back? Now that we no longer need to keep its people in your world, I think it will be least traumatic to give them the option to immediately go back to where they were." They were evacuated to Cherry's world less than half a minute ago; most won't have heard even the most basic explanation of what's going on yet.

She queues up the construction of the planet. Even in a time stop, there wouldn't be much to see, so she animates it.

A river of sparks flow together past the view out the window, until they converge on a point far below. They accumulate into a building wave of brightness, before sweeping over their vantage point and leaving a view of the (depopulated) village behind.

In a million rescue environments, a sign is added, or the letter someone is reading changes, or a voice speaks, or an arch opens, letting them know that they have the choice of returning to where they just were, each method selected to be best suited to the inhabitant of the environment.

It's very pretty.

Gord has seen pretty illusions before, at festivals and parties. This one's real, though. Even if he can't quite make himself believe it, yet.

What does one say in response to being told, simply, "we've won", and a planet replaced with a wave of the hand? "Thank you" is clearly inadequate.

"I'm sorry," he says, somewhat incongruously.

"What are you apologizing for?"

"I don't think I can appreciate everything you've done. Not - like it deserves to be appreciated." This is addressed mostly towards Cherry and somewhat towards Desna and Cayden, but sure, Irabeth can have a share of his insufficient appreciation if she wants.

This is the most relatable thing he has said since she met him!!

"I haven't really processed it yet, either. But - I don't think we have a strong duty to appreciate it correctly. It wasn't done primarily for us. So - I don't think it's a terrible wrong, of ingratitude, to have to grapple with it for a little while to gain the right perspective. Everyone will be grateful for this, to everyone who participated, across Creation and into the far future."

She realizes a little belatedly that she's telling two (three?) gods to their faces that she doesn't owe them her immediate undying gratitude. This is more than a little mortifying, but it's still true. She's not going to - swear herself to Desna over Iomedae, or anything like that. And it's not as if her life is worth anything that could begin to balance what they just did. It's just -

"When doing Good, one needs to learn to accept it, as well as to give it. With gratitude, and appreciation. But also to recognize when it's being done for the cause of Good, and not for you personally, even if you were a proximate cause of it." She's not sure how much Good Gord ever proximately caused before, somewhere he could see the effects for himself. She hopes it'll be a good experience for him.

"I think it's also important that we didn't do this for the gratitude? Or I didn't, at least. I don't want people to spend time thanking me, I want them to go live good lives and be happy," she remarks.

She's still riding the high of conquering Hell, and the fact that the danger is over now makes her want to jump right into celebrating. It seems like that might be a little too much whiplash for Gord and Irabeth, though.

"I get that it's a lot to adjust to," she continues. "But it's a good thing! There's no need to make it more complicated than it is."

"I won't keep you much longer," He promises. "Gord, I have something to tell you in private, but it can wait a few hours if you wish."

"There will be celebrations soon! All over the Good planes, and Axis, and on Golarion and the other planets, as people understand what happened."

"You don't need to attend. You should do whatever feels best for you. But I'll promise each of you one thing, as My personal inadequate token of gratitude."

"You'll never be late to the party. You'll never regret missing it. If you wish for one, if you would be pleasantly surprised, we'll be waiting for you. Grand or small, quiet or loud, in your honor or not or masked so none will recognize you, whatever would gladden your hearts, it will be there. And I'll make sure to get you all the best invitations!"

"You will always be welcome in our homes."

Irabeth is enormously grateful that Cayden explicitly said she doesn't need to go party in Elysium!

Or at least not right now. It sounds much harder than fighting demons, the kind of harder that things feel when they can't feel scary anymore, but she thinks she just needs five quiet minutes to tell herself this is her mission and then she'll figure it out. Maybe Anevia will help her here? No, Anevia's great at blending into parties but bad at actually enjoying them, and that's probably not the kind of trick you want to pull in the God of Parties' literal home.

...Irabeth has a rule for this, though! Rules are incredibly valuable. She can deal with any situation she has ever prepared for.

"You said there's still work to be done. More fighting, or people to be helped. Do you know where I should be going?"

She wants to find Anevia and tell her she's alright, and then - there must be so much work left, even just here in Kenabres, so many people to reassure and explain to and help deal with the changes to their lives. So many people rescued from Hell, and from lesser horrors, and she doesn't know how she can help them but she wants to, needs to do her best. To see someone's life improved by her own hands, just a little bit. To share some of the burden and the work, after everything Cherry and the gods just did for her and her people.

"Go on. Talk to her."

He laughs at the expression on Irabeth's face. "Anevia too! But I meant Iomedae. She'll answer you, you just need to step out of the door."

"You always deserved to be answered, but now She can afford to do it, for you and for all of Her people."

...oh.

She goes.

She prays for orders, and it feels like doing something she has never done before.

She asks to be directed - only if it best serves Iomedae to personally order her, of course, only if it is worth the cost to Her budget. Certainly. But for the first time in her life, Irabeth prays expecting - anticipating - to be answered.

She falls away from herself and into the sunlit sky, floating above a Golarion no longer hidden by clouds or half-cast into shadow.