"Tear-falling pity dwells not in this eye."

― William Shakespeare, Richard III, Act IV, Scene 2

Chapter 2: The Last Son of the Lion

It’s a wonder how many of us come from Earth. Or an Earth, rather - I suspect there are thousands of them, set side-by-side in the multiverse like almost-identical jewels. I don’t know how and why they diverge, or what other commonalities they might share…Only that some are close enough to count.

Jeru hailed from a world where the British empire never fell, where the European Powers continued to play their Great Game. He was a fourth-generation graduate of the Shaeffer Institute, the latest product of rigorous breeding and education programs developed by Newton and overseen by the Crown.

As I understand it, the objective was to create third-line administrators to assist colonial governors. It was an important task, as high as a half-caste could ever hope to ascend, and so he’d been raised under special pressure. In such conditions, nothing soft could survive: Jeru excelled, as he knew he had to.

It was that or be discarded.

I didn’t know the grisly details, but everything about that sounded utterly horrific. Compared to that, my comfortable middle-class First World upbringing was positively pampered. All the hurdles I’d had to jump through, the ones that had caused so much angst, were child’s play compared to what he’d endured.

After that, you understand, the dangers posed by each new and alien world came almost as a relief. He’d won all five of his previous worlds, and Phospiach was no exception. By the time I’d made it to Adrijanopolj, he was reigning champion of the arena, marked for great things by the city-father.

As I understood it, he’d been smart enough to play two goddesses off against each other. Stoking their rivalries, letting them squabble over him. Getting them to top each blessing, while fending off the threats they sent his way with aplomb.

Compared to him, I was a brute - All clumsy, flailing brawn - and he knew it.

He’d have called me out, but he wasn’t done with this world. Not yet. Both of us, after all, were waiting for the same thing.

In truth, I rather liked him. It was hard not to like him, despite the obvious reason not to - Well-favored, exquisitely courteous, there was a reason why his strikingly handsome likeness adorned recruiting posters and small shrines all across Adrijanopolj.

It was, after all, Jeru’s nature to rise to the top of things. To turn everything to his advantage, and to improve it in turn.

Industrious, I’d call him. Never idle, the engine of his mind always working, always curious.

He was just that kind of person.

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The bone-black jade of my gauntlets folded back, retracting with a series of ratcheting clicks. The armored panels withdrew into the ebony bracers that sheathed my arms to the elbow, perpetually cool against my skin. My hands felt exposed, bare - No longer extravagant, exaggerated wrecking balls - but I needed them free.

For a start, I needed to wipe the blood away. It was already drying, still tacky against my skin, but that was because there was an awful amount of it, and not all of it was mine.

It got everywhere, flecks of it still clinging to my face. Down my chest, dulling the gleam of my coat-of-scales. Somehow, I’d even managed to get it over my belt and the holster strapped to my right thigh, badging them with finger-smears of gore.

I wondered how the hell I looked.

“You’re late,” I said, doing my best to remain steady. “Thought you weren’t going to make it-”

Jeru chuckled, low. “Oh, Morgan,” he said, almost fondly. “-You know I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.”

He seemed content to stay where he was, but I didn’t dare take my eyes off him. I knew how fast he could move, after all. Besides, I had a strong idea of what that spear might be, and I had a sinking suspicion that it could pierce tank armor.

I was in no rush to try conclusions with him, not in the state I was. Even with Vairocana’s singular blessing at the very tip of my tongue - For I could see his favour, in the steam that rose from the wounds of the dead, in the faint scent of sandalwood incense carried on the breeze - I had a feeling that would only end one way.

“You’ve been keeping secrets, haven’t you?” Jeru went on. Admonitory, like he was dealing with an errant friend or an exasperating but well-loved cousin. “The Maiden of the Harvest. Her, and the…third one. All this time, and you never breathed a word.”

He tipped his chin towards the blaze below, as if to say: And look what happened.

“They say silence is a virtue, but virtues can be taken too far-”

I felt myself bridle, instinctively.

“I didn’t know what she was going to do-” I began, but then caught myself. That wasn't entirely true, not really.

I had, honestly, underestimated her. Completely and utterly. Underestimated them, really, in every sense of the word.

