[Edited] Chapters 56-58 (Patreon)

I've actually already finished the first run through these as far as edits go, but I've been finding that it helps to reread them before posting. Many times, I find myself unsatisfied with my changes, and it helps to get a sense for the chapter flow when I'm not distracted by my editor's notes.

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Ch. 56 - Fear Beneath the Glass
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They say you should never stare directly into the sun. Sound advice, however one had just exploded in our faces—twice—so there was not much we could have done save stand there, blinking owlishly while what felt like the remains of our eyeballs dripped down our faces.

“Now that,” I said once I managed to find my voice again, “was a mean trap.”

“Bloody lethal be what that were.” Jax’s growl of irritation was a touch saltier than usual. She rounded on Lynnria. “I thought ye said the traps was just little stuff. Arrows. Foot-catches and the like.”

“Mostly,” our youngest croaked. The explosions had fortunately not extended beyond the plane of the stairs, so we had been spared everything save the sound and light. Still, that itself had easily been enough to crisp the ends of our hair… to say nothing of the spots still fading from our eyes. “The maze falling on our heads was pretty big, though.”

I grimaced. Then winced from the beginnings of heat-rash spreading across my face. “I have to take responsibility for that one. Dissolving support pillars is usually a bad idea.”

“How else were you supposed to free me?” Arx asked, most of her attention still focused on the room ahead. “And why have only the one holding up the entire maze? I can’t think of a reason unless it was meant to collapse.”

I had to give her that. “If I’d done the puzzle correctly, I’m sure that could have been prevented.”

“Maybe. One thing I can say, if you hadn’t bought me that skill just now…” The corners of her mouth tightened, and she glanced at me from the corner of her eye. She looked pissed. “That trap was meant to kill.”

“It’s the Dungeon, Arx. Isn’t that the idea?”

She did not answer at first, preferring to quietly seethe. Instead, she took a couple of steps up the stair to survey the damage. Curious myself, I followed.

The once well-appointed sitting room was now totally bare. The end-tables and their lamps had gone. No trace of the chairs or cushions remained. But more than that, the place looked almost suspiciously clean. One would have expected the nuclear fire from a moment ago to have left behind some ashes or scorch marks, but there was nothing. Not even a speck of dust. A team equipped with hazmat suits and chemical agents could not have done a better job.

I let out a low whistle. Now that’s a fireball.

It was regrettable, but I had come to accept that I would never be able to replicate a feat such as this. I was simply not that kind of mage. Oh, I could come close with my Detonating Sap, given some prep work and the right circumstances. The incident with the Bandits and the burning merchant carts stood in testament to that. But that kind of explosion produced more concussive force than heat. Certainly not the kind that could reduce a whole room to atoms.

Does that mean I’m breathing armchair right now?

“Every priest I’ve ever heard has said the Dungeon is only meant to push us,” Arx said quietly, her gaze turned inward. “Make us faster. Stronger. Smarter. The Dungeon doesn’t put things in our path that can only kill us. And when death does happen, its only because we were too blind to see what we should have done to prevent it.”

She pulled in a deep breath as her eyes refocused, and for a moment, she scanned the room as though only now just seeing it.

“This was different.” She turned to me finally. “That second explosion was meant for you. I’m sure of it. You were the only one who couldn’t have heard the tell.”

I glanced at the others only to receive nods of confirmation. The ticking had been quite audible to them.

Damn. I was afraid of that.

I had already put together that the second explosion was to pick off stragglers—a cruel trick that no honest dungeon master would ever use unless they were dealing with a particularly savage bunch of murderhobos—but to target me specifically?

Come to think on it, hasn’t that been the situation this whole time?

I had been stranded and slowly starved through the constant traps. What food I had found had either turned to ashes in hand—like on the island—or been poisonous enough to kill a moose. And even after overcoming the hurdle being alone represented for a summoner, most of the challenges I had faced had been ones in which having allies was of no consequence. Close to every moment I had spent since setting foot in this place had been designed to single me out.

The only exception had involved that painting—a puzzle which had required four people to solve… had in fact been undetectable until then. A puzzle which had been necessary to obtain the yellow crystals…

One of which had been needed before tackling the maze, had I ever expected to legitimately rescue Arx.

“She’s not playing fair,” I realized.

“Fair? Mate, she wants ye boiled in a stew!”

However, Lynnria began shaking her head. “She’s a goddess. If She really wanted you dead, you would be dead.”

“Then why aren’t I?”

I began absently rubbing at my abdomen, lost in thought. What deities I had met thus far had been… well, I was not sure what word I was looking for. Capricious? Cagey? Arrogant? Cruel? Dismissive? All of those things and more. But mostly just powerful. Any one of them could have killed me with a wave their hand.

My own hand slowed as the realization of where I was scratching set in—right where Ahnbe had stabbed me.

Ah… so that’s it. Power was a matter of perspective, after all. And power respected power.

I jerked my head once, dismissing the matter, before turning to Arx. “What did you see up here before you jumped away?”

“What did I see?” Arx looked at me in disbelief. “Did you not hear what I just said? She wants to killyou!”

“I know,” I acknowledged, then turned toward the sun-drenched portal. “Ironically, in all the world, I think through there might be the safest place I could go.”

It would be far more difficult, after all, to justify our deaths if we were literally right under Her nose.

Arx’s chin lifted as she worked her way backward through my rationale. “I see… ‘stits, I hope you’re right about this.”

“Well…” I smiled, mostly just trying to put a brave face on it. “I seem to recall someone telling me that Wisdom was only applied Intelligence.”

“I doubt I phrased it that way.”

I shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. The point is, I can only act based on what precious-little information I have, and from what I’ve gathered, She won’t stoop to killing us directly.”

“Don’t mean She ain’t got nothing else in mind,” Jax countered from one side. “Never take a roaster’s hand without checkin’ the trees.”

An unwilling puff of air escaped my nose. It was decent advice for all that it was bandit logic. Only a fool would think they could outmaneuver someone of Her age and experience.

Thinking back, all of Her correspondence toward us thus far had been polite and meticulously designed to set us at ease—directly counter to the Dungeon She had planned for us. Whether that was meant to coax us toward our eventual doom or as simple alibi toward the very-pissed-off sibling my death would leave behind, I did not know.

But it was best I be as prepared as I could be.

“Well, I can’t argue with that. Arx, why don’t you go over what you found before you had to jump away with Jax. I’m sure you two can work out how to disarm this thing if you put your heads together.” Part of being a good leader was in knowing when to delegate, after all. We needed through that door. And I needed to work out a way of actually surviving once we walked through it. “Lynnria, come with me. We’re going to discuss the rest of those skill points Arx and I have saved up.”

“Me?” Lynnria glanced at her seniors apprehensively. “But I only know about—”

“Warrior builds. Yes, exactly,” I finished. “It’s the ‘build’ part I’m interested in.”

I might have been an ant flailing at the unfairness of the universe, but I had no intention of getting squashed without biting somebody.

“Have you ever heard of a concept called power-scaling?”

*****

I took a slow breath to steel myself against the quiet dread that had descended and balled my hands into fists in a futile effort to control their trembling. For all my preparations and admittedly-creaky logic, taking that first step toward the now-opened door was taking all the willpower I could muster. The solid bar of light cleaving the once solid barrier in twain was sending chills racing up and down my spine.

Jax and Arx had been successful, though most of the puzzle’s finer details had escaped me. Once assigned, I had only given half an ear to my lovers’ task, so I only knew it had involved light refraction and mixing the resultant colors to unveil further clues. It had all sounded fascinating, and I had been quite tempted to lean over their shoulders, figuratively speaking. However, Jax had taken to the responsibility with such avid enthusiasm—both from the trust I had placed in her and the puzzle’s similarity to one of our first shared obstacles—I decided it best to leave them to it. That was what delegation was all about, after all.

And the result spoke for itself. Not only had the trap been disarmed, we were now free to proceed. If I could just convince myself to move.

On my end, I had already decided the direction Arx’s next skill should take—namely fine-tuning her arrow skill—so hashing out the minutiae had been relatively painless. I only hoped my patch job worked.

My own skill-point had been far more recalcitrant. Power-scaling ideas rely heavily on layering one skill atop another, our own Status-Effect-conversion chain being a prime example. By themselves, the individual skills making up the chain were not of great use, but taken together, they combined into something extremely powerful. Trying to get anything useful out of a single skill was much more challenging.

However, after a meticulous and conspiratorial—one never knew who or what might be listening—review of the skills and abilities we had amassed, we had managed to cobble together an interesting little ability and something of a plan to go along with it. It was tenuous and heavily dependent upon the Demon Queen’s own approach to the situation. If She decided to just kill us all… well, there was not much we could have ever done to prevent that, but if She at least decided to talk a little first, we might have a chance…

…if only to run for it.

Might.

And there was still the outside chance that all of our assumptions were completely off-base. That She genuinely just wanted to sit down and chat over a polite meal. I doubted it, but if it had ever been apropos for me to be wrong, now was the time.

The floor rumbled again, and I cast an uneasy glance toward the ceiling. For a brief moment, I had felt… unsettled. Like I was on the verge of breaking into a cold sweat, however it had gone before I could identify the source of it. But then, I was already clenching my fists hard enough to shatter glass, so it was tough to separate one cold sweat from another.

“Funny,” Jax commented. “That rumble should’a come after we opened yon door. That one were late.”

“Weaker, too,” Arx agreed. “Maybe that was the last few blocks of maze finally collapsing?”

“Maybe.”

Still… there had been that feeling. The echo of it still itched at the back of my mind, begging to be caught yet flitting just out of reach. It was… somehow familiar.

“Are we going in or not?” Lynnria prompted.

My lips pressed together as second and third thoughts clashed through my brain. Had I considered all the angles? Should I take another day to rest? Accrue as many skill-points as possible? Would they matter?

I took another breath in a vain attempt to soothe myself. As close to panic as I was, it did not help to know how many eyes were centered between my shoulders. That for all the outward calm I projected, they knew my inner turmoil. They could sense the depth of the precipice upon which I gazed.

If only there was some way to step back from it…

I let the air escape my lungs again in a defeated fog. I had no alternatives. I knew that. But the same could not be said for all of us.

