"In a power-hungry, power-worshipping society, men label themselves atheist."

― Ernest Hemingway

Chapter 3: The House of the Brother

The temple-monastery of Rastuvia, one year ago:

They were skinning the priest, and they were skinning him slow.

From within the sacristy, I could hear his gurgling screams. His face pushed down into his own blood, his skin flayed away one strip at a time, I had no idea how the poor bastard was still awake.

Lit by crackling flame, the warrior-dervishes of Vairocana seemed like howling apes, dancing and punishing, capering in frenzied victory. The flashing edges of their obsidian knives rose and fell in delirious arcs, plied against soft flesh. The grunts and squeals of pain they evoked were hoggish, mindless, barely even human-

If I cared to look closely, I might have identified the trophies they were taking.

I didn’t.

The meditation-garden of the monastery’s cloister had been made into a cage, of sorts. The long shafts of spears and pole-arms had been stabbed blade-down into the earth, each a hand’s breadth from the next. Chains of brass had been lashed around them, midway and at the top, to keep them true.

Together, they staked out a circle roughly thirty feet across, open to the swirling storm-clouds. Within, the hollow space was packed with a mound of bodies: the priests, guardians and acolytes of the Brother, those that hadn’t been butchered out of hand. Bloody, filthy, most of them unconscious, they lay in a jumble where they had been flung, like some grotesque tapestry of tangled limbs.

Some of them, the less fortunate ones, were awake. Like trapped animals, they clung to the bars, their eyes bright with mortal terror.

For they knew what was coming, and that it wouldn’t be long.

Outside the makeshift cage, the ground had been reduced to churned mud and broken stone. The careful symmetry of the garden, tended over decades, had been destroyed, deliberately and with distinct relish.

Vile improvements had been made to the statues of soldier-heroes and exemplars of the Rastuvian faith. Serene stone visages had been hacked off, to be replaced by gaping, silently-staring heads. Wretched offerings, bouquets of orphaned limbs and offal, rested in carved hands, dyeing robes arterial-red.

The great marble statue of the Brother himself had been desecrated, in a determinedly thorough way that left no doubt as to intent. In his guise as the Leader-of-All, Rastuvia’s magnificent figure towered over a host of lesser worthies. Three times life-size, his bronze sword was thrust forward in his own fist, as if directing a mighty army to sweep forth and destroy his enemies.

A body had been impaled on the forlorn deity’s verdigris-encrusted sword.

It had taken significant effort. The sword was not sharp.

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The air had become a soft blackness, tinged with red. Soot and sparks billowed up from the burning buildings on all sides, the distant screams of the harrowed and the triumphant cries of the victorious rolling out of the dark.

With the last defenders overcome, the true horror was only just beginning in earnest. By the time the Ihulian Horde moved on, no stone would stand on stone, and only charred ruins would mark their passage.

The mercenary bowmen of the Ral Partha were looting the dead. Worshipers of Golag the Monger, they revered wealth above all else. They’d been the ones to introduce me to the wonders and horrors of the Soul Market, where the essence of deceased debtors were traded like grain.

According to their esoteric faith, the goal of life was to gather slaves to serve them in the After-Death. After all, you only live once, while death is forever and all-consuming. From their view, it was best to claw and scrabble for what wealth you could now, because you had all of eternity to enjoy the fruits of your labour.

Or lack thereof, as it might be.

And so polished silver armor was stripped from the limp bodies of the fallen, the lining of boots slit open for hidden coins. Rings were cut from fingers, gold fillings prised from teeth, as the sounds of plunder and destruction echoed hollowly in the distance.

I’d done some looting of my own, of course. My belt-pouch was filled with gems, pulled from the resplendent sarcophagi and reliquaries of the ancestor-shrines. Vairocana’s followers had exhumed the honored dead, to scatter their bones to the wind or to burn them anew on pyres.

They cared nothing for gold and jewellery, which they’d tossed aside or trod underfoot, even as they fed the flames with scrolls and illuminated manuscripts from the sacred Library of Ikaroi.