Softer, almost to myself: “...I didn’t think she’d do this.”

He nodded, quietly sympathetic. Overhead, the storm swirled, sullen and on the verge of eruption. I could see bars of lightning stabbing the dark clouds, flickering above the distant ocean.

In time, the rains would come. Not soon enough to stop the fires, but they would come all the same.

I let my gaze drop to the bloody, battered corpses scattered around the peerless fastness of the Spire, silently numbering the dead. It occurred to me, with an ugly pang, that while I’d acquitted myself admirably, Jeru had carved his way through them far faster, and with far less effort.

Not that there was anything admirable about what we’d done here, of course. Especially since, most likely, I’d known some of them. Not enough to remember their names, of course, but enough to remember when I’d been, just for a while, on their side.

They’d fed me and sheltered me, and I’d lived among them for months. I’d sat with them at their fires, played with their children, driven off bandits and monsters, even worked the same fields.

In the end, that hadn’t been enough to stay my hand. It certainly hadn’t spared their lives.

Maybe I’m less sentimental than I thought.

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Back when I started out, once I began to get a handle on things, I relished any fight. In particular, against outmatched opponents who were foolish enough to cross me. It wasn’t about killing: It was about winning, the satisfaction of knowing that I’d bested them, the swell of pride that came with knowing I’d come out on top.

I think I was overcompensating, really. Back on my Earth, confrontation had never been a big part of my life: Sure, there were petty squabbles and the usual office politicking, but - by and large - your status was measured by your education, your job, the size of your bank account…All the usual signifiers of success.

I’d lived in a fog of comfortable mediocrity, with a vague but ever-growing sense of frustration. Longing, perhaps, to be someone else entirely. Someone hard-driving, relentless, powerfully masculine. Someone who knew what he wanted, with the will to take it.

Except…I didn’t know how to be that kind of man, sort of like a supercharged schoolyard bully version of myself. I didn’t even know where to start. My father, the self-made man, probably did - But even asking would have been a kind of surrender, an admission of failure. I had too much pride for that.

Or rather, I was afraid of what I would learn about myself, the opportunities I’d squandered. How I’d taken the safe, comfortable road each time, and it’d led me nowhere I wanted, with nothing but a grey future ahead, featuring more of the same.

I suppose, in the end, that what I’m saying is: I was primed for this. In some ways, I’d been waiting for this my entire life. Not like my sister, who must have seen it as the only way out of the crushing web of familial obligation and social expectation that’d been woven around her - What I wanted was more than an escape.

I wanted power. Not power in the sense of wealth or authority, or any one of the invisible levers that could be used - So subtly, so slowly - to sway minds and influence others.

I wanted power I could exert freely, that would cut to the chase. That would be the solution to any problem.

The power to inflict violence upon others. To kill, if I so chose.

If, in the grand scheme of things, we were all tools - To be used and discarded as soon as we wore out - I wanted, at least, to be a tool that could smash what it desired.

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Don’t get me wrong: I don’t consider myself maladjusted or especially bloodthirsty. I simply enjoy having options available, to know I could cut to the chase if I really wanted to. To act on impulse if the urge took me, unfettered by the countless little obstacles they put in the way.

I don’t just mean the obvious, of course. Do something desperate and rash and spontaneous, and you’ll spend the rest of your life paying for it. Your family will suffer. You’ll be black-balled, unable to find employment for the reminder of your existence. You might end up dead, or spend the rest of your life rotting in jail.

More, Earth had all these barriers, all avenues to success already explored, already mapped-out, already blocked. So much depended on what you’d done in the past - At a certain point, earlier than one might expect, there was very little you could do to better your circumstances in life.

In my experience, the individual was oddly powerless, a spectator in his own life. Impotent to do anything other than the role he’d been assigned, to toll away all his days. Being aware of great events, of the grand arcs of history, just let one know how much he was missing out on.

But as a thresholder, as a world-walker, I could do what I wanted. Not in the hazy expectation of a payoff somewhere down the line, but here. Now. All else be damned.

After all, what did I have to lose? Other than my life, of course.