“You don’t have to,” I replied finally, my voice quiet.

I did not look at Lynnria. The admission alone was almost more than I could bear, but I owed her this choice. Hour by hour, her destiny had slowly become ever more enmeshed with my own. But not inextricably so. Not yet.

“The front door is open. Always has been. I… probably should have told you that before… now that I think about it. But you were looking for your grandfather, and I… well, I’m not much good on my own.” I was rambling. Making excuses. I firmed my shoulders. “If you want to, you can collect your first Word and escape. There’ll be survivors, I’m sure. They can take you in.”

My heart sank steadily as I waited for her reply, though I honestly could not say what answer I hoped for. Even if we had not been traipsing into a lion’s den, the prospect of going into the presence of another goddess—and of my own free will—was nearly enough to send me gibbering into a corner.

None of my companions were prepared to handle this, least of all, Lynnria. They had felt the faintest brush of Her gaze, true. But to stand before Her? Endure Her anger?

I swallowed roughly. Fuck… I hope this works.

“You’re afraid?”

I almost laughed, the question was so absurd. What kind of courage would a person need not to be? But I did not say that.

Just nodding was difficult enough.

“Then… why don’t you leave?” she asked. “If the door is already unlocked, why don’t we just go?”

Now that was a fair question. But one with an answer that had not changed since I had first set foot in this place.

“‘Unending disappointment.’”

Even I did not fully appreciate the implications of that phrase. What did it truly mean to provoke an eternal grudge from a goddess? The only conclusion I could come to was that simply leaving would damn us even more thoroughly than walking directly into Her jaws.

Might delay things a while…

But Lynnria did not let that faze her.

With a snarl, she proclaimed, “Your enemies are my enemies. If it’s courage you need, you have mine!”

“That’s a way, lassie,” Jax said with a resounding swat to the girl’s backside—provoking an indignant squawk in return. “We’ll make a proper Dolilim of ye yet.”

Arx nodded along, though she was much more subdued. I could see the effect my internal struggle was having on her. “We have your back, Master. No harm will come to you while we live.”

I almost smiled. I had never done anything to deserve such loyalty. Such stalwart faithfulness.

Still. I knew. No amount of bluster could break the rocks of the mountain before us. Fill the void beyond which we had to traverse.

One by one, I gathered their gazes.

“We’ll see.”

Then, I turned. And steadily, taking up a rhythm every bit as slow and heavy as a march of death, my feet began to move.

“I wish I could aid you more here,” Mia whispered as the light from the door loomed closer. “I can guard against some fraction of her presence, but beyond that, I am helpless.”

I nodded in silent acknowledgment. I would take anything I could get.

“Make certain not to speak my name,” she cautioned the rest of the group. “Xhinn may yet be unaware of my existence, but even if she is, it would be best not to remind her. She may react… poorly. And whatever else you do, do not look at her. Understood?”

No one spoke. The atmosphere was too thick for words. Besides, we had discussed this already. Made our plans. Either they worked or they did not. There was nothing left to say.

Well… maybe one thing.

“Leeroy Jenkins.”

The softly murmured name drew looks of curiosity, but I did not bother to explain. It was a foolish joke, but sometimes courage comes from foolish places.

And I was a very foolish man.

As the door swept aside, we had to shield our eyes from the light beyond. However, once they had adjusted, what we beheld…

It was like stepping into another world.

Yes, there was the cerulean dome of the sky stretching above, the sun glowing softly for all its brilliance. Around us, there were all the verdant trees and beautiful flowers one might expect from a manicured garden.

But it was stained glass. Every bit of it. The sun, the sky, the flowers. All glass. But alive. Moving. Swaying. Random depictions of birds swooping by and gone. Strange beasts frolicking in apparently distant fields. Clouds rolling by. Yet all of it was contained in one, single dome of glass.

“It’s like a church,” I breathed in awe.

“A shrine… actually.”

Startled, it took me a moment to find the source of the new voice. The light cast over our surroundings was too disorienting to make sense of the world on ground level. Everything was broken up and strangely colored, as though by a projector. However, eventually, I became aware of a long, rectangular table, set with the table cloth, cutlery, candles, and all the other fine trappings one might associate with a king’s banquet. Save the food.

And behind it, standing with the stiffly formal air of a butler, there was a woman. Or more accurately, a lilim.

I could not say how I knew that for certain. From everything I had heard, they were not supposed to conform to any set description. I could just feel it somehow. In my gut.

This particular specimen was of middling height. Thick, golden locks framed and curled gently about her face, and bizarrely, she seemed to be wearing an eyepatch. But beyond that?

Far from the demonic mien I had been expecting, this being was… well, the closest I could say was that she was more like a dragon given human form. Black scales mottled her otherwise pale skin in random patches but gathered mainly about her limbs and torso in an artful mimicry of clothing. A reptilian tail curled about her leg, unmoving save for the very tip which flicked about like a tapping toe. And from her head, a pair of bone-yellow horns jutted forward and up, almost like those of a bull.

She was also quite nude. But then, I would have been more surprised in finding a lilim otherwise. For the rest, I only noted that she was both curvaceous and every bit as bare as Jax before averting my eyes. I could tell the hunger radiating off of her as readily as I could her species. And I did not even have that ability.

Jax and Arx instantly moved forward, shielding me from her, but she gave them no notice.

“You have the honor of standing within the very spot my Lady began her grand design, not an hour’s walk from her resting place, the Fifth Creation itself,” she intoned grandly. Yet her voice maintained a soft and sensual quality, as if she were not so much speaking as cooing at her pets. “You can just see it there.”

She pointed behind herself toward some sort of black smear out beyond the tapestry of living glass. From its tall and narrow shape, I assumed it was a stele much the same as the Fourth had been. However, assume was all I could do. For all that the dome was depicting a scenic view, the actual scenery beyond was all but totally obscured.

“The Fifth Creation?” Arx parroted. “I’ve only ever heard of four. And the third has never been found. Where is the fifth supposed to be?”

The woman did look at her then, and she pointed a second time, more exaggeratedly and with a spark of amusement twinkling in her eye. “There.”

I placed my hand on Arx’s shoulder to forestall the disgruntled hiss I knew was coming.

“Um… hello. My name is Donum… of the uh… the Clan Donum.” It was an awkward introduction, but one works with what one has. One day, I might even be able to say that without flinching. “This is Arx and Jax. And behind me is Lynnria.”

Thankfully, the gorgeous creature before me did not seem to mind my discomfort.

“Oh, I’m very well aware of who you are, darling,” she purred, sauntering forward.

The stiff formality from before melted away the moment she moved, as though she were a being somehow composed of both ice and water in superposition. Whether through training or willpower, she could hold herself still. But to move, she was the very essence of sensuality.

Naturally, Jax and Arx bristled, but she paid them no regard.

“We’ve met many times.”

I looked at her in confusion. We have? When? Where? But then my eyes began to drift downward, helplessly attracted by her completely unreal body, and I had to shake my head before I made a fool of myself. Don’t go there, man. Just… just keep looking at her face. “Then… you have the advantage of me.”

The faint spark of amusement returned to her face, and her own gaze drifted downward. Whatever difficulties I had been experiencing, she seemed to regard as mild inconveniences. If at all. For all that I was wearing about the drabbest felt smock imaginable, she was staring at me so frankly, I might as well have been naked.

“The advantage, you say?” she replied finally, then laid her palm against her chin like some sort of madame. “In some ways. But in others? I didn’t believe the effect would be so profound, but now that I’m enrobed… Mmm~ Lady forefend, but your voice is like silk on my skin.”

By that point, even Lynnria was starting to growl, never mind her elders, and I had to quickly step in front of them lest they take the Conan approach to diplomacy.

Chebs, is it getting humid in here or is it just me? And why do I smell cinnamon rolls?

Realization set in, and I quickly started breathing through my mouth.

“Uh, right… no.” Oh, hell! I can taste it, too. “I meant that I don’t know your name. We’re supposed to be meeting your, um… well, your Lady, I suppose. Is She not here?”

Right. Good. Have to remember, normal people can’t just smell vagina from ten feet away. Don’t acknowledge it. Just stay on target.

Still… hers smelled… really good. And I experienced a moment of regret at being so hasty. If only I could develop the skills necessary to spar with a femme fatale like this with a cool head. Maybe there even was one. I would have to ask Mia.

Of course, I did alright with my own girls, but I knew them. Outsiders made me fumble over myself like a newborn calf, weirdly mirroring the Dolilim’s own predilections.

Still, I was not sure whether I was relieved or frustrated not to find the Demon Queen waiting for us. For all the grandeur of our designated meeting place, I could detect no sign of Her presence, and the absence had thrown me off-balance. I had been expecting fire and lightning. Not this.

The lilim tilted her head to one side coquettishly, still allowing her good eye to rove about me. “Oh, she’ll be along. We’ve had a great many guests recently, and there are only so many Faen to manage them all. One guest in particular has been… disruptive, requiring my Lady’s personal attention.”

I narrowed my eyes, both at the reminder of the tragedy that had filled so many vacancies and out of disbelief. “I can’t imagine any mortal powerful enough to keep the Lady of the Dungeon on Her toes.”

“I’ll bet it’s Grandfather,” Lynnria whispered at my back. “He’ll have been beside himself trying to find me.”

That was worrisome, if for no other reason than the idea of what he might do when he actually did. Especially if he was as powerful as Lynnria seemed to believe. Yet another meeting I’m not looking forward to. Ah, well. He can’t be any worse than the Demon Queen.

However, from the secretive little smile blooming across this lilim’s face, she did not appear keen on elaborating.

“Until our host arrives, I have been tasked with seeing to your entertainment… and I suppose you’re right. We’ve never been formally introduced.” She bowed at the waist, setting certain parts of her anatomy into pendulous motion. “My name is Xyn, the eldest.”

“Oh, no…” Mia whispered faintly.

My eyebrow twitched before I could stop myself. The lilim had pronounced her name, ‘Zen,’ rather than the ‘Zhin’ of her goddess—and likely namesake. But never mind the similarity. It did not fill me with a great deal of confidence to hear that utterance from my own Faen.

