“How dare you!” Roared the boy, standing in a fury so loud and great he surely failed to hear even his own mother barking him down. Fariah’s magic answered her call at the same moment his did, and she moved just a hair sooner.

He hadn’t so much as a chance to shout before the boy was pinned back against the throne. Gasping and struggling to dislodge her elbow from his throat, body convulsing impotently and lungs fighting to drag breath through an airway too compressed for passage.

She didn’t look up, merely stared into his eyes for a few moments and studied the gradual colouration of his face. Stepping back only as his flesh grew crimson and limbs enfeebled.

Fariah was by Menza’s side in another instant, letting the magic leave just as swiftly as it had come. She eyed the fruit of her exertion, saw the boy’s throne crushed and ruined against the wall, cracks stretching outwards in the stone behind even as he slid down to sit leaning against the splinters.

An admirable show of restraint on her part, she decided. No more than half of her magic had been needed for the display, and as much as three quarters might have crushed his windpipe.

“Please do tell your son not to make any more attempts on my life, I don’t think my consort will spare him again.”

Consort? The fucker!

Fariah bit back her anger, studying the woman impassively and searching her for any trace of the self-destructive indignance that had racked her son.

She saw none, only calculation and intelligence. The face of a woman worthy to bear an Immortal’s child.

“I think I would like you to leave, Herald Menza. You’ve been here minutes and already my son has been wounded, my decency questioned. We are not suborned to your empire, and you have no right to give orders or demand answers as if we were. Speaking to me was a privilege, and one I now revoke.”

Fariah turned to Menza, studied the man carefully. Suddenly fearful as she searched for hints that his legendary unpredictable streak might rear its head and open the gates of eclipseum.

There would be nothing she could do if it did.

Yet there was no sudden fury behind his incandescent, cyan eyes. No tremors of rage running along his pale skin, or flush of anger to colour it. Only the same cool, casual self assurance the man seemed eternally armoured by.

“Of course.” He smiled. “Of course. That is your right, after all. Though if we’re to leave, I would level just a single remaining question at you on my way out- you may choose not to answer it, of course.”

Armana looked over Menza, inhaling as if to call for her guards. The man finished quickly.

“How long ago exactly did the God Killer slay Malike?”

Fariah’s own surprise almost obfuscated Armana’s, yet still she saw the woman’s eyes bulge, black skin lightening by half a shade as a sudden palour took it. Her sputtering response was pushed to incoherence by the mess shock had made of her mind.

Menza just studied her, still smiling his lopsided smile. Still affixing the woman with a stare that seemed to pierce her very flesh. It was only the idiot boy regaining his breath that broke the strangled silence.

“My father lives still, you fool. He’s merely absent- absent and due to return this day.”

Fariah was almost impressed by the density of blunders in his sentence. She held her tongue, waiting for Menza’s response. It came quickly.

“No,” The Deity answered. “I don’t think he is. For a start, there’s your guards. Suddenly assembled, by the poor quality of their equipment, and carrying an uncommon readiness- there’s no reason they should have been prepared to flood out and await my arrival by the hundred. Not without a considerable caution instilled in them, something I’ve seen more of merely travelling through this settlement.”

Armana opened her mouth, but the Deity spoke over her.

“And don’t say you expect me to believe that your son referring to that throne as yours was a mere slip of his tongue.”

“It was.” The woman answered. “And our men were equipped and assembled because we received anonymous word that Haven would be marching upon us.” Her voice gained strength by the sentence’s end, but Menza remained undeterred.

“You received word of a Haven invasion, and you took no measures to evacuate your citizenry, or even those few of highest station?”

He delivered his refutation with a calm, reasoning tone. As if he were explaining the world to a child, rather than trapping a spider. Armana’s face fell, hands tightening as her fingers dug into the stone rests beneath her arms.

Fariah never let her focus fully move from the boy, even as he finished gasping for his stolen breath and grew still. She’d made enough mistakes not to underestimate even a weaker opponent.

Power meant nothing to a mystic whose magic wasn’t touched, but the imbecile seemed content not to seize the opportunity. Almost a pity.

Trembling slightly, as if her very lungs and throat were working to hold the words prisoner, Armana finally raised her eyes once more to match the gaze of Gilasev Menza. Her voice was hoarse when she spoke, more a croak than anything.