It’s somehow freeing, to know that consequences - when they come - aren't things like the loss of your job, the downgrading of your credit rating, or an indelible stain on your reputation that will haunt you the rest of your days.

Dying in an explosion, dodging assassins sent to kill you, choking on the nanite poison in your water…Those are immediate, visceral. You live or you die, with no grey areas in-between.

When a man calls you out, the winner gets to live and the loser dies or ends up humbled. It’s a problem you can solve, here and now, rather than one that vanishes into an amorphous maze of bureaucracy and emails: Either way, the matter can be decided in a matter of minutes, and then it’s done with.

In a way, moving between worlds made it easier. You step through a portal, and - just like that - the slate is wiped clean. Whatever mess you leave behind, that’s someone else’s problem now. It’s not like anyone’s going to chase you, to enforce the law, to hand out punishments.

Does it make it harder to care? I don’t think so. The first flush of emotion, of connection, is always the most intense, most memorable one. It’s time that withers them, understanding that breeds contempt.

You care about something intensely, passionately. You give it your all.

Until you don’t, and then you make a clean break. You accept the impermanence of things, treasure the memories of the good times - Then you let it go, and move on to whatever comes next.

You let novelty become your guide. You learn to throw yourself head-first into what’s in front of you - Once your interest flags, once it wears thin, there’s always the next world, and the next, and the one after.

Say one thing about being a thresholder: At least I’m never bored.

What does that have to do with the peasant-warriors of Pa’quan? It’s simple. When yesterday’s friend becomes today’s enemy, you don’t let it slow you down. Act first, then contemplate the what-ifs and might-have-beens later.

You can care for someone even as you’re killing them. Especially when you’re killing them, in fact. You can love them up to the point the last spark of light flickers in their eyes, until their last breath gurgles from their lungs.

For there’s no contradiction, not really. What’s past is past - The infinite now is all that matters, and the rest is just water under the bridge.

I say this now, with absolute certainty: Even then, I knew I would remember Alistair and Eulisia as my friends, long after they died by my hands.

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“How did you get here?”

“Why, the same way you did.”

I bit back my first answer, let out a slow breath. He was enjoying this, I knew: Being willfully obtuse, winding me up. Keeping me off-balance, too distracted to find my footing.

“But you flew-”

“I faced the Spire’s trials, just like you. The last door opened to sky.”

In an graceful, oddly birdlike gesture, Jeru canted his head to the side. White teeth flashed in his perfect smile, a quiet glint of amusement in his calm eyes.

“The doors do not take you where they must,” he said. Leaning forward, ever-so-slightly, like a man imparting a secret. “They take you where you most desire to go.”

And I thought: There’s a way out, with something that was almost a wild flash of hope. I fought the urge to look over my shoulder, the way I’d come in - I hadn’t come this far to turn back, not even if Jeru meant it.

I half-suspected his spear would be in my back, before I was more than halfway across. After all, in his place, I would probably do the exact same thing.

The wind picked up. It moaned around us, rushing across the parapets of the Platinum Spire in a low, rising whistle: I shivered, involuntarily, feeling the bite of it through my armor, through the quilted shirt I wore beneath.

Moments like this - They made you realize how small you were in the face of eternity. How the world would continue to turn, no matter what happened here today.

But then again, every day is the end of the world for someone.

You may wonder: How could we be talking like this, in the shadow of the Intrinsic Gate? Alistair and Eulisia had a head-start - Didn’t we fear they’d beat us to the prize?

We had our reasons. I needed to catch my breath, to fight down the pounding in my head, to ready myself for what lay ahead.

Besides, the Intrinsic Gate had its own defenders.

And as for Jeru-

In those remarkable eyes, the calculation was happening. I could see it: His keen intelligence comparing this with that. Weighing all he knew about me, against everything he could do. Considering all the flaws, all the angles, all the possibilities.

Watching it happen made me feel stupid, slow. An abacus versus a quantum computer.

“-Alistair,” I said, just to wrong-foot him. “His name’s Alistair.”

A long, slow blink. As if I’d confirmed something he’d already known.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

“Ah,” Jeru said. “A monster, is he? One willing to poison thousands, to drive my city to madness, all so he can-”

'Your' city? I thought - But it would've been impolitic to bring it up.

