I... have no idea what to do with this information.

Nyx has been barraging me with questions that I’m probably supposed to be relaying to my paladin, but she’s been asking them so fast one after another that I haven’t had a chance to try. So instead, I’ve just been holding Izahne in silence.

(You know what, fine. I try to help and you ignore me! I should be used to this,) my Assistant whines.

Could you just, lay off for a while? You’re asking so much I can’t even repeat it. Besides, it feels like this is at least calming her down.

(Well obviously, that would calm her down! But of course you don’t know that, you’re just doing random things that may or may not help, as usual.)

Why do you keep assuming I know all these things?

(Because I have no idea what you do or don’t know! You have the most random knowledge rattling in that empty dustbin head of yours, why that but not this? You make no sense!)

Okay, okay, calm down. Let’s handle one crisis at a time, alright?

She lets out a heavy sigh. (Fine.)

Meanwhile, Izahne has been shaking and leaking and breathing weirdly less and less over the past few minutes. Maybe it’s alright to talk now?

“Nyx asked me a lot of questions to ask you about this, but I guess the first one will be mine. If you’re mine, but you’re theirs, how does that work?”

“Well,” she answers shakily, “to begin with, marriage is more nuanced than just belonging to each other. It works well enough to explain it when you don’t feel attraction and aren’t even from a race that reproduces in pairs. You can just split yourself, can’t you?”

I shrug and spawn half a dozen wraiths, flit them around in the air, and then reabsorb them. “More or less, but they don’t really seem separate. I can feel through them as if they’re almost part of me.”

She exhales and gives me a squeeze. “Attraction is a biological thing that people feel. It’s sometimes related to a drive to reproduce, but it’s also an innate emotion most of us experience at some point in our lives. You don’t feel most things, so it’s no surprise that you don’t understand it, but imagine if you felt an incredibly strong pull to be near a person, to be close to them emotionally and physically. We call that attraction.”

“I see.”

We’re quiet for a moment, other than her occasional sniffle. But then I can’t help but ask.

“Are you attracted to me then?”

“Yes.” She doesn’t hesitate, and I can’t help but furrow my brow.

“Why?”

“I don’t know.” Her breathing is starting to get weird again.

“We’re not at all capable of reproducing...”

“I know that, of course I know that,” she muffles into my robe.

Huh.

I give her a brush with Consume and feel her noticeably relax, at least partially.

“Is it okay if I ask Nyx’s questions now?”

Izahne takes a breath and exhales against me. “Alright.”

So what was it all again? And one at a time this time, please.

(First you should ask what exactly their arrangement is,) my Assistant offers.

“What kind of arrangement do you have with Themis?” I relay.

“Well,” she begins, “I’m in his queue to be his Vessel, and if I survive one hundred years, he’ll move to the next.”

Hmm?

“There’s a time limit? I don’t plan on dying any time soon, so that just means one hundred years later you can find me again, right? I don’t understand the problem.”

She sighs into me. “Themis’ Vessels tend to die a lot, though. He gets targeted by cults of dark gods, just like the others in the light pantheons.”

(Next question! What – )

I’m not finished!

“What if I just follow you around and keep you alive until then?” I ask.

“He’d never allow that. His thing is balance in all things, including whether his Vessels live or die. I guess in some ways it doesn’t make a lot of sense, but the gods can be like that sometimes.”

I unexpectedly grit my teeth. “You’re right. That doesn’t make any sense at all. He can’t have you, you’re mine. Especially not if he isn’t even going to protect you.”

I notice she’s started shivering against me, and she’s begun radiating feelings of pressure and strain through our bond.

(Your Aura, idiot.)

But... wait, my Aura isn’t even on!

(Not... that one. You always radiate malevolence, remember? It’s way stronger right now. So, maybe calm the fuck down? She doesn’t need this right now.)

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

I take a deep breath – still a strange experience for me considering I don’t need to breathe, and yet it feels instinctual – and try to focus my thoughts. I feel Izahne relax as well.

“I’m sorry,” I say. “I don’t know what just happened.”

My paladin chuckles, but it still sounds pained. “I felt it, though.”

“Felt what?” I ask.

“Your emotions.”

I... what?

“I don’t experience human emotions, though.”

She offers me a weak smile. “Yes you do. Not many, but you do.”

…

“Then what was it?”

“You shouldn’t be surprised, and neither should I,” she says.

“Why not?”

“It’s one of your Domains. That was unmistakably envy, and anger.”

I tilt my head and ask, “What does that mean?”

“You were so enraged at the thought of me belonging to someone else that you lost control.”

…

“I understand,” she says. “This is something you’re going to have to think about. You’ve reacted this way at least twice now, and both of those times involved something you interpreted to be a threat to me. I won’t pretend that it doesn’t feel nice that you’re this protective of me, even if you aren’t able to love me back.”

I do think about it for a moment, and then say, “I see.”

“But you can’t protect me from this. Not from him.”

“We’ll find a way.” I surprise myself with how quickly I say it. “I know I'm pretty dumb, but Nyx is a genius. We’ll find a way.”

(I... damn you, I can’t even make fun of you when you say it like this.)

Well, genius, start thinking of something. There has to be something we can do here.

My Assistant snorts. (Against a god? What are you going to do? They have a contract, that’s how these things work. Same with your marriage. Breaking those tends to get all sorts of other gods involved, and then you have an absolute mess assuming they don’t just smite you to save time.)

I don’t know, but there has to be something? Didn’t you have a whole bunch of other questions? Why would we even ask anything if we weren’t looking for a way around it?

(Well,) she sighs, (I at least wanted to understand how deep she is here. There’s a difference between being next in line or being somewhere probably a few centuries down the line, isn’t there?)

