He stumbled, as the haze suddenly stopped short, the trees ending in a blinding light where the sun blazed at him in its full glory. A stumble turned into a fall, and then a longer one, for he had been at the crest of a hill. He tumbled, grunted, hit a rock with a crunch he wasn't sure was him or the rock, bounced, hit the ground again, and then the world started spinning, more and more rapidly around him – until suddenly it stopped, with another crunch, that was most definitely his nose.

Eyes watering, he tried to sit up, but simple immediately fell back over, the world refusing to right itself, swaying dangerously. He reached for his nose – and his fingers came away … well, they had already been gory and bloody, so, bloody. He checked his status instead. Two damage. He coughed out a laugh at that, and struggled to his feet, blinking at the … literal boulder. That was now cracked. Or maybe it had already been cracked; he hadn't gotten a good look at it on the way down.

His gaze returned up the hill. The trees just stopped, in an unnatural line, branches pressed up against it, but not moving through at all. What? His attention moved around the valley he found himself in. And stopped, at the writhing mass of enormous maggots devouring the remnants of a tree some fifty yards away. Uh. Well. That was … he had seen one of those once before, fighting what he would later learn, to his great disgust, was a rot elemental. He looked back at the trees. They … kind of looked like they were … leaning away … they couldn't? He looked back at the maggots. Well. He would, if he could. He did, finding his exhaustion temporarily melted away; he barely even noticed the ascent on the far side of the valley.

Where he found himself slowing again, staring at black-robed figures, who were opening an enormous cart, out of which spilled … piles of maggots, who immediately began converging on the nearest tree. The top of the hill he found himself standing on gave him a view of several other hills, up which were being pushed carts, by more of the Black Wardens. He could see Anchor in the distance, now, he realized.

One of the wardens pointed at him, and gestured at another; he couldn't hear the words, but two wardens immediately began converging on his position. Thomas hesitated, debated running – and then, reluctantly, made himself wait.

“You made it out.” The sonorous human voice that emanated from the robe nearly made him jump out of his skin, prepared as he was for it to be an alien buzzing. Okay. Different … species? He worked through his thoughts quickly.

“Yes. But there should be another woman … ” He paused, because her head had turned, and was staring straight at … straight at the nightmare thing. He looked between them; the nightmare thing didn't seem to be paying attention to the warden at all, as if he – she? – was beneath its notice. “Please tell me you see that thing too?”

The warden's attention returned to him. And there was a brief pause. “What thing would you be referring to?” He stopped himself short of answering. Was this a trap? Would its presence cause him a problem? What would happen if he answered honestly? His mind had just begun to spin in panic when she continued. “Mistress Arias has already returned, and informed us that you would be along. Your villagers, or the surviving members at least, are ahead, preparing for transportation and quarantine.” He looked at her, then at one of the carts full of maggots, his mind forcing itself along from its quagmire. Mistress Arias? He moved along from that as well.

“Quarantine?” That triggered a thought; planes being destroyed. “But … can't you remove it? Isn't this working?”

“It is a delaying tactic at best; it may give us two or three days. Mistress Arias has killed four korlets already; give it a week, and they'll be everywhere, and we'll be evacuating another plane, and reorganizing dozens of anchors, because it will become impossible to make sufficient ingress to destroy the anchor. You are to return to Anchor, and report for transport and quarantine. We will take it from here.”

Thomas stared at her, then at the work they were doing. And, lacking for a conclusive thought of what else to do – started trudging towards Anchor. He was exhausted and confused. It was easier to just do what he was told. The journey to Anchor flashed by in a moment, and dragged out over eons. Every step was an effort; he felt every muscle burning to move his legs one pace forward. And he'd complete a step, and discover he had taken thirty, as time blurred together. And then he found himself filling out paperwork, halfway through it when he suddenly became aware that he had stopped walking. He couldn't remember exactly how he had gotten there, and couldn't remember the three pages of documents he had apparently filled out. He started to read through it again, stopped, because he didn't care, and started writing again. Now, where had he first appeared again?

And then he was clean, and in bed. He didn't remember how that being clean had happened, or when. Before the paperwork? He couldn't recall. It didn't matter. He slept.

“You made it in the end, then. You were nearly late, there.” Thomas watched the woman uncoil herself from a web, that was also, somehow, a chair.

“Seems like we just saw each other.” He watched the thing carefully. “What is your name?” Laughter, thick and clumpy, like congealed blood.

“You've asked me that before.”

“I … ” Thomas hesitated, trying to recall, and was startled to find his exhaustion not in evidence, the memory coming without great effort, “I asked what you are.”

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

“I am a concept. My name is what I am.”

