Tenthé waited for the pain to hit. Against his better judgment, he poked at the things that usually hurt the worst. After a few good prods, it became apparent that the normal lifetime of agony packed into an instant wasn’t going to happen so he kicked away the leftover bits and dirt he was buried in and tumbled down a slope to the bottom of the dry sewer.

It took a moment to orient himself. He was near his old sleeping place in the alley near the Mission, covered in a mess of dried blood and chunks of body parts. Although he called the bundles where he resurrected “bodies”, they were nothing more than all the things he needed to reconstitute himself. If these packets were too far away from where he died, he’d come back in the nearest place with most of what he needed, like an abattoir, or once, the remains of what some local beast had puked up.

Fortunately, his Pockets followed along, so he pulled out a robe, and arranged everything to be in their normal places.

He had a thought and pushed up his sleeve.

Dang it! He hadn’t noticed before, but with his arm restored, the tattoo was still there! This being an avatar of a god wasn’t like the stories made it out to be. Where were the cheering crowds and heaps of glory?

He began trudging to the nearest exit, cautiously poking at his brain, trying, but really not, to figure out what happened to the agony that accompanied being reborn. He had no thoughts on the matter since it had never happened before. Exactly where he’d resurrect had been a bit of a gamble since he hadn’t been sure if his bodies would have made it through the re-do. But, at least this one had. That probably meant that the Dreamer didn’t know enough to significantly change this part of the City.

Making sure, he checked his Pockets. They were fairly well stocked, which was good, because he’d lost everything else the previous him had been carrying.

And, unfortunately, making the copy had a high cost. His power was significantly reduced. It would come back, and there were things he could do to build it up, but he was going to be relatively weak for the next few days.

Tenthé marched on. There should be manhole just ahead, and, there it was. He popped up the ladder, pushed the cover aside, and grabbed a huge arm that reached for him.

“Hey, it’s me! Stop that,” He yelled at the warrior who was struggling to get his arm back.

The warrior peered at him “Oh. Didn’t expect you here.”

“Yeah, me neither.”

Tenthé finished climbing out of the sewer and peered around. If you knew where to look, it was possible to see a bunch more Horde creeping through the alley and nearby street.

“So. Is it going okay?” he asked.

“Yeah, really well! The City didn’t expect us at all. Just soldiers and priests, and they don’t have a clue. We’re right on track.”

“Well, if you guys made it this far, I guess the Mentor was right. There should be enough of you now that the Gods are going to notice the drop in worshippers.”

“And,” he added with less than total enthusiasm, “I guess I’ve got to get back to what I was doing.”

At this, he dropped his weight, cast shear, and shot into the air.

The warrior watched in amazement. Only the highest of Sages and some gods could really fly! Although, as he watched, the kid’s flight looked kind of rough as he slammed back and forth through the sky.

A shout echoed. Maybe someone from the City had finally clued in? About time! The warrior ran off.

Tenthé jolted here and there, doing his best to get to the temple. He figured he was succeeding more than not.

The upcoming fight, and he had no doubt that there was going to be one, was going to be interesting. Turtle had some ability that could take him out with one hit, right through his shields.

That, and a shell that was probably impervious to everything, was going to be an issue. Thank the Gods that Turtle was really big and slow.

Just then, one of the domes of the temple burst and a huge figure shot up into the air.

Oh good. Turtle could fly. And he was fast. Very fast.

The Turtle spun and faced Tenthé. The god’s mouth was open, his eyes a sullen red glow, matching the one from deep in his throat.

Turtle shot an intense fireball at Tenthé then another and another, a continuous stream of fireballs. The only thing that saved Tenthé from another death was the randomness of his flight and that he was operating at maximum fast.

The fireballs that missed continued on until they hit the wards above the walls, where they made a spectacular light show as the two magics fought each other.

Tenthé had an idea and dropped a bit, still slamming everywhere as his rapid use of the shear kept him out of the way of the fireballs.

Turtle didn’t seem to notice, but fireballs began impacting the fort. Anything that could kill him in one shot should do quite a lot of damage on the ground and reduce the number of worshipers.

That was cold, but Tenthé wasn’t fighting to lose.

Although, to be honest, it wasn’t looking too good. The few things he’d managed to fire at Turtle had absolutely no effect, even less than with the Dreamer.

A little bit of inattention and he was struck, not by a fireball, but by Turtle himself. Tenthé was blasted back into the City wards. He stuck, with the wards sizzling and sparking as they slowly chewed at his shields. He tried to eat the magic, but the wards were highly resistant.

