“Well, let us review.” Anapa leaned back. “He is the god of darkness, chaos, and evil. Let us agree to put aside philosophical concepts of evil and good, as they are subjective. What is evil for one is good for another. Let’s talk instead about chaos. Chaos, as our priest here will tell you, is an extremely powerful force. Do any of you know what a fractal is?”

Roman raised his hand.

Anapa grimaced. “I know you know. Here.”

A dark equilateral triangle ignited on the floor.

Anapa waved his hand. A smaller equilateral triangle appeared in the middle of the darker one, its corners touching the sides of the original triangle.

“How many triangles?” Anapa asked.

“Five,” I said. “Three dark, one light in the middle, and the big one.”

“Again,” Anapa said.

A smaller light triangle appeared in the middle of each dark triangle.

“Again. Again. Again.”

He stopped, pointing at the filigree of triangles on the floor. “I could go on to infinity. In basic terms, a fractal is a system that doesn’t become simpler when analyzed on smaller and smaller levels. Keep that in your head.”

A system that can’t be broken down to basic components. Okay, got it.

Anapa leaned forward. “To understand chaos, you have to understand mathematics. A lot of your civilization—most of any civilization, really—is built on mathematical analysis, the guiding principle of which is that everything can be explained and understood, if you just break it into small enough chunks. In other words, everything has an end. If you dig deep enough into any complex system, you will eventually unearth its simplest parts, which can’t be broken down any further. That sort of thinking works for a great many things, but not all of them. For example, the fractal. It doesn’t end.”

I felt like I was back in the Order’s Academy at some lecture. “This is surreal.”

“The fractal?” Anapa asked.

“You. Explaining this.”

Anapa gave a long-suffering sigh. “What do you know about me?”

And now I’d been singled out of the class. “You are the deity of funeral rites.”

“And what else?”

Umm…

“Medicine. The exploration of biology and metaphysics. Knowledge. This is my primary function. I impart knowledge. I teach. One can’t just give man fire. It’s like giving a toddler a box of matches—he will burn the house down. You must teach him how to use it.” Anapa shook his head. “Back to the fractal. It can’t be explained by mathematical analysis, so humanity, as it so often does, declared it to be a mathematical curiosity and swept it under the rug. Except the fractal occurs again and again.”

An earthworm appeared on the floor of the office.

“A line,” Anapa said. “So simple.”