“Please, have a seat. Dinner will be along shortly. I’m sure you must be,” she rose just enough to smirk at me, “starving.”

With that, she spun and headed toward a side door I had only just noticed. I might have wondered how it could possibly connect to the rest of the mansion… if this place followed any sort of logic.

Jax spat in disgust once she had gone—then, with a guilty start, hastily smeared the result into the ground. “What a thundering cunt. Never seen such a gaggin’ hole in all me life, and I be one. Then to taunt ye fer suffering? If’n I weren’t so polite-like, I’d show her the broad of me ax, I would.”

It was a sign of the stress we were all under that no one called her on it.

Now that our opponent had gone, I felt like I had been abandoned in a doctor’s office while some undisclosed test was being conducted. There was no leaving and nothing much to do save stare at the walls until the—likely horrific—news came back.

At least the room is nice.

“I guess… let’s do what she asked,” I suggested, heading for the table.

Jax nodded and quickly went to pull out the chair at the head of the table for me, but I shook my head. “That should be for the host, I think.”

“Obviously,” Lynnria confirmed with a trace of condescension. “Guests would be seated to one side.”

Jax puffed out her chest. “I knowed that. Just did nay like the idea of some sweltering cunt taking a better seat, be all.”

I almost chuckled. Whether through grit or the sheer weight of her own uncouth nature, Jax seemed unbowed by the situation. I was grateful for that.

Still… “Let’s cool it on the colorful language for now, Jax,” I advised, my eyes tracing the path of a bird slipping through the welded glass overhead. It was looking at me funny. “You never know who might be listening.”

I myself badly wanted to ask Mia what she had meant earlier, but that would have called attention to her existence. Then again, ‘oh, no’ already said plenty.

“Yes, Master,” Jax agreed, scanning the rest of the seats consideringly. “Then, I suppose ye’d sit next to the cun—er… host?”

“Traditionally, to the left and in descending order of importance as you go down,” Lynnria affirmed.

I was pretty sure it was the other way around, but I was hardly an expert on the etiquette of my own culture, much less this one. Nor did I much care. I was still so nervous, the idea of eating something was making me nauseas. I felt like a prisoner on death row being offered his last meal, giving me a rather intimate look at what a cruel joke the whole tradition was.

I had been uneasy before I had even stepped through the door, but now? My ears felt hot, and there was a sharp ringing threatening to overwhelm me. I barely took notice of the barbed comments the lilim traded as they sorted themselves out, and only vacantly noted the slightly-too-thin-to-be-comfortable cushion of the seat I had plopped into. My thoughts had started crashing into one another like the froth of the ocean in a storm, and my mind became clouded and dull.

After a moment, my eyes caught upon someone else’s, and I had to blink a few times as confusion slowly pushed through the fog. My own mirrored reflection was staring out at me from within a silver place setting on the table. The platter was not so polished as to deliver a perfect likeness, but even so, I looked… intense. Angry. Frightening, almost. A man teetering on the edge.

Black started to encroach along the edges of my vision, and my eyes squeezed shut of their own accord.

“They have to know we don’t eat, right?” Arx said suddenly, and my head jerked up. “What exactly are they going to be serving us?”

“I uh…” I realized my lungs had begun to burn from the lack of air, and I sucked in a cooling breath. Pull your head out of your ass, Donum! We’ve barely even started, and you’re freaking out? “I don’t know.”

I glanced down the table toward Arx. And then Jax. They had been staring at me.

“Sorry. I guess I, uh…” I licked my lips, feeling abruptly guilty. They would have obviously sensed my mood. “The waiting kind of sucks, huh?”

“It be a piss wank, mate,” Jax agreed. Probably. “But try not swallow it, eh?”

My jaw worked for a moment, but I honestly could not think of what to say. Jax’s expressions remained as colorful as ever—despite my earlier admonishment—and for once, I was glad of it. Working out what she was actually trying to say gave my mind something to chew on besides doubts and worry.

Fortunately, I was saved from either by the arrival of our refreshments. Several lilim entered through the same door Xyn had left from, all in a line and carrying silvered trays with those fancy cloches over top that you never see save in movies. Each of them filed in behind our chairs before serving us in one, synchronized motion.

Truthfully, I did not know where to look. All of these women were beautiful in their own way. Their hair seemed to come in an assortment of unnatural colors, bringing to mind those of the laoi race, and they all sported horns of various descriptions.

However, unlike my own much-more-feline-in-character Dolilim, these seemed to favor reptiles for their chimeric additions. All of them had scales wrapping various parts of their bodies, though only two in the the same color as their hair. Some had spikes or ridges running down their spines or coming from their shoulders.

Curiously, none but Xyn bore a tail.

So, instead, I decided to focus on the covered tray passing in front of me, only taking a moment to glance at the green-haired beauty who was serving me.

“Thank you, Hwx,” I murmured distractedly. Then blinked in confusion.

“Yes, sir, Lieutenant.”

The words had barely left the woman’s mouth that she jerked back like she had just stuck her hand into a bed of live coals and the tray clattered to the table. A moment passed while we stared at one another, me in surprise and shock and her with both hands covering her mouth in horror.

“No…” she breathed and began shaking her head fervently. “No, no, no. I can’t… I can’t…”

Then, like the gazelle her horns so closely resembled, she fled.

Scarcely had the door slammed shut behind her than a burbling torrent of secretive whispers began. The servant lilim seemed no less confused than the rest of us, and most of them were casting glances, ranging from speculative to hostile, my way.

The one exception was Mia. But from all the exuberant hooting and carrying on inside my head, it was hard to tell whether she was reacting to the situation or celebrating a goal at a gameball match.

“Master,” Jax whispered, leaning close. “What be a luten’ent?”

“What? Oh, it’s a… it’s a military rank,” I explained. “Back where I come from.”

Her eyes widened briefly, and she leaned back. I could almost see the gears beginning to whir in her head.

“Oh. Oh, no, no! Jax, I’ve never—”

But it was too late. Before I could say anything more, she had already leaned over to Arx, doubtlessly expanding upon their fictional account of my backstory.

Damn it. And of course, that lilim had reacted about as suspiciously as possible. What the fuck was that, anyway?

Xyn clapped her hands together smartly, putting an abrupt end to the turmoil. “Enough!” she shouted. “Serve our guests and begone!”

The servants—if they could even be described such—replied with a mix of curtsies, nods, and sarcastic jeers, but they obeyed. Shifting so as to compensate for the loss of one of their number, they synchronized themselves once more and swept the covers from our plates. Then they turned and filed out the door.

As for what had been revealed… I had thought I had prepared myself for just about anything, but I still managed to be surprised.

“A gold coin?” I asked finally.

“Naturally,” Xyn replied. “What else would a bunch of lilim eat? Even if they are… polluted.”

Arx fixed the woman with a penetrating glare. “If this is some strange idea of a joke, it’s not funny. It’s perfectly obvious you feed exactly the same way we do. I can taste how delighted you are in our discomfort.”

Xyn sneered at her. “I am delighted to be able to feed at all… mutt. Not all of us get to be so picky. Now be a good little girl, and eat what you are given.”

“Watch your tone, snake,” Arx hissed. “I will not tolerate insults to what my master has made me.”

“And what has your master made you?” the blonde replied, leaning down. “But an ungrateful little bitch?”

From the look in her eye, it was clear this Xyn was goading Arx into a fight—was eager for it, in fact. But Arx seemed sensible enough not to rise to it. Whether that was because of her past, some undisclosed diplomatic training, or what have you, I did not know. However, drawing weapons would have only implicated me, and jeopardized any semblance of the diplomatic immunity I could have claimed.

Lynnria seemed collected as well, for all that she was looking rather sharp-eyed, but with her background, she was probably used to situations like this.

Then… there was Jax.

“Ye tell us to chew rocks when we been starved fit to stave in our ribs and got the stones to call us ungrateful, ye maggot-eaten fud?” she growled, rising.

Xyn straightened, delighted to have found an easy target.

“Oh, I think we both know which of us has the stones.” Her grin turned malicious. “Or had, I should say.”

A vicious, animal-like snarl instantly ripped from Jax’s throat, and she began positively vibrating with the need for violence. “If yer so keen of shovin’ metal down our gullets,” her ax slowly materialized in her hand while black, viscous smoke began rising from her shoulders, “I got some o’ me own right here.”

Just as I was about to stand in some futile hope of calming the rapidly degrading situation, a sudden, monstrous pressure descended over the room. Whatever anger had built. Whatever fear or confusion. All was swept away in the wake of that horrifying weight. The simple act of breathing had consumed all our thoughts.

She had come.

=====
57 - A Coin of a Different Color
=====

The light was the first to change.

The soothing blues and greens from the pastoral scene above quickly shifted to the deep crimson of twilight, and soon even that faded until all was darkness. Stars sprinkled their way into existence like fireworks, spinning and whirling bursts of light, forming patterns guided more by whimsy than reality. And yet through all of that, the sun was still clearly visible in the sky beyond the dome. It was the glass that had turned to night.

Still, these things were mere theatrics. A trumpeting herald for the single, great hand that then speared its way through the sky. It hung there a moment, a false moon over the cathedral’s horizon, glowing softly from some inner light, before slamming to the earth below. Though mere glass and joins of coppery tin, the sheer presence behind that illusory appendage pressed me down more surely than a slab of iron. I felt as if I were holding dozens of spells, each far beyond my capacity. It was all I could do just to look upon a depiction of divine flesh.

Then came the rest of Her.

The horns rose first. Twinned spires of curved bone snaked their way over the horizon like rivers carving a path through the firmament. Great baubles and chains of gold dangled from them, each link the size of a comet. Emeralds and rubies shone from within settings like lakes, so lustrous, they glimmered and sparkled as though from a distant mob of paparazzi.

One by one, the newly formed stars began to wink out. A new wave of darkness, far deeper and more profound, swept over the sky until all was black. Until even the true sun was obscured.

Then She swept her hair aside. And we were bathed in a new light. The light that was Her. I knew I should look away. Mia had warned me about this. Repeatedly. But I could not. It was… too late.

