I narrowed my eyes, staring at Veles in Piotr's body with a malevolent hatred. "My wish for fair play didn't last very long, did it?"

Georgie looked excited about being taken hostage, but I was terrified for him. Terrified and angry at Veles threatening my family.

Veles stared at me, contempt in his eyes. "Spare me your outrage, Aaron. If I was breaking my promise, then I would just appear in all my divine glory and break your neck. Who would stop me? My whore of a wife, Mokosh? My surviving brother, Svarog who insists on ignoring that anything has changed since he forged the worlds? Mythras, who claims he is the great champion of humanity but did nothing against the Twisted Ones?"

"Zorya Dawnbringer would have killed you if you hadn't corrupted her," I said, trying to him distracted from Georgie.

"Tell me when and I'll lightning zap him, Aaron," Jon said, perched on my shoulder.

"Don't," I said, not knowing whether that would kill Veles or not. I wasn't willing to risk Georgie's life. If Veles needed me to trade my life for his, I would. The only problem was I didn't believe he wouldn't kill Georgie immediately thereafter. His word meant shit as far as I was concerned now.

"The Firebird broke the rules and so did you," Veles said, narrowing his eyes. He was undoubtedly reading my mind as he had during our previous encounters. "This is supposed to be a game after all. You skipped all her dungeon and went after her directly. You also had her help. In other words, you cheated."

I grimaced because I didn't entirely disagree with Veles there. Weis and Zorya had gone to pretty elaborate lengths to keep us from trying to confront things head on. "Speedruns and shortcuts are part of the system. So is talking the monster to death. Did you ever play the original Fallout? Speech is deadlier than a nuke."

"Did you really fuck and kill a goddess, Uncle Aaron?" Georgie said. "That is awesome."

"Don't use language like that," I said.

"Fucking why?" Georgie asked. "It's just us guys here."

Veles laughed. "I like your nephew, Aaron. It would be a shame to kill him. I wonder if he'd be willing to take the same deal your cousin would. Hey, Georgie, how would you like to be a death knight?"

"Would I!" Georgie asked.

"He's a child, Veles," I said, now even angrier. "Have you no dignity?"

Veles tightened his grip on Georgie. "Old enough to kill is old enough to die and there are many boys his age fighting for the two queens. Besides, I'm not going to get very far in killing two worlds if I hesitated to harm children."

"Oh, you want to wipe out the world? I'm out," Georgie said. "I thought you wanted to take it over like Cobra or SPECTRE."

Veles frowned as if this conversation wasn't going the way he expected. "I am still within the context of the rules. I am not striking you down. Piotr came to my avatar and asked for aid against the hordes of, well, me. I offered him a return of his youth and health as well but asked for a favor in return."

I stared at him. "Let me guess, you asked for a day of his life in return or some other word play."

"No, I asked for him to kill Garland," Veles said. "The man he adopted as a surrogate son and his heir. He barely hesitated before agreeing. In the end, a chance to live his glory days again was more important than the person dearest to him. He broke his oaths: first to Lord Rose to care for Garland and second to his fellow Undermasters to never betray a brother, so he became mine."

"Ah," I said, staring. "I see."

"Entrapment laws don't apparently exist when you're the Devil," Jon muttered.

"I am as far above Lucifer Morningstar as he is above you," Veles said, cooly. "Either way, he is my puppet for this journey, but it will be human hands that kill you or your nephew. Your choice."

I struggled to figure out a way out of this. "Let's fight it out, Veles. That makes a better story, doesn't it?"

"No," Veles said. "You have wronged me, Aaron. Wronged me in a way that you can't comprehend. Chernabog is dissipated and will not return to existence for a century. You atomized him when he tried to manifest through his so-called daughters. The Firebird's spirit is missing, and I am struggling to find it."

I struggled not to think of my daughter.

"Ah," Veles said, clearly still able to read my mind. "That explains it. She has sought to make it impossible to be corrupted again. It seems my children are not as interested in playing the game by its rules as you and I are. Weis' influence at work no doubt."

"Chernabog tried to take over my body," I said. "Probably so he could try to kill you personally."

