A couple of minutes earlier, Will had stepped into the Beyond.

At first, it had been simple enough. Nynn was no current Dread Executor, but he was familiar enough with the Beyond to advise Will on it, at least. Ayla had made a brief appearance, detecting a significant presence there, but she hadn’t stayed for long.

“I would tell you to think twice about what you’re doing, but I know how much you tend to listen to me,” she said.

“Anything besides the obvious I should be worried about?” Will asked.

“The obvious is worrying enough that gem-tier candidates have chosen to turn back and choose an alternate path,” Nynn pointed out. “Some sovereign-tiers, even.”

“You say that like it’s going to stop him,” Ayla said. “I don’t think he particularly gives a shit about who’s given up before.”

“I’m honestly surprised it hasn’t gotten him killed yet.”

“You know I’m still here, right?” Will said.

“Are you going to disagree?” Ayla said.

“No. It’s definitely gotten me killed.”

Ayla’s form shifted at that, just barely perceptible.

“So you say,” she said. “Well, I’m out of energy. I used up too much to see what was going on anyway. Do your best not to die.”

“You’re sure this isn’t breaking some, like, age-old contract that’ll set every Dread Executor in the multiverse on me, right?”

“Please,” Ayla snorted. “You aren’t the first to do this. Don’t think that just because you’ve gone and spat in the face of the heavens that you’re the only one who’s ever done that. The gods are well aware of the Beyond. They likely even know that you have a connection to it. Their ability to access it is nothing like yours or mine, but it was a creation of the system, and in a very real sense, the gods are a part of that same system.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Will said. “We already know what I’m going to do.”

Nynn sighed. “I know the shape of what you plan to do, but knowing the canvas and the painter is entirely different from knowing what he is going to create.”

“That’s an awfully obtuse way to say ‘I do not actually know what you plan on doing,’ you know,” Ayla said drily. “Goodbye.”

She vanished, leaving Will and Nynn alone.

Nynn’s Beyond travel skill didn’t create a sanctuary like Will’s and Ayla’s did, so they were currently in Will’s. He hadn’t quite understood how Nynn and Ayla had constantly reacted to him going into the Beyond until he’d felt the tug himself—the sensation that there was someone he’d connected with reaching out towards him.

How exactly the Beyond worked in getting them into the same moment of frozen time despite them entering at presumably different periods was a question for another time. Magic was magic. Even with the system, there were some things that just couldn’t properly be explained.

“Okay, Nynn,” Will said. “I know you can’t make one of these, but can you at least hold onto it for a bit?”

“Who do you think I am?” the former Dread Executor asked, affronted.

“A gold-ranker who keeps forgetting he’s not a sovereign-tier anymore,” Will replied flatly.

“That felt personal.”

“That’s because it was. You can do it, then?”

“Yes.” Nynn had the good grace to take his lumps as they were and not pursue this thread any further.

“Fantastic. I’ll be right back.”

Will hopped out of the Beyond, Equilibrium Mantle taking hold immediately as he returned to the biting cold of Everest.

“Alright,” he said. “Who doesn’t have a sigil here?”

His options were Hua, Liam, Lily, Jessie, Yui, and Nathan, which… aw, shit.

“Just me and Yui, I think,” Nathan said. “Is that going to be a problem?”

“No. Okay, you two can go last. Hua, Liam, do you have the same sigil?”

“No,” Liam said. “Mine is big on weight, balance, impact, that kind of thing. Momentum. Hua’s is—”

“Stealth, I know,” Will said. “I had the opportunity to see some of her skills.”

“He means he saw right through them,” Hua said. “As it turns out, our corruption wielder here has a skill perfectly designed to find me.”

“Yeah, I’ve got every flavor of bullshit under the sun,” Will said. “Isn’t that sick?”

“No,” Nathan said.

“It’s unfair,” Liam agreed.

“Sometimes,” Hua hedged.

“Oh, it’s fucking awesome,” Lily said.

“Nobody asked you, Lily. Alright. I know how this is going to go for exactly one sigil, but I’m not sure about the rest. We can do this one of two ways. One is to go one by one, which has the risk of my skill breaking because of some weird sigil shit partway through, stranding whoever’s left here. The other is to go all at once.”

