"Come, lad. Let's see if we can find a scrap of food in this mess and some place to sleep," Semon said, glancing at the burning sprawl awaiting them onshore. Most of the Annalis structure nearby lay crumpled and blackened, though farther reaches of the sprawling complex still blazed. The squat, ugly shape of the Skeinry hunched a stretch away from the huge, shattered doors fronting the Annalis. It looked intact, at least, so perhaps it might provide refuge.

By the bloat and reek of the bodies floating nearby and scattering streets and stairs, the sacking of this place transpired several days ago. Recently enough that the worst of the danger probably lay behind, but not enough that looters or scavenging beasts were sure to be done and moved on.

"Nothing will ever be the same," Sadar said to the dark waters. "This always is true, yet we humans build our cities, our cultures, our verses such that we forget this over and over again until the forgetting seems more real than the truth."

"Tell me or yourself or Ocyl or whomever you're talking to wile we search the ruins," Semon said, motioning for the boy to come.

Perhaps it was his imagination, weariness, or a rapidly-falling dark lit only by the ruddy light of the Book's bureaucracy ablaze, but Semon thought the Twine actually looked at him as he stood. "The Mother is indeed the only hope. Whatever lies beyond the All, she is the only one who can take us there."

"Mother be praised," Semon said.

"Mother be absent. If she-" Sadar's words ended in a grunt and he staggered back a few steps then plunked down on the tail-end of the boat.

As Semon stared at the boy trying to figure out what was going on, he vaguely recalled a whooshing whistle as something had flown past him. Strygen released the boat and raced up the dock, his hair whipping about in a frenzy.

"If one body dies, what does the other..." Sadar muttered, then toppled over backwards into the water. In the setting sunlight, Semon caught a brief glimpse of an arrow buried up to the fletchings in the boy's rib cage.

Where dock met land, Strygen's hair spun and thrashed, knocking aside another arrow as it whistled from of a burned-out building nearby. As the dusa charged the building, a huge man with vivid snake tattoos and a huge axe rushed from its shadows to greet him with a roar.

Having seen the unassuming Strygen kill bandits, versal troops, and even the odd Legionnaire with shocking ferocity and surprising ease, he expected the dusa's axe-wielding opponent to go down quickly. The man, however, moved with surprising grace for his size and ducked, twisted, and parried Strygen's spear-like thrusts of braided strands with the ease of an actor marking out the steps of a staged fight during a play.

Then the unmistakable press of steel against Semon's throat turned his attention away from the fight.

"Who do we have here?" a soft, male voice whispered at his ear. "You have the reek of a dozen verses and the deaths of ten times that many people about you.

Figuring the man was merely feigning ignorance judging by his knowing statement, Semon dispensed with any pretense at subterfuge. "I am Semon, First Disciple of the Mother."

"Ah. Fascinating," the man practically hissed. As the knife pulled away from his throat, Semon rubbed at his throat instinctually, feeling for blood. By its lack combined plus the controlled swings the huge warrior used to push Strygen onto the defensive, this man and his crew were professionals. That and arrow after arrow whizzing out from the shadow of this ruin and that half-burned hut, each growing closer to striking the dusa than the last.

Smon forced himself to look away from Strygen's increasingly-desperate battle and towards the man who stood nearby, lounging against one of the sturdier-looking posts rising along the dock.

What first struck him was the man's Inviolate uniform; not at all what he was expecting. The next thing that landed was how ordinary the man was. Nothing about him beyond his attire was at all striking. He would have fit in equally standing upon a wharf pulling in a net, carrying a spear in some versal guard unit, serving luncheon at a Dynast's table, or shoveling strider shit in a stable.

"Tell me," the man said. "How does one become the First Disciple?"

"When the Prophet of the Mother is brutally slain by Dynastic assassins," Semon said, automatically.

"Indeed. Ghulen, by the way," the Inviolate said, touching his chest and happening to bump the Inviolate vial consuming all light that touched his sternum.

"Pleasure," Semon said, liking his lips. He hazarded a glance at Strygen, hoping the ferocious dusa had managed to deal with the dual threat somehow and was coming to his rescue. Instead, the dusa limped from the arrow piercing through his thigh. His tunic front clung to his chest from a combination of sweat and fresh blood. The axe-wielding monster grinned as he stalked towards the retreating dusa while a short-haired, heavily-scarred woman with a short bow circled around Strygen's flank.

This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

"We surrender," Semon said, turning back to Ghulen. "No need to kill Strygen."

"Which Dynast?" the man said, his eyes piercing into Semon's as if reading Truth from his soul.

"Which... what?" Semon said, shaking his head to clear the haze of fatigue that even this close proximity to agents of death was failing to keep at bay.

"You said Dynastic assassins were sent to kill the Martyred Prophet. The only Dynast authorized to do so in Heaven's Tread would by Ocyl and he seems unfortunately aligned with the Mother for some unknown and unknowable reason."

"I... I don't..." Semon blinked rapidly and rubbed his forehead. He'd been telling that story so long, he almost couldn't remember what really happened. Wretch heads. Vomit. A young woman pinned down to a bed, dying to his knife with fresh hope in her eyes and desperate pleas on her lips.