All things considered, I felt like I’d earned it. I’d used the last of my grenades in the final assault, and there was (of course) no hope of ever getting more. Without them, the horde would’ve lost hundreds more whilst storming the fortress, giving victory a distinctly Pyrrhic feel.

Then there were the Reversi to consider. The protectors of the monastery’s last redoubt had been living nightmares, towering head-and-shoulders over the bandit spearmen fighting desperately to bring them down.

Two-headed, four-armed monstrosities, the Reversi were conjoined twins, endowed with all the blessings of Rastuvia. According to legend, their mothers were fed a steady diet of elixirs and drugs to ensure that they were spawned with the sacred symmetry so beloved by the God of Accord.

With their faces hidden behind painted masks, one contorted in fury, one serene, their limbs bristling with thrice-blessed weapons, the sanctified horrors had stood firm against nearly eight times their number. In the span of a few furious minutes, they’d hewed their way through dozens of men, curved blades reaping a vicious tally of lives.

All the while, javelins, arrows and sling-stones had ricocheted hopelessly from their god-forged armor. Curses and invocations to the Horde’s petty gods had fluttered from them, harmless as petals, even as their hissing blades cut limbs from torsos, bodies from shoulders, heads from stumps…

-Until I shot them, of course.

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The Furstenburg was a tried-and-tested gun, a hefty double-barreled squad support weapon. Developed from the ubiquitous pulse repeater favored by the Alarian Commonwealth, it was the heaviest firearm that could be legally owned on the frozen hellscape of Dolor.

Mass-printers had churned them out in their thousands, to deal with (at first) the planet’s viciously hostile biome. Later, the threat of the unquiet dead and the Cold Ones had brought the decades-old design back into fashion.

While the assault rifle and carbine formats were more popular, the Furstenburg’s reliability and ease of maintenance spoke for itself. Pound-for-pound, solid-ammunition weapons (particularly the impact rounds developed by Munzer Arms) had greater stopping power, but pulse munitions were exceptional at shredding the reanimated corpses of Dolor’s dead.

It was, of course, at least four thousand years ahead of anything the greatest armorers of Phosphiach had ever imagined.

I was staggering, delirious with exhaustion and the blood-red haze of battle, by the time I got close enough to open fire. Covered in blood and grave-dust, ears ringing with the clash of iron and the screams of the dying, I remember seeing my own spit drooling out on dusty red marble and brick as I lurched into the fight.

My arms had felt like twigs, as I pointed my gun at the nearest of the Reversi and squeezed the trigger.

It didn’t matter.

The relentless pummel of one thousand rounds a minute cut the first one in half. It fell, still smoking from repeated impacts, and I emptied the rest of the magazine into the second before the charge ran dry. The cone of death chewed through scripture-etched armor, ripping through the four-armed giant’s guts, coring it out from within.

I was shaking so badly, it took me almost a full minute to fumble in a fresh charge pack. Longer, to start firing again. It was well worth the wait, though. I unloaded so hard on the Reversi, they turned to nothing but flying body parts and bloody spray, torn apart by the roaring storm of shots.

That, I think, was enough to break the few defenders that remained. Not just the death of two of Rastuvia’s most-favored sons, but the awful, abrupt nature of it.

They knew, with the surety of soldiers fighting for a lost cause, that they couldn’t fight that.

That the day was lost, and their lives were lost with it.

In the face of the blaring gun, the fiery bolts of cyclic pulse fire searing through the night, they faltered…And then the berserker-saints of Vairocana were upon them, laughing as they killed. The rest of the Ihulian Horde found new strength, surging forward with the momentum that leads to overwhelm, and-

Well, you can guess the rest.

Suffice to say that it was a vision of violence fully-realized, of point-blank savagery I hoped never to see again. Within the nave of the holy-of-holies, the blood was literally ankle-deep in places before it could drain away.

Sometimes, I’m surprised by how alien other worlds can be. Not just in the obvious sense, of course, but in how utterly atavistic they can be.

As a wise man once said, the past is a different country. But, more than anything else, the presence of countless Gods had deformed Phospiach. It had grown permanently, violently out of sync with anything resembling the sensibilities of the Earth I knew, in ways both subtle and gross.

