I needed a second to process that. "I'm sorry but what the actual fuck?"

Zorya had a sad expression on her face. "I am the Fire Demon. What you are seeing here now is the portion of my mind that represents the real me. The part I have managed to partition off from the rest of my corrupted self."

I blinked. "Please, explain."

Zorya paused for a moment. "When the soldiers of Rome and their priests came to conquer Ledziania, they were armed not just with the power of their god but accompanied by darker cults: the Twisted Ones' worshipers. The Twisted Ones feed not on the prayers of the faithful or the principles a deity embodies but darker more vile things: dishonor, pogroms, fanaticism, rapine, religious hypocrisy, and slavery. Whatever a god holds sacred, they gain power by defiling. Wherever the church of the Nailed God was corrupt, so were they strong. Wherever soldiers did not keep the faith of Perun, they were strong. Wherever love was corrupted, and women were chattel against my mother's will, so were they strong."

"That doesn't explain anything," I said.

Zorya did not interrupt her story, though. "Our victory over the Twisted Ones was a narrow one and required linking your world with this one. Most of the other gods had grown lazy and cruel, unwilling to defend Mat Zemlya against the Twisted Ones or reign in their worshipers. If they had any who had not abandoned them. My light father, Perun, promised to stand vigilant, but my dark father, Veles, sought new powers to defeat the Twisted Ones. Because they continued to rise again and again as humans awakened them with their evil."

I would have asked more questions, but Zorya conjured images of my mind. The Twisted Ones were like demons in some ways but closer to Anti-Gods. They existed to make mockery of everything in Creation and were some real Cenobite-meets-Chaos-looking mothersuckers. Unlike popular mythology, they didn't tempt people into evil but fed on all of humanity's worst impulses only after being summoned by them. Still, once they became involved, everything became manifestly worse. They might not have been behind the Nazis but they certainly helped them once they got going. It turns out there had been some serious Castle Wolfenstein shit going on behind the scenes of WW2. That was just the beginning too.

The Twisted Ones turned gods into horrors and humans into monsters. What was worse than a slave lord? A slave lord with superpowers. Ministers with the power to summon hellfire and bend minds to believe every evil word was God's own. Rich people somehow even more immune to the law because they could see the future or call down death with magical accidents. The Twisted Ones loved all that shit. That was just my world. On Mokosh, here, where they had actual magic, there had been several low-scale apocalypses: zombies, plagues, demon hordes, the works. All brought about by the evils of man. Each time, driving the Twisted Ones back and binding them was harder. Each time another god sacrificed his entire being to keep them down. It was a losing battle and I saw one god who had wanted to reverse that downward spiral of entropy. I was surprised to find out what god that was.

"Veles wanted to stop them?" I asked.

"My dark father hates oathbreakers," Zorya said. "He used to tempt men to wickedness but only so they could rise above said flaws and become tempered steel. The irredeemably evil are of no use to him save as cannon fodder."

"He seems pretty irredeemable himself," I said, dryly.

"Now, yes," Zorya said. "He sought the power of the Twisted Ones to feed on so he could fight them without having to rely on mortal prayers. He offered that power to use, and I became goddess of all aspects of war. Not just the honorable, merciful, and defensive but every violent act for good or ill. My brothers and sister made a similar pact. The Great Wars and the Great Darknesses made us desperate."

"That seems like a bad idea," I said.

"Yes," Zorya said, in a 'no shit, Sherlock' sort of fashion. "It was. We became the Elemental Demons, and our power was subordinated to Veles. Our light father was cast down and Veles rose as the ultimate god. He is too powerful for the Twisted One's influence to dominate completely and maintains much of himself, but his plan is insane. Nevertheless, we will ever fall back under his influence unless defeated."

That explained a lot but not nearly as much as I wanted. It was also dodging the point of all this. "So, if I destroy your avatar, then you're...fine?"

Zorya shook her head. "If only it were that simple. Our avatars are in a very real way our lives. Destroying this body will be the end of this consciousness. A new Zorya Dawnbringer will be born from my follower's dreams and prayers. I plan on influencing my reincarnation but even that will only be influence."

"I see," I said.

I had no pithy remarks or pop culture references. There no humor I could raise as a defense regarding this.

"Do you?" Zorya asked. "I need you to gather your strength and to learn every bit of tactical skill as well all as sorcerous knowledge I have to impart. All of it will be needed to defeat the Fire Demon that has my full strength."