“This knowledge could destroy us.” She whispered. “Would destroy us. We have enemies, ones held at bay only by Malike’s name.”

“I’m aware.” Menza said, suddenly cold. “But I don’t care. I’m tracking the God-Hunter, and you’ve delayed me, if only by minutes. This conversation has drawn my ire, if you would like to amend your error I’d recommend you become extremely cooperative and show me Malike’s corpse. Assuming you’ve not yet disposed of it.”

Armana considered it almost instantly, standing and gesturing for Menza to follow her. Fariah fell into step behind the Deity, the imbecile boy behind her- stopping only as his mother ordered him to remain.

They moved through the palace’s bowels at a brisk pace, air solemn and cold around them. Footfalls loud under the weight of duty and significance held on their shoulders.

It took little time before Armana led them into a great bedroom, exquisitely furnished and indulgently large. Fariah spotted the object of interest almost as soon as she was through the door, lying centered in the enormous bed.

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A corpse, or something close enough to it. Skin tight and black across bone, flesh seeming to have melted away beneath it.

Hair absent, eyes shrivelled and deflated, expression easily recogniseable even in the cadaver’s destruction. A mask of terror and agony.

Fingers had withered into thin needles, interlocked as if in a funerary stance. It struck Fariah how wrong the air was in its cleanliness, lacking the pungent reek she’d come to expect of all things dead.

“Familiar.” Fariah said, leaning against the wall and eying the ruin where it lay. Menza gave the corpse only a cursory look before turning to Armana.

“Where was it found?”

“He was found here.” The woman answered, bristling at something. “By me. I… I woke up next to him like that.”

Menza’s eyebrow arched.

“And you kept it a secret, even from your own people?”

She didn’t meet his eye before answering.

“What choice did we have? As I said, we have enemies. His power was all that kept most at bay.”

“And when did you last see him alive?”

She answered instantly.

“While we were lying beside one another in bed the night before. I slept for perhaps six hours.”

“So that leaves us with a six hour window in which an Immortal was taken from his bed, dragged away in the night and killed before being brought back. Few mystics could manage that in less time than the man would make to fight back with magic. Few Immortals, even.”

Armana spoke up again.

“Why are you so sure he was killed elsewhere?”

Menza hesitated, and for a moment Fariah thought the man may hold his tongue. Obfuscate the truth and spare the woman its harshness. The expected glint of humanity never came, and he spoke without euphemism of hesitation.

“Because I recognise the corpses left by this God-Hunter as ones caused by a particularly powerful relic. It doesn’t kill painlessly or quickly, and if your husband had died within fifty paces of you, you’d have heard it.”

Fariah saw the mask of strength crack on the woman’s face, but she held back tears.

“It’s clear enough what your implication was in unveiling this.” She breathed. “You’re warning me. By simply spreading word of my husband’s demise, you could sweep away any defence his name brings and have me destroyed. If truth is your payment then so be it. What else do you need to know?”

Menza hesitated at that, if only for a moment.

“You must know that merely hiding his body is a temporary measure.”

“What would you suggest then?” She hissed.

“You need a new ally.”

Her reply was made of spit as much as sound.

“Of course, I was wondering when you’d propose it. Well then Menza, what concessions must I make to join your illustrious sect?”

Menza didn’t even blink at the hostility.

“None, unless accepting five hundred battle-hardened war mystics and a legion of conventional soldiers to bolster your defence is something you’d find objectionable.”

That knocked the wind from Durhka’s sails.

“Why would you offer such generous terms?” She asked, suspicion threading her voice.

“Because I don’t like bloodshed.” Menza answered simply. “And because I don’t like rape, or looting, or any of the hundred other things whichever army first sacked your city would feel entitled to do by merit of its people believing slightly different things.”

She studied him, apparently still wary of a trap.

Menza seemed irritated as he spoke again.

“Do you accept my offer, or would you rather wait for one of the other main Heralds, the ones who actually believe the shit they spout, to give you an even less generous one?”

The conversation ended quickly after that, and they left the settlement at a pace only their magic made possible. They reached their transportation swiftly, skyrunner’s elliptical, dark wooden body making a clear outline among the luminous foliage around it. A few stomps to the sealed body’s roof signalled the occupants to open it.

Only in the vehicle’s heart did they begin to go over what had been learned.