Sacrifice had become a virtue. The murder of heretics, a sacrament. Humanism in its most fundamental form had been replaced by the need to please one’s patron deity. Anything, and I mean anything, could be justified by that single imperative, the rewards of divine favor overriding all else.

Phospiach. Great place to visit, not so great to live.

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Skakoan the Wayward was the first through the breach. Gore streaming from his great axe, he sang paens to the Frenzied One as he tore down the bound-arrows banner of Rastuvia, brandishing the ragged flag like a trophy.

Wild-eyed, possessed by furious mirth, Skakoan was laughing so hard he wept, tears tracking down his cheeks. There was something almost childlike in his glee, his face twisting in a great leer as he trampled over the dead.

“Brother to none!” he jeered, lifting the severed head of a centurion-theurge by the hair. “Where is your God now? Where is your God now?”

Cheers greeted his words as he flung his arms wide, bull chest heaving.

“Burn this place!” Skakoan roared, his hulking silhouette badged with scars. “Burn it all!”

The half-beast warriors of Dora and the axemen of the Wutrim streamed past him, hungry for plunder, drunk on blood-

And in all the confusion, I limped away.

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The pool that lay before the tall statue of Rastuvia was clear, the waters sparkling aquamarine. In His aspect of the Loyal Companion, the god looked down from above, carved lips curved in a benevolent smile. No weapons, this time: Instead, His hands were open and empty, extended in the universal symbol of peace.

I splashed water onto my face and chest, sluicing bloodstained hands through the blessed font, until I was as clean as I was going to get. Once the rush of adrenaline had died away, I’d been heartily sick in a corner of the temple. Even now, I could still taste the vomit at the back of my throat, my head pounding with the beginnings of a migraine.

That’s what happens when the fighting stops. The magnitude of what you’ve survived, what you’ve done, catches up with you. It’s like a hangover, like the scratchy comedown after a high, and it churns in your gut like battery acid. Sometimes, it’s all you can do to get it out.

I’d like to say there’s no shame in that, but I think there is.

Despite my reworking, despite the many worlds I’ve crossed, there are times when I feel like a pretender. Someone soft as putty, trying his best to be hard.

I’ve never been brave, not really. In the heat of the moment, with my blood pumping and my fists flying, I can forget that.

But after…After is another story.

After is when the doubts creep in. The terrifying sense of dislocation, the frantic voice that comes from that deep, dark place inside.

How am I here? What am I doing?

What now?

Sometimes, it’s hard to remember the life I once had, before all this. The life of steady, stultifying monotony, the trajectory of my existence defined by the eternal orbit of work, home and family.

As predictable as it was suffocating. Like drowning, ever-so-slowly, in body-warm water.

Was I unhappy? I don’t think so. There’s a comfort in the familiar, the mundane, that we take for granted. We don’t realize what we have, until it’s gone.

But I had wanted more, or at least something else.

Nothing and no-one forced me through that first, all-important portal. In fact, I had every reason to stay. After all, I wasn’t fleeing debt or disaster or heartbreak. I wasn’t the one facing the impossible choice between living a lie or the apocalypse of the truth.

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Not like my sister.

The portal was meant for her, really. Even now, the thought fills me with a kind of weary resentment. She’d always been smarter, more hard-working, more gifted. Like Dad, the man who’d hauled himself up by his own bootstraps, May had been the driven one, seized by the need to make the most of her life.

As for me, I’d been content to coast. To take the path of least resistance, knowing that I always had the security of family to fall back upon. Only to realize, too late, that wasn’t what I actually wanted.

By the time I found the portal, it looked wrong. Wavering, on the verge of dissolution, it was a fading bloom of rose fire, about to collapse upon itself. It hurt to pass through, hurt enough to make me wonder if it was all a terrible mistake-

But I’d made it. I’d made it, and I would never, could never, go back.

That’s all it takes, really. Each time I falter, every time I feel the sickening lurch of doubt, I tell myself:

This is what you wanted, Morgan.

Don’t be a pussy.