I stared at her, remembering how she'd utterly beaten my ass in our previous encounters. "You weren't fighting at your full strength?"

"No," Zorya said, looking away. "Your defeat of my brother weakened my dark father's hold and Weis helped conjure my sanity back from the madness of the Fire Demon, but it is a flickering state. The Fire Demon is a creature of arson and slaughter, delighting in culling the lives of the living for no other reason than the joy of battle lust. All she sees are..."

That was when Zorya grabbed me by the arm. She was shaking and that was not an action I associated with the super sexy invincible war goddess that I'd only gotten to spend a short amount of time with.

"Are you okay?" I asked, reaching out to touch her arm.

Zorya pushed me back and I went skidding across the bottom of the volcano's floor. That, by itself, was almost enough to knock the wind out of me.

"No," Zorya said, looking pained. "It's too soon!"

"What's going--" I started to speak before realizing what was going on was all too easy to guess.

Zorya dropped her staff on the ground and ripped off her blindfold, revealing red eyes that burned like embers fresh from the fireplace. Her mouth began to distort and grew a set of exaggerated fangs like a cobra. A pair of extra arms slowly grew out of her sides, conjuring swords made of fire while her clothes (scant as they were) burned away. From her back grew a pair of wings conjured from hellish flames. Zorya Dawnbringer was known as the Firebird and the twisted parody she was becoming was something that I knew was someone who would burn the entire world if unleashed by Veles.

Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator.

Running away, heading back to the caverns I'd emerged from during my first trip with Weis, I took a moment to be glad this was just a dream even if I didn't know how to awaken myself. Unfortunately, I was disabused of that notion by the Fire Demon reaching out with both of her upper hands and saying something in a guttural language that the Mark of the Champion didn't successfully translate.

Then I was PULLED into this place.

I can't really describe what was different given my dream self was identical in every way that mattered to my physical body but I could tell the difference. Somehow, the Fire Demon had physically summoned me from Dragon Keep to the heart of the Fire Temple. I was alone against an enemy who could tear apart a small army. Hell, probably a mid-sized one. There would be no resurrections here.

"TELEKINESIS!" I shouted, pulling Zorya Dawnbringer's staff to me and staring at the creature she'd become. "This isn't you! Fight it!"

YOU HAVE ACQUIRED A STAFF OF THE DRAGON KINGS

My mind filled with its dozen or so spells, functions, charges, and command words that would do absolutely jack shit if the Fire Demon got anywhere near me.

"Weak, gentle, and scheming!" The Fire Demon hissed. Her voice was, I'll be honest, kind of comical since it sounded like someone with a pair of plastic vampire fangs in their mouth did. Lots of spittle and hissing too. "How could she let you touch her? How could she select you for her rebirth's sire!"

I had no idea what the hell she was talking about and was too scared to parse it out. Instead, I turned the Staff of Dragon Kings onto her and blasted her with an frost dragon's breath that struck the Fire Demon in the face. It barely managed to inflict any damage on the goddess' avatar before she began hurling fireballs my way while I dodge rolled out of the way, only succeeding because of my boots of speed.

I understood what Zorya Dawnbringer had been trying to do with her punishing training of me now. Not just to become better as a warrior but to know every one of her moves and how to counteract them. I stayed out of the way of the Fire Demons spinning blades as best I could, utilizing JUMP and ARMOR spells both while blasting away using every type of magical attack within the staff she'd brought with her.

The Fire Demon chased me around her area in an almost comical fashion as I hurled every possible attack I could against her while remembering the timing that Zorya had drilled into my head with repeated deaths. The blazing rage inside the Fire Demon, no pun intended, was her greatest disadvantage. Every time she opened her mouth, it was to let forth another insult about how I'd defiled her with my weakness. Zorya had made it personal with us and that was its own advantage. Unfortunately, the staff didn't have an infinite amount of power, and I expelled the last of its energy creating a lightning shield that was destroyed by her conjuring two more blades to attack with four at once.

I ended up fighting the Fire Demon with enhanced Arcane Fire that was made three times as strong by the staff but still only seemed to barely penetrate the burning aura of the monster. None of my attack spells could do any damage, undead focused as they were, and any animals I conjured here would just die. I was exhausted after just a few minutes of fighting her but that just meant I had to use REFRESH to keep up my attempt to win via a death of a thousand cults.

It almost worked too.