Ah. You were... I see.

“How many others are in the queue before you?” I ask.

“Two, if you include his current Vessel.”

I exhale a small amount of ash. “That’s not very many.”

“It isn’t.”

“Hey, why did you even agree to this to begin with? I mean, why would you want to be this weird god’s Vessel if you’re expecting that you’d just die in the process?”

She’s quiet for a moment, just breathing through my robes.

“Also, what are you doing?”

My paladin stops momentarily and then looks up at me with a faint blush. “Promise you won’t be mad at me?”

I furrow my brow at her. “I don’t know if I’ve ever been mad at you, or anyone.”

“I guess that’s probably true,” she says.

And then trails off.

“So,” I prod, “What is it?”

She shyly glances away before she answers. “I was smelling you.”

Heh?

“What do I even smell like?” I ask.

“Ash, mostly. You smell like the ruins of a burned library.”

I blink. “That is oddly specific. Anyway, uhhh what were we talking about? Oh right, the... the thing. Why would you want to die as a Vessel?”

She doesn’t answer, but she does catch herself absentmindedly leaning her face in – probably to smell me again, apparently.

“I don’t care. Smell away.”

She blushes and tries to push away from me, but I’m used to her weird games like this. I hold her tighter instead, and offer a quiet, “No. Stay and answer.”

Izahne squirms for a moment and then finally stops. I can tell she doesn’t want me to let her go, not really, because she’s definitely strong enough that if she wanted to break free, she could.

(Careful there,) Nyx warns, (you have no idea how strong you are now that your level is question mark or whatever. You’ve never tested it.)

Yeah, that’s fair.

“I didn’t hurt you, right?” I ask.

My paladin leans into me again and softly shakes her head against my chest.

We stand in silence for a while, again. The passersby on the street continue to ignore us, which is good, because for some reason I feel like I’d have to reduce any who interrupt to dust. Hey, why is that?

(Probably your Domain again. You want her to yourself.)

Huh.

Finally, Izahne breaks the silence. “Do I look young to you, Nemesis?”

I shrug. “I know you’re not. Nyx told me so.”

“I used to be a crafter, you know.”

“I didn’t know, but I do now. Did you get bored of it?” I ask.

She goes quiet again, so I hold a little tighter since it seems to calm her down.

“Family trade. We made door mechanisms. Just door mechanisms.”

Huh. “Nothing else? Nyx made a lot of inventions apparently, you didn’t invent anything?”

I feel her slacken against me. “They wouldn’t let me. My family, I mean. I needed to carry on the trade, since my brothers and sister had already left.”

“Why does that matter? Why couldn’t you just leave?”

“I finally did. I couldn’t take it anymore. And my excuse was when a priest of Themis visited the colony. ‘Fight for balance’, he said. And I listened, and prayed. And Themis offered me a Class, so I took it, and I left,” she says. I can feel her face wetting my robe again. “I didn’t care if I was going to die. Nemesis, I made the same thing for three hundred and seventy years! I wanted to die!”

I have no idea what to say to that, any of it, so I continue to hold her instead.

I’m not even thinking when I absentmindedly say, “I’m going to kill him.”

Izahne goes stiff against me and looks up, pale as ice. “Y-you can’t! He’s a god! Oh gods, Nemesis, please don’t! He’s already taking me! I don’t want him to take you too!”

“I’ll find a way.”

Our bond feels incredibly unstable now, and she buries herself in my chest again.

(It’s called ‘crying’. You know, when water comes from their eyes and they breathe weird and sometimes make weird sounds? Humans do it when they’re sad, or a handful of other emotions,) Nyx says.

I sigh a cloud of ash. More human things, of course. I need a hells-damned manual or something. Maybe a textbook. I should ask master about that.

Although.

Thinking about master...

(Don’t tell me – )

I can’t help but remember...

(This is going to be bad, isn’t it?)

I ate a god, or at least a past me did. Subsumed them. That means they’re part of me now, right? They’re still in my soul?

(Technically?)

I feel something inside me break. An unexpected wave of nostalgia washes over me and through me, and I find words where there weren’t before. Shadows spring from the ground around us, blotting out everything around us other than the burning eye of the moon glaring down, much too close in the suddenly dark night sky.

[Warning: Error Type X$?%% in progress!]

[Divinity (UNKNOWN) has overridden mitigation procedures: (It’s time to wake up, child.)]

INDRA IZAHNE, CHILD OF VULCAN, PALADIN OF THEMIS, I project, the words reverberating around me before I can think about what exactly is happening. Am I even in control right now?

[Warning: SYSTEM Integrity Compromised!]

My paladin pushes away from me, something I don’t contest. Her eyes are wide as she snaps starkly upright, looking not unlike prey before a predator, and I can’t help but feel a pulse of hunger within me. And again, the words pour forth.

YOU ARE MINE. I REJECT THE CLAIMS OF OUTSIDERS, FOR MY POSSESSIONS ARE MINE ALONE, AND I AM A JEALOUS GOD. IT IS MY NATURE, AND SO THERE SHALL BE NO OTHER CLAIMS BEFORE MINE.

Izahne is shaking like a leaf in a strong wind, and finally loses the strength in her legs. I absentmindedly gesture, and she gently floats to the ground instead of what would have probably been a pretty nasty fall. I can tell some System messages are happening, but I can’t hear them through the static filling my mind. I strain futilely against it and manage to feel one more reverberating projection before I lose control to whatever is moving me.

BECOME MY AGENT. BECOME THE AGENT OF THE ALL-DEVOURER, THE QUEEN OF HUNGER, AND BY MORTAL HANDS SANCTIFY OUR REBIRTH.

I black out.