Dharma's gnarled hand was on my shoulder before I could even twitch in shock, let alone speak.

'Measure your response, Silva.' The Karma agent didn't speak. Instead, his words travelled through the aether-not into my mind, as telepathy didn't work on strigoi, but the realm of raw mana itself, and my aetheric hearing was keen enough to pick them out.

'We are in the presence of royalty,' the Indian continued in an ironic tone. 'By which I mean, we do not want to start a war with the Fae right now.'

'Didn't you hear what he said?!' I thought back.

'Yes. That's why I told you to watch yourself.' Dharma didn't move his head, so as not to draw attention to our silent discussion, instead just glancing minutely at me. Judging from everyone else's lack of reaction, he was somehow masking our thoughts, too. 'I am aware many agents died engaging Chernobog's cultists and supporters. But it is not the time for...Silva?'

I was shaking again, and that was always a horrible sign when it came to me. Not because I was some unflappable prick, but because, as a walking corpse, I didn't breathe, blink, twitch, shift my weight, or do any of the little things humans do without realising. I need to do them myself, which sometimes necessitates shapeshifting.

Shaking, then, was a sign that I was either so scared I wanted everyone else to see it, which I never did, or that I was so disturbed I was unconsciously using my powers.

Going by how my flesh rippled and twisted, trembling on my bones, this was a case of the latter.

I was out of Dharma's grip and in Samuel's without seeing either of them move. The wendigo was holding me like I was a cracked vase, his leather cloak moving to hide me from view, and he was addressing Oberon.

'The strigoi is unwell. We would halt until he recovered, or hurry to your palace, and...'

'I understand,' the Fae King replied in a voice so faint, it was like he was whispering from a thousand kilometres away.

Because I wasn't focusing on them. I was back in that chamber of worship, taunted by a god hiding behind another's face...no.

I was in Hel, with the blood of gods on my hands and in my throat, after my friend had sacrificed himself for nothing, nothing at all.

I-

Was-

Speaking the-

TRUE NAMES-

OF THE FAE WHO HAD BROUGHT THE NIGHTMARE BACK AND NURSED HIM AT THEIR BOSOM-

THE BASTARDS WOULD DIE AND ACCOMPLISH NOTHING. JUST LIKE MARCUS HAD.

***

Diego was spinning through the blackness, while his body drifted through the void of space.

In his four decades of life, and four centuries of unlife, the vampire had often heard people talk about the palace of their mind, the mindset they retreated into when they desired to think, meditate, or even relax.

Diego often said he had a hovel of the mind, but that was a lie...ah, no, a  joke. Yes. He remembered jokes. His mother had once told him to make as many as possible.

He would have prayed for the woman's soul, had he remembered her name. Or, at least, her face.

Diego's mind was not a hovel. It was a charnel house.

Vampires, like their lifeforce-drinking cousins, inevitably began talking to themselves as their power grew-that was, their instincts became louder and louder, achieving a sort of pseudo-sentience.

Some vampires' instincts took majestic, awe-inspiring forms. Diego knew Ilsa, a top agent in Austria's Slaughtering Shield, spent her days in the company of a blood-drenched she-fiend, who spoke to her in her own voice.

Ragnar, from Norway's Hearthwatch, saw his thirst as a gaunt berserker, who exhorted him to find the fiercest enemies, and drain them of life after glorious combat.

Diego often wondered what it would be like for his thirst to be...anything else.

In his mindscape, the vampire was a limbless torso, tarlike blood congealing on the edges of his stumps. Worse than his current bisected status, but not as bad as it could have been.

Diego lay on a carpet of gaunt, pale corpses-everyone he had ever killed, and turned into wights. There were humans, of course, thousands and thousands, and mages in their hundreds. Weres and undead if all stripes, including his own kind, wounds left by blessed silver still smoking.

They had all been justified deaths. So Diego had convinced himself. Because, if they hadn't been...if they hadn't...

A soft sound, like knives cutting old paper, drew Diego's attention. His thirst was approaching, its bladed legs tearing through the mental representation of his victims.

Its lower half was a leech's segmented, bloated tail, the angry purple of a bruise. Blood and other, far less wholesome fluids dripped from it as it was dragged along, covering the wights in layers of foulness.