I lasted almost six minutes against the Fire Demon in the end, causing her to pause and transform before my eyes. She gained a serpentine tail as her face became noticeably more draconic. I'd successfully managed to piss her off and that would have been a good sign if not for the fact that Zorya and I had never trained in fighting something like this. I attempted to mutter another Arcane Fire spell, only to literally trip on one of the vents and get caught by the Fire Demon's tail being spun around like a whip.

YOU HAVE SUFFERED 46 POINTS OF DAMAGE

In an instant, I went from being unharmed to having been hit with the force of a semi-truck. I bounced against the volcano floor like a skipping stone across a pond. I ended up landing right at the base of the Blades of Chernabog, that had been sitting there untouched throughout the entirety of our battle.

My strategy to "kite" around the Fire Demon like a butterfly, staying out of range of her swords and dodging her ranged attacks had been a good one. It just hadn't worked. Maybe if my DEX score had been higher or maybe if I'd just been a little bit better, I might have worn her down, but the battlefield conditions had changed to the point there was nowhere that I could flee. I needed my fellow party members to fight this thing, and they probably would have died if they'd been here from the beginning. I wasn't willing to sacrifice them, though, and there was no use in pondering what might have been.

Embrace us, the swords hissed as one. We are your only chance for survival.

No, I thought back, casting CURE and CURE (II) as the Fire Demon slithered toward me. She was moving slowly now, confidant in her imminent victory. I had no reason to doubt her probable victory even as I tried to pull a miracle out of my ass.

Or my pocket.

Hmm.

Sometimes evil is the only way to fight evil, the swords said. Let us feast on her divine blood and we will pass some of that onto you. You will be the demigod you have been proclaimed but lack the strength to be.

I have my own idea on surviving, I thought, pulling out the Mark of the Champion I'd recovered from Valentin's stash.

Before I could do anything with it, I was suddenly wrapped up in the Fire Demon's coils as the snake burned my flesh. It was agonizing and I barely could move with my hand sticking between her lower body's death grip. The monster's hideous distorted face was more disturbing for its similarity to the woman I'd been intimate with.

"I will kill you like a praying mantis," the Fire Demon hissed, cradling my face with four burning hands. "You will die in ecstasy and terror all at once."

I resisted screaming long enough to say one word. "TELEKINESIS."

The Mark of the Champion slapped itself on one of her hands and I hoped I wasn't betting everything on a crap shot. But if I was, I hoped it came up a seven or eleven.

The Fire Demon looked at the bracelet with confusion before suddenly loosing her coils, I was half dead and suffering horrific burns from where my leather armor had been burned into my skin. I wasn't dead, though, and witnessed the Fire Demon shaking like she was being electrocuted. She thrashed, twisted, and convulsed for several seconds before collapsing on the ground.

ZORYA DAWNBRINGER/FIRE DEMON DIVINE RANK NEUTRALIZED.

"Go team," I said, lying on the ground and pulling out the potions of vampiric healing I'd gotten from Radu's hounds. They tasted like blood, probably because they were made from blood, but they sealed up my wounds. I ended up downing all six even as I found myself choking on the toxic gas that seemed to be all around me now.

YOU ARE NOW POISONED.

"Great," I muttered, shaking my head. "Zorya, are you there? Or are you weresnake harpy meth addict version of yourself?"

Zorya looked up and she had clear black eyes that were all too human. She was no longer on fire either, which probably wasn't good. I could see she was suffering burns from the hot rocks around her as well but seemed to be ignoring any pain like it didn't exist.

"You need to kill me, Aaron," Zorya said, her voice desperate. "Now, before the Fire Demon returns. I can already feel her gathering her strength."

"Uh, no," I said, staring at her. I felt woozy and my vision was blurry. I was also coughing every few seconds. "That's not going to happen."

YOU HAVE SUFFERED -1 CON DAMAGE

Oh, that wasn't good.

"You need to kill me before I kill more...people," Zorya said. "Before I harm our..."

"Our what?" I asked. "Listen, let's just fast travel back to Dragon Keep. We'll borrow the other three bracelets, and you can be our demigoddess super party member."

Zorya looked up. "I command you to kill me."

Her mind washed over mine, and I couldn’t resist. Everything went red and when I once more was aware of myself, I was holding both Blades of Chernabog and had buried them into Zorya' chest.

"No," I said, staring in horror.

Zorya looked up, the light leaving her eyes. "Thank you. Find our daughter, Aragorn. Teach her, her birthright."