“She’s cleverer than you.” Fariah noted. “All of your little deductions have proven right, but late. Or else misdirected deliberately. She’s reading you like a book even as you hurry after her.”

“You don’t know that she’s a woman.” Was all he responded with. Fariah grinned and shrugged in answer.

“A two in three chance. Regardless, what’s our next move?”

“Thinking, rarely a bad idea. There are a few things we learned that might prove useful yet. Most interesting to me is the fact that Malike’s body was displayed so brazenly after his death.”

Fariah nodded.

“I found that strange too. All the God Hunter’s other kills have been discreet and… utilitarian. Efficiency has seemed her priority, yet now she’s killed in as obvious a way as she could have. Surely she knew it would get out no matter Armana’s secrecy. What reason could she have had? Was she simply mocking you?”

Menza shook his head.

“They’ve never seemed interested in doing so before. No. The God Hunter’s been active for months, but it’s only been a matter of weeks since their reputation grew to global levels. I imagine they’ve decided to abandon subtlety altogether and start spreading fear instead. A tad childish, if you ask me, but then I suppose I’ve not the experience to criticise a serial killer.”

He thought for a moment, grinning.

“The God Hunter’s last target was Serr Irtha, an even more inactive and obscure Immortal than Malike. If they decided on infamy, they’d doubtless have only done so after that last kill. Considering Malike’s own lack of presence, he was likely selected out of convenience… meaning, assuming our prey travels by flight, we can use the path between him and Irtha to make an estimate of where the God Hunter might go next.”

Fariah hadn’t the chance to even speak before the Deity was moving, hand waving to clear a nearby table, then waving again to drag a set of maps out from a nearby compartment.

It took moments for him to weave Utalis and make copies, crafting parchment out of the very dust around them, moments more to begin marking them, mumbling to himself as he worked.

He soon had a route plotted across Mirandis through the locations of Irtha and Malike’s deaths, a line curved only slightly to account for the planet’s shape and bifurcating oceans and continents in its trajectory.

Dots glowed around it, detailing the last known positions of Immortals, and soon Fariah and Menza both studied the markings. Searching for where the points of interest intersected with the path.

They saw it almost at once, and the realisation drew an icy terror to close in around Fariah’s heart.

“Oh pit.” She breathed, stepping back from the table with wide eyes and a slack jaw. Still staring, as if her glare might change reality. The markings remained stubborn in their consistency.

The line still straight through the city of Udrebam.

Menza’s face was as blank as polished slate, eyes not leaving the paper. Emotion visible only as a light tremble seizing his entire body. Fariah found herself backing away from the Deity, mind filling with half-remembered tales of his temper and fury.

She was Immortal, but the world’s Deities were a different breed entirely. More different from her, perhaps, than she was from the mortals beneath them both. And yet she had seen this ancient being as he gazed upon a resonance stone, heard him explain why he ignored the humming messages- even felt silent scorn at being told he’d not be able to resist flying back to Udrebam in any other way.

The scorn was gone, now. As was everything but her fear.

He didn’t look at her, or even up from the paper at all. Merely spoke in a low, soft, hard voice.

“Go and find the captain.” The Deity breathed. “Tell him to make way for Udrebam.”

Fariah left, seizing the opportunity to place walls between her and the raging Immortal, even knowing how little difference they’d make if his fury went uncontrolled. When she returned after ordering the course, she found Menza pacing. Hands curled into fists at his sides.

“They planned this.” He spat. “They must have, it’s far too perfect otherwise. They’d surely not have had enough of a head start to be certain of making it there, had I not been delayed. But how could they predict that?”

He seemed to chew on the question for a few more moments before dismissing it, leaning against the table and gritting his teeth in a helpless, aimless rage.

“I can’t fly after them.” He said at last. “Not at any worthwhile speed. Not without releasing enough magic in all directions to let Immortals across the world know what I was doing and where I was going.”

Fariah understood his plight, it was one that applied to all of their kind- save on a smaller scale. Recogniseability could be disastrous at times. She didn’t need Menza to spell it out that the God Hunter had positioned themselves perfectly near Gemini to make a hostage of the girl.

“This is still a skyrunner.” She said pointedly. “It can make the trip in weeks, perhaps less.”

“It is, and it can.” The Deity muttered. He didn’t meet her eye.

“But much can be done in a few weeks.”