Shimmering black eyes lanced through me just as surely as spears. I felt as if my heart was being squeezed by a vise. Every beat of it reverberated through me, forcing blood through veins so compressed, you would think I was on a rocket to the moon instead of this farcical banquet.

Abruptly, the distant sound of retching came to my ears. I was not sure from whom. I could no more move my head than any of the rest of me—an ill omen for the poor victim. I could only hope they, at least, had managed to collapse to one side first.

However, it did serve as a reminder, and I began my grim yet silent work.

Pulse. One to Jax. 10… 9… 8…

“So…” The voice that hit us was as feminine as it was licentious, yet so grand in scale, the bass of it rattled the tableware in front of us. “Our dear, sweet Donum finally deigns grace us with his presence. How delightful.”

Sarcasm. Good. I could deal with sarcasm.

Gritting my teeth against the pressure, I gasped, “H-Happy to be here. Wouldn’t… wouldn’t miss it.”

Puls—holy… fuck! Close your eyes, man! Stop looking at Her! To Arx! To Arx!

Even reduced to this crystalline facsimile, She was beauty personified. Every sweep. Every line of Her. She was at once muse and art. Aphrodite in glass.

Which was neat and all, but I could ill afford the dip in blood pressure.

Curiously, even amidst my inner turmoil, I distantly noted how exactly she looked like Mia—or perhaps, as she would have were she rejoined with the rest of her heavenly origin. Namely Bline. I could not possibly describe the difference. Only that, once seen, it could not be unseen.

There were, of course, a host of minor deviations. The hair. The eyes. The horns. But in the face? Xhinn and Bline could have been twins.

“Truly?” She boomed. “How bold of you. I would have expected more contrition given the circumstances.”

Contrition? I squeezed my eyes shut again. Somewhere in there, I had lost count, but I was pretty sure Jax could handle another dose.

Pulse… and pass…

“A-and what—” I sucked in as deep a breath as I could manage. “What would those be? Y-you never actually explained what made you so angry. I’ve… I’ve tried identifying your items before. N-never… never reacted this way.”

Lynnria and I had previously discovered a riddle—on the chest back in that room with the gravity trap—referring to some bargain or other which had been broken in spirit. Vague a clue as that had been, I had still put together a scenario with the potential to explain at least a few things. However, that involved a lot of ifs, maybes, and my own transitory dreamworld. And I was not about to put words into Her mouth. All I knew for certain was that the last time I had heard Her voice had been immediately after trying to figure out the secrets of Arx’s new pendant.

Never did get that one pinned down. It had something to do with her particular tastes, as I recalled—that being the main reason we had traded for it at all—but of course, we had since discovered that she enjoyed possessiveness.

Hmm… now, what would that mean…?

“What are you blathering about?” Though comparatively light in tone, the Demon Queen’s voice was still so thunderous, I could feel my teeth vibrating. “You were supposed to figure out what the item does. That’s the whole point of giving them out! Did you think I would reveal the location of my Isafel over something so piddling as that?”

Eyes shut. Pulse. Pass to Arx. Deep breath. Open again.

“Isafel?” Where had I heard that name before? “The rivers?”

She snorted and looked away, finally relieving some fraction of the hellish pressure of her gaze, and I took the opportunity to get as much oxygen into my system as I could.

“Rivers, you say? Ha! Mortals. How delightful.” Her chuckle of amusement set the baubles adorning her horns to tinkling, then she again fixed me with a bit of a side-eye. “Isafel means ‘the winding dragon,’ you know. In… one of the older tongues.”

It took me a moment, but the pieces did finally click together. “You’re talking about that Mouth in the lake, aren’t you? It has a name?”

“They all do. My precious children, each and every one.”

“Your ‘precious child’ destroyed an entire town!” I shouted indignantly—then flushed with regret. Provoking Her was about the last thing I wanted to do.

However, either She did not understand why I was getting upset, or it was simply beneath Her notice.

“Yes, many thousands of people,” she admitted without even a trace of remorse. “Rarely am I so magnanimous. I suppose I’ll have to hide her somewhere else now, though I fear the game is spoiled. With the Words she can gift…? No, mustn’t leave her exposed.”

Game? Another pulse. Another pass. And Words? As in plural?

“You’re talking about people dying like it’s some kind of joke.”

“And you’re talking as if I were my sister,” She retorted immediately. Then, perhaps as a minor concession, She shook her head sadly and laughed. “I suppose it is a bit of a joke though, isn’t it? How many years has it been now? I can’t even remember. And yet still… they all die.”

It seemed to be a trend with these goddesses that they always talked past you, referring to agendas and events about which you could never have had any knowledge. Still, that last part was clear enough.

“That tends to happen when you throw people into a death trap,” I muttered.

She tutted, turning to me again, and slowly leaned down to the point where her face began to distort over the dome of the ceiling. All the while, her presence increased, measure by measure, until it was all I could do to stay conscious.

“There is no use debating the Purpose with me, little Donum. We are all slaves to our own destiny. Mortals most of all. At least some of us strive against it.”

I had no idea what to say to that. Not that I could have, anyway.

Each of the goddesses had made mention of this ‘Purpose,’ though none had elaborated much beyond its name. Nor had Mia ever brought it up. All I knew was that it was in some way tied to the way things worked around here. But ‘strive against it?’ Against what? Destiny? The Purpose itself?

“Don’t…” I just managed to force out. “…know… P-Pur…”

“Hmm?” She began to grin. “Not bad. Impressive, really. For you to be able to speak even now?”

For a single, blessed moment, her eyes shifted away from me, and I just managed to gasp for air.

“Very well, I shall give you a moment’s respite. You have managed to divert me from my cause here, and I haven’t all day.” She smiled again. Breathtakingly. “Besides, I doubt your companions can take much more, and here I had been so looking forward to speaking with Jax again. Our sparring matches were always the highlight of my day.”

With that, She turned and strode some distance away against the false horizon, finally pausing to simply gaze up at her own mirage of stars. I doubted whether She was in any way truly distant—the glass was not exactly moving—however, Her presence had receded to the point of mild inconvenience, and that was enough.

Her mention of my companions had me worried. I had not heard a peep from them since Xhinn’s arrival, and I knew Jax well enough that she, of all my girls, would not have missed an opportunity to snipe at our antagonist. However, when I looked…

Lynnria had collapsed to the floor in a puddle of her own sick—which solved one mystery. I could not tell whether she was conscious, but she was at least still breathing. Meanwhile, Jax and Arx seemed… better? But only marginally. If I had to put words to it, I would say they looked a bit like they had just sat through a bad movie marathon while locked in a burn pit with a bunch of plague victims.

“Jax?” I stood, pushing my chair away so as to lift her head from the table. She was trembling like a leaf. “How we doing here?”

It took her a moment, but her eyes did just fix on my own. And when they did… “Yer standing?” she breathed, on the verge of weeping. “Ye spoke. Ye looked Her dead on and spoke! And now yer standing?!”

I nodded ruefully. “I told you it would be bad.”

Another skill cycle, but held longer this time to account for the reduced pressure.

Jax gasped as yet another micro-burst of Lust coursed through her—all I could risk with the severity of the presence bearing down on us—but, far from the usual depravity, her eyes had taken on a wild, glassy look, like she was hovering somewhere just on the edge of madness. The impulse to hold her close and whisper sweet comforts into her ear was strong. I wanted to assure her everything would be fine… but I could not know that for certain. It would be a lie claim otherwise. And she would know.

Still, I needed her head in the game, so I delivered a stinging thump to her tit.

“How are we doing?” I asked again. Meaningfully.

“Close,” she grunted, shivering with pain and pleasure. However, when she opened her eyes again, they seemed much clearer. “Be close now.”

Only close, huh?

This whole thing was going to fall apart if I did not get some Life in me to fuel the skill I had bought. And sooner rather than later. I did not know how much longer I could keep Xhinn distracted.

With a grimace, I happened to glance at the plate in front of Jax and its neglected ‘offering’ of a meal.

Hold on… All the gold in the world comes from here, doesn’t it?

I could not recall exactly when or where I had discovered that little tidbit of information, but recall I did. The most reasonable assumption was that it was mined in the process of digging out all the myriad corridors of the Dungeon, but that was hardly the only possibility.

Curious, I snatched up the coin and gave it a sniff. Smells like metal. And when I touched it to the end of my tongue: Tastes like metal, too. Damn. How were they expecting us to eat this?

“You cannot unbind it, my lord.” Mia’s voice came but faintly. That she dared speak at all with Xhinn so near was a risk, but one she must have deemed worth it. And that told me a great deal. “You do not yet know its Name.”

My eyebrows gathered into a pensive furrow as I distractedly sent another packet of Lust to Arx. Mia almost never spoke clearly when new knowledge was on the table. But she would hint.

I don’t know its name? No… its Word! I tilted my head as possibilities spun through my mind. If I could not ‘unbind’ it—presumably a necessary first step before consumption was possible, given the emphasis—would that not leave these Dungeon Golds useless to us? And if that were so, why give them to us at all?

Unless…

The furrow of my brow relaxed upward of its own accord. I might not have known the Word for gold, but I did know another, and so similar, the coincidence strained the limits of credulity.

Hastily, I jerked open my Coin Pouch and exchanged the gold for a single silver piece.

“One coin should be as good as another,” I mused aloud. They all came from the same place, after all. And Silver was a Word I did know.

“Dearest?” Arx wheezed, but I ignored her.

Now what do I do? Just scratch Silver on it? And what would that accomplish? It already is silver.

“Dearest!”

I sighed with frustration. Could she not see I was trying to keep us all alive here?

“What?” I said, turning. Then jerked just about out of my skin.

Xyn was standing over me—or more accurately, lounging over back of Jax’s chair—and watching with a casual disinterest. With the arrival of her divine counterpart, I had forgotten she was even here. But now that the Demon Queen had temporarily left us to our own devices, this servant of Hers seemed inclined to resume her taunting.

“Was the gold too rich for you, then?” she asked, affecting innocence. “Why didn’t you say so? I could have arranged for something more… modest.”

