I urged my legs on, GO! and pumped [Vigour] through my muscles to leap to Skelth’s side. Alator acted less than a moment after me, in silence, and before Akishen had time to turn, he had collided with her side, sending her sprawling away. I grabbed both of Skelth’s arms, twisted him, and pressed them, crossed, into the small of his back.

“You— GET YOUR HANDS OFF HIM!” Akishen shouted, leaping to her feet. The Bronze Dagger flashed as she pulled it out of her belt, but even through the red mist of her vision, she saw Alator standing before her, eyes flashing and trails of smoke rising from the corners of his eyes, and just gritted her fanged teeth.

I leant down and put my head close to Skelth’s, and whispered:

“No calling. You will give us answers.” I felt an assenting nod come which didn’t quite move his head. The arms tight behind his back struggled against my grip for a moment, but it was strengthless. Without the walking stick, he swayed where he stood, and after a moment fell back against my waist. In youth, he must have been even taller than Paresh, but now he was a frail man, standing bent smaller than his daughter.

“Lenya,” I barked. “Be ready to get the truth out of him.”

Akishen’s mouth chattered and her eyes glowed hate as I lowered Skelth to the damp jungle floor. He sat heavily and groaned pain, shaking out his arms then pushing one fist into his lower back.

“What do you know of the Crimson Crown?”

His eyes widened, and he glanced to Akishen, who bristled and dropped her rage a tad.

“We know what they are, and that they are far away, in Uruk.”

As he spoke, one of his small, pale, pointed ears twitched, as his Weakness said it would.

“You’re not telling me the whole truth. We have ways to force that — but I would highly recommend not putting yourself through the pain.”

He dropped his gaze in recognition — he’d felt the [Command] magic before.

“Patha, just tell them.”

Looking up with pain to his daughter, he spoke slowly to his daughter, “There are things I didn’t tell you, anareth.”

Wracked again with a short coughing fit, he doubled over and brushed his face, bloodying the leathery skin on his hand, then turned to me.

“Talbot, you said your name was. Are you one of them?” As he said it, an intensity took over his face like an exertion of great effort, as if activating a Skill.

“No,” I replied simply.

Skelth breathed a sigh of relief.

“Then we are still safe. . . . The Crimson Crown are the true power behind Uruk, and many places far beyond. King Gilgamesh is a figurehead, nothing more, as I’m sure you know, and Vath-Erta, their council, ostensibly hold power. However, behind them, the Crimson Crown pulls the strings.”

What do I care about the high politics of Barbican? I thought. Our charge, destroying the World-Eater, is surely way beyond political squabbling. . . . No, perhaps that’s naïve. . . . A shiver was sent down my spine as I thought of the sudden immensity of the issue before us.

“Keep going,” I ordered, putting a heavy hand on his shoulder.

He didn’t flinch at the hand, I didn’t have a sense we were intimidating him at all, but he answered willingly.

Seems like he’s been wanting to get this off his chest for some time.

“It started a few months ago. We came upon some travellers on the road, a gilded wagon, pulled by ruby-furred goats, more food than they could have consumed in a month — seemed an easy mark.”

“But they proved too powerful?” Lenya asked.

“Oh, no, no, there were no Crownsmen there, thankfully, haku-nai. No, we took what we needed,” Skelth smiled grimly. “Still a sizeable wagon, laden with much to trade. It was the sponsor of that excursion that knew a member of the Crimson Crown in Uruk. . . . They sent two men, felid-folk both, and they . . . sent us a message — loud and clear. Since then, they expect regular updates in person regarding Ith-Korr and whatever else we learn about the towns on the Boiling Sea. Akishen goes often, as do a few others. The journey to Uruk is long up the Trade Road over the mountains, so much so that our messengers often pass each other. I see very little of my daughter nowadays. . . .”

He trailed off, all of a sudden an old man, guilty and morose, looking at his daughter with wet eyes, wheezing, wondering where all the time had gone. Akishen’s edge fell away from her fully, seeing the sudden trust her father was showing, and a tear came to her own eye, which she fervently brushed away.

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I stood and walked to his front.

“And they told you of the coming Scouring of Ith-Korr?”

Skelth nodded.

“A talent of my daughter’s — to become unnoticed in shadows. Before a meeting in Uruk, she overheard a conversation she was not supposed to.”

“And you did not warn the city wardens?”

“If the Crimson Crown had divined that we had let sensitive information slip to the Hanging City, they would have razed our camp, and the city, to the ground. Besides,” he winced and moved himself into a more comfortable sitting position, “The people of Ith-Korr are cursed due to their complacency.”

In a moment of idiocy, I shared a glance with Lenya, who wore a practiced confused expression.

“Paresh told you,” Skelth guessed. “The fool. I suppose he still awaits the Shrewdship to come up with some magical cure!”