Instead, I snorted. “Nothing like that,” I said, with a heavy shrug. “He thinks…I guess he thinks he’s doing the right thing.” I paused, realizing how utterly inadequate the words seemed.

“...In the long run, I guess.”

A thought came to me, and I looked up. “Could they actually - I mean, what they’re trying to do, would it…?”

“Who knows?”

My look turned disbelieving, and he chuckled, low. “I never claimed to have all the answers, my friend. Not even the gods do. For if they did, what need would they have of us?”

He had a point, there.

Some of the pressure in my head had eased, now. Enough that I felt the migraine pulse at my temples fade, my center - slowly, ever-so-slowly - returning.

“Good thing, too,” I muttered. “-Or we’d both be out of jobs.”

My hands were at my sides. Open. Empty.

I could feel matters accelerating to a conclusion, now. The moment of decision was coming, and soon, very soon, words would mean nothing. Jeru’s patience wasn’t infinite - And neither was mine, come to think of it.

In a way, I wanted an end to this, too.

“Just one last thing…” I began, then shook my head. “No, never mind. I guess it doesn’t matter, not now-”

Jeru’s smile was infinitely kind. “Go on, my friend,” he urged, gesturing with one gleaming hand. “If not now, then when?”

“Well, if you insist,” I said. “It’s just that…”

I let my brow furrow, searching for the words. “I didn’t see this coming. Couldn’t have, not in a hundred years. But, Jeru - If I know one thing about you, it’s that you’re a pretty smart guy. The thing I don’t get is…”

My voice lowered, to just above a whisper.

“Why didn’t you?”

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I can't speak for everyone, but there's a...Shall we say, a recurring theme across worlds.

Rival heroes arrive from other realms, drawn inexorably towards one another. They plunder the land, scouring it for knowledge, for power, for weapons they can bring to bear for some advantage, some edge, in their inevitable final confrontation. The world becomes their stage, the backdrop for their duel as they work wonders and horrors, armed with alien technologies and magics beyond imagining.

And then comes the final battle. One dies, sometimes both do, and then they're gone, as swiftly as they've come.

But they leave a legacy behind. They share their wisdom with rulers and peasants alike, arm their allies with weapons from other worlds. Staves that spit fire and metal, machines that claw their way through the sky and gouge the earth, towers that dwarfed the greatest castle, martial techniques that shape the course of armies for decades to come, sciences full centuries ahead of anything the wisest sage could ever hope to conceive...

I've never managed to do that. In fact, I've never even tried.

Now, I'm an educated man. Was an educated man, at any rate.

These days, I'm afraid, my physical capabilities are generally far more important than whatever I learned from my degree.

You'll be surprised at how little of that knowledge is useful in any way. I wasn't a farmer, an architect, or an engineer. Mostly, my job involved sending e-mails and drafting reports, staring at endless rows of figures on a glowing screen. I made nothing with my hands - When something broke down, I threw it away and bought another, or called someone to take care of it for me.

I can't even remember the last time I changed my own oil, or even put together furniture.

If anything, I was a consumer, like so many others. Just another cog in a great machine. No, calling me a cog gives me more credit than I deserve. I was a part of a part, one of the many clicking things that make up a larger component, the kind put together in a third-world sweatshop by indentured labor.

That was the first shock, I guess. That basically nothing I had ever learned, that I prided myself on knowing, was useful.

What does the layman have to contribute, anyway? My guess is: a smattering of half-remembered world history, an encyclopedic knowledge of pop culture, a general idea of Earth's modern conveniences and almost no practical knowledge on how they work.

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Imagine a conversation like this:

"In my world," I might say, "We have these horseless carriages of metal. Cars, we call them. We've got thousands of them on the road, like you wouldn't believe."

"Horseless carriages!" a local would say, swept up in a vision of a far-off reality. "Incredible. But how do they work?"

"Something to do with the internal combustion engine, I guess. I know they run on fossil fuels."

"Fascinating! This 'engine'...How do you build one?"

"-I don't know."