The irony of her use of that word was not lost on me. With her so near, the raw sensuality of her naked body was nearly overpowering. Her skin almost glowed, it looked so soft, and the pendulous sway of her breasts, hanging unfettered and completely unconcerned with my nearness, almost blanked my mind.

So it helped that she was being a bit of a bitch.

“I’m sure you knew exactly what you were doing.”

A sly grin spread across her face. But what she said was, “Do you know what you are doing?”

“Not even a little bit,” I admitted frankly.

I knew what I was trying to do: transform the coin in my hand into some form of food. But wizardry of this kind seemed esoteric by design. Sure, go around, collect Words, and you too can fulfill your dreams of magic. But did anyone ever explain how? Not on your life! It was no wonder the Lady of Power had to assemble spells for people. No one would ever break into the mage game otherwise.

“That’s a shame,” she observed airily. “A person could get hurt that way.”

I sighed. “Are you here to offer advice or just to watch me squirm?”

“Oh, I always enjoy watching you, Donum,” she returned, twisting her hips slightly. “You are so very beautiful, after all. You almost make me forget myself.”

Jax’s clawed hand instantly swiped toward her, but Xyn danced away, laughing. For a moment, it almost looked like Jax might try to pursue. However, what faint pressure still remained seemed enough to rob her the strength of her legs.

“Away ye, slag!” she yelled instead. “Dare touch me master, and ye’ll draw back a stump!”

Arx hissed weakly in agreement.

“Will I?” Xyn teased. “And how will you accomplish that, I wonder? With my mistress here, your fangs are nothing but strawgrass. Besides, you can’t expect me to offer anything… without first extracting a price.”

I grimaced. That had sounded ominous. Something told me going down that road was not in my best interest, but I was so starved for knowledge, even the faintest whiff of it was too strong a temptation to pass up.

“State your terms.”

“Master?!” Jax turned to me, horrified.

“Enough,” I said forcefully, then shoved another dose of Lust down her gullet to follow it up. And this time, I was rewarded with the faint trickle of Life in return.

Finally! Now, we’re getting somewhere.

“My terms?” Xyn replied, playing it coy. “Why, whatever do you mean?”

I glared at the blonde. “Quit your games, wench!”

Oof. What am I? A thirteenth-century duke? But I hastily shook off my qualms. If I was going to play the part of the master, it was important to portray self-confidence.

“I want to know how to turn this coin into Life. You know how to do that. What do you want in exchange?”

She eyed me silently for a moment—which was off-putting given she only had the one.

“What I want…” She sent a cautious glance toward her distant mistress and lowered her voice. “…I doubt you’d be willing to give. But I would accept…a single moment of your regard.”

I quirked an eyebrow. “My regard?”

She nodded solemnly. “Touch me. Let me feel the spark that first kindled in you when you looked at me. Do that, and I will tell you.”

“You ‘stit-sucking…” Growling, Arx began to writhe in her chair, clawing and scratching at the arms in an effort to rise. “That is not something for the likes of you!”

“Which is why she is offering to trade for it,” I countered, punctuating the statement with her portion of Lust—and was fed in turn.

Excellent. Phase one complete. Now I just have to fill my own Life Pool. This little side-bar was turning up aces for our chances. It was a stroke of luck that She had granted it. Actually, maybe just a little too lucky. Damn it, there’s an angle here I’m not seeing. There has to be.

I glanced at the foreign lilim suspiciously. “I know your kind well enough to anticipate their needs, and you’ve said you don’t always get to feed on the best of emotions. But why the touch? What do you get out of that?”

The beauty tilted her chin upward challengingly. “Do you want to know that or the method for consuming that coin?”

So there was something. But trying to figure out what it might be without first filling up my Life capacity was a non-starter. If I did not get my new skill going post-haste, we were done.

“The method then,” I replied.

“So touch me,” she commanded, pleased. “Touch me with desire in your heart… right… here.”

Her hand lifted to accompany her words and traced a delicate path just over her breast.

“Where?!” Jax strained mightily, but there was nothing she could do to counteract the pressure. And Xyn had deliberately positioned herself just out of her view. “I’ll kill ye, ye poptae! Master, nay listen to this rank scaffie! Be a trick sure.”

Of that I had little doubt, but I saw no recourse but to play this through. Even so, Jax’s pleas did make me hesitate just long enough to glance at her… and then Arx. The two of them were on the verge of digging through the backs of their chairs, they were so pissed. If Xhinn had not been standing… wherever She was, I had little doubt anything I said could stop the coming onslaught.

But at least they were not wilting under Her stare anymore. It was just a pity the same could not be said for Lynnria. She had yet to move from her little puddle of befoulment.

Well. Nothing else for it.

With as much confidence as I could muster, I took the few steps necessary to close the gap between myself and this Xyn. But as I neared, the bravado seemed to fade from her visage, replaced by a sort of nervous apprehension.

I could not fathom why. Isn’t this what she wanted? Yet now that I was this close, I could see a sort of vulnerability lurking behind her eye. It was like she was afraid.

Abruptly, she thrust her chest forward. “Well?”

The challenge was echoed by a redoubling of the growls and snarls at my back, but they seemed done with insults. The Dolilim had already been provoked beyond the capacity for words.

Slowly, I lifted my hand. However, for all its splendor, I did not look at my target. I was gauging her expression. Watching for those barely-there moments of fractious indecision cresting the barriers of her mask.

I paused, hovering close enough to feel the heat rising from her flesh. “Are you sure you want this?”

She glanced up from my hand to find my eyes, and she looked at them searchingly. “I want you to want it,” she whispered.

I stared at her a moment more, then allowed my gaze to flick down to her heaving breasts. They sat high and full, wonderfully pale against the black of her scales and with bright, pink buds almost quivering in anticipation for my touch. How could I not want them?

And yet… yet…

“I barely know your name,” I observed quietly. “You want to kill me.”

My accusation had been more probe than indictment, but she made no attempt to deny it. The trap laid for me in front of the solarium door had been perfectly clear, after all. Instead, her lips soundlessly formed a single word.

Please. Just that. Please.

I could not say who made the move. The next instant, palm met flesh, and my consciousness was suffused with the sensation of her pillowy softness. Triumph lit in her eye, but I could not see the reason for it. No assassins leapt from the shadows to protect her honor. Poison gas did not fill the room. Everything remained just as it appeared on the surface: one touch fueled by desire in exchange for one scrap of hidden knowledge.

And I did feel a moment of desire for this creature—else I doubted she would have looked so pleased—but most of all, I felt regret. Regret that we had to be enemies. Regret that I could not feel certain of her own intentions. Regret that I could do no more than simply touch.

But I could at least show her what she was missing.

Scarcely had the power of my skill flared to life than she leapt back with arms crossed over her chest. Even so, I could tell she was struggling to hold up her own weight.

“No one asked you to do that!” she hissed.

This time, I was the one to grin in triumph. “You were willing.”

She had to have been. The Hammer did not shed its Glory on those who did not want it. And now that she had felt its touch…

“Your mistress will hear of this, traitor!” she growled. “How long will her protection last, I wonder, when she finds out how lax your loyalties have been?”

Ahnbe’s protection, huh? That confirmed one or two of my suspicions. Still, I could only quirk an eyebrow.

“If that was why you wanted me to touch you, you’re a lot braver than I am. I barely survived the last time She smelled a lilim on me. I can only imagine what She would do to you.”

For all that my benefactor had technically forgiven the matter, that had not stopped Her from tossing Jax about a quarter mile into a nearby river. And that was with the knowledge that Jax had been completely ignorant of her crime. This lilim should have known better.

Xyn’s expression faltered.

“Now, I believe we had a deal?”

She sniffed and turned her back to me. “Stuff your deals! You’re dreaming if you think I’d give you a thing after the mouthful of disgust you just shoved down my throat.”

“Lies…” Jax hissed. I had not noticed until just then, but in her enraged fervor, she had managed to slide out of her chair and drag herself about halfway toward us. “Ungrateful reprobate! I’d ought to kill ye just fer the slander. He wants ye, fer all ye never deserved such. And regretted he could nay let his ownself feel the more!”

It might have been a sign of how used to my lilim I was becoming, but it scarcely crossed my mind how strange her reaction to this situation was. I knew she felt no sense of betrayal. She was only angry my enemy had dared tempt my regard, and now that it had been granted, she was doubly pissed it had not been appreciated.

Xyn scoffed. “As if I should listen to the opinions of some impure, little—”

Abruptly, pressure again flooded the room, almost driving me to my knees. And then it faded. It seemed Xhinn was in no way as distant as she seemed… and clearly did not care for her underlings reneging on their deals.

“Fine,” Xyn said shortly. “Just scratch its Name away. And may you choke on it for all the good it will do you! As if a mortal could ever use the Words as they were intended.”

“Seems someone hasn’t been watching me as closely as they claimed,” I replied with a smirk. Then I flung an arm to one side. “Observe!”

Man… that would have been much cooler if I had a cloak. But at least I’m rocking the hat.

Of course, now I actually had to follow up my bluster.

Scratch its Name away? Hmm… that implies the Name should already be there, but I don’t have the ability to reveal Words. I glanced at Lynnria’s unconscious form. She could sense them through touch if not by sight. Can’t use her yet. But Mia implied my just knowing the Name gives me some power over it.

I pursed my lips. Well… I guess there’s no reason I can’t just scratch the Word in myself. Silver was pretty soft, after all. Even the nearby flatware would have been sufficient, but how was I supposed to account for the gesture with a table knife? Experience had taught me that these runes needed to be inscribed in a single stroke and with as many as all five fingers at once—though Silver only required three for some as-yet-unknown reason.

You’d need claws or something in order to actually engrave the—

I blinked. Ho-ly shit. You cannot be serious?

It was way too much to be coincidence, but there it was all the same. In order to scribe at all, you needed a medium that would accept an actual engraving. The Words were too volatile, otherwise. But how could that be when innumerable objects existed which held magical properties? All of which came from the Dungeon—which held the only sentient race I knew of to naturally possess claws.

No wonder the kinds never figured it out!

“Jax—!” I paused immediately. No… her mentals are too low. “Arx, I’m going to need your hand.”

“Ho…?” Xyn turned. It seemed I had caught her attention. “And what do you hope to accomplish with that, I wonder?”