“Which risks what, exactly?” Nathan asked. “I’ve gone through a bunch of portals, and yours is nothing like the other ones. I don’t actually know what the inside is like. My analysis skill doesn’t work on it.”

“According to the guy waiting to pass you on, you’ll just all get spit out on one side or another, and I’ll suffer some backlash. It’ll probably be easier to do than going one by one, too, since I only need to deal with the BS once instead of, what, three times, four?”

“Then why are you even asking?” Hua asked. “I’m going.”

“You’re sure this is safe?” Lily asked.

Will raised an eyebrow. “Since when do you care about safety?”

“When it affects me, mostly.”

“Oh, of course.”

Will didn’t check to see who was coming into the Beyond with him, trusting that enough of them would get over their fear of his skill to get moving.

Jessie was the first to go through, followed closely by Nathan. The latter didn’t have a sigil, which was easy, and the gestalt’s sigil was Elys, Lady of the Lake, a minor goddess who wanted absolutely nothing to do with the kaiju. Thus far, she’d left it behind during every other Beyond trip, and this one was unlikely to be any different.

Nynn was waiting for them both.

“The gestalt,” he said. “Interesting choice of ally.”

“Hey, Jessie can hear you,” Will said. “Don’t be mean to it.”

“Not. Mean.” The gestalt’s words were definitely getting clearer. “Is. Fine.”

“Well, if you say so.”

Liam and Hua stepped in together shortly afterwards, which was when the problems really started.

Will had had casual chats with the Elven Mother—well, it wasn’t that casual, but it had gotten the point across—about what he was doing in the Beyond. Once Liam and Hua entered, though, so many crimson lines emerged from them that it was like they were marionettes on strings. Rather than just the one somewhat tenuous connection that Caiyeri had held towards her goddess, both of them were chock full of the lines. It made sense, since they’d had their sigils for longer and had more importantly been spamming the shit out of their sigil skills, while Caiyeri hadn’t used Sadareth’s once.

He got to work immediately, dragging both of them within the range of the Sanctuary so that they couldn’t be thrown into the uncaring chaos of the Beyond, then stepped out himself.

The demon in his eye seemed to grow stronger when he was in this space, empowering him enough to not only see the lines but to cut through them with his connection to the Beyond. Will suspected he was drawing on the demon’s power as well, borrowing strength from Richard’s true body elsewhere in this vast expanse. On a surface level, it was similar to Desecrated Bond, but that skill specifically nerfed the gods by capping their fuel source to the power stored in any given User’s soul.

Here, he was interfacing with their true power, albeit limited to their connection to one individual. As much as Will liked to talk himself up, there was no way he would have been able to do that without the assistance of a demon.

Good thing he’d looped one into a contract.

Cutting through these was still harder than it had been with Caiyeri’s, but he figured out the trick to it pretty quickly. The combination of his soul, which had been refined by gods and carried so much corruption it was notable even in the plane that inherently opposed that concept, alongside the demon’s natural affinity towards the Beyond was the perfect combination for him to cut through these bonds beyond time.

Yui also had no connection to any sigil, being a Dread Executor candidate of her own and knowing the risks that came with connections to gods.

That left only Lily, who Will hadn’t even had a reason to bring along in the first place beyond the desire for a few extra bodies. She was by far the most connected to her sigil, which was a bit of a surprise but probably shouldn’t have. If her god was one who adored tearing the wings off of flies and lasering ants with magnifying glasses, it would be a perfect fit for that little psychopath.

Her entrance coincided with Hua’s and Liam’s sigils realizing what was happening. They pulled back with a vengeance, trying to yank their sigil-holders out of Will’s sanctuary and into the abyss for some reason that hadn’t yet been made clear to Will. They did so with such force and enough connections still in place that Will likely wouldn’t have been able to stop them alone.

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Fortunately, he wasn’t.

Nynn was well aware of the Beyond. Even if he wasn’t a master at manipulating it, he’d been around long enough that he still retained some level of knowledge on how to reinforce sanctuaries. Yui, too, evidently had some experience with it, though her form was much more amateurish than either Nynn’s or Will’s.