Over and over, as long as it takes. Until all uncertainty fades in a haze of dimly intuited rebirth, and I am myself again. The version of myself that I’ve always, in my heart of hearts, have always wanted to be.

For a time.

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“-What troubles you, infidel?”

That voice, like flint scraping steel, froze me in my tracks. I turned, exaggeratedly casual, wiping my hands on stained leggings. Caked with dried gore and the unspeakable filth of the battlefield, it did nothing at all except to make them dirty all over again.

“Nothing at all,” I lied, as I seated myself on the lip of the font. The cold stone felt good beneath me, something solid to cling to after the day’s feverish excesses.

There’s nothing like a little death to make you feel more alive.

I made a show of stretching, rolling my shoulders to work out the ache. “Just wondering if we were done here, that’s all,” I said, like it didn’t matter. As if everything I’d seen, everything I’d done, was just another day at the office.

“After all, I’ve held up my end of the bargain, haven’t I?” I forced a bluff, easy confidence into every word. The conquering hero, atop a pile of the dead. “More than that, even. But then again…Isn’t that always the way?”

It sounded false, even to me. But then again, I’d never been truly comfortable around Vairocana’s apostles.

Kayla was no exception.

Her family’s farm had been put to the torch by soldiers from the army of Vash’ro, during one of the countless brushfire wars fought between petty warlords. Apparently, it was all a tragic misunderstanding: Their target was actually a village ten miles over, which had declared for the other side.

Still, the soldiers had been thorough. Kayla had seen her parents and her younger brother hanged from the trees of their orchard, her neighbors and friends put to the sword. As for her, she’d been pretty enough to warrant a stay of execution. Long enough, at least, to entertain the men for a few hours.

When they were done with her, they’d slit her throat and left her to die in the burning farmhouse, marching off under their bound-arrows banner.

Against all odds, Kayla had survived, even if she hadn’t really wanted to. For weeks after, she lived like an animal, blank-eyed and clothed in rags, driven beyond the limits of human sanity. What remained of her was a tabula rasa, a soul upon which nothing was written.

Seac the Raven, Enlightened of Vairocana, had found her. Emptied out by all she had endured, it was easy enough for the Raven to reforge her in his image.

She never found the ones who ruined her life. But tormenting those who marched under the flag of Rastuvia, who fought in His name, was sufficient to give her some kind of peace.

Over the course of four years, Kayla had killed almost three hundred people. She’d done for most of them with the jagged swords she favoured, but she’d accounted for a distressingly large number of them with her bare hands.

Can you imagine doing that? No pulverizing gauntlets or enhanced strength. Just her scarred and calloused hands, gouging, choking, strangling. Watching limbs thrash, faces going first purple, then black, from slow suffocation.

It takes hate to do that. True hate, as rare as true love.

She called me 'infidel', because I could never believe, not truly. My faith could only ever be transactional, mercenary, as much I may have wished otherwise. I lacked the capacity to truly open myself to the Gods, to cast myself into their hands, to be reshaped like clay according to their whims. Like the greater mass of humanity, some instinct, some deeply-buried urge for self-preservation, would always hold me back.

Faith, true faith, meant absolute surrender. To give up one's agency, to become a tool, an extension, an appendage of a greater being. To accept another will subsuming your own, and all that came with it.

Well, I'd seen what true faith could do, in a world of Gods.

And I wanted nothing to do with that.

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I won’t mince words. Kayla was a hideous thing, her skin webbed with the residue of near-fatal burns. The scars that had come after were layered on top of the earlier damage, but it was the aftermath of the great, throat-opening slash that drew the eye, that captured the imagination. You could see how deep the cut had been, how close it’d come to beheading her.

Somehow, she hadn’t lost her faculty for speech. But her voice was and would always be an ugly, rasping thing now. Like some ancient hide-scraper of a knife, being whetted on leather.

The worst part was, it didn’t trouble her at all. You could see it in what remained of her broad, dark face, a face that was never angry or sad. Nothing phased her, not any more: She laughed easily and spoke freely, and could kill as easily as she breathed.

In her line of work, that was a quality to be cherished. It marked her as most favored in the eyes of the Frenzied One, blessed in His sight. And no, that wasn’t a metaphor: In a world of gods, such things were nearly always to be taken literally.