“You are … the hunger for pain.” He'd heard a word once. Phagii? Phagus?

“No.” A smile that was too large to fit into the mouth it came out of, vicious and cruel. “I am that which devours sin. I am Grace.” He froze, for a moment, as that word cracked through the dream, and skewered his mind. Thomas took in a deep breath, and another, and found himself panting for air. The figure waited for him to recover before continuing. “Although perhaps you'll find a lesser name less unnerving; I am the purifying flame. I take only that which makes you less.”

“You called yourself a god to be.”

“Yes.” Coyly, now, a naked woman prostrating herself before him. “I am yet to be all that I will become.” Thomas studied her, feeling … remote, and empty. She watched him, smiling wider.

“You don't want my pain, else you would not so freely give it. You want my … flaws.”

“Pain, child, is your flaw. You crave it. It makes you feel alive.”

“It makes me feel like shit. It makes me hate existing.”

“It makes you feel. It makes you hate. You crave that, for you are empty without it.” He paused, considering that; actually considering it. Then caught himself doing so, and mentally staggered; he found himself growling.

“Why do I feel like being smarter has made me more vulnerable to you?”

“It makes you more willing to listen. That is smart, no?”

“No. Because you want something from me; you will say whatever will convince me.” Her smile cracked, then shattered; the prostate woman before him became an imperious man.

“That doesn't make anything I say less true, or less reasonable.”

“No. But if I were to let you convince me, I think should you change your mind, and you wished me to believe as before, you could do so as easily.”

“Then I could have done so already, boy. You tie yourself up in knots; but if my words were so seductive as you claim, I could easily have planted that very thought in your mind, for it could be as I wish you to think.”

“Which you wouldn't tell me, if you had.”

“Let me finish that for you: Unless it was to guarantee that very thought, that very conviction. Truly, child, this grows tiresome. Either I have control over your mind entire, or I do not. Your sophistry! When you thought yourself stupid, you convinced yourself not to listen, for you were too stupid. Now, you think yourself smart, and so you convince yourself not to listen, for you are too smart. Either argument might work, but you seek to have them both, to be beyond reason.”

“So I should listen to you, and be convinced?”

“You should listen to me, and decide for yourself.”

“Which is just another way of saying that I can, and should, agree to be convinced. By something that wants something from me.” She eyed him for a moment, then sighed, and was a fairly ordinary-looked woman, clothed in black silk, sitting on a black throne in intricate patterns of spiderweb. He could make out far too many details in the throne, from where he … sat, apparently. He looked down at his own chair, a simple wooden thing. Her voice returned his attention to her.

“Fine, child, we shall do this your way. Call me … Faith.” A wry smile, almost human.

“Okay … ” He paused, debating the wisdom of this course, and then, with a small mental shrug, permitted it. “Faith. I am Thomas.” She visibly hesitated, lips parting slightly, eyes widening ever so slightly, the barest intake of breath. Human, again, almost. But not quite right; imperfect in its perfection.

“What I want from you, what I want from every soul who would agree, is to remake you, upon your death. Make you into something worthy. You have the right of choice; Arbiter will allow nothing else. I want permission to take that which makes you less, that you might be more.” She smiled at him, a smile too human by half. “You have many afterlives to choose from. But – this is a universe built on concepts, so different from your own, with its mathematical precision. And the afterlife exists, as a concept, on a level fundamentally below that you now occupy. If you choose an afterlife of war – what remains of you is suited to an eternity of war – although eternity does palely compare to the truth of it, for it is without time, a concept its own. The conceptually pure version of you, in the conceptual context of war. Run, of course – by the concept of peace. Antithesis; what any god wants, in a realm of conceptual power, is themselves.”

“And yours?”

“Grace.” The world shook, his mind creaked. “The undeserved, given to the undeserving. Perfection. Renewal.”

“You are Corruption.” She simply smiled at him, as he split the dream with his own declaration, and had to restrain himself from clawing at his eyes, his face, his ears.

“If you wish.”

“And those trees, that corruption, they are yours?” Anger. Inhuman, and flashing; the dream shivered and cracked, under an aura which was as quickly suppressed. The nightmare thing smiled at him once more, teeth too long by half, and too sharp entire; her voice came thick, sickly sweet, and dripping with venom.

“They are not. They are an infection, not a corruption, and they are not siblings of mine, nor cousins of the most distant sort. They are not even a concept, but a hideous amalgamation of purpose-wrought destruction, and they have undone work I haven't even started yet.” He studied her for a moment, and reluctantly found himself convinced. Thomas slowly breathed out, as he realized he was convinced.

“Shit.” The venom retreated, and the smile was once more too human, expressing a satisfaction which was entirely too perfect for his comfort. “Shit.”