They wouldn’t be able to stop the divine pull either, but they delayed it for long enough to enable Will to finish cutting their influence away, weakening their grasp and removing their ability to play with their sigil-holder’s souls.

“Sorry about the turbulence,” he said, returning back to the Sanctuary. Though it had been a simple task, his soul was exhausted. There were way more people present in his little chunk of realspace floating in the surreality of the Beyond than he was used to, and this particular middle finger to the gods had taken a lot out of him. “Don’t worry if you can’t feel your sigil right now. It’ll come back just fine.”

“Better that than getting dragged around a bunch more,” Liam said. “Thanks for the save, mate. I haven’t a bloody fuckin’ clue what you did, and I’m fine keeping it that way, but I appreciate it.”

“You’re welcome,” Will said, unsure how else to respond.

“What is this place?” Yui asked, looking around. “I’ve been here before, I’m sure of it, but I’ve never been here long enough to see what’s actually going on.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Will repeated. “You, me, and Nynn here can have a chat later down the line.”

“This is pretty similar to the broken portals, isn’t it?” Nathan asked.

“Like I said,” Will said, stressing the words. “Don’t worry about it. It’s not our current problem. Now—”

“We have a problem,” Nynn said abruptly.

“Of course we do,” Will sighed. “I see it.”

Their plan had been simple. Nynn’s method of transporting himself into the Beyond created an anchor, just like Will’s did—the primary difference was that the former Dread Executor tended to spend much, much less time there. With Will’s Sanctuary active, they had found that Nynn could functionally co-opt the skill to do the final transit, sending them all into the location he’d started from.

It was a good thing they’d decided to do that, too. They’d chewed their way through a few dozen silver-rankers and one or two golds, with Jessie doing the bulk of the killing, but the Peace gold-rankers were just too plentiful and too fast to respond. Fighting above their rank was one thing—doing it against coordinated, intelligent enemies with divine backing was another entirely.

Will’s faction hadn’t quite been ready to throw the towel in, but they had been hard pressed to get any further progress without entering an all-out pitched battle.

The problem now was that Nynn’s exit had been shut off. Well, that was a poor way to say it. More accurately, it had been rerouted. They would still make it to their final destination.

However… it seemed Will’s particular disregard for godly convention had not gone unpunished.

“How do you want to do this?” Nynn asked.

“There’s only one way we can do this,” Will replied. “My exits are looking the same way. Get a move on.”

“If you say so.”

Before anyone could object, Nynn connected the Sanctuary to his bridge and they were all suddenly somewhere else.

#

“A courtroom?” Will asked, amused. “You could have picked any of the billion trillion configurations of a room that your godly minds could come up with, and you chose a courtroom.”

“I did not ask for this,” Kadael said, somehow managing to sound both authoritative and exhausted at the same time

Nathan: What the fuck is this?

Will ignored the message, though he did note that the very fact it was present indicated that they were somewhere slightly more real than the Beyond. Text chat only worked if there was at least some degree of physical incarnation.

Hua: Can’t move. Can barely breathe. Tell us afterwards.

This was a bit concerning, actually. If he was physically incarnated, there was a real chance that he could die here. All that depended on how much the gods wanted him dead, of course.

Yui: These presences are unbearable. I will observe.

He’d have to play his cards right.

Nynn: You know what you’re here for. Good luck.

“I’m sure you didn’t,” Will said drily. “The state of my companions is because… why, exactly?”

“Consider yourself lucky that you did not choose major gods to offend,” Kadael said. “You are the only one they wish to consider. Your companions are here by incident. These gods do not have the power to affect them beyond what they can do with their mere presence. Not without spending more plausibility.”

So their mere presence was enough to basically take everyone but Nynn and Nathan out of commission—no, judging by the reaction, it was only Nynn that was accustomed enough to gods doing this that he could think and speak normally.

“You should consider yourself lucky that you are not worth our time to punish for your words, youngling,” said a feminine figure draped in simple white leather that hid most of her body but for the many, many weapons strapped to her body. A splash of blood drew a long line from shoulder to hip.

Uthra, the Maiden Huntress. Lily Teneli’s sigil.