Its upper half had six legs, pointed and edged like broadswords. From the waist up, purple became a pale red, almost pink. A mosquito-like body, covered in hair like razor wire; multicouloured wings, like the feathers of Diego's hat, sprouting from its back. Its multifaceted eyes were white as milk, unseeing as a mole's-for his thirst was blind, and did not distinguish between friend or foe, which was why he had never fed it, and, God willing, never would.

A proboscis, so long and thick it resembled a small elephant's trunk, tapered to a circular, razor-toothed leech's mouth.

'You are dying, liar,' his thirst said. Its mouth could not form words, instead opening and closing, twitching at nothing. It spoke through thought alone. 'Will you choose to be sincere, in your final moments?'

Sincere? So very few people ever asked him to be that, and even fewer lived long enough to regret it. But...he doubted his thirst would survive long enough for that. It would die with him, after all.

'Your lower half reminds me of my wife's,' Diego said, not needing to fake the huskiness in his voice. The pain did that for him. 'And that arouses me.'

His thirst's face could not express emotion. Even so, Diego could practically feel its exasperated frown.

In truth, he had never compared his thirst's appearance with Clio's, because the lamia deserved to be described in much grander terms. But looming death made men think strange things, though there were far, far worse things to think of as he died than Clio.

If he somehow survived this, he knew he'd have all the time in the world for that. He doubted ARC would send him on a mission anytime soon...or ever again.

'You cannot trick me with that empty smile. Have you forgotten I am your true face, vampire?'

'Now, there is no need to be cruel,' Diego tried to coo, but it came out as a wheeze. 'Everyone tells me I look like Banderas, not the Human Fly...'

His thirst shook its head in frustration, half-skittering, half-crawling across his mindscape. 'Do you not regret never drinking anyone? Seeing life leave their eyes under your fangs'

'Blood is blood,' Diego said simply, raising his bare arms-he was naked in his mindscape, for visiting it was like being in one of those embarrassing dreams, except lucid-and looking at the wrists he had bitten open to drink from so many times. His pale skin was unmarked, for nothing a vampire could do to themselves under their own power would leave scars.

Unmarked, except for the ragged band of flesh across his throat.

Diego had seen, in some early, pre-Shattering movies, vampires with two tiny points on their necks, as if their sires had pricked them with pencils. It was not impossible for one's turning mark to look like that, as long as their sire was a good shapeshifter who took care to lengthen some fangs, and only use them, but...

Diego's sire hadn't been careful about anything except her thirst. For his blood, for  him. Her fangs had torn his throat open just like her claws had ripped apart his manhood-in her excitement, she had forgotten how frail fledglings were. Luckily, he had healed in seconds, beyond pain, except that caused by divinity, after his soul spilled out alongside his blood.

'Blood...is blood,' Diego repeated, darkness filling the corners of his vision, obscuring his thirst as it paced. Among vampires, "bite your tongue" meant much, much more than just "don't speak". They quenched their thirst and grew their strength through blood, but it did not have to come from anyone else. They could bite down on their tongues or limbs, feeding on themselves, though most vampires saw this as a sign of being too poor to afford artificial or donated blood, while criminals saw it as proof of weakness and cowardice.

Diego was not ashamed to die a coward, if that was true.

Long, long picoseconds passed, stretching like taffy, while the darkness obscured everything. Even his thirst's muttered curses faded away, and then...silence.

Diego stirred. This was not how he'd expected Hell to be.

In his hand, the thing that wielded him, the thing that looked like a sword, trembled and growled, a not-sound that filled the void where his soul had once been and made his hackles rise. The vampire opened blood-crusted eyes.

It is approaching, the Throat of Thirst spoke. The mirror-sibling-rival. Its host.

Samuel Shiftskin took a fraction of a heartbeat to leap from Earth to the ruined sun. The wendigo walked on plasma, looking down at the bisected vampire with a mix of pity and curiosity.

Are you going to live? Do you want to? And if yes, why?

'You did a good job, Cortez,' Sam said. 'Szabo tells me they'd have all died if you hadn't drawn the 'shadow-thing' away. Judging by your wounds...I'm inclined to believe them. Was that thing holy?'

'I am not healing, sir,' Diego replied. 'Maybe its hits were just so persuasive, my body decided to stay like this.'

'Allow me to offer a counterargument, then,' The Salem Head crouched over him, cloak filling his vision, like he was a priest taking Diego's confession. 'This is just the beginning-I can feel it, in my bones and water. The beasts flee from the high places, seeking refuge beneath the ground. It will not save them.'