There was no hesitation to Kayla, no capacity for fear or doubt, and she could commit the most atrocious acts of violence without warning. She never killed without reason, mind you. Sure, Kayla looked like a monster, but she wasn’t one.

Not quite. Or at least, not yet.

She scared the shit out of me, all the same.

I was fairly confident I could take her in a fight. She was, after all, only human…

But I went out of my way to make sure there was never, ever a reason for one.

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“Hmmmm.”

At my words, her gaze fixed on me. Weighing me with those dark eyes, as I fussed with my rifle’s sling and tried to look at ease.

The silence stretched between us, for a long, dreadful moment. Too long, almost, as Kayla’s unblinking eyes bored into me. There was a faintly distracted, distant air to her, as if listening to some voice only she could hear.

I was half-afraid that if I tried, really tried, I would hear it too.

Abruptly, she smiled. Yellow teeth, flecked with blood, set in glistening pink gums.

“The God approves,” Kayla said, whisper-soft, as her eyes resolved back into full focus. “Vairocana the Culler, Eater-of-Weak-Meat, is pleased by what we have done today.” There was a subtle edge to her words now, working under my skin like a dagger between ribs.

“-What you have wrought, infidel.”

Now I had to look away, from that knowing gaze. For the Frenzied One’s apostles, you see, the act alone was never enough. It wasn’t just about what you’d done, they wanted you to consider why you’d done it.

To be perfectly, entirely aware of what you’d been a party to.

Vairocana can be a bastard like that.

“Yeah, well…” I said, keeping my voice carefully level. “I’m glad He’s happy.”

There was no point, after all, in rising to the bait. After all, Kayla didn’t care, not really. I don’t think she had the capacity to care about anything, not any more, other than doing Vairocana’s will.

Slaying His enemies. Getting His truth out. Preaching, in word and in deed, of the enlightenment that could only be found at the heart of carnage.

Everything else had been burned out of her, a long time ago.

“So service is its own reward?”

I laughed, involuntarily, the sound scraping at my dust-dry throat. “Don’t tell Oloin that,” I said, with a wince. “He’ll never let me hear the end of it.”

If anything, Kayla’s smile widened. She’d always found the venal old Godbinder amusing, for some reason. I think he must have reminded her of someone, I suppose. A beloved uncle, maybe, or some crotchety grandfather.

“-True,” she conceded. “You are resolved, then?”

I shrugged. “Now’s as good a time as any, I suppose. Tell me.”

She shut her eyes. Just for an instant - But when they opened again, something in them made my hair stand on end.

“The Eye of Vairocana opens,” Kayla said, in her rasping whisper of a voice. “The Frenzied One holds you in His gaze. Certainty is His to bestow: Look to Him when life meets death, for all shall be made clear.”

She pressed her scarred hand to her chest, making it a heart-truth.

“When the dead lie broken before you, when the savor of their last breaths rises like mist, know that surety shall be yours. Your hands shall be sure, your heart unwavering, your strike as absolute as His own blade. So speaks the God, and so shall it be.”

No great visitation came to me, no rush of otherworldly power. No crack of thunder; No single, gazing eye. All I felt was the weight of her words descending, laden with a significance that blotted out all else.

I waited, until the last echo of her words died away. A moment, then a moment more, until I was certain that nothing else was forthcoming.

Into the looming silence, I said:

“And…the other thing?”

Right on cue, I felt my stomach cramping, reminding me that I hadn’t eaten in hours. The sensation of perpetual hunger, of being hollowed-out from within, was a near-constant companion now. Puking my guts out had only made it worse.

Kayla’s face was as serene as a graven statue’s.

“Vaircona will not help you. The sickness that devours you from within is your burden to bear, not His.”

Fuck, I thought, acid churning in my guts. Fucking Vaircona.

I knew it couldn’t be so easy. That the one thing I’d wanted above all else wouldn’t come cheap.

Fucking Gods, they’ll screw you over every time.

Story of my life, really. One step forward for every two back.

