By the hour’s end, Brittle found himself reevaluating his beliefs. Perhaps there was something to this ‘true of heart’ nonsense, after all. No matter the danger, Sir Thomassin overcame each and every obstacle without fail. He successfully evaded a drop fall, traversed a rickety rope bridge stretched across a bottomless rift with ease, tiptoed past all manner of sleeping beasts, and even jumped a pit of sharpened stakes without garnering a single scratch.

He could have gone around the pit of sharpened stakes, as Gilly had done, but Sir Thomassin insisted jumping was more fun. Brittle did not agree. Somehow, against all odds, the persistent knight arrived at the entrance to the goddess’s lair more self-assured than ever before. He even managed to find himself a suitable sword along the way – plucked it right out of the rock it’d been wedged into with barely a tug.

A warm yellow light illuminated the far end of the passage. It grew brighter as they neared. The line of yellow light seeped out from under a heavy wooden door set deep in the surrounding rock. The familiar scents of wet clay and moss receded as the trio reached the front steps. In its stead hung the mouthwatering aroma of sizzling meat.

“This must be it,” Sir Thomassin said as he stooped to set Brittle back onto his own two feet. “The stench of evil is strong. I can nearly taste it.”

“I think that’s sausages.”

“Evil sausages,” Sir Thomassin agreed.

Mounting the stone steps, the knight reached for the ornate door handle. To their collective surprise, the door was not only unlocked, but swung open with soundless ease. Sir Thomassin met Brittle’s befuddled stare with a knowing smile. “I told you, pure of heart.”

“Mama says you can’t enter someone’s home uninvited,” Brittle reminded him in a whisper. “A good beast knocks first.”

Sir Thomassin must not have heard. Squaring his broad shoulders, the knight sauntered into the open doorway, disappearing from Brittle’s sight. “Mara, Goddess of Ill Fortune?” His thunderous voice boomed from one cavernous wall to the next.

A loud clatter came from within, followed by a started yelp. “What in the name of me?”

“Son of a gum tree.” Brittle realized that if he hoped to intervene, he couldn’t wait for a formal invitation. Surely the goddess would understand given the circumstances. He scurried inside the brightly lit room and tucked himself against the nearest wall. Gilly waddled in on his heels, doing a less successful job of blending in with the furniture.

Brittle found himself in a massive, dome-shaped chamber. Twinkling strands of flameless yellow lights were strung across the ceiling, giving the impression of a starry night sky. Shelves of books and trinkets lined the walls, with haphazardly placed furniture making up what might have been a sitting area near the middle. There was a kitchen at the far end. A dark-haired woman stood in front of a clay stove, sucking the sting from her blistered finger. An iron pan laid upside down near her slippered feet. A slick of hot oil and burnt sausages littered the floor.

The goddess lifted her glare from her dinner to her surprise visitors. The ferocity in her curled upper lip could have curdled lukewarm bog water. “Well? Get on with it.”

“Mara, Goddess of Ill Fortune?”

“You already said that.”

Sir Thomassin’s confident steps brought him to the center of the room. He brandished his sword at her. “Prepare to meet your doom.”

“Oh, for my sake. Not this again.” The woman’s chin tilted upwards. The ends of her dark, frizzy hair bobbed with each exasperated shake of her head. The goddess’s words seemed directed at the ceiling, and not at the unexpected gaggle of strangers assembled on her doorstep. “That’s the last time I trust a cave-to-cave salesman. Genuine water serpent, my–”

“Run, your goddessness!” Brittle parted with the wall, but only made it a few steps before the Great Maker's stare fixed his feet to the ground. The same could not be said about his tongue, fortunately. “He means to kill you!”

The goddess’s wide eyes roved from Brittle back to Sir Thomassin. “...What is that?”

“You should know,” Sir Thomassin said. “You made him.”

While Brittle was pleasantly surprised that Sir Thomassin referred to him as a ‘him’ and not ‘it’, it still didn’t make up for the grave misdeed the knight was about to commit. “I tried to stop him, Great Maker, but he wouldn’t listen. Please, you have to get out of here.”

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Sir Thomassin edged forward menacingly. “Mankind knows the truth now. Your immortality is a myth. The God of Glory has already fallen. And you, and all of your ilk, are next.”

The goddess’s forehead lifted from where it was currently slamming into her hands. “Sadar? The God of glory? Did you just say he’s dead?”

“Slain by mortal hand, just as you are about to be.”

“When?”

“Now.”

“Not me, numbskull. When did Sadar die?”

