“I distrust those people who know so well what God wants them to do, because I notice it always coincides with their own desires.”

― Susan B. Anthony

Chapter 7: The Battle of Dalat (Part I)

You’d think that being Tauruskhan’s exalted champion, His anointed and sanctified weapon, would have come with a respect befitting my status. Men bowing and scraping, maybe. Women falling at my feet.

As it turned out, it wasn’t quite like that.

At best, what I got was a kind of great and apprehensive interest. Before, my manly virtues - Strength, a certain aptitude at breaking faces, the ability to endure wholly disproportionate amounts of punishment - had bought me respect from the tribesmen.

Now, however, the few I saw treated me with a mix of awe and wary caution.

Not that I had a chance to meet many of them, of course. After my ordeal, the Temple of Krata, carved from the living stone of the sacred Firepeaks, became my new home. Careful divination had narrowed down the fated time to a matter of weeks after the autumnal equinox, and there was much to do in the months that remained.

Even with God-granted healing, even with the flesh-ward, it took me almost a while to recover. Now, you might think that I would be feasted and feted constantly, and I was kind of hoping for the same. Instead, I spent almost the entire time getting something of a crash course in thaumaturgy, mostly under the tutelage of High Priest Praya himself.

It was, to my surprise, mostly practical. Praya was a no-nonsense man, refreshingly straightforward. He knew that the task ahead was the culmination of everything up to this point, the thing Tauruskhan desired above all else, and you best believe he was sweating bullets to make sure I was up to the challenge.

Obviously, I was highly-motivated. My life was on the line, after all. I was in it to win it, and all those other old chestnuts. I couldn’t skate by on mere survival alone, not this time. I actually had to come out on top, or I could kiss any chance of a cure good-bye.

Fortunately, the subject was a fascinating one. In brief, I now held within me a pool of divine power. Unlike a priest, who had to pray and chant and make the appropriate invocations to call upon Tauruskhan’s might, I could simply channel His essence through the gifts that had been bestowed upon me.

Much faster. Much more efficient. Way less waving of hands and incense-burning.

Even better, with Tauruskhan’s attention fixed firmly on me, the pool was a self-renewing one. I didn’t have to offer up sacrifices or spend hours in prayer to renew my connection to the source. As long as I lived, as long as our pact remained intact, the Bull-God would keep on pumping me full of carefully-hoarded power, limited only by the amount I could hold at once.

It would take time to replenish my reserves, of course. If too much divine fire was poured into me at once, I’d go up in flames. Sure, my enhanced form meant that I could take more than, say, a warrior-priest of Tauruskhan…But it was better not to red-line the engine unless I absolutely had to.

Still, this was a rare chance to spend someone else’s money, and I intended to take as much advantage as I could.

Some of the God’s gifts would come easily. There’s a reason why warriors pray for strength and stamina, they’re so fundamental that it’s hard to go wrong with them. As a matter of fact, pretty much any problem can be resolved with sufficient brute force.

Others, however, would require study and instruction to unlock. The unstoppable charge, the war-cry that ruptured eardrums and shattered wills alike…You needed to get into a certain mindset to use them, to draw upon what lay within.

Like learning to drive, or doing a trust fall. Once you figure out the trick of it, you never forget.

There was, however, no way to test the gift I’d chosen over all the others.

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Now, if I’d been of the blood of Tulgar, things might have been different. My family would have been showered with all honors, my lineage marked for greatness. Instead, Chieftain Shahin knew I wouldn’t be hanging around for much longer, and acted accordingly. The Graven Star had power to consolidate, after all - They were now top dog, and a host of duties awaited.

They had to plan for the future, and that future certainly didn’t include me.

I’m told that my absence was a conspicuous one. There’s a first time for everything, I suppose. More importantly, it was what my absence meant that was causing something of a stir.

You see, if I succeeded at what I was meant to do, if I actually pulled this off-

…Well, Tauruskhan would be gone forever.

If you think about it, the idea was a pretty bleak one. Sure, part of Him would remain: The Bull-God’s power was a function of the combined devotion of His supplicants. His priests and shamans would still channel that power to perform miracles by praying to His image, in much the same way Eulisia and her Strawmaidens still venerated the shade of Pa’quan.

But the greater part of Tauruskhan would depart for greener pastures, and He would leave His people behind. His priesthood would no longer commune with the Horned Conqueror in the flesh, and His people would be denied His vigilance and protection.

The God wasn’t just abandoning the Twenty-Six Tribes. He was using them as…a kind of launchpad, I guess. Centuries of worship and careful cultivation, entire generations of the faithful come and gone, and Tauruskhan was about to cash in His chips and walk away from the table.

And, to really stretch this already-strained metaphor, I’d be hitching a ride on His wagon.

“Yet the world will continue to turn,” Praya said, after another lesson. He released a long, slow sigh, gazing into the distance - His eyes empty of all feeling, except a kind of bleak resignation. “The People will endure, as they must. And we, the Faithful, shall tend to them as we always have.”

I wondered about that. Would it be enough to sustain Praya’s already-prolonged existence? What need does an absent God have for a high priest?

I suspect Praya was thinking much the same thing. Still, even though he was very likely facing the end of everything he’d ever known, the white-bearded hierophant was surprisingly sanguine about the matter.