So you know what you want, but you have no idea how it works. No idea how to make it, or even how to make what you need to start making it.

You know what that makes you?

It makes you the idea guy, and let me tell you: Everyone hates the idea guy.

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Maybe cars are too complicated. Let's try something that doesn't require about forty-thousand individual components, from the tiniest nuts and bolts to the dark mysteries of the engine block. Guns, perhaps - The great equalizer, or so they say.

For a start, plenty of worlds already have guns of some kind. Take my word for it: I've been shot at enough times to be something of a connoisseur.

Making better guns, though, is an extremely complicated process. All modern (or even less-than-modern) firearms have three basic groups of parts, namely the action, stock and barrel. Putting them together? That takes a lot of work.

You'd need dedicated craftsman who, at the very least, have some idea of what they're already doing. More, you'd need to convince someone to take a chance on your idea. And that's a hard thing to do, especially when you're dealing with a painstaking process that could take anywhere between weeks to months (or years) of work. There are precise proportions involved, and tolerances to be carefully measured.

You can't just go about with what feels right, you actually need to know the subject intimately. Otherwise, you'll be lucky if you get something that just blows up in your hand.

Don't forget that physics and local resources can and will vary wildly from your assumptions. What do they call sulfur, carbon and potassium nitrate on the world you've just stumbled upon? Better find out, because there's an explosive surprise if you get things wrong.

My first world, for example, was one where iron was startlingly rare. The few mines were jealously guarded by the mountain folk, hoarded as a kind of ultimate weapon against their foes.

What happened? The fey lords and ladies of the Gentry made it their personal playground for their games of intrigue and cruelty, for all time to come. When I left, they were still doing it, and there was no end in sight. No way for the human population to rise up in revolt against the horrors they could conjure, the flesh and souls they could twist when the whim struck them.

It wasn't a pleasant place to be, even if you'd won their hospitality.

Believe me.

Sometimes, though, this can work for you as much as it can work against you. On my fifth world, my opponent - Lin Qiuyun - hailed from a world known as Great Arc. From what fragments I've been able to gather, it was a world of supernatural martial arts, where the search for personal enlightenment at all costs translated into real, personal power.

As I understand it, she was of the Second Sphere. One of the exalted, but only just. She'd got a foot on the ladder to eternity, but circumstances (and her foes) had conspired against her dream of a perfect society. There had been a brief but vicious power-struggle, and she'd been driven out of her own cabal.

Which made the portal, I suppose, the answer to her prayers. A chance for a fresh start.

At any rate, she'd made herself useful to the Empire of Iron, and they'd made her their Grand Provost, their Minister of Civic Order. Unfortunately, she was perpetually frustrated in her attempts to share what she knew.

As I understand it, it takes a certain level of spiritual strength to rise through the spheres, one that most people can't muster. All the more so in a world where magic was fading into a thing of myth and legend, where even the most gifted of the nobles could barely control the Zmei - the great iron dragons the Empire used to lay waste to its enemies - that was their birthright.

Apparently, there were elixirs, tinctures and treatments that could cultivate such potentials, but again Qiuyun was thwarted. A lot of what she needed simply didn't exist in that world, or existed under different names. Even subtle differences could throw off the end result, and she'd had little to show for all the resources and effort expended.

And by that time, the enemy was beating down their doors, hungry for blood.

I know this, by the way, because I helped bring the axe down. I'm not often on the side of angels, but the Empire of Iron needed to go. Qiuyun's experiments were positively innocent compared to what they had done, before either of us arrived.

Mind you, she never struck me as evil, just extremely focused on her goal. Even now, I can't understand how she could be part of that.

Desperation, I suppose, makes for strange bedfellows. Or maybe the allure of power just went to her head.

We'll get to that later, though.

In time.

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But, you might say, surely there are other things a civilized man could contribute. A working knowledge of basic hygiene, perhaps. Telling people to boil their water and wash their hands before eating.

Dare I say, a little crop rotation, even?

Well, for one thing - Most people already know that, and they don't like outsiders talking down to them like they're idiots. Those who don't know probably don't care, either. Unless you can make an immediate, measurable positive change to the lives of most people, they generally won't stick with it, especially if it's inconvenient, costly, or potentially dangerous to themselves.