He'd buried the memory with the woman and its sudden re-emergence ripped apart the foundations of the structure of lies he'd built a religion upon. "I... she... there were..."

"What did the assassin look like?"

"What? He looked like... tall. Large. A huge man."

"And he jumped out of several-story high window after? I heard descriptions of the place where she died from one of the raving fanatics you spawned and it wasn't a ground-floor room the assassin leapt out of. I even visited the area on my way out of town. All the tenements in the area are build the same. Pretty small windows for a 'huge assassin'."

"Well, he contorted and..." Semon's usually agile tongue floundered, as though wounded as badly as Strygen and just as outmatched.

"How do you know a Dynast hired him? If he was a professional assassin, why was he afraid of a few stray cultists? What sort of axe did he hew the prophet with?" The questions came at him as fast and unexpected as the archer's arrows.

"He shouted something that... we outnumbered him by several... the axe was..."

"So it was an axe? How did you get such shallow, long scars from an axe?" The man no longer leaned on the post, but advanced towards Semon slightly with each question. With the sun setting at his back, the Inviolate became a brightly-silhouetted shadow wearing the darkest shadow possible on his chest. Dark as the Aj.

Semon rubbed at the self-inflicted scars on his forearm. "I wrestled the axe from him and took these while-"

"You wrestled and axe from a huge, professionally-trained, Dynasty-hired assassin?" Ghulen said, now almost within arm's reach. "Why did he flee and leave you as a witness?"

"He must have wanted... there were others who came and..."

"All the stories I heard said the assassin carried a 'wickedly evil knife' or the like? Did you like all this time?"

"No, I just misspoke. Tired from my travels and..."

Ghulen stood close enough to skewer Semon's good eye on the long knife he toyed with. So close was the man, even the setting sun casting his face in shadow didn't veil the hot intensity of the man's gaze.

"I killed her!" Semon cried, the burst of emotion accompanying the admission surprising even him.

Strygen cried out in pain at the same moment and Semon whirled, shaking and streaming tears. While Strygen's hair entangled the tattooed warrior's axe and seemed about to overwhelm him, an arrow had struck Strygen in the lower back. The dusa fell down as his knees buckled. A moment later the giant with the axe yanked it free from the increasingly-feeble wave of Strygen's hair.

"Spare him!" Semon cried. "I'll tell you everything. Anything! Just don't let anyone else die because of me."

The man with the axe kicked Strygen over and glanced at Ghulen. Semon turned to see Ghulen staring down into him.

"How did she die?" he said softly, almost comfortingly.

"I cut her throat. Slit it while others held her down, helpless," Semon said, barely able to form words as his chest heaved and guilty sobs wracked him. "I've sacrificed everything since to make her sacrifice worth it, given everything so the hopeful message she birthed would not die with her! Spare Strygen and the others, they're innocent."

"No one's innocent," Ghulen muttered, nodding to his man.

"No! Spare him!" Semon jerked his attention back just as Strygen made a final desperate lunge towards the man. As before, the warrior seemed to sense it coming and sidestepped easily. The woman fired an arrow into Strygen's ribs with a desultory motion as the axe swung and separated the dusa's head from his shoulders.

The ever-stirring silver hair fell still for the first and last time.

Semon sobbed on his knees, mourning the Prophet, the countless menials who had died for the faith he'd convinced himself to believe in, for Sadar and Strygen and child-like Hue probably lying in a pile of ash with an arrow in his throat. He tried to pray, but the faith he'd professed to the Mother and worn like a garment since he began her faith fell away like an ancient robe unraveling after one-too-many washings. Prayers to the Ascen caught in his throat, feeling shallow and perhaps heretical.

"Interesting," Ghulen whispered, his voice intent and almost reverent. "Thank you."

The man with the axe lifted Strygen's head by the hair and spat on his face while the woman sauntered over his corpse to cut her arrows free from his dead flesh.

"I'm so sorry, Strygen. So sorry," Semon sobbed.

"You murdered the Prophet of your religion and blamed a Dynastic assassin like me?" Ghulen whispered from behind him.

"Yes. Yes, I killed her. I slit her throat when all she wanted to do was repent for the deaths she caused. All those Wretches..."

"And you likewise repent?" the man whispered, close enough that Semon felt Ghulen's breath stirring on his ear.

"More than anything."

"This is poetic, then," Ghulen said.

Before Semon could process the man's words, the sharpened bronze of Ghulen's knife slashed through flesh, tendon, and trachea. Semon clutched at his throat as he rolled on the ground, gurgling and drowning in his own hot blood.

"One more lose thread neatly knotted," Semon heard Ghulen mutter as the man squatted over him, watching him die with the mild curiosity of a child pulling the legs off another insect. "Rega will be pleased."

"Only a few final threads left to tie." He stood and walked away, leaving Semon to die alone.

Semon felt his life force fade with each slowing beat of his heart. When had it grown so cold?

As the sun finished setting, his last sight was the corpse of the dead god lying in the marsh.

Poetic indeed, he thought detatchedly before darkness came for him. At least my end comes close to the end of everything.