Given enough time, he could work his way out, but Turtle was lining up to cast a fireball at him. The only thing Tenthé could think of was to try going up the planes. The first plane up was no better, the next showed the fires in the City slightly dimmer, but in the one above that, the wards were less active and the fireball coming toward him looked like a dim red sphere with tentacles or something similar, writhing around it. Tenthé mustered every resource he could and went up one more plane. He’d never been this high in the planes of the City before.

This one was just weird. There was no ground, or city, just blue sky, clouds, and walls that floated like huge ribbons drifting in the air, looping above and below him and going off into the distance.

The really strange part was that parts of things were floating around. Wagon wheels, breakfast buns, arms, stones, a shoe, a burro’s leg, a clump of grass, and on and on. Just… stuff.

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Tenthé was afraid to move from where he was. He wasn’t sure how places lined up between this plane and the others. If he moved, he might end up almost anywhere when he went back down the planes. The good thing was that he seemed safe, but you had to be really careful on these weird planes. This was the sort of place where Isabell got her cubes from.

Tenthé gave it a second or two, then descended to the nearest lower plane. He came out a good deal further away from the walls than he started, somewhere near the center of the City. It was very good that he hadn’t tried to move anywhere. Who knew where he would have ended up? Maybe he could use that high plane for travel, the next time he wanted to risk his life and do some experimentation.

This plane was empty of any threat so he cautiously descended to the next. With no sign of Turtle or fireballs, he entered the base plane, just in time to be nearly run into by Turtle once again as he flashed by!

Tenthé was in very fast time, so he quickly shot out a sticky rope to latch onto the Turtle’s shell, causing him to snap around as the rope went taut. As he flapped along behind, Tenthé realized he hadn’t truly understood how big Turtle had become! He felt like a hair waving in the air behind a horse’s butt.

And, like the horse wouldn’t notice a bug, Turtle didn’t seem to realize Tenthé was back. That might change anytime, so Tenthé quickly pulled himself up to Turtle, where he found himself on the god’s shell, near his tail.

With the wind from the Turtle’s passage, it was nearly impossible to hear anything, but Tenthé could feel the Turtle roaring through his hands and feet where he touched the shell. He huddled down and put his head right on the shell, trying to analyze whatever it was made of, but, as far as he could tell, it was impervious to everything. Given a few years, he might be able to scratch it.

About the only thing he had that might do some damage was one of his stones, but if he set one off, there was an excellent chance it would destroy much of the City without doing much to hurt the Turtle. The stone he’d used on the Dreamer had been a bit of a gamble, but the Old God’s temple and the Dreamer were strong enough to contain the explosion. Here, in the air over the unprotected City, the damage would be huge.

Tenthé inched his way to the edge of the Turtle’s shell and looked down. They were flying over the City, and Tenthé could make out people fighting below. As Turtle went past, a bunch of them fell down.

His roaring was an attack! As far as Tenthé could tell, it didn’t seem to discriminate between friend and foe, but if the Horde was unconscious, then they couldn’t be converting Turtle’s followers. That was a problem! On top of the few other problems he was dealing with.

Tenthé tried a few of his most potent attacks on Turtle’s shell, and, as expected, accomplished nothing. How could Turtle be afraid of him? So far, Tenthé was entirely on the defensive. Nothing he did had any real effect.

He thought for a moment. Maybe he’d been thinking about this all wrong! Not one to dawdle, Tenthé snatched a stone from his inventory, sheared up into the sky, then, through a miracle of miracles, managed to get directly in front of Turtle. From there, he flew right into the god’s mouth. Reaching out, he clawed his way deeper down Turtle’s throat. For some reason, the god objected to this, and began bucking and spinning, trying to force Tenthé out. To no avail. Tenthé forced his way as far in as he could, then set off the stone.

Then he was in another dark place. Honestly, it could be anywhere since over the years, Tenthé had stashed bodies everywhere. This time he didn’t get off lucky. In the next instant he spent a bazillion lifetimes being killed to death in the most painful ways. This was much worse than copying himself.

When it stopped, he unboxed his mind from the shields that was the best he had come up with to protect himself. They seemed to have helped, because his personality hadn’t fractured even more. Sort of a win.

Once he was tracking as well as usual, he burned his arm off.

Tenthé then rooted through his inventory for a replacement. He was getting low on arms. The best he found was another remote manipulator, but had talons instead of fingers.

Whatever. He snapped it in place, flexed a few times, and started kicking. Something broke and a dim light shone on his face. He sat up.

