“So, where exactly are we headed?” The Prophet clambered into the front of the carriage, sitting down next to Huojin who handed him a map. Opening it, the Prophet saw several markings spread out across the map, all seemingly on old villages or run-down towns. Something caught the Prophet’s eye; all of the markings seemed to form a symbol around one central area which Huojin had taken the liberty of drawing out.

“You think that the slaver's main base is in the center, then,” he asked, less of a question and more voicing his confirmation to himself. “That’s the hope,” Huojin said with a nod, taking the map back. “I still intend on visiting any of their bases we might come across, but the main base is our best bet for finding her.”

Huojin rarely talked about his sister, only spilling his heart out when he had had a bit too much to drink, but the little bit he spoke was enough to make the lingering dregs of care in the Prophet's heart want to find her just as much as Huojin.

“We’ll get her back, don't worry,” the Prophet reassured, resting a hand on his friend's shoulder. Huojin looked at him with total bewilderment plastered on his face. “I think I might’ve preferred when you were colder, this new side of you is a bit off-putting,” Huojin said with a light chuckle.

The Prophet scoffed and punched his friend lightly on the arm before climbing into the back of the carriage once more, grabbing his estoc off of the ground and cleaning it. Whatever blood Svarog bled certainly wasn’t healthy for the steel, as it had started to deform the blade. The Prophet held it out in front of him and stared down the handle, seeing a very noticeable bend in the sword.

He sighed and fit the sword back into its sheath, before standing and walking back over to Huojin. Tapping him on the back, he says: “Hey, Huojin. I hate to do this but my swords bent out of shape and the edge is looking duller by the day. Any chance we could take a detour and stop by a town, see if they have a blacksmith.” Huojin laughed.

“Oh, who would’ve thought that trying to cut through a literal god would mess up your sword? All good though, there's one nearby,” he responded, but the Prophet could tell there was something else he wanted to ask. “Speaking of which,” Huojin continued, “What the hell was up with that town?”

“The one Svarog attacked us in?” the Prophet inquired; Huojin nodded. “I should’ve said something the minute we settled in. The cult had occupied it. I could tell from the tapestries and the lingering voices. Whenever the cult has been somewhere recently, if you’re acquainted in some way, you can hear people crying out for help. Lost souls sacrificed to a merciless god.”

“How the hell does that work,” Huojin asked, a chill running down his spine as he imagined what that must sound like. The Prophet shrugged and mumbled something about the sacrificial process before returning to his sword, doting over it like a father trying to tend to their ill child. Huojin shook his head, wondering how someone could get so desperately attached to a weapon. Another question for the Prophet to add to the ever-growing list.

The Prophet leaned his head back and sighed, looking up at the canopy above. He could see the sky through one of the many holes; dark clouds dotting the calming blue, reminding the Prophet of the storm. Of seeing Grayson again. Of seeing Vale again. An image of her face planted itself firmly in the forefront of his mind, and a sudden pang of emotions hit his heart. He blinked, surprised when a tear trailed down from his eye and splashed into the water surrounding him.

He jolted up, taking in his surroundings. He was in the middle of a shallow body of frigid, ink-black water that lapped at his ankles. The wall of the carriage he had been leaning up against had shifted into a rock, and his surroundings were covered in a thick blanket of fog. He had experienced something similar before, and it wasn’t something he was keen to revisit. Looking around, he saw someone kneeling in the water.

He walked over to them and reached out before another figure came into being, spawned from a wisp of smoke and standing in front of the kneeling one. Then, one after another, hundreds more appear in the same manner, each as still as a statue but seemingly locked in combat. Cinris looked closer at the two figures in front of him; they were featureless, lacking a face. But Cinris didn’t need a face to recognize the kneeling one. It was him.

Another featureless figure appeared, and Cinris recognized this one, too. It was Vale. A voice ripped through the crushing silence that dominated the landscape, sending the Prophet crashing to his knees. It’s distorted; a mixture of every language the Prophet had ever heard, every voice he’s ever heard, all shouting at him at once.

“Strength in solitude.”

