"Oh, mother sucker!" I said, clutching my eyes.

Everything was white and I still couldn't see a damn thing. Which wasn't a good thing when you saw a nuclear explosion.

"It's alright," Joan said, beside me. "You're just blind."

"Just blind?" I asked, stunned at her insensitivity. Then I remembered she was a woman with access to casual magical healing. Hopefully, magical healing that would work in taking care of my issue.

"Yeah, hold on," Joan said. "CURE BLINDNESS."

That was was when everything slowly moved its way back shapes and then colors. I blinked several times as I looked dowm upon Joan. "Okay, it really is much better to have magical healing than the alternative. Though I am ninety-percent sure my mother's plan to introduce pencillian to Ledziania is a good idea."

"Is that her weird idea we need to eat powdered fungus?" Joan asked, holding the side of my head. "Because I'm still not down with that."

"You have pizza in the Empire," I said, looking at her. "You also put mushrooms on everything."

"That is completely different!" Joan said.

"Ahem," Ania cleared her throat. "We have bigger issues to deal with right now."

I shook my head and turned around to see my party had teleported to the edge of the lake where there was a pair of massive waves splitting from the center. Hundreds of feet tall and spreading in opposite directions. Thankfully, well away from us.

The Ledzianian Śniardwy was surrounded by a vast forest and we were not that far from the camp where King Ivan III and King Wotanson had assembled their forces.

"I'm pretty sure that an explosion a kilometer underwater wouldn't cause that," I said, pausing. "But I admit I do not know the exact science of nuclear physics as related to magical fantasy worlds."

"Hold up your thumb!" Jon said, having assumed his raven form and sitting on my shoulder. "Also, if it blinded you, what's the chances you are utterly cooked with radiation? And by you, I mean me, since we're focused on what's important here."

"You were caught mid teleport but while light struck you, actual radiation did not," Susanos said, drawing my attention.

Susanos had dropped her glamour and no longer looked like a glamorous Southern European movie star. Instead, she looked more like the horrifying desiccated corpse she was. Susanos was still dressed in her wrap and crown but in the words of the great Ash Williams, she'd got real ugly.

"Yeah, but light is radiation," I pointed out, walking over to the lake's edge and splashing my face a few times. I dropped the scroll of true names on the ground because, well, it was not as important as whether or not I'd be dead of cancer tomorrow.

"Try shapeshifting a few times," Rachel said. "That should reset your genetics."

"Would that work?" I asked.

"It's an interesting puzzle," Rachel said, adjusting her witch's hat. "Magic fundamentally obeys the laws of physics in the context of simply being a new element of cause and effect adding to the existing world."

"Yeah, it works like programming language," I said, going and picking up the scroll. "You fuck with the engine too much and it breaks but it works fine if you acknowledge how it all works together."

Ania put two fingers in her mouth and whistled. "Please. Can we focus on the end of the world? Or worlds in this case?"

"We're always focused on the end of the world," Bloodstorm said, taking a deep breath. "I also don't want to die of poisonous magical energy. So I'm all down for any folk remedies that will cure us. Turn me into a dog and then back. I like dogs."

"Ha!" Jon taunted. "I'm surviving this no matter what. The crow wins."

"Are you a crow or a raven?" Rachel asked, curiously. "You identify as both but they're distinct birds."

"Yeah, but the thing that distinguishes them most is the sounds they make," I pointed out. "Jon speaks English."

"True, but they also differe in tail, bill, flight pattern, and size," Rachel said. "I'd argue he's kind of weirdly in-between and that was before he became a dragon."

"Maybe we could get him his own species name, Ledzianian corvus," I suggested.

Ania stared. "So, yeah, clearly we aren't focusing on the end of the worlds despite my request. How long do we have until the Crossroad is attacked by Belobog?"

"Three days," Susanos said. "The armies of the dead do not tire, hunger, or thirst. Belobog mindlessly marches to his master's tune because he has been the one most affected by the Twisted One's corruption. He only desires to cause as much pain and suffering for his master as possible before being put down."

"Great," I muttered. "What kind of help can you offer us?"

I'd been under duress when I'd agreed to an alliance with the Witch Queen but war was rarely a situation where you got do things without duress. Indeed, virtually every treaty and surrender was made under some form of it. You didn't agree to these things just because. Right now we needed to figure out how to deal with whatever Veles was doing on my world. I had visions of The Walking Dead, nuclear war, and worse dancing through my head.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Like most evil dictators, Veles couldn't be counted on to act in a perfectly rational and sensible way but that didn't necessarily mean he was less dangerous. Much of our struggle against him had been defined by the fact he was treating all of this as an enormous game. I wasn't even the person he was playing against. Veles had been playing against Larry C.C. Weis and the fact I'd "wasted" a wish by demanding he stick to the rules was something I didn't truly trust. Basically, we had no idea of knowing what he'd do next.

"I have assembled the surviving members of the Thirteen," Susanos said. "I have destroyed the ones who refused to accept my leadership. That, unfortunately, gives me only a tenth of the undead forces assembled by Belobog. I am working on convincing the goblin kings of the Death Mountain to join me as well. That is hard, however."

"Why?" I asked.

"Because they are too busy celebrating their god leaving," Susanos said. "They also sensibly believe that if Belobog destroys much of Ledziania then they can claim the depopulated surface for themselves."

They may find that humanity decides to pay them back for that," Bloodstorm said. "Assuming, you know, other humans don't invade them for the exact same reason."

I grimaced as that was a reference to our biggest failure so far in the past year. Something so bad that if I survive to write a LitRPG trilogy detailing my adventures, I would leave off page. We'd tried to recruit the Viking Rus to join our army and Bloodstorm's people had proven to be utterly intractable. For a so-called proud warrior race, none of the Jarls or petty kings had wanted to waste their soldiers on something like saving the world.