“William Li-Brown,” another god said. This one was larger than life, hidden largely in shadow. He looked like a titan, though all that was visible besides his towering silhouette was two dark purple eyes. “You interfered with my champion.”

Will frowned, searching his mind for a name. No dice.

“I don’t seem to recall who you are,” he said politely. “Mind giving me a refresher?”

The pulse of divine aura that served as a reply to that told Will exactly how much the god minded.

“Sorry,” he said, just to drive the stake in further. “I usually deal with more important gods, so—“

He was pretty sure by this point that this god was Liam’s sigil, and his suspicion was confirmed by the sensation of its direct pressure, like it was forming a fist around his soul and threatening to squeeze.

“Oh, go ahead,” Will sneered. “How much plausibility did you spend to get here? Can you afford to pay the price to kill me? Do you think I’ll stay dead?”

“Stand down, Siren,” the third god said. “I did not come here for blood.”

This one was the least noisy of them all. Her manifestation was the same size as a regular human’s, and not even a tall one at that. Divine magic obscured her features otherwise, meaning the only notable aspect of her was the cloak that covered her entire body, shining with constellations.

Aladriel, the Thief of Stars. Hua’s. She seemed to be less immediately antagonistic to Will than even Sadareth had been, which was nice.

“Kadael, I’m assuming you didn’t arrange this out of the niceness of your heart,” Will said. “They’re not happy with the Beyond?”

“No,” the Hunger replied. “They spent plausibility to force this. I spent a small amount of my own to barge in on this. I have invested far too much into you for you to be lost here.”

To be lost, Will noted. Not die. That could have been a fancy turn of phrase, but he doubted it. Will had come back from beyond the pale once, and he wasn’t entirely sure that he would stay dead if that case came up again.

“Great,” Will said, turning back to the gods.

“Corruption wielder,” Uthra said. “You should consider your next words very carefully.”

Will took a sweeping look across the room, then sighed deeply.

“Nah, I think I’m good. Have any of you actually looked at what’s happening on Earth right now? That and the other planet, I guess?”

“Will…” Kadael said warningly.

“Oh, fuck off. You know I respect you, you slimy little shit, but you also know that I’m practically dripping with plausibility. All four of you do. It’s like you’re sharks and there’s blood in the water, isn’t it? That’s what this is really about. Maybe there’s some level of interest in protecting your sigil-holders, but no, I know your kind. You would’ve made this a problem for me before. If you actually hated me, I would know by now. Not one of these people wants me dead because of your intentions, which means that you don’t want to kill me, you want to use me.”

It surprised Will that they were letting him ramble on this long, but then he had another thought.

“Oh, you don’t actually have the plausibility to burn, do you? Is that why you’re so desperate to get me?”

“Will.” The Hunger reinforced his voice with his divine aura this time. It wasn’t the soul-crushing power that the corruption wielder had long since gotten used to—no, this was something entirely different.

“Relax,” Will said.

Nynn: Are my eyes deceiving me, or did a silver just tell a deity to relax?

Will rolled his eyes. Not helping, Nynn.

“So long as an action originates from me and not you all, you have plausible—heh—deniability, right? You don’t need to confirm or deny that, the question’s rhetorical.”

Kadael didn’t say anything, but his aura was all Will needed to read.

Tread lightly.

Will, like any good sigil-holder, decided to take that into consideration, ignore it, and move on.

“Here’s the deal. None of you three are going to get me. I’ve already got Kadael with me, the Crown is halfway up my ass, and none of you have the power to burn to kill me and take my stuff. Do you know who does?”

The god that Aladriel had referred to as Siren rose further, his size increasing with his aura, and his rage rolled off of him in waves, pressuring Will’s soul with a familiar pain.

He winced. “Do you mind?”

The pain intensified. Judging from the reactions of his impromptu team, they were feeling the backwash of it too.

Well, if asking nicely wouldn’t work, Will was always willing to take the low road.

“Please,” he snorted, gathering himself. “The answer to my question, by the way, is—“

“Peace,” Aladriel said. “We are familiar. I will not deny she has given cause for us to be here.”