I was just guessing there but I had the sneaking suspicion none of the Old Gods were in on Veles' plot to murder the population of two worlds. They were all corrupted by the power of the Twisted Ones and working for their father involuntarily.

Veles' eyes, or Piotr's, turned literal red. "None of my children can appreciate the fact destroying the two worlds is the only way to defeat the Twisted Ones forever. If the worlds are corrupted by their essence, their chaos, they will return to ruin our ambitions. Humanity can never grow, and the gods can never guide them. But the living are the only people vulnerable to their power. When everyone is dead, it will be perfection: a perfect, unified, ordered universe."

I didn't bother pointing out that there was a non-zero, verging on 100% chance that Veles himself was corrupted by the Twisted Ones. Certainly, Perun had believed it and so had Zorya Dawnbringer. Still, it was kind of funny to realize that the whitest of the White alignments in the pantheon was Veles not Perun.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Unfortunately, the very act of thinking about it meant that Veles undoubtedly heard it. His red eyes narrowed, and I suspected my attempts to delay our conversation any further had come to an end. "You know nothing about what you're thinking about. Having stolen some of my brother's power does not make you a god."

I decided to take a big swing. "Veles, maybe you aren't thinking clearly. Maybe this whole plan is because the Twisted One's power is influencing you. If there's a way to purify their power from you, it might make you see things differently. Isn't that worth trying? Your family is against you, but they love you. I think. This doesn't have to be a game between us. Maybe we can just have peace."

Also, ignore the thousands if not millions of people he'd killed.

Crap.

Probably not good to have thought that.

"Mokosh and Perun both tried to appeal to my sense of honor," Veles said, sneering. "So did the Nightbringer. The fact you think you can succeed where they failed disgusts me. Your journey has come to an end, Aaron Bartkowski. Take comfort in the fact that you successfully pissed me off before it. Step forward and die so your nephew can live or know you are a failure of a man who cannot even protect his own family."

"Don't do it, Uncle Aaron!" Georgie said, attempting to bite Veles' hand and stomp on his foot. Unfortunately, this wasn't a kid's movie.

"I'll do it!" I said, stepping forward with my hands up. "Just don't hurt him."

Veles smiled and nodded. "Now watch him die."

Veles conjured a ball of fire in one hand and raised it above his head.

"No!" I shouted, struggling in the moment to figure out which attack to use against him.

That was when Veles' hand exploded as there was a thunderclap and shattering of glass. My attention briefly went to the window beside me where I saw a bullet hole had appeared inside it. What the actual fuck? Georgie hit the ground before jumping up and running past me. The expression on his face was exhilaration rather than relief.

Veles backed up against the wall as the red left his eyes and an all-too-human expression appeared on his face: terror. It wasn't Veles anymore but Piotr. "Garland, no, Aaron, I wasn't actually going to sell you out. I planned on...betraying him...getting him to...could you call a doctor?"

That was when there was a sting in my ears and Jon took to the air, startled.

A gunshot.

Piotr fell back against the wall, a bullet in his head.

"Asshole," Wendy said, stepping forward with a gun that looked like the kind Robocop used. She was wearing a nightgown, and Georgie was clinging to her side.

"Holy shit, mom," Georgie said.

"Wendy?" I asked, doing a double take as my ears rang like someone had been ringing church bells in my head. I put my hands up to cover them. "Where the hell did you come from?"

"You don't think I notice when my kid goes missing?" Wendy asked, looking at me. "Why the hell didn't you kill that guy?"

"I was trying to talk him down!" I said, casting a CURE spell and hoping it fixed my shattered ear drums.

"That's stupid!" Wendy said. "When evil gods are involved, you shoot them!"

I stared at her then looked at the bullet in the window. She hadn't fired it. "Who is sniping at us?"

Wendy turned her attention to the bullet hole then shrugged. "I think you know. Be glad you have friends on this side of the world. Now I'm going to take my kid back to bed and get some bodyguards. Because of you, I'm going to have to study magic and figure out a way to solve this problem that you're clearly incapable of doing."