Not even bribery and playing them against one another had accomplished anything. I had thought I was pretty good at winning people over but, in the end, the Rus had beaten us through the power of sheer selfishness. We'd had more luck recruiting the Empire and elves to our cause. Ironically, the dwarves had just said yes immediately. It didn't really warrant a story either for opposite reasons.

"They will accompany my forces because of another race of Veles' creation accompanying them," Susano said, surprising me.

"Who?" I asked, confused.

"The ratkin," Susano said. "They are a vast empire underneath the ground, one with uncounted numbers but no desire to serve anyone until now. They will join the cause of defending your race but you have to pay their price."

"Me?" I asked.

"Yes," Susano said, her skull face unreadable. "They wish you to be their god."

"Their...god," I said, making sure I understood her properly.

"Nice work if you can get it," Jon said. "Sit around on your ass all day and take credit for when things go right as well as how things going wrong are mysterious ways."

"Which is absolutely true," Joan said.

"You poor thing," Jon said.

"You remember you have divine blood too, right?" I asked Jon. It was a requirement to use the Marks of the Champion properly.

"Nope! Completely forgot," Jon said.

"You're dodging the question," Susano said. "The ratkin are deeply impressed with you for some reason."

"I stopped a few genocides and forced Ivan to repeal the bounties on their head," I replied. "Killing them is now murder. It apparently wasn't before."

Susano was silent for a moment. Her eye sockets glowing with an eerie witchfire. "I actually didn't think there would be a reason. Curious."

"Yeah, they even had a holy war underneath Crossroad," Bloodstorm said. "Kept the population numbers down when they couldn't decide whether Aaron preferred Star Wars or Star Trek."

"None of them even knew what those movies were," I muttered, feeling immense guilt about the whole thing.

"Another sign you make a great god," Jon said.

"Except you are not a god," Susano said. "Not yet. You have not claimed the power of the marks."

"It's complicated," I said, looking at Alek.

"Is it?" Alek asked, giving me no support.

Alek had given me his and essentially forfeited his collective divine power and chance to be a god. I hadn't absorbed it, though, for multiple reasons. One, I'd nearly been overwhelmed by the previous attempts. Two, I figured it would get Veles to take off the kid gloves and just straight up kill me. A reason that had never been particularly convincing even before Veles had started throwing nukes at us. Third, I didn't want to be a god. I didn't want to return to my boring humdrum life of being an office drone working on bug fixes for a company that turned out to be owned by someone literally (and I use the term literally as it should be used here) worse than the Devil. I was enjoying my life as the Dark Undermaster's overmaster and Lord of Dragon Keep with Ania at my side. I wasn't sure I had it in me to sacrifice everything and that wasn't a very heroic attitude.

"It is the nature of fools to believe the seeking of power is somehow immoral by itself versus how that power should be used," Susanos said.

"No offense, lady, but that would come across a lot more sincere if it wasn't from the second in command to Emperor Palpatine's god," I replied.

"Told you that the Warsian ratkin were right," Rachel said to Jon.

"You haven't seen Aaron drink one beer and then go into a lengthy rant about smashing both Kira and Jadzia from Deep Space Nine," Jon said. "I almost respected him after that. It makes me wonder what sort of statues the ratkin will build in their cathedral sewers."

"I told you that in confidence," I muttered, pausing. "Admittedly, in front of an entire bar of inhebriated patrons."

"It wasn't exactly a secret," Ania muttered. "I know far too much about that show that I cannot watch and would have no interest in if I could."

"Yeah, you're not going to make it as a couple," Jon said, shaking his head. "He could handle the fact you're an assassin but not disliking DS9. Personally, the thinking man knows Ivanova is God."

I ignored the opbvious bait. "We'll see about that. Defeating Veles is my top priority. Do you know what his plans are for Earth?"

Susanos chuckled, which sounded like a cartoon villain with reverb. "I know that he wishes to destroy both worlds but in such a way that all the souls of both realities come to him as well as empower him to be as powerful as Triglav."

"Who is Triglav again?" Alek asked.

"God," I replied. "With a capital G, or at least legally indistinguishable from our mere mortal perspective."

"Technically, I suppose he'd be considered closer to the Demiurge of Gnostic mythology in that he'd be--" Rachel started to explain.

"No other gods would be able to stop him and he would be able to rewrite reality as he sees fit," Susanos said. "An ambitious plan if not for the fact that if

the Twisted Ones have truly corrupted his heart, then he will simply end up destroying all reality."

"It would have been so much better if he just intended to conquer the universe by killing it," Ania said.

"Yes," Susanos said. "You will have to return to your world, Aaron Bartkowski. However, you must thwart Belobog's actions here first."

"Why?" I asked, knowing that it probably wasn't because she was afraid that millions would otherwise die.

"Because I live here," Susanos said, lifting a skeletal hand. "For the value of living."

"Right," I said, staring at. "You bring your army and tell the ratkin they'll get what they want."

"Aaron..." Ania trailed off.

"The only delay will be dealing with Veles," I said, staring.

"Excellent," Susanos said, before vanishing. No puff of smoke, no flash of light, or even a swarm of bats. Nope. Just one second she was there and then wasn't.

Ania looked at me. "Are you going to just agree to work with every awful person as long as it brings us closer to Veles' defeat? Maybe? Are you willing to sacrifice your future?"

I stared at her. "I learned it from you. You said we should do everything in our power to defeat him. Even if it meant our deaths. You said there was nothing beyond it."

Ania blinked, opening her mouth then closing it. "Maybe that was before I had something to lose, Aaron."

I shrugged. "Yeah, it seems to be that way, doesn't it?"

I walked off to go talk with the kings and Great Mother.