The standing figure turned in a stiff, robotic manner, raising its hand as if preparing to strike the silhouette of Vale. A sword appeared in its grasp, and it swung, cutting clean through Vale. The Prophet pulled himself to his feet and tried to cry out, but nothing ever came as he was thrown into the water once more.

“Weakness in care.”

The voice echoed out once more, and the Prophet soundlessly screamed as his eardrums burst from the voice. Images of his friend’s corpses flashed into his mind, all killed in battle; their bodies littered with gashes and their clothes tattered and torn. He tried to pull himself up again but was forced back down.

“Remember your purpose.”

A pillar of crimson flame descended from the sky, touching down in front of him. A silhouette of Svarog marched towards him as the voices repeated their message over and over, getting louder each time until it was like the entire world was screaming at him.

Svarog stopped, glaring down at the Prophet. The metal of his helm where his mouth should be shredded open once again as the voice echoed from deep within his breastplate.

“You can’t save them. You know it. You’ve had this vision hundreds of times, and it’s always the same. Drawn to a flame, those Moths will find you. And they will take it all from you. You’ll be right where you’re meant to be. Alone. Afraid. Angry. Hollow.”

The Prophet struggled to his knees despite every atom in his body desperately trying to cling to the ground. Utter hatred and disdain were plastered on his pained face as he glared into the god’s visor. He ground his teeth together as blood bubbled up in his mouth, the force of the voice crushing him.

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“Never once did I care for a single word that slipped off of that forked tongue of yours,” the Prophet forced out, surprising the god. The Prophet raised an arm and pointed directly at Svarog, blood streaming down his chin. “When I kill those uppity royal army bastards, and when I keep everyone I love alive? You. You’re next.”

“What makes you think anything will change? What makes you think you have any power over your fate?” Svarog taunted, leaning down as the voice once again threatened to throw Cinris to the ground. The Prophet smiled and pulled himself to his feet, letting his arm fall as he came face to face with the god.

“Because I say it will. Because I say I do. Who the hell is going to stop me? Surely not some prissy elf with a hard-on for revenge. Does that make it you, then? The god of creation? The Crimson King, Bathed In Fire? Quite the intimidating repertoire you’ve got there. Yet you failed to kill a group consisting of a dysfunctional monk and some washed-up mercenaries. Surely that’s gotta be a stain on that reputation of yours.

“Let me ask you this, Svarog. What makes you so sure I can’t change my fate? What makes you think I’ll fail? Is it because you’ve walked the same path as me? That’s what you’ve repeated every time I’ve asked this, so I’m taking a wild guess and assuming you were gonna go for that again.”

The Prophet opened his mouth to continue but was cut off as the god slammed his fist into the Prophet’s chest, sending him falling back to his knees as his ribs shattered and punctured a lung. “You. Know. Nothing.” the god said, grabbing the collar of Cinris’ shirt and lifting him as Svarog stood at his fullest height, making Cinris’ feet barely scrape the ground.

“Really? Nothing, eh? Well, let me tell you what I do know. You failed. Whatever you tried to do, you couldn’t. I don’t know if it was saving the people you loved or killing someone who falsely accused you and is now out for your head, but you failed. And no matter how hard the cult tried to make me a vessel for you, they failed. And to me, that proves only one thing. That I’m nothing like you.” Cinris spat, causing the god to flare up in indignation.

“You know nothing, you ignorant whelp!” The god roared in fervent rancor, fire bursting from him, evaporating the water around them before more took its place. “We are far more alike than I care to admit, so trust me when I say this: You. Will. Fail. I ran my mistakes through my mind for eons trying to figure out what I could’ve done better, and never once did I come to a conclusion where it all worked out in the end.

“You will fail, and you will fall, and I will watch and laugh as you go. You are a failure, flesh and blood. You failed to die, you failed to keep the ones you love happy, you failed the Cult, and soon you will fail again. There is no fortune smiling down on you in the future, there is only a pit. A well of fire for you to cast yourself into and fulfill your purpose.”