“Great,” I said. “That’s great. Really, it is. Praise Vaircona, and all the rest. Now if you’ll excuse me-”

I heaved myself to my feet, fighting the urge to spit. All that blood and thunder, and I was back to square one. No closer to a cure, with no idea where to even start.

It wasn’t a complete waste of time, I tried to tell myself. I was walking away with Vaircona’s blessing, a pouch full of purloined jewels, and a coat of lamellar scales stripped from the mummified corpse of Lord-Prophet Vukyelt, first and greatest warlord of Accord.

But all I could taste was bitterness.

For I was dying, and that was all there was to it.

Kayla watched, as I stood. Looked on without a word, as I scraped my boots clean against the intricate mosaics detailing Rastuvia’s birth and greatest triumphs. It was a petty thing to do, but given the screams and wails that rang through the fire-lit night, I’m sure she appreciated the sentiment.

A thought struck me, as I shouldered my pack, tucking my battered helm under one arm.

“What’s next? For you, I mean.”

She blinked once, solemn, as if contemplating the question. Then-

“Adrijanopolj,” Kayla said, at last. Her hands settled on the hilts of her saw-toothed sabres, her fingers tracing the kill-markers on the notched grips. “For too long, the Hundred have believed the Sacred Capital to be their own.”

The firelight glimmered, on her scorched-clean teeth. “The God has tasked us with disabusing them of that notion.”

I whistled. That sounded like a long-shot, at best. Adrijanopolj was a Rome, a Constantinople, the temporal home of at least a score of war-gods. On that count alone, they had the Horde outnumbered by at least ten to one.

Man-to-man, the actual odds were even more appalling. Eulisia had told me as much: How the stalwarts of the Jackal Legion and the remorseless cataphracts of the Mourners had taken less than a week to crush Pa’quan’s failed revolt. Men and women fleeing, screaming, ridden down by cavalry, falling beneath a rain of merciless black spears…

They’d been going easy on the peasants, focusing on chastisement over decimation. After all, someone was needed to plough the fields and raise grain.

It didn’t take much imagination to see what would happen, once the Ihulian horde ran head-first into the armies of the Hundred Great Gods.

“You know it’s suicide, right?” I said, frankly. “Attacking the Sacred Capital…You’ll lose thousands, and that’s if you win. You probably won’t even-”

I stopped, mid-sentence, silenced by Kayla’s look. Her expression was patient as stone, ever-so-slightly puzzled, like she couldn’t understand why that was a problem.

“You are a strange man, infidel,” she said, quietly. “You tell yourself that you were made for this life, for conquest, for war…And yet you fear it, with every fiber of your being. It is fear that rules you, that has always ruled you, the way a rider masters his steed. Why, then, do you persist?”

The full weight of her regard was a palpable force, enough to make my skin crawl, my gut clench with an abrupt unease. For it felt like there was someone else looking out at me through Kayla’s eyes, and I knew that might even be true.

All of a sudden, the quiet of the sacristy felt suffocating, like the walls were closing in.

I didn’t have an answer. Not for her, and certainly not for Vaircona. Instead, I simply shook my head, trudging down the aisle towards the distant flames. Absently, I wondered where Oloin had gone off to: While he’d have given the assault a wide berth, I had no doubt he’d be first in line when it came to picking over the spoils.

I was about halfway to the door, when Kayla spoke.

“There are other Gods, you know,” she said, low. Thoughtfully, as if contemplating distant possibilities. “Soon, it will be summer on the steppes. Tauruskhan, the Horned Conqueror, stirs. His blood runs hot: The spirits whisper of war and worship.”

I didn’t slow. After the Grand Guignol I’d just survived, I had no intention of plunging headfirst into another brushfire conflict. I’d had my fill of fighting, at least for now, and more than enough treasure to squander magnificently over the next few months.

Maybe Alistair was right, I thought. There’s no end to this shit, is there?

“The Iron Hoof is more than just a god of battle,” that rasping, charred voice went on. “His people call upon him for fortitude. For fertility.” Flickering orange light dappled the flagstones underfoot.

“-For healing.”