'I can still fight, dammit,' Diego gurgled, blood beginning to fill his throat and mouth, drip down his face.

Sam nodded. 'Do you want to? We could still make use of you. If you don't...I will let you die.' The wendigo smiled. 'Should I eat your corpse, or take it to the lamia?'

The Throat of Thirst roared, breaking reality like cheap glass and erasing the aether beneath, behind and above it across the solar system.

Like many of Earth's strongest supernaturals, Diego was bound to a concept. He was not fused with it like Armament or Dust Devil...or, for that matter, Shiftskin, who had somehow bound two to his will. But Thirst-for blood, for pleasure, for wealth and power and more-was his, just like he was its.

In many ways, Thirst and Hunger were extremely similar. They both allowed their wielder-tools to drain and consume almost anything, and exacerbated their already monstrous natural-so to speak-appetites.

The difference was that, while Hunger had been able to manifest freely since time immemorial, Thirst had once made a mistake, and been bound in a nameless temple in a withered jungle, crumbling despondently under a cold sun that ate light.

That was where Diego had found it. In brighter, more ignorant days-not innocent, for Man had not been innocent for millennia-, he had travelled to America as captain of his own ship. In the country that was now known as Mexico, his men had been picked apart by a tiny, but nevertheless unstoppable monster-Chupacabra, the locals had whispered.

Enraged by their captain's failure to protect them, or even predict the attacks, and driven beyond the breaking point by his insistence to remain, his men had risen up, beating him bloody and abandoning him on the island where his sire had found him.

Diego had easily found his way back to the mainland after that, foaming at the mouth for revenge. He had torn apart his rebellious crew without a second thought, then wailed as he stood amidst their wights when his wits returned. Angry at them and himself alike, he had sought the trail of the monster, and a means to defeat it-for, even after he drank enough of his own blood to turn planets to dust and rip apart stars, he knew, just as he knew sunlight would seal his esoteric powers and anything holy could kill him, that Primus could not be defeated through mere strength, even if Diego were stronger than him.

And his great-grandsire had drunk far, far more blood than he had.

Even after he ripped the Thirst from its stone prison, unheeding of the atavistic horror it radiated, he had been unable to wound Primus. Cleaving the sun in half was far, far easier than scratching the First Vampire, and the scratches never stuck.

Sam opened his mouth wide, drawing the Throat's roar into his gaping mouth, and devouring the holes in reality it had created.

'Reversing destruction, sibling,' Sam mocked the Throat in Hunger's parchment-dry tones. 'Can you do that?'

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Hissing at the taunting challenge, the sword ripped itself free of Diego's hand, then cut through his flesh, placing itself alongside his spine, forcibly holding his halves together.

Unhurt, for the sword was an embodied concept, rather than a holy weapon, Diego rose to his feet in surprise. The pain was gone. What...?

'So, you have chosen...life,' Sam said, his light tone failing to fully mask his wistfulness. 'It cannot reverse the damage-at least, not without altering creation itself on a fundamental level. But it can keep you alive.'

'I am ready to return, sir,' Diego said, one hand tracing his waist. The shadow had cut him in half impossibly neatly, but it hadn't actually left any marks.

'Are you?' Shiftskin asked, head tilted at the ravaged sun. Pursing his lips, Diego pushed his mind against the sword, feeling the Thirst's desire to prove its sibling wrong, then break and consume it. Drawing upon a fraction of its power, Diego sought another main sequence yellow star, one with no inhabited worlds to be harmed by alterations. Then, like he was drinking blood from his own veins, the vampire moved the plasma across light years, far faster than light, adding it to the sun and moulding it until the star was back to its original shape.

'I believe I am now,' Diego clasped his hands behind his back. 'What now, sir?'

Sam grunted. 'There will be consequences, of course. We will strike back at the Fae. You could be useful in this endeavor...though, I would rather they believed they killed you, so we could surprise them.'

'Understood. I'll get my trench coat and shades.' He already had the goatee. He could hide. 'May I ask why it was you, specifically, who came to check on me, sir?'

Sam shifted awkwardly. 'Aya...the mummy respects you, but she was busy. She chose a trusted friend to go find another, and save him if possible. We'll go to Giza first, then get to brass tacks and plan the incursion into Faerie.'