There's always the option of bending the ear of a King, noble, or the local equivalent...But they're interested in things that can help them now, too, in dramatic ways. They want your exploding powder, your earth-sundering magics, your ferocious deity that will sweep all unbelievers before Him like chaff. At the very least, they'll settle for something that makes them even richer.

What they don't want is something that will (slowly, with constant effort) make the quality of life better over the span of the next few years, or gradually reduces infant mortality or the risk of plague. To be blunt, they don't give a shit about that, and they never will.

How about new political systems or religions, then? Spreading the word of God, Allah or Marx?

Again, most worlds have gods. Sometimes, the Gods even answer prayers. That's a pretty good incentive not to try a new flavor of things, to my mind.

As for politics...I suppose if you're in charge - or you know someone in power - you could probably make people try whatever you wanted. That, however, has always struck me as a dictatorship with extra steps. Forget about setting up an institution that will survive you, you'll be lucky if they don't have a big war the moment you're out of sight.

That's assuming you can even enforce your decisions, too. Never assume you have monopoly of force: I certainly don't. Phospiach alone had beings that could feed me my own innards, if sufficiently roused.

Trust me, one man with a pulse rifle and a suit of power armor does not a ruler make. You need armies for that, and a bureaucracy, and hundreds of functionaries, and tax-collectors, and (of course) hundreds of thousands of laborers, who have no idea of your grand vision and just want three hot meals a day and maybe not getting murdered by invaders.

So no, I've never tried it. It sounds hard, and - more importantly - it's boring. Don't forget, too, that you have an other in the world somewhere. Hunting you, stalking you. Waiting for you to slip up, so he can strike and move on to better things. Someone with no interest in remaking the world according to his vision, and who just wants to plunder it for all it's worth.

Someone very much like me, for example.

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I'm sure you can think of ways around this. Perhaps (for example) you could find tomes of practical knowledge. Books about mathematics, physics, mechanical engineering and yes, gunsmithing. You could take them with you at all times, carry them to the next world. Bring the light of civilization and modern science to the multiverse.

The problem is, as anyone with the misfortune to carry a haversack for a full day will tell you, those things are heavy. Worse, they're useless in a fight, where every pound counts. I travel light - I might be strong, but everything that isn't a weapon or my armor can still be a liability in a fight. I already have enough trouble keeping my hands on those.

When push comes to shove, a sword (even a cheap one) is way more useful than a book on applied chemistry.

...Well, I suppose the latter could also be a weapon, if I threw it hard enough.

Remember, more often than not, you'd have just won (or, more crucially, lost) a fight to end all fights when the portal opens. Alistair's told me that it hangs around for a day or two, long enough to say your goodbyes and to resolve any unfinished business, but I didn't know that until this world.

More importantly, I rarely had the luxury of hanging around. Out of the five worlds I've explored so far (not counting Phospiach), four ended with an intensity of violence that dwarfed everything that came before it. In my second and third worlds, I had just enough strength left to crawl through the portal before I bled out - Leaving behind battles that were still raging as I made my escape, and it was honestly anyone's guess how those ended.

Let's be honest. The other guy probably won.

It is my fondest hope that, right after I went down, Ryan Trent got smeared across the pavement by a Gamma-class enhanced human. I wouldn't count on it, though.

No, I'm not bitter.

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There's digital media, of course, but there's no guarantee you're going to be able to access it wherever you're going. I know I didn't see a computer for three entire worlds, and even then it was only tangentially similar to our conception of one.

I still have my cracked, chipped handphone, all the way from my Earth. It hasn't functioned for five worlds, now - The battery died on my first one, and I'm pretty sure it'll never run again, even if I did have a way to charge it. I could have asked Rhohdohr, Visage of Howling Skies, to help...But he'd probably have thought I wanted to be smote by lightning instead.

So no, it might as well be a brick of glass, metal and rare earth elements, for all the good it's done me.

And what unearthly wisdom doth this digital repository contain, by the way?

At a guess, I'd say it's something like several dozen movies, a few hundred novels, and at least ten gigabytes of animated and non-animated pornography.