“Just you wait and see,” I shot back, quickly rounding Arx’s chair.

The pressure in the room rose fractionally. It seemed I had gathered more attention than I had anticipated, but I ignored it. Xhinn was not moving to stop me, and that was enough.

Arx grunted under the weight, looking about like I had felt under Her full gaze. But we had predicted this much. “M-master?”

I knelt, lifting her arm from the chair as easily as I would a feather. “Here. I need you to scratch the Word for Silver into this coin, but it has to be all at once.” I had to think for a moment to consider the logistics, then lifted my own hand to mime what I wanted. “Like this.”

Thumb, middle finger, and pinky together. Out, turn, out, turn, out. Flourish.

Arx looked at me like I had just sprouted a third eye.

Grimacing with frustration, I gathered her fingers and pressed them to the coin. “Go on. Try it.”

Her incredulous stare only intensified. “Master… c-can’t…”

“It seems the mutt is still too much a mortal. How shocking.” Xyn sighed with barely disguised mockery.

“I’m a mortal,” I shot back. “If I can do it, she can do it.”

“Master…” Arx wheezed, and this time, I began to feel the shaking in her arm. The tension. She was trying, I realized. It was just that the effort of pushing the Word into existence was still too much for her.

It was a feeling I knew all too well. However, she was not attempting to activate some grand mechanism like with Lynnria. This was just a base Word… and one which reflected the nature of the object already. She was not actually changing anything yet, so where was the resistance coming from?

I had no answers. But I could help her.

“Arx, sing for me.”

For a moment, you would have thought I had sprouted a second head to go with my third eye. But then it vanished. She understood.

So she sang. It was the same tune as before, with its haunting melody and frankly bat-shit lyrics, but we were looking for its effects more than anything. And this time, we deliberately stared into one another’s eyes. Deliberately fell deeper. Closer. And closer.

Until the song ended. And our lips met.

For the space of a single held breath, we were one. One mind. One body. I could feel the blessed coolness of air filling lungs too long compressed. I could feel the muscles tensing in a body sitting up, no longer perturbed by the presence of a hostile goddess. I could see my own face looking back at me. Could sense the near feral hunger. The aching call of alien and unfamiliar loins.

But most of all were the powerful reverberations of joy sparking through every corner of her being. Joy that we had become one yet again, even tenuous and fleeting as it was. Joy that she could be of use to me. Joy that I needed her.

A joy I reciprocated. For what greater joy can there be than in the certain knowledge of your own love’s affection?

Our fingers moved, easily and naturally. Almost an afterthought.

The Rune was. And it was Silver. Pure. Axiomatic. It always had been. Always would be. Happy to sit there humming away upon its little coin. The universe was good. All was right.

And then a single diagonal stroke destroyed everything.

Suddenly, I was only myself again, but I had bigger things to worry about. An angrily vibrating coin was now sitting in my hand that was trying to figure out just what the hell it was supposed to be if it was not silver. As Mia had hinted, I had unbound its potential. But I still needed to direct that potential through some act of Charisma, or else it would do what all energy did when left to its own devices. Namely explode.

So I shoved it my mouth.

Yes… I know. Perhaps not the brightest of moves, but quick thinking has never been my strongest suit. I suppose, if pressed, I might have given some rationale like only an idiot would have shoved a bomb into his mouth. So clearly it was supposed to be food? But in reality, it had been borne more of instinct than thought.

Now, I just had to convince the powers that be that I was not an idiot.

“Ha!” I said, turning to Xyn with as much of a victorious pose as I could muster—and loudly chewing upon what was still quite possibly an incendiary device. “Who’z zya mutt, now? I tol’ you zhe could ‘oo it. And now zya Life Ener’zy is mine!”

Xyn stared at me a moment, however far from the pity or mockery I had expected, she seemed stunned. And perhaps that was not all that surprising. Even setting aside my potential success—and more probable lunacy—what Arx and I had just done defied explanation.

“So she did,” she agreed. “But you should probably—”

Mid-sentence, the coin gave a single pulse of heat and dissolved like so much cotton-candy in a pool of water. More Life than I had ever thought could exist in the world pulsed through me and with enough force to drive me to my knees. And then more. And still more.

“—oh.” She sighed. “Too late. What a shame.”

Then came the laughter.

=====
58 - Ignition
=====

Giggling echoed about the chamber in cacophonous waves, crashing through and reinforcing themselves until all I could hear was maddening contempt drilling its way through my skull. Then it stopped. Even the echoes were snuffed out as though doused by water.

“Seventy-three,” Xhinn announced, the menacing footfalls of her approach filling the now quiet room despite the mere illusion of Her visage above us. “Seventy-three contingencies, plans, and pitfalls. And which do you fall for? Of course. The one thing I felt certain you would never even consider. The coin. What delicious irony!”

I only distantly heard her. Unimaginable heat had begun to churn in my gut from the huge font of Life swelling and expanding outward. My skin flushed red even as sweat and steam beaded and puffed from its surface.

Push! Push! Push!

“Why…?” I just managed to grunt through my chattering teeth.

“Why?” She parroted mockingly. “What an open-ended question. Perhaps you wonder why your victory has so suddenly turned to ashes? But that’s simple! Each and every Copper ever minted within my domain is formed from a portion of the Life snuffed out within it—whether monster… or kind. Specifically, eight portions to the Copper. And you, my Donum, just consumed a Silver. Eight portions of eight. Sixty-four full measures of Life. And unless I miss my guess, about six times your total capacity.”

Push! It was a sign of the pain I was in that it barely even registered with me that I had just eaten the fiscal equivalent of soylent green. Though, in fairness, she could have just told me I had eaten gilded horse cock, and my reaction would have been about the same. I felt like my intestines were about to burst out of my abdomen. More! Keep pushing!

She cocked her head. “And don’t think your little conversion trick will get you out of this one.” For a moment, I froze, terrified She had discovered my ploy. But then She went on. “This is no Status Effect. This is heat, pure and simple. Raw damage delivered straight to your belly. You, my dear, sweet Donum, are about to melt from the inside out.”

Fuck! It hurts! More! Have to keep going…

She swiveled on a heel and began to pace, clearly enjoying Herself.

“Or perhaps you wonder why I bothered kill you in this manner when I could accomplish much the same with but a single Word. That is answered in two parts. First of all…” She spread her hands as though performing for some invisible senate. “Where is the fun in that? You can’t expect the Fifth Child to go about smiting people from on high. No, no. That is simply not my style.”

Almost there. I was sweating so badly, you would think I had just climbed out of a pond, but the terrible heat was starting to abate—a sign of the end, one way or the other. You can do this…

Xhinn continued, oblivious to both my pain and my efforts to save myself. “And secondly, my… thief of a sister would have been rather incensed were I to respond so directly, for all that she deserves it. Her reaction has been inconvenient enough as it is.” She sighed. “No. Far better this way. And now that you have killed yourself, I need do nothing more than sit back and watch. My pet even warned you. ‘A person could get hurt,’ she said. More than enough for an alibi, I should think, given my restrictions.”

She paused to gaze wistfully up at the false sky before continuing.

“Or perhaps you wished to know why kill you at all,” she mused quietly. Almost with regret. “What could you possibly have done to reap such ire? But I’m afraid it’s too late for that. You are already de—”

She turned and froze mid-word, her gloating at a sudden end. For I was not writhing on the floor or bursting into flames, as She had no doubt expected.

I was on my feet. And staring at Her straight on.

“What trick is this?” She hissed, pressing on me with the full weight of her eyes—which widened in shock when I did not so much as flinch. “No spell exists that would allow you to so much as stand in my presence, much less survive that much Life.”

I only grinned, sparing a quick glance at the information Mia was happily waving in my face.

A minor attribute bonus? Ha as if! Maybe under normal circumstances. But now? Without a care, I again activated That Only Makes Us Horny to transform the unabating weight of Her presence, further fueling our Life-giving chain. And this time, full bore. I barely even noticed the Lust surging through me. Such things could not control me now. Let’s keep this gravy train going, baby!

“Maybe not one you’ve ever heard of,” I said, trying not to revel in this moment too much. Who knew the random plan Lynnria and I had cobbled together to maybe make a run for it would end up being so powerful? “Let’s just say, if you let little things build up long enough, they can easily overwhelm you.”

Xhinn narrowed her eyes. “You would play games?”

“Me?” I pressed a palm over my heart in mock offense—and only distantly noting the constant stream of Life starting to flow in from my Dolilim. That coin had caused our plan to deviate somewhat, but we were still on track. For now, they just needed to keep their heads down. “Never. In fact, I think it’s time we both laid our cards on the table. I’ll even start for you.”

I folded my hands behind my back and began to pace—much like Xhinn herself had done not a moment before. All that Wisdom was making my head feel… weird. But extremely clear. It was just a shame it had not revealed a better path than leaping straight through the fire.

“The first indication we ever had that you were upset was when you abandoned Jax’s mind—the very moment Ahnbe revealed my status to her as Her ‘Chosen.’ Since then, you have thrown around a couple of illuminating descriptions. ‘Thief’ and ‘traitor’ come to mind. Both of which contrast sharply with the rather… interesting way you signed your latest card. You have a most intriguing scent, by the way…” I paused a moment, but Xhinn said nothing beyond tilting her chin fractionally away. Embarrassment? No… not quite that… “Unless one of those was a lie, I can only assume this is something you remain conflicted about.”

I turned, gesticulating as I spoke. “Then there was that little poem you left on the trunk Lynnria and I found in your maze. To quote: ‘A bargain struck ‘tween Great and Low of shattered soul to guard. Why for should I then gifts bestow with bargain’s spirit marred?’” I chuckled. “You do love your riddles, don’t you?”

“It comes with the job,” she interjected flatly.

“I suppose it must,” I replied. “And what a job it is. I might have even expressed some sympathy were the circumstances different. But I digress. The riddle speaks of a bargain—between the two of us, presumably—which I must have somehow broken by catching your sister’s attention. I could apologize for that, but I might as well beg your forgiveness for having been struck by lightning. Your sister didn’t give me a lot of choice in the matter.”