'Your dedication is appreciated, as is Head Reem's affection,' Diego gushed, just to watch the wendigo grumble. 'If I may say, though...it is rude to be married and not show it in any way, sir.'

'Aya is not my wife, you old goat.'

'Of course not, sir,' Diego said soothingly. 'The shadow hit me upside the head several times.'

Youths these days... these two, especially, were in denial far more often than when they went swimming. He firmly believed it was work getting in the way. Retirement would do both of them some good, even though Shiftskin had always been an old man at heart.

***

I came to the sensation of being waterboarded with acid.

I hadn't fainted, not really, but I  had lost the ability to think straight. The mention of Chernobog had triggered my...it had...

I was a liability. If I could lose control over something so minor, what good could I do in ARC? They'd be better putting me out of everyone's misery, so I couldn't have a fit in public and kill people who actually deserved to live...

Hah.

But we never get what we want, do we?

The Fivefold pressed me facedown into the holy water, holding my thrashing body still with strength equal to mine-another demon. Not the trickster or the finder of weak points. Her grip never slackened, even when I realised what I had done and stopped moving.

The Fivefold slowly, cautiously pulled me out of the puddle of holy water she had summoned, even though I wasn't resisting. That demon of hers had searched for my weakness and brought it here.

Standing around me, the agents stared at me with stony expressions. Even Szabo wasn't smiling, for once, instead giving me a considering look, lips pursed. I couldn't see the Knights' faces, only their hands on their weapons, but Bedivere looked like he had awoken from a nightmare, only to see reality was worse.

But was that not the story of Camelot's failed defenders?

And around them, impaled on iron spikes, were the twitching, still steaming bodies of Oberon's host.

The Seelie King himself stood stock-still, hands clenching and unclenching, face quite literally changing colour as his rage drove his shapeshifting into a frenzy.

Before I could ask what had happened, Oberon dashed at me, gauntleted fists raised, crystal armour a red so dark it was almost black.

With Mimir's perception still lingering at the edges of my mind, I could perceive things far faster than usual, as well as with greater accuracy.

Oberon, by himself, was as powerful as Thor or Heracles: a destroyer of worlds, a ravager of stars, hundreds and hundreds of times faster than light. Boosted by the mana he drew from the aether as he dashed at me, his power grew exponentially, jumping by orders of magnitude every fraction of a nanosecond...no, of a picosecond-

If two galaxies colliding had a sound, it was unlikely to be too different from the one made by Shiftskin as he tackled the Fae King off-course, then tried to wrestle him to the ground.

'Let go of me, you fucktoy of a mongrel!' Oberon shrieked into Sam's rhino face, crystal tears streaming down his cheeks. 'I will break that revenant until he forgets how to beg for death! Bastards! Attacking under parley! Slaughterin m-my-'

But I wasn't listening to Oberon's sobbing rant. His words had drawn another memory to the forefront-a beautiful one, for all that little David had not appreciated it, instead almost fooling himself into believing it had been a hallucination.

Ungrateful. I had made him face most of his fears, and for what? Nothing. He could not even fall asleep to be tormented by his nightmares, instead needing my attention to experience them...tsk, tsk, tsk.

But then, when indoctrinated into the religion of hypocrisy, what could I expect?

I rose from his body like a mortal from a bed, letting the strigoi slump into the demon whore's grasp. Honestly, the wretches deserved each other. A shame that she had chosen that jumped-up monkey, rather than his much, much better mirror...

David's eyes widened in disbelieving hatred as he stared up at my floating form, mouth opening and closing, but no words coming out.

Aw, unsure how to swear? Let me help you.

'Hello, old toy. Did you miss me, like Nacht thought it didn't?' I morphed my face into a smile at his hateful grimace, crushing him inside a field of invisible force before he could do anything.

Now...onto business.

'Oberon! You can thank me for thinning the herd. I can assure you, mankind and its lapdogs would have been far, far less thorough.'

A construct of solid darkness pushed the Fae onto his knees, holding him in place.

Another ungrateful worm. I should have killed them all, but that was more than Merlin had asked of me, and I didn't want to help the bastard for free.

The menagerie of freaks tensed, ready to jump at me, or unleash their powers, to no avail.

They would not succeed here. My side was making its move, bringing us closer to the endgame.

As such, when tentacles of chaos crawled out of the Void and into reality, they were unable to escape or destroy them. They were opposing a power far greater than their combined, and its equal and opposite was far away, pursuing his own duty.