Hardly something that could bring a dirt-grubbing civilization all the way to the stars, right?

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All that aside, Jeru done pretty well for himself, considering.

Ever since Jeru had slain the leader of the Ihulian Horde, ever since he’d been anointed as Champion of Adrijanopolj, he’d pretty much had the run of the city. And he’d been busy, too, putting that fine mind to use. I’d seen the new aqueduct going up, the drains being dug and the clay pipes being laid down. The intricate system of pulleys and cranes at the docks, the great pits for the disposal of the city’s filth…

The last I heard, they’d been raising a dam - a magnificent, grey-walled thing with bronze-cast water screws - to irrigate the pleasure-gardens favored by the priests of the Hundred. Normally, incipient corruption meant a project like that would’ve ground on for years, but Jeru’s easy charm, implacable will and obvious power had a way of overcoming obstacles like that.

And then there were the informers, of course. The whisperers, keeping one finger on the pulse of the city, ready to whisk away dissenters and troublemakers. He’d nipped at least one potential uprising (against the strange foreigner who’d come from nowhere, and wormed his way so quickly into the city-father’s good graces) in the bud like that, without fuss.

They’d been keeping tabs on me too, of course. Never obstructively (for I was the Chosen of Tauruskhan, after all) but enough that I made sure to drink, carouse and whore my way across Adrijanopolj until they were satisfied I was no threat.

You might call it a miracle of low expectations, but I had to work hard to do that. Do you know how hard it is to keep it up for nearly a month? Especially when you can’t get drunk? Let me tell you, it makes you feel like an imposter.

At some point it becomes more a chore than anything else - You start going through the motions, surrounded by strangers made into absolute cretins by drink. Then, it’s all you can do to keep up the facade of good cheer as you make for the door.

Between the two of us, I think he was having more fun.

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Speaking of fun, Jeru wasn’t afraid to act swiftly and decisively, either. Call it a general program of social improvement, if you will - He certainly did.

For instance, the Sacred Capital had always been lousy with cults. They were a recurring problem, abducting the occasional victim off the streets for bloody-handed sacrifices and awful rites, forever skulking in the shadows to accomplish their obscure objectives.

He’d come down on them like a hammer, declaring them a blight that needed to be purged. Most thought it was rhetoric, until a series of highly-publicized raids had cleared out the worst of them over the course of a few bloody weeks.

Generous bounties had been raised on targets of opportunity, to encourage both whistle-blowing and independent action from mercenaries and soldiers of fortune - Hell, I’d collected on a few of those, and promptly blown all that silver in a series of revels.

After all, it wasn’t like I could take it with me. For all I knew, the next world ran solely on barter.

The genius of it, though, was that this was only the public face. Jeru’s real target had been his rivals on the Deliberative, the assembly of nobles and moneyed interests that exerted outsize influence on Adrijanopolj.

He’d been preparing for this, you see. He knew everyone, and everything about everyone. He romanced their mistresses and bought off their servants; Given the amount of coin, of influence he had, that wasn't hard.

So when the time came, under the guise of the Breaking of the Cults, they had nowhere left to run. Hiding places. Secret tunnels. Escape routes and sanctuaries. Old debts that might just mean salvation…All of it useless when the moment came, because Jeru was already there, lying in wait.

At any rate, in less than a month, everyone who needed to die ended up in the grave. That turned out to be remarkably few, surprisingly - Jeru was more of a surgeon than a butcher, and only cut away the most stubborn tissue. Still, that meant almost two hundred people died, most of them in the span of a single week.

He’d always been a big believer in following through, I guess, and once he got started he didn’t see any reason to stop.

By the time the dust had settled, Jeru was more than the city’s champion. He was something along the lines of its First Citizen, the real power behind the throne. Sure, the priests of the Hundred Great Gods still met on the Eöthic Council, and there still was a King…But increasingly, they deferred to him.

Frankly, they were scared shitless of him.

Don’t think the change was for the worse, those. By the end of the year, Adrijanopolj was a nicer place to live. Crime was down, business was booming, and girls were being allowed in the temple-schools. Things were looking good, for the Festival of Ascension…

Until the faithful of Pa’quan had fucked it all up.