Despite the situation he was in — despite the wolven beast of a man staring down his daughter, despite the magic-user beside him threatening psychological torture, despite the erratic warrior with his hand on his shoulder — despite all this, Skelth laughed full-bellied, then broke into another coughing fit, blood spattering the leaves by his feet.

“Patha . . .” breathed Akishen.

He held up a hand.

“I’m fine, anareth. If I didn’t laugh, I think I’d fully lose myself in the bleakness.”

Alator turned aside and spoke to us over his shoulder, one eye still on Akishen:

“I have witnessed the worst of the horrors of war,” he spoke with rumbling grit, “But it has never failed to steel a people.”

War. . . . Maybe it was the Warrior mindscape eating into my own, or perhaps it was all the action films I used to watch, but the word didn’t scare me. In fact, I felt brazen. I threw my hands up in the air.

“Everything is so complicated! Well, there’s the why, at least! You’re despicable, and you’re a coward.”

The words were eaten by the jungle, but not before they prickled Akishen’s nerves to breaking.

“You fiend!” she called as a war-cry and leapt forwards. Alator caught her jaw in his grip before she passed him and he threw her to the ground, then knelt beside her, a hand hovering over her throat. She moved to struggle but met his eyes and relented, and showed him her long palms.

Immediately after the gesture, he stood and helped her back up. She went to her father and held her hand against his cheek.

“Who are you people?”

I couldn’t help myself.

“We’re the Warriors of the Gods, and you’ve allied yourselves with the villains.”

A bloated, stunned moment passed. Skelth’s eyes were wide, making sense of the situation. Then he lowered his gaze and the deep blue lines on his face twitched as he held back a snigger.

“Warriors of the Gods. . . .” Akishen said. Where I wanted awe, her eyes were narrowed and suspicious — even mocking.

Not the response I had in mind. . . . But I guess at least I’ve lessened the tension.

“Fine, I’ll bite,” Skelth said, his voice a little more playful. “Look, our people are degenerating,” Skelth put one finger to his temple. “Losing ourselves. This has happened to our people before. The Coven of Mah’drac keeps the scrolls, and tells us that our ancestors took to sleeping in trees and eating carrion, before war came, and we once again remembered who we are.”

“That can’t be the only way,” I huffed.

“It’s the only one we can think of,” Akishen said.

“Then it’s folly,” Alator barked. He took a step forwards and held his arms out. A sudden burst of wind split the canopy and the faint golden filigree that runs from his fingers glinted in the light of the suns. “I’ve seen enough of this World to judge it. You won’t enjoy a war with the World-Eater; only a massacre.”

“You have not witnessed the power of the Bannermen of Uruk,” the general smiled and met his gaze. “By bringing Ith-Korr back to glory, and keeping the Crimson Crown on side, we will have an alliance the likes of which has never been seen.”

Alator scoffed and turned away.

The conversation had gotten away from me. My mind drifted to Jiriam and Luka, the mother and son we saved from the vampyri during the Scouring, and back to Keza at the Woven Vine tavern. This is ridiculous, my thoughts burned. These people flitter about, thinking of grand change far off in the future.

Glancing to Lenya, I saw her eyes glazed over in thought, brow furrowed, wrestling with the implications and trying in vain to imagine a way forwards for everyone involved.

That’s not the way. I gritted my teeth. What can we do right now? We know nothing about the Crimson Crown. We know nothing about Uruk. We know so little about the World-Eater save for Alator’s vague fearmongering. I . . . I was going to start putting mental effort into the plight of the Hanging City and its people, but some unconscious calculation stopped me, and I remembered SYS’s promise that, after this world, Earth could be next. This isn’t my fight.

Looking at Alator, the shape of his massive back, the strength in his shoulders and thighs, the energy in his whole body, I wondered if he had all these same thoughts.

“Do what you must,” I eventually blurted out. Lenya gasped, and Skelth and Akishen looked up to me standing above them. “But you’ll assist us first. Akishen, you are to return with us and speak to Captain Paresh. Tell him enough of what is going on so that he doesn’t throw another platoon of wardens at you. Try for your prisoner exchange. Then . . . you are to escort us to Uruk.”

She glanced between me and her father. General Skelth’s ancient visage took on the look of a father protecting his daughter from a foul suitor.

“And if we refuse?”

In answer, I just kept my eyes locked on his. Effort shuddered over Skelth’s face and his lip trembled. Activating a Skill, I thought. That high-level [Battle Tactics], I presume? I wonder what he can see. I clenched my fist around the Bronze Spear of Blinding, but did nothing more.

“You’re a fiend,” Akishen repeated, under her breath.

After another moment, Skelth shirked my threat and looked to his daughter sadly, and nodded.

“Bring us to the meeting place with the Crimson Crown,” I commanded. “Then you can go off and play bandit to your heart’s content.”

They’re free to hate me, I thought again.