“Oh, come on,” Will complained. “I mean, thank you, you seem quite reasonable and I see why you picked Hua as your sigil-holder, because you’re both awesome in pretty similar ways, but I was going to have this entire monologue about how Siren’s soul pressure was some dogshit compared to, like, Kadael’s, or Vyx’s, and definitely Peace’s.”

“I apologize for Siren,” Aladriel said.

“I don’t,” the god roared.

“You can sit down and stop talking or I’ll kill myself the moment I get out of here and nobody’s getting anything,” Will snarled. “I’ll get Nynn to chuck me into the Beyond, too, so not a single one of you gods will be able to lay your bloody hands on my corpse.”

“The suicide gambit again,” the Hunger said. “I must admit, it’s a lot more entertaining when I’m on the other side of it. Well, ladies and gentleman. You have your offer.”

“Not yet they don’t,” Will said. “Here’s my offer: stop wasting your precious plausibility on me when you have so little. It must take a lot more to bring us into here than something more normally suited to a god, right?”

“The cost is not very high, but yes,” Kadael confirmed.

“Youngling, you do not know the weight of what you do,” Uthra said.

“You be quiet too,” Will said. “How about you stop trying to get your greedy, grubby hands on me and you support your damn sigil-holders like you’re supposed to? The moment we walk out there on the other side, Peace is going to have who knows how many gold-rankers trying to find us, and make no mistake, she’ll be a lot better at it than you.”

“With the plausibility within you—“

Will had had enough of this.

“No,” he said quietly, the demon within him giving him the strength to continue even under the gaze of four gods. “You are not going to bleed me dry to power yourselves. I’ve come this far. Trust me to keep going. Trust your own people to—“

“You are MORTAL!” Siren shouted.

“And I. AM. TALKING. ” Will ground out, each word punctuated by a burst of demonic corruption. “So do me a favor and SHUT. UP.”

“I am impressed by how long this one has survived,” Aladriel said. “I assent. I only have one champion remaining, anyway.”

“You don’t even know what you’re assenting to,” Will said, amused.

“I know enough,” the Thief of Stars replied. “My original goal is not feasible.”

“Great,” Will replied. “Lovely. Can we just end this waste? I know you three aren’t working with Peace, because if you were, it wouldn’t be you I’m dealing with. If you’re not with her, you’re against her, as far as I understand it.”

“Roughly so,” Kadael said.

“Fantastic. Then know this: you are never, ever going to get anything from me, so you better do your damn best to make sure nobody else does either.”

“You bargain like a god,” Uthra said.

“Funny,” Will said. “You whine like a mortal.”

Achievement earned: Defier

It’s not every day you survive blasphemy, and it’s not every day you meet a god. The intersection of those two is so small that you’d think it didn’t exist, but here we are. Look at you.

Reward: You have earned the [Heretic] title.

#

“Mother’s grace, how are you still alive?” Caiyeri asked. “It’s one thing to stand up to a god.”

“You’ve done that before, haven’t you?” Will asked. “Stand up to a god, I mean.”

“Yes, but not multiple, not like this. What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t thinking. I was doing.” Will started, then amended, “Is what I’d like to say, but I could tell it was basically them forcibly opening an attachment to Kadael’s domain. If they actually wanted to do anything to me there, it would have had to be through my sigil, who has a pretty vested interest in me, given that my plausibility is supporting him.”

Caiyeri stared blankly at him.

“I’m not even going to ask,” she said. “I’m glad to have you back, though, and it looks like you’ve managed to get even less sane than before. How’d you swing the gestalt to your side?”

“Soul torture,” Will said sagely.

Caiyeri nodded knowingly. “I’ve heard it’s very effective.”

“No, not really, actually. Jessie’s the only one it actually worked on, and that’s because someone else was soul-torturing it first.”

“Oh, really?”

“Yeah, but that’s a whole ‘nother story. I’ll tell you that sometime else. For now, I’ve got Sen’s eyes casing this joint, and I think we’re about to have company.”

“Nynn seems to agree,” Caiyeri said, gesturing to where the former Dread Executor was rousing their new faction. “Shall we get moving?”

Darkness exploded from Sen’s eyes.

Will grinned. “Way ahead of you.”