“You cannot become Chosen without agreeing to it,” she argued with quiet malice.

“Oh, really?” I retorted caustically. “I don’t seem to recall anyone asking me whether I wanted any of this. The only options She ever gave me was a choice between a mind-melting trip to pound town and death, so you’ll forgive me for only choosing insanity! And as for Chosen? All I ever expressed was a touch of empathy. And look where that’s gotten me.”

I had a feeling that perhaps that had been a tad indelicate—mainly due to the storm clouds and distant flashes of lightning starting to play out in the glass behind her—but leaving her conflict to fester would only lead to rot. Lancing it was the only way it would ever heal. I just had to hope she had not been lying about the whole smiting business.

“So tell me, Xhinn… Fifth Child or whatever you are. What is this shattered soul? Unless there are more secrets you’ve been keeping, I can only assume it’s the linchpin behind this whole thing. So what is it? Why did you need to guard it? And what does any of that have to do with—”

I stopped. There was another piece to this puzzle. One I had known since the beginning, yet had never considered. It was too ludicrous. Yet it was the only thing that made sense given everything else I knew.

I can make lilim.

I lifted my eyes to Her again. “What exactly did you do to me?”

“Oh?” She began to stride forward, shadows playing over her body, obscuring her natural glow and emphasizing the threat she posed. “Finally put that one together, did we? Finally realized what must be? Lilim… are my creatures. The embodiments… of my Faen. Only my magic can shape them. For you to share the same… so too must you share a piece of me.”

Thunder boomed behind her.

“It was Iwho granted you your power!” she yelled, the clap of her voice in no way second to the cacophony in the sky. “And I paid dearly for the privilege. But the prize…? Oh, the prize. That was something I would have payed anything to acquire.”

I waited for her to elaborate, but She only began to cackle maniacally. “And what happens? What do I get for my sacrifice? The very moment I let you out of my sight, my dear, sweet sisters pounce. ‘Oh, but Xhinn… I only want to look.’ So they said. ‘That’s a curious thing you have there. Wherever did you get it?’ As if they were not green with envy, salivating at the very idea of absconding with what was mine by right.”

I blinked slowly. “But I’m just some guy, Xhinn. There was never anything special about me.”

“Exactly!” She exclaimed. “‘A bargain struck ‘tween Great and Low.’ Between us, you said? Ha! You only wish your were Low. You are a mere bug! And that is precisely what made you so very special. You were someone from the outside! Someone whose status could be ignored. Lower even than kind! You were someone who could be interfered with without disturbing the Purpose.” She swiped a hand through the roiling clouds behind her. “And my sisters? Even if they did not know, they could sense it. Sense you were different. And there is nothing more tempting to an immortal than something… finally different.”

Mia gasped softly, echoing my own much-more-audible exclamation. There was a lot to unpack in there, but what struck me the most was the possible explanation for the weird obsession these goddesses had with me.

Still, something about it seemed… empty. Unsatisfactory. I doubted Xhinn was lying, but I simply could not reconcile the events of Mia’s birth with the mere presence of this implanted divine essence.

And apparently, Mia was not buying it either.

“She doesn’t know…!”

…what?

“But you were not for them,” Xhinn continued, heedless. Whirlwinds of glass had appeared to rip and tear at crystalline trees in the far distance. “You were given to me! My gift! Mine to grow and nurture as I pleased! My… eyes to the world outside—the world my Father created. A world I could touch but never see. It was to be His concession. His apology for the endless eons of my imprisonment. You were my Donum!” she shouted loud enough to rock the foundations.

Wait a minute… my name? My name actually means gift! Chebs in hell… How much have I been manipulated without even realizing it?

“Xhinn, I’m sorry you got shafted,” and from the sound of it, by her own sister. Does Ahnbe even know about any of this? “But I think there’s a lot more going on here than either of us realize. And even if there weren’t, I never would have betrayed you if I had known. If you had just taken five seconds to actually explain—”

“Explain?!” she screeched hysterically. “Has whatever you have done to keep yourself standing also rendered you daft? I love riddles? Bah! I am a creature of riddles by nature! Mystery and enigma are my very life’s blood. Do you have any idea how much it hurts me to draw back the curtain? I may as well flay the skin from my bones!”

The floor at my feet began to rumble and shake as though in sympathy for her pain. Yet again, I could feel something behind it. Something odd. Something that should not be. Something familiar.

Xhinn looked to one side, sensing it as well. And chuckled humorlessly. It was the sound of someone giving up on hope.

“But I have long grown used to that. Mystery would not be mystery if it could be solved as easily as turning a page. Unfortunately for you, my once Donum, you failed to grasp it in time. And I will no longer tolerate these insults. My vision has been taken from me. The kind I was to nurture, stolen.” The lightning flashed, reflected within her eyes as though in warning. “The mind that was my sanctuary, trespassed upon!”

My eyes widened. Oh, shit!

“I have been abused enough, Bline!” she thundered, pointing at me. “Did you think I would not sense you there? Skulking about? Whispering in his ear? Did you think I would not know whose tower he stood beside as I captured him? You thieving cunt! You would steal even what the Third has already stolen?! I will not tolerate this!”

Abruptly, her presence doubled. Then tripled. The image of her body did not move within the glass, but somehow I could tell… Somewhere out there, She was moving. Not the illusion. Her. And rapidly closer.

“Xhinn, no!” Mia yelled, though I knew it to be futile. “This is forbidden! You cannot—!”

“I don’t care!” She boomed, Her voice rippling against my skin. “I don’t care anymore! I have hadit! I tried to do this the right way, but you have conspired against me at every turn. You pushed me out! You warped and polluted what I built! You turned him against me. I was the one to pay the price. Me! Not you nor anyone else. He was to be mine! And if I cannot have him, then I am taking. My motherfucking soul. Back!”

Her palm opened to descend upon us. It spread out over the dome, seeming ever lower and lower. For a very brief instant, the light behind it darkened—as though eclipsed by some unimaginable silhouette… before the sun went out entirely.

And then the glass shattered.

A real hand—Her real hand—crashed through the mirage of storms like madness itself puncturing the film of reality. Space and time distorted around it, rising and whirling as waves of heat. Great claws, each the length of swords and carved in elaborate scenes of battles past, tipped Her fingers.

Then it turned and ripped the rest of the dome away.

For a moment, sound died. The illusion had been shattered. What laid beyond that dome… was emptiness. The vacuum. The endless blanket of nothingness and all its stars. And there in the sky, just rising over the horizon, was something that could not be. Something that was distinct in how very much it was not the moon.

But I could only register that as a distant footnote. My world had been filled with Her. There was no room for anything else. She was majestic. Great wings towered above her, framing her body in a draconic aura. Thick locks of hair streamed in waves as it danced about her crown of horns. And her gaze practically vibrated as it bored its way through me, twin holes as black and dead as the void behind her.

I wanted to hold Her. Comfort Her. Soothe Her. I wanted to grovel at Her feet. To rip out my own heart and present it to Her on a platter. To scoop out my eyes as unworthy to look upon Her. She was Glory. She was Love.

And her anger was Terrible.

Time reasserted itself. The fragmented glass, hanging suspended not a moment before, blasted outward as the air trapped within Her sanctuary was sucked into the vacuum. I had to clutch at the somehow unmoved table so as not to be carried along with it, the simple act of self-preservation snapping me out of my daze. I could only hope my Dolilim had somehow managed to hold on, as well.

But Xhinn could not be satisfied with letting us die by asphyxiation. This was now personal.

As I watched that hand again descend, fingers grasping while lightnings and flame thrashed about her claws, I again felt the floor begin to shake. Rhythmic. Frantic. Over and over. Thump after frenzied thump.

There was a presence behind that shaking, I suddenly realized. I had felt it. Had been feeling it from the first. I had felt it when the safe room locked us out. I had felt it when the door to the Tailor’s shop had fallen away. Each time stronger. And stronger. Attempting to force a crack through the walls of Xhinn’s palace. It was seeking something. Calling. Calling to me!

In a flash, realization came, and I remembered.

‘Speakest thou mine name if thou hast the need.’

“Ahnbe!!!”

Scarcely had the pair of syllables left my lips than a sound like the world folding in on itself plucked the ground like a harp string. Then a new voice thundered through the heavens, echoing the very first sentence I had ever heard from Her:

“STOP! FUCKING BALLS!”

I glanced upward again in time to see Xhinn turn to one side. “You cannot interf—!”

Whatever else she might have said came to an abrupt end as some kind of unholy… thing slammed into her side. It was fur and scale. Claw and tooth. Wings, limbs, and tentacles. And all mashed together with no sense of symmetry or reason save that which would maximize the potential for brutal trauma.

Yet behind it all, there remained a sense of radiant beauty. No matter the horror Ahnbe chose to enrobe Herself within, nothing could disguise that. It was innate. Axiomatic.

However, when the shock wave of their collision hit, it occurred to me that perhaps it might not be such a grand idea to stand around with my thumb up my ass while She-Godzilla and Biolante battled it out in the skies overhead. Also, there was the rather immediate issue of the open airlock—neither of which had I accounted for in my plans.

Though, in fairness, this part had always been a bit fuzzy.

“Donum!” Mia screamed into my ear. “You must get to Lynnria’s wand! It’s the only way!”

“The fuck am I gonna do with a dirt launcher?!” I yelled back. “Have you lost it?”

A bar of heat and light bisected the sky above, obscuring her reply… which was saying something considering she was sitting inside my own brain. “—ampli—! You’ll have to trust me!”

“Ampli-what? Trust you?” I shouted, glancing incredulously toward Lynnria’s unconscious form—wrapped around a leg all the way at the other end of the table. A table, I might add, whose opposite leg I was already clutching onto in a desperate bid not to get sucked into space. Andwhich kept bucking like a bronco every time one of the Nancy Archers out there took a step. Of Jax and Arx, I could see no sign. Damn it! Please, don’t be sucked into space! “It’s not really a matter of trust, Mia!”