'Do not wonder how I slipped past your guard,' I said conversationally, ripping the Throat of Thirst out of Diego Cortez' flesh and letting the vampire fall apart-should have never stopped under Shiftskin's cloak, little leech. To show I wasn't killing more than the deal had asked for, I pushed my godly will into his body, fusing his halves together. 'I will explain once I finish what I swore to do. You can all thank me...in a few moments.'

I dragged the thrashing, swearing David into my free hand, twirling the Throat with the other as I sped across Faerie, waiting for my partner to meet me halfway through.

Merlin's arrival interposed his prison over the vibrant wilderness of the Fae realm, drowning it in gloom, but the cambion's smile was as bright as the eyes it reached.

A burst of my power left David trembling in pain, as close to unconsciousness as his kind could get. There was no need for him to learn of these proceedings...yet.

'You have the Thirst,' Merlin said by way of greeting, nodding towards the apparent blade.

'It won't be able to consume your prison,' I replied. 'But it will erode it, weaken it enough that you will be able to exit...'

'As long as someone else takes my place,' the mage finished, seeming almost regretful as he looked at the future prisoner.

Stupid. Had he not asked for this, in service of what he claimed was a good cause? Humans...even their halfbreeds were sentimental.

'Indeed,' I said, then placed the Throat of Thirst on the chain around his neck, pressing onto it with all my strength and will, until the blade cracked with a despondent wail. Its incarnation obliterated, its greater self in the realm of ideas was not crippled.

It would have only taken a few more years, perhaps decades, for it to goad Diego Cortez into a feeding frenzy. Somehow, I knew ARC would be just as ungrateful as David.

The chains looked as strong as before, but they were brittle, loose. So, as Merlin slipped out of them, hovering on the threshold of freedom, it was the easiest thing to throw the strigoi into his bindings, which tightened around his grey limbs like spiteful snakes.

'I thank you for keeping your word, Black God,' Merlin said in a neutral tone, not looking at his cousin when the nephilim warped into existence between us.

'You are welcome,' I said, then turned to Vyrt. 'And you did a good impression of me, back then. Scratching a mark into his neck was a little too obvious, though.'

'He convinced himself it wasn't real. Why pay it attention?' Vyrt shrugged, then his eyes narrowed. 'You will not win, Chernobog. Nor will your master.'

I bristled. 'I have no mas-'

'This is merely another stepping stone on David's path upward,' the mongrel went on, as oblivious to his pompousness as any self-assured "hero". 'An opportunity to grow. What does not kill him makes him stronger.'

'Then I'll just have to avoid that, won't I?' I bared my teeth in a grin. 'But let us not speak of the far future, now. Cambion?'

'With the Fae's army out of play, they will be stuck rebuilding their forces, not to mention the trust between them, for a long, long time,' Merlin chuckled. 'And let us not forget their reputation! No Unseelie will follow Oberon after trillions died under his nose, nor will anyone treat him as a capable, watchful leader any time soon.'

'As for Earth...well,' Vyrt smiled thinly. 'Many were calling for genocide against the Fae after they tried to do it to us. I think this will silence those voices for a while, allowing cooler heads to focus on strengthening the world's defences. The eldritch incursions so far will increase...as I am sure you can promise, Black God.'

'As sure as I am that mankind will appreciate the kidnapping anarchists being taken down a peg,' I said lightly. 'You can thank me for the slivers of my power I passed onto their Everdark. Without them, the death toll would have been lower.' As would have the hatred, resulting in a smaller expedition, and...well. We would not have been here.

'You mean the things that mutilated the Unscarred and the Bronze Boyar? That is too pompous a name for attack dogs,' Merlin scoffed.

'I was more impressed by that shadow you sent to Omu base. If it hadn't crippled Cortez...' Vyrt trailed off.

If that shard of me hadn't, the Throat of Thirst wouldn't have been focusing on keeping its wielder-tool alive, and it would have been much harder to remove it, and thus pave the way to Merlin's freedom.

'Do you think your Knights will take this in stride?' I asked, crossing my arms as the two glanced at each other.

'I pray they will,' Vyrt said finally, brow furrowed, clearly hoping free will would stop existing, thus making things simpler.

'If not...it will be quite a chore to alter so many minds,' Merlin added.

I nodded. 'Give the Lady of the Lake my regards, cambion.'

You deserve each other, you petty schemers.

***

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