Cinris coughs, sending blood splattering over Svarog’s helmet. “My flesh and blood might be built from failure, but my bone? My soul? Those are built from the stubborn, indomitable will that plagues this body and mind of mine. No matter what, I refuse to give up. Because while my strength may come from what I haven’t been able to do, my structure is from what I have. I’ll build my flesh and blood from scratch over and over again until I can do what you can’t. Until I can win.”

The god dropped Cinris with a splash, and he pulled himself from the ground despite his body begging him not to. Svarog paced in front of him angrily before turning back to the Prophet. “You are not a god, boy. You are a mortal. You will be one till your final tear falls from your face. Even if you make it past this next obstacle, I assure you I will be waiting on the other side, ready to cut you down. What will you do then? What will your indomitable will do?”

“Make sure you remember how it feels to fail.”

The Flaming silhouette pulled its charred sword from thin air and raised it. The Prophet spat a glob of congealed blood onto the boot of Svarog, which bubbled and smoked, burning as the Prophet choked out his final words of threat to the beast before him.

“Even gods fear death. And it doesn’t matter how high you climb to escape me, because I’ll climb after you. And when you reach the peak, when there’s nowhere else to run, I’ll send you tumbling down. And that’ll just make your fall all the more satisfying.” A bloody grin spread across Cinris’ face, and it stayed even as his head fell from his shadowy body, splashing into the freezing waters below.

His smile stayed on his face as he slipped back into reality, but it quickly fell as something hit against the side of his head with a loud thunk. He opened his eyes and frowned as he looked at the squatting form of Huojin, the growing pain in the side of his head telling him his friend had been poking him with his staff for quite some time now.

“Oh good, you’re alive,” Huojin said in a flat tone, standing up sluggishly. The Prophet could almost hear Huojin’s joints creaking as he stretched and sighed before reaching a hand down to help him up as well. The Prophet took it, if not simply using it as a means to get close enough to punch his friend in the gut.

“Instead of checking my breathing or my pulse or any of that, your initial response was to jab me in the side of the skull, repeatedly, for,” the Prophet stopped, noticing the sky outside was now dark and the moon was the only thing shining light into the carriage “how long, exactly?”

“Couple hours at least. Doesn’t matter though, we’re here.” Huojin hopped down from their wagon with a tired inelegance while the Prophet stood, dumbfounded that for supposed hours, his friend thought he might’ve been dead and had resorted to poking him with a stick like he was a trampled animal on the side of the road.

The Prophet dropped from the carriage, taking in his surroundings. The streets were empty and most of the lanterns had been doused at storefronts and the like. Cinris sighed in disappointment as he noticed the smithy was one of those stores. The only lights that remained were from the windows of the tavern and the lampposts that lined the street.

Huojin was leaning against the side of the carriage and pushed himself off as the Prophet emerged from the back, immediately making a beeline for the tavern. Cinris followed with another sigh, realizing that a room was likely the last thing on his friend’s mind judging from his purposeful gait.

The Prophet’s fears were confirmed as he tailed his friend, walking through the tavern doors just behind Huojin to see him somehow already at the bar, paying for a drink. “Room first, drinks after,” Cinris said, snatching the coins out of Huojin’s hand before he could give them to the barkeep.

Huojin groaned but obliged, looking over at the barkeep, asking a question about their vacancy without actually speaking. The man nodded, “Should have one more for you. That’ll be two silver for the night,” he said, holding out his hand. The Prophet tossed the coins over and gave his friend a meaningful nod before walking off. “Last door on your left,” the man called out.

Cinris stepped into the room and collapsed on one of the two beds, finding himself more exhausted than he had expected. Direct communion with Svarog was probably the cause, he thought. He held his arm out in front of himself as he laid on his back, his hand open and palm facing the ceiling as if to grasp something that wasn’t there.

He sighed and rolled over onto his side as his tiredness got the better of him. His mind drifted again and settled onto an image of Vale's face. The sooner he could kill the ones hunting him, the better. After all that was done, he could finally reunite with her and make up for lost time. The thought brought a smile to his face as he eventually drifted off to sleep.

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