“Then you must call your—”

Something crumpled overhead then burst like crackling popcorn, and I looked up in time to see a spray of projectiles flying in all directions—one of which sliced through the solid stone of a nearby wall like gelatin. However, on looking up, I happened to spy a pair of claws embedded within the lip of table above me—and a third, gray-skinned hand a little farther down. And I knew exactly who it was Mia wanted me to call:

“Jax!” I shouted with relief. “Arx!”

There was no response from either.

“They can’t hear me. There’s too much wind,” I shouted to Mia—assuming they were even still conscious. “You’re going to have to go over there yourself!”

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “In all the excitement, I forgot I could do that. Hold on!”

She was gone before I could reply. Which was for the best. It was mostly a lot of expletives, anyway.

A moment later, Jax’s head popped over the lip of the table, searching frantically until she spotted me. I might have given her a weak, little wave were I not otherwise occupied. I had never been so relieved to see her face in all my life.

“Heyya, gorgeous!” I shouted. “Mind giving a fellow a hand?”

She nodded with determination, then dipped back for a second to shout something at Arx before working her way toward me. Meanwhile, the third hand was quickly joined by its twin and headed toward Lynnria.

It was in moments like these that I genuinely envied them their freedom to invest in physical stats. Sure, manipulating time and space had its perks, but when you are struggling just to hold on to a table leg, a touch of extra grip strength starts to sound really sexy.

And where in the unholy hell is all of this wind coming from? With the gaping hole in the ceiling, the room should have been depressurized in seconds, so I could only assume the doors leading to the rest of the Dungeon had been blown open.

Which was a mixed blessing. Yes, we still had air to breathe but just getting from our table to the door was going to be a tad complicated. Even if I could have flown everyone out at once, my levitation spell simply did not have enough acceleration to counteract the wind, and rendering ourselves weightless would have been worse than counterproductive.

Meanwhile, waiting for the remaining atmosphere to drain away was stupid nonsense. Assuming we could even survive being underfoot an ongoing clash of the titans until then, just holding our breath in a vacuum long enough to get to the exit would be a miracle. And that was ifour blood did not start to immediately boil from the depressurization.

About then, Jax muscled her way up and over the lip of the table and managed to work a leg around my lifeline to brace herself before grabbing hold of my wrist.

“I got ye, Master!” she yelled. “Don’t ye worry none.”

That was a hard ask. She was strong but not exactly what I would call superhuman.

“Would you settle for worrying less?” I quipped.

“Aye!” she shot back, hauling me toward her—and somehow managing to smile despite everything. “What do ye think of me dress? With the wind flappin’ it about, its been ticklin’ me bits something fierce. Could go for a chug, I tell yer.”

I blinked once, more than a little non-plussed. “It’s great, Jax. Very sexy.”

It kind of was, too… not that I had a lot of head space reserved for that sort of thing. She would never stoop to wearing underwear, so the overly stiff breeze was causing her already-scanty dress to flash me about nine times a second. But then, watching a fit woman doing pretty much anything in a cocktail dress was a delight, much less contorting herself about a table leg to save my life.

Her smile grew wider. “Keep to them thoughts, Master. Makes me stronger.”

I nodded. Right. Of course. I knew there must have been a practical reason I had not yet passed my Lust along. Buff to Wisdom… buff to Wisdom… buff to Wisdom…

For a brief instant, daylight again filled the solarium, followed by a thoom loud enough to make even the constant wind hesitate.

“Balls!” Ahnbe’s swear of outrage echoed into the distance. “The fuck do you think you’re doing?!”

“I think I’m defending myself from a violent sociopath who has invaded my—” WHAM! “Ack! Bloody sucker-punch me, will you?”

I glanced at Jax. “You’d never guess they were sisters.”

“I dunno,” she said, staring into the sky. She seemed remarkably calm for all that we were sitting in the middle of a war-zone, but then, Wisdom was the go-to stat for protecting against mental effects. Panic was certainly one of those. “Ye take all them powers away, and they’s just two birds having a go over their bloke.”

My face took on an incredulous smirk. That seemed a bit of an oversimplification.

About then, I saw Arx flip back over the edge of the table and start making her way toward us, Lynnria’s dowel-rod clutched firmly-in-jaw.

“Alright! One wand on its way,” Mia announced unnecessarily.

I nodded that I had heard. Having the Faen around had certainly taken some getting used to, but she had her uses—when she was paying attention, anyway.

“Here you go!” Arx shouted once she was within reach, passing it to me. Then, laughing like the lunatic she was, she upended herself so as to latch onto the bottom of the table with her legs and let go. “Woo! What a rush! Isn’t this terrifying?!”

One of Ahnbe’s severed tentacles went flying overhead before crashing into some unseen part of the landscape.

“You could say that, yeah,” I agreed deadpan.

She just slapped me on the shoulder. “That’s a Quester’s life for you. Don’t worry. You’ll get used to this sort of thing after a while.”

The tentacle—now having sprouted some several hundreds of mismatched wings—flew back overhead and started launching thorns the size of fighter jets toward the distant combatants. There was no fucking way Arx had ever experienced something like this. But I could appreciate the subterfuge.

“Heaven forbid,” I breathed.

“Will you two stop dithering?” Mia shouted. “There’s a gaping hole in the ceiling, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Oh, I’ve noticed,” I replied grimly, eying the wooden stick—and the distant planet just cresting the horizon—with a hefty dose of skepticism. “I just don’t know what you expect me to do about it.”

“I expect you to use your head! Think man! What does that stick do?”

“Now isn’t the time for games, Mia.”

“Neither is it the time for arguments. Now, answer!”

I grit my teeth. More cryptic bullshit…

A wand was just a simple gizmo that could activate a spell via key phrase. In this case, you say ‘dirt,’ and…

“It shoots dirt!”

“When Lynnria uses it, yes. But you know something she doesn’t, don’t you?”

A brief moment passed while I stared at the stick in confusion, but not because her hint had been too vague. I knew perfectly well that I had gained the Word, Dirt, on binding Arx. I just could not see how that was supposed to help me. Generally speaking, knowing a Word just helped you cast a spell that contained it more easily, but I did not know the spell that was attached to this wand.

And yes, the key phrase happened to be Dirt, but without having spent a skill point to obtain the spell, there would be no Will behind it to assist in actually saying the—

My eyes widened.

“Are you nuts?!” I shouted. “You can’t just say a random Word out loud. Nobody can. No mortal, anyway.”

Writing the damned things were bad enough, but actually saying one?!Never mind rolling the boulder uphill, she might as well have just asked me to lift up the whole, bloody mountain.

However, when it came, the argument did not come from Mia.

“Yecan,” Jax said with an air of certainty. “Ye got a touch of the divine in ye, me master.”

“Yeah, maybe.” According to Xhinn, anyway. “But I can’t see how that makes a difference. We’ve already tried it. Remember? It was after the very first Word we ever got.”

Jax began shaking her head. “Lot’s happened since then. Ye’ve growed. Got stronger. Been marked by a second goddess! Ye could use them Runes e’en before y’et that coin, and now ye got enough Wisdom in ye to gaze on that without so much as a blink.”

She pointed to the ongoing mayhem playing out in the skies above us, but I resisted the urge to look. ‘Without so much as a blink’ was a bit of an exaggeration, but I had taken her meaning.

“More’n that, though,” she continued, “Ye can craft kind inter yer immortal servants. Ye got a Faen at yer beck. Ye got flamin’ goddesses at war over ye! Master, I ain’t understood half o’ what that jessie said to put her ownself to the radge, but I know me heart. If there be a soul what can do this, it be ye. I know it to me bones!”

There was no single item among her list that convinced me. I had known them all already, and even had I not, each of them could be explained away. Rationalized. Put into context. I was not some chosen hero. I had no grand destiny. I was just a regular guy put into a not-so-regular set of circumstances.

No. It was not her words at all. It was the look in her eyes. The faith. The unshakable conviction. I was her master. She would fight gods for me. She believed in me. How could I do less?

Besides, it was that or death. Arguing further would only waste more oxygen.

My eyes closed as I centered myself. I did not know if Wisdom was going to be the deciding factor in all of this, but if it was, I was going to grant myself every ounce of it I could.

Buff, buff, buff…

I breathed deeply of the wind howling in my ears, pushing everything else away. No distractions.

Buff, buff, pass to Jax…

The wand slowly lifted to point at the skies overhead and the explosions ripping them apart.

More Life! More Wisdom!

My mouth opened.

For a moment, I felt as if I had connected to something…monumental. As though my lips had become the wedge to crack open the very Eye of the world.

And it stared back at me.

Sleepy. Barely even awake. Yet it had noticed.

That minor acknowledgment of my existence felt as heavy as the moon at my feet. Like thousands of goddesses. The sheer pressure of it bore down, crushing my insides to paste. But it only waited. Daring me to Speak. To try making a sound. To utter even a peep of the Language of Magic.

And it ignited my Life-giving chain like jet-fuel. Presence became Lust. Lust became Life. Life became Wisdom!

More Wisdom! More!

“Ye can do it, Master!” Jax shouted exultantly. “I can feel yer power building!”

My heart hammered in my chest. My lungs burned. Lust and Life surged.

Pass to Arx! Buff!

“Take our Life!” Arx yelled, enraptured. “Take all of me!”

My face locked into a rictus with the effort. My skull was about to burst. The Word was too heavy. It was too much!

More!

Abruptly, a ray of sunshine slashed through the clouds. My Will was breaking through. I could sense it! I was close!

MORE!

My jaw worked. My tongue engaged.

“***!”

The world froze. The wind stuttered. The twin giants paused mid-blow to look down.

A tiny… insignificant ant had just Spoken.

Just a single Word. But when ants speak, even gods take notice.

Even so, it was not enough. One Word by itself was next to meaningless. It was just a single noun. What was the Magic supposed to do?

I needed to guide it. Mold it. Give it context. Purpose. I needed to seal the dome overhead, but my Vocabulary was so very limited.  What few Words I possessed raced through my head.

Lift. Conceal. Toilet.

Useless garbage.

Labia. Generation. Cynic.

Random bullshit.

Moisture. Floridness. Palac—!

My eyes flew open. I had it! Hot blood was pouring down my cheeks, but I had it!

“***!”

The world came unstuck. The wind resumed its howl.

And then the wand ignited like a lightsaber.