This body was in one of the risers that made up the floor of an abandoned classroom in the College. Pushing the broken flooring aside, Tenthé stood up, pulled out another cloak, and went over to the door. Just for fun, he swiped at the wall with his new “hand” and found he could score deep gouges with almost no effort. Might come in handy, but it would be a pain to hold onto anything small. He opened the classroom door and peered down the hallway. At the end of the corridor, he could see a bit of a shimmer, so he moved closer to see what was going on.

Ah! It looked like in the re-do, these hallways had been pushed a bit further out of the base plane, which was why Tenthé hadn’t seen them in his recent visit to the College. Growing evidence that the Dreamer had not really changed things as much as Tenthé thought. More like he patched together fixes without a lot of understanding.

Tenthé plane walked through the boundary and back into the College. It was still here, so the explosion inside Turtle had probably been contained. The College appeared empty, Tenthé was alone as he walked the halls. Exiting through the main entrance, he looked up to see if there was any sign of Turtle. The walls blocked much of his view, but as he was about to throw himself into the sky, Turtle flew slowly over, still screaming his stun yell.

He did look a little singed, but other than some black around his beak, didn’t appear much the worse for the explosion.

Dang it! Tenthé was running out of ideas.

The one he really didn’t want to do was go through the City and kill everyone off. It would get rid of Turtle’s worshipers, but he’d made an oath not to ever do that sort of thing ever again.

He did have one other possibility. A bit of a longshot.

Tenthé made sure his stealth and shields were as optimized as they could be, crawled up the walls and peered out. Cautiously, he looked around, but couldn’t see where Turtle had gotten to, so after checking and re-checking, he flung himself into the air.

At this point, his luck ran out.

Turtle appeared beside him, coming out of some kind of stealth. Tenthé had just enough time to see the billowing robes of the mystery Goddess standing on Turtle’s back, behind the god’s head, when he was hit by a fireball.

The only thing that saved him was his incredible reaction time. He managed to cast a shear just as he was hit. He wasn’t killed, but he did lose an arm and a leg.

He bowed to the inevitable and with great regret, tried to send himself to another body.

And failed!

The Goddess was doing something that kept him here! He tried again. Nothing! Through his remaining ear, he could hear her laughing. He tried to plane walk, again with no luck.

Tenthé’s thoughts were wandering. As he spun slowly, he noted the blood pooling against the remains of his shields. It made pretty ribbons in the air.

Even though he was grievously injured, the years of struggle had taught him to be tough, so he rallied enough to fire off a shear, which hurled him away.

This was partially successful, putting him far away enough that Turtle couldn’t end him immediately, but his remaining eye showed him that he was still connected to the Goddess by streams of her magic. He tried another resurrection, with no better luck.

This was a bit worrisome, it might mean that if he died, it would be for ever.

Casting shear didn’t really hurt any more than staying still, so he kept doing it. As before, it kept him away from Turtle’s fireballs, but he was getting even more woozy. As he hurtled over the City, a small part of his brain remembered what he was supposed to be doing, so his next shear fired him down, where he blew through the top of a building. He then smashed into the floor, which gave away, dropping him into an underground chamber where he plummeted to the floor.

There, he found his remaining leg was now broken in multiple places, since it bent where it shouldn’t, so to move, he reached out with his talon and embedded it in the floor. Tenthé used this to drag himself across the room. When a door blocked his way, he slashed at it until it was shredded, then pulled himself through.

He was continually healing himself, but was barely keeping pace. Maybe he could have done something more, but his thinking was so cloudy the most he could do was what he was.

He dragged himself to another door, shredded it, and slowly pulled himself into the cell. Feet appeared in his vision, but the rest was a blur. The blur grew larger, becoming a person reaching down to turn his head to look in his eye. He was sure it was someone he knew, but the person was fuzzy with a seething orange glow flowing and forming all around… her? The features of her face would come and go, but when her face did appear, she appeared concerned.

“Tenthé?” the girl asked, plaintively.

He wanted to answer, but it was hard to do with no cheek, and maybe no tongue.

He was startled when his remaining ear was assaulted by an inhuman scream and the girl went away. Tenthé was mostly concerned by the fact that she’d dropped his head, causing a surprising amount of pain as it hit the floor. He tried to rally, but everything was so hard!

Tenthé struggled, but the energy he needed just wasn’t there. Whatever the mystery goddess had done, this was it for him. Eventually, he simply rested, listening to his breathing get weaker and weaker.

Until, with one last breath, he died.