The tip of Sir Thomassin’s sword lowered as a hint of disappointment crossed his stoic features. Of all the ways he’d envisioned their final battle, Brittle doubted any of them involved an interrogation. The knight’s brows knitted together beneath his shiny helm. “Three weeks ago.”

“Killed how?”

“By the gods’ only weakness. A knight of pure heart.”

“A what?”

“Oh, don’t act like you don’t already know. Now stop stalling and prepare to die.”

“Sadar, you clever snake.” The goddess crossed her arms over her chest, muttering, “Convince the mortals you’re dead, and they’ll leave you alone. Why didn’t I think of that?”

“Save your breath, villainess. You won’t be able to talk yourself out of this one.” Sir Thomassin raised his sword and advanced, one slow step in front of the other.

The goddess swept in the opposite direction, keeping the granite kitchen island between them. She was dressed in a fuzzy robe with matching yellow slippers. “Look, it was entertaining the first few times, alright? King Eluard sending one of you to my doorstep and then we’d do the whole song and dance until ill fortune struck. But it’s getting old. Every other week there’s some new hero making a mess of my cave, vowing to slay me.”

Sir Thomassin moved forward undeterred.

“You saw the coconuts, right?” The goddess carried on, gesturing wildly with her hands as she spoke. “I used to have real skulls on stakes. Nice ones. But I can’t afford to keep replacing them every time some starry-eyed buffoon comes hacking and slashing his way in here.”

“Stop moving and die!”

“No! Go away. Leave me to eat my floor sausages in peace.”

Brittle turned the same time as Gilly and the two locked eyes. The lizard looked nearly as disappointed as Sir Thomassin, for entirely different reasons, naturally. One would have thought an epic showdown between a deity of untold power and a purehearted knight would have been less like a spirited game of chase-the-witch.

The pair went around the couch several more turns before the Great Maker grew weary of the game. She whirled about to face Sir Thomassin, planting one slippered foot forward. “Alright, that’s it! I tried to spare you from your own pigheadedness, but I’ve had enough. See for yourself what happens when anybody gets close to me.”

Sir Thomassin charged. He made it two steps before he slipped on the living room rug and fell, striking his head against a sturdy, short-legged table on the way down.

The goddess threw her arms wide as she shouted at the ceiling again. “They never listen!”

The knight remained as an unmoving pile of armor on the rug.

Gilly’s tail thrashed back and forth, but with less enthusiasm than Brittle expected. From the lizard’s expression, even she appeared to have mixed feelings over Sir Thomassin’s anticlimactic undoing.

Brittle edged closer, tapping his spindly fingertips together. This was the second dead body he’d seen that day. The same one, actually. Brittle feared Sir Thomassin’s untimely demise had stuck this time. “Is he…”

“No,” the goddess replied with a dismissive wave of her hand. “He’ll wake up with a splitting headache and be no worse for the wear. Can’t say the same for his pride, though. Hard to recover from a blunder like that.”

Brittle sighed in relief. The feeling vanished the moment he realized the Great Maker was staring at him with that puzzled expression on her face again. “The knight said you were one of mine,” she said. “What’d he mean by that?”

“You created me. Just as you did all bog log beasts.”

The goddess held her hands in front of her, twisting them into strange knots. “I did?”

The Great Maker had a hand in creating beasts of all shapes and sizes. Brittle supposed he couldn’t fault her for forgetting one or two from time to time. He tried to jog her memory. “Mama says we were willed into existence when the Goddess of Ill Fortune stubbed her toe on my great-great-great grandmother, Mossy Stump Wood.”

The goddess’s dark eyes grew wider. “Oh.”

“I’m Brittle.” Remembering his manners, Brittle gestured over to Gilly. Bored of talking, the lizard in question had lumbered her way into the kitchen where she was currently scarfing burnt sausages from the floor. “That’s Gilly.”

“Mara,” the goddess replied, as though she expected Brittle to call her anything other than ‘Great Maker’. Her irritated gaze swept back over Sir Thomassin’s still body. “I hate it when they get this far. Lugging the bodies out of here is so much work.”

Brittle didn’t know what to say to that. He would have offered to help, but his wee arms weren’t very good at dragging anything anywhere fast.

“You know what? Forget it. Eat first, drag stupid knight away afterwards.” The goddess turned on her heel and swept back towards the kitchen. The fuzzy edges of her regal yellow robe fluttered in her wake. “Stay for dinner, Brittle. It’s been ages since I’ve had company that wasn’t trying to kill me.”