I blinked. "You mean the end of the world?"

"Yes!" Wendy snapped.

"You're going to be a witch?" I asked.

"Yes!" Wendy replied.

Ania ran up the top of the stairs, looking around before seeing Piotr's body on the ground. The expression on her face was one of heartbreak as he'd been the only adult to show her any kindness for years.

Wendy slapped the pistol in her hands. "You need this more than I do."

Ania blinked, taking it.

Wendy then dragged Georgie away, my nephew staring at the body with the expression of someone who had just seen something immensely cool. Seriously, there was something wrong with that kid.

Jon had taken roost over one of the windows, far above our heads. "Short version, Ania, Veles possessed Piotr. He took Georgie hostage. Aaron tried to do his usual diplomacy thing but failed miserably. Wendy turns out to not have been an apple fallen nearly as far from the family tree of Eighties Action Heroes as might initially be guessed too."

I didn't speak, instead just looking down at Piotr's body while looking back to the window. Out there, Alek was probably sitting in a sniper's nest. I wanted to run after him and try to talk some sense into him. I also wanted to grab Ania and pull her away from Piotr's body in case he decided to take her out. He'd shot Veles, his supposed master, but I didn't know his reasons. Had he decided to turn over a new leaf or had he just seen that the God of Evil had been threatening his nephew?

"I'm sorry, Ania," I said, looking down then lying. "He was a good man. I'll be back in a minute."

"What?" Ania asked, doing a double take.

I ran for about ten or fifteen minutes through Dragon Keep, out the front door, around the streets of Crossroad, and eventually up the interior of a dilapidated watchtower. How did I figure out which part of the city was the sniper's likely location? One advantage of having my ridiculously enhanced intelligence was that I'd been able to use that time to figure out the trajectory of the rifle cartridge that had been fired as well as its most probable origin point off the top of my head. Yes, running toward a sniper's position was incredibly stupid. I know. Still, I did it. I ended up finding a sniper's nest after heading up three stories worth of stairs to the top of the watchtower. There was a tripod, some empty bags of potato chips, a few discarded water bottles, and a walkie-talkie. It gave a perfect view of Dragon Keep's Overmaster's office, showing that he'd known where I was going to be.

Alek had been here to kill me.

He could have.

I squeezed the walkie talkie, noting the Epic DungeoneeringTM logo on the side. "Alek? Over."

No answer. My heart sank.

"Hi, Aaron. Over," Alek responded. His voice sounded a lot like mine. Just deeper and gruffer.

I didn't know how to respond. In the end, I went with a simple one. "Why? Over."

"Veles and I have a deal," Alek responded. "I get his support in killing the Wise Man. I take down some of his enemies. Killing you and threatening Georgie was not part of it. My family was supposed to be off limits. I felt the need to remind him that I am not his slave like Valentin was. Ours is an alliance of convenience. Over."

That sounded completely insane. "Weis is...not the enemy. I think. Over."

"He's worse than you know," Alek said. "You've done good work, Aaron. Way better than I thought you could have under the circumstances. However, this isn't cops and robbers. There's no good guys or bad guys here. Just bad guys and worse guys. You should go home or settle down with that pretty redhead before things really go to hell. Over."

I paused, debating my response. "The end of the world has to be stopped, dumbass. It's where we live. Both of our worlds...over."

Alek didn't respond for a moment. "I could shoot you right now, Aaron. I have you in my sights. You don't have what it takes to make the hard calls. Maybe I don't either. Maybe I'm just in this for revenge. But don't get in my way. Over and out."

Revenge?

For what?

On who?

Weis?

What the hell was going on here? I didn't have an answer to that and, unfortunately, I suspected the only people who might be able to answer that were Weis and Alek themselves. One thing was for certain, a new player had entered this fucked-up game and he was choosing to play by his own rules rather than Weis or Veles'. It gave me hope that I might be able to reach Alek but also convinced me that he'd gone off the deep end. I turned to leave, only to see Ania standing in the doorway behind me.

I looked at her. "It was Alek. I had to..."

Ania just hugged me.

Neither of us said anything more.