----------------------------------------

I’m not sure what I was expecting from him. An explanation, maybe - “Ah, my friend, I was busy pleasing two goddesses at the time. Given such beauteous companions, surely a man can be forgiven for such a lapse?”

Maybe he’d get angry, and I’d finally see a crack in that unflappable calm of his - “Those responsible will suffer for this, I assure you. Of that, you can be certain.”

Or he would shrug it off as an honest failure of his - “If the gods failed to see it coming, how could I?”

At this point, it wouldn’t change things. But any of the three would’ve satisfied my curiosity, and probably been highly amusing in the process.

Instead-

Silence.

It stretched between us, like the yawning void on all sides of the apex of the platinum tower.

“What?” I said, into the stillness, my gaze fixed on Jeru’s coolly serene face. “Come on, don’t leave me hanging. I thought-”

He didn’t answer. But his smile grew a little sharper, those eyes - piercing, mesmerizing - shifting subtly, ever-so-subtly, in aspect.

Something, tickling at the back of my mind. Slowly, like a dim bulb flickering to life, I felt understanding trickle down my spine.

And I realized-

"Oh fuck," I said. “You knew-”

His features may as well have been carved out of graven stone.

“-I suspected.”

The small spark of anger in my chest, the one I'd long-thought buried, flared with sudden heat.

“Then-” I felt my fingers twitch, aching to curl into a fist. A sudden hot stab of phantom pain pulsed through my skull, the words I thought I had forgotten surging up from within.

“Then why didn’t you stop it? Why, for pity’s sake?”

Jeru’s eyebrows rose, just a hair.

“You surprise me, Morgan. I was under the impression you lacked the capacity to care.” A thought seemed to strike him, then, and his blonde ponytail swayed in time to his next drawn breath. “A sliver of conscience, perhaps?”

“Oh, I’m full of surprises,” I ground out, like I was chewing rocks. “Now tell me.”

He considered this, for a moment. Doing some last-minute calculus, maybe, about how this might tip the balance in his favor. Once Jeru had (I assumed) added up the numbers, made the correction to his mental spreadsheet, he said, very simply:

“The Eöthic Council would give anything to save the city.”

A pause.

“-They did.”

“Jesus.” I said, as I took a step back. “Jesus, and I thought I was a bastard.”

I’d half-turned to my right, like I couldn’t resist taking another sidelong glance at the city below. At the rivers of flame spilling across the vast, dark field of the Adrijanopolj. This high up, you couldn’t make out any details, but you could still get a sense of the chaos of it…A kicked ant-hill, a model city driven mad and set alight.

The flamelight flickered across Jeru’s impassive features, washing across his burnished, mirror-polished plate. He sighed, lightly, and the stylized bestiary that adorned his armor seemed to move with him. Serpents writhing, birds swept aloft, the great beasts of land and sea locked in primal combat.

“I thought you, of all people, would understand,” he said. “This world is but one of many. We are but transient guests, at best.” The jeweled bangles affixed to either side of Jeru’s helm - beaded strands, almost like earrings - chimed, faintly, in time to his words.

“Surely you didn’t think you’d be alone in your plunder?”

“No, no. I get that.” I shook my head, still disbelieving. “It’s just that…You were building the city back up, and all that. I thought you were re-”

A rushing like breaking waves, a surge of wings-

I drew Oneira’s gun, smooth and fast, the barrel coming up in the same swift motion. The gun’s heft and balance was intimately familiar, down to the tiny digits blinking 04 on the digital display.

Jeru was already airborne, already swooping across the narrow distance with speed beyond measure. Each titanic wingbeat churned the air, void-edged pinions moaning as they swept him forward in a furious surge of motion.

Even with Vairocana’s blessing, even with His boon of surety and perception, Jeru was almost too quick for the eye to follow. A speed-distorted phantom, visible only by the rippling wake of his passage.

For one frozen instant before impact, I glimpsed his helm closing over his head like a golden casket. That great spear snapped out, just a blur, flickering into invisibility as it drove at me-

Lightning blasted the clouds, and lighting blasted the world away.

TO BE CONTINUED