I stopped, mid-stride, rifle slung over one shoulder, my pack the other.

“The steppes,” I said, carefully, “-are a long way away from here.”

“Your life is measured in months rather than years, infidel. For a man in your circumstances, you seem remarkably reluctant to grasp at what hope is offered.” Kayla shrugged, as if it was of no matter. “Oloin has kin, there. Enough, perhaps, to grant you an audience.”

She had a point. I turned it over in my head, weighing what was against what might be…

No-one’s as smart as they believe themselves to be. In fact, many people are flat-out dumb. Of course, I don’t exclude myself from that category. The difference, I like to think, is that I know how stupid I can be, on occasion.

Or maybe I’m just fooling myself.

“What’s your angle?” I said, and she frowned, uncomprehending. “I mean, what do y - Does Vaircona stand to gain from this?”

There was a moment’s pause. A contemplative silence…Or the deadly stillness of a snake, before it struck? It was hard to tell. The long-ago fire that had claimed Kayla had obliterated any warnings of such.

I felt the silent pressure of her gaze on the gun. Not the solid weight of the Furstenburg, but Oneira’s gun, the one I’d carried with me from the very beginning.

And at last, she said-

“Who knows? Every man has but one destiny.”

I waited, to see if she had more to say. But when I turned back, Kayla had put me out of her mind entirely. Her gaze was fixed on the great statue of Rastuvia, her scarred and burned features upturned, like a penitent in prayer.

I wondered what she saw, when she looked upon Him. The architect of all her suffering? The web of cause and effect that summoned her here, to this holiest of places?

Perhaps all she saw was the idol of an enemy god, ripe for defilement. For in the end, what else mattered?

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That was the last time I ever saw her.

The Ihulian Horde, as you know, came to a bloody end at the Battle of Zemrun Pass. Just like I’d predicted, the assembled army of the Hundred Great Gods massed against them, a wall of iron that thousands of men broke themselves against.

By itself, that would probably have been enough. But what tore the heart out of the Horde, that put a brutal end to any hope of bloodlust and weight of numbers carrying the day, was something they couldn’t possibly have expected.

It was Jeru Ogai who slew High-Warlord Zarrak Warbringer, as well as his sons Brakka the Scarless, Vorgul Death-clutch, and Lokar the Pitiless. He accounted for all four of them in a single bout of accelerated combat, a feat made more complicated by the hundreds of men all trying to get at him.

Jeru made it out, of course. He was just that kind of guy.

During the Triumph held for him, he rode at the head of the army, in a chariot pulled by white lions. No slave to whisper “Remember, thou art mortal” in his ear, not here. The only voices he heard that day came from the gods Themselves.

I was in the crowd, of course. I hadn’t announced myself as Tauruskhan’s champion, not yet, but I’d wanted to get a look at the competition. We would meet a few weeks later, once I’d sorted things out, but even then he’d seemed invincible.

I remember thinking, even then: He’s going to be a problem.

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I never looked into it, but I know Kayla and all of Vaircona’s apostles died out there. Locked in mortal combat, as life rushed out and death rushed in.

Hands around necks.

Teeth in throats.

We weren’t friends. We weren’t even close. At best, we were aligned in the same direction, like two arrows in a fusillade. After all, Kayla was an awful thing, an empty vessel filled by the whispers of a remorseless God.

By the standards of Earth, she would be considered insane. On Phosphiach, however, she was enlightened on a level that few could ever hope to match.

Not that it did her much good, in the end. Vaircona cared nothing for His tools so long as His will was done, and so He’d sent His apostles to the slaughter.

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I wonder about that, sometimes.

I wonder if the purpose of Kayla’s life, the torment, the horror, the trauma, was to position me with the cold calculation of a piece being moved across a game board. To ensure that, on the Day of Ascension, I would scale the heights of the Platinum Spire itself.

That I would one day, with hands made steady by Vaircona’s own calm, fire a gun from another world directly into Jeru Ogai’s face.

No, we weren’t close. But I think of her, sometimes.

The Gods rest you, Kayla Born-of-Flame.

Whatever you were looking for, I hope you found it.

TO BE CONTINUED