“I may not have been there at the beginning,” he said, in that oh-so-compelling voice of his, resonant with conviction. “-But I shall be there at the end. To see the Supreme Chieftain Ascend, to take His rightful place in the firmament…That would be my life’s purpose, fulfilled.”

And he meant it, you know. He really did.

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On Phospiach, the idea of worshiping a higher being for their moral standard, as something you strove for, had never quite taken off. Men didn’t worship the myriad Gods because they were virtuous, they worshiped them because they were demonstrably powerful.

The cultists of, say, Rhohdohr, didn’t make offerings to the Stormgod because he was a paragon of morality. They did so because He shared His lightnings with those who pleased Him, and because they were afraid He would fuck with them if they didn’t.

As you can guess, almost all the petty and not-so-petty deities were the same story. They demanded worship by dint of their power, and they got it by demonstrating what they could do.

And, you know…I’m okay with that. Really, I am.

Sure, the Gods of Phospiach were bickering and petty at best, and outright cruel and predatory at worst, but at least you knew where you stood with them. The presumption that we worship our Gods because they’re what we aspire to be…Well, to be frank, that’s something that’s never quite sat right with me.

Everyone’s got an angle. Everyone.

If someone says differently, they’re lying.

That’s my experience, anyway. I’ve been to six worlds - Seven, if you count Earth - and nothing I’ve seen has ever disabused me of that notion.

Which is why Praya’s words really got to me, shook me with their calm sincerity.

You see, Praya knew his God was about to drop him like a bad habit. He knew that his people were going to be cut loose, that they would soon face a period of strife and chaos unlike anything they’d ever known.

He knew that he, Praya, was very likely going to die. Probably in great agony, as Tauruskhan turned His face from His highest of priests, and towards the waiting heavens.

He knew all that, and Praya loved Him anyway.

That’s faith for you. Some people really do deserve a better class of God.

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In the span of eight days, I was as recovered as I was ever going to be. Not fully, of course - Sure, the healers of the Iron Hoof’s own fane had made free with their ointments and elixirs, and the scar-ward had done for the wounds they’d missed. But they only dealt with the fleshly harm I’d suffered, not the creeping degeneration that was consuming me from within.

I could feel it, now. The bouts of inexplicable dizziness that swept across me, at the least convenient of times. The beginnings of a waxy, grey pallor to my skin, the prickling numbness at my hands and feet.

I’d been briefed on this. I knew the signs.

They weren’t serious, not yet. With the proper regime of meditation and beta-correctives, the damage could be limited. I would retain my faculties for a handful of years to come, more if swift and decisive action was taken. If I submitted to decommissioning and chromatin intervention, over the span of the next few months, my prognosis was even good.

Unfortunately, I’d left the last gene-therapy lab behind, three worlds ago. There would be no half-measures, except for the light at the end of a very long tunnel.

Watch for the tremors, I told myself. When you get the shakes, you know it’s getting bad.

That would be the first indication that I was running out of time. The neurological changes, however, would be harder to detect: The anhedonia, the black moods, the bouts of hyper-aggression.

How would that interact with Tauruskhan’s blessing?

I would find out soon, I supposed. Most probably after some terrible, accidental interaction between Unity-era science, divine power and infernal sorcery fucked me over in new and exciting ways.

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As you can guess, despite my victory, I wasn’t in the best of moods. Oh, I may have pretended otherwise, with bravado...But I was tired, soul-weary, longing for something I couldn’t name.

Now and then, I thought about Lyun Ri-na, whom I’d left - abandoned - back on Unity. I like to say that I didn’t have a choice, not really. Battered, stabbed and bleeding out, it’d taken all I had left to crawl through the portal, away from Ryan Trent.

Away from death, really, because they were one and the same.

Had she survived the cataclysm that had descended on City Zero? Did House Hun-Du still rule from the White Point? For all I knew, she still dwelt - now and forever - at the Panopticon, doing what she’d been bred to do. Watching the crimson skies, that remarkable mind forever vigilant, awaiting the slightest fluctuation that threatened an infraspace breach.

I remembered that last night on Tenba, three weeks before Ryan and his insurgents made their move. She’d just emerged from a two-month cycle of de-animation, wan and drawn from the stresses of communion with the city systems. Like her fellow Augurs, part of her slipped away, each time they put her under: She was never quite the same when they brought her back.

The sensory deprivation of the experience made Ri-na restless, eager for diversion. But until her bloodwork was done, until it was clear that she had a clean bill of health, the medica wards would be her home for the foreseeable future.

In some ways, those grey, numberless days were worse than her time on ice. She dreamed of music, of crowded streets and the wind through the trees, which made the cold, quiet walls of her confinement feel all the more like a prison.

“This will never work,” Aris Marsh had told me, softly-glowing eyes sympathetic. Like me, he was delta-class, but there was no disguising his inhumanity. The overgrown gigantism of his form made him a tragic giant, his face oddly equine from his warped proportions.

“You’ll have weeks together, at best…And that’s if you’re lucky. You’ll drift apart, sooner rather than later - I’ve seen it happen. Four cycles a year, and that’s not counting the time spent in fugue…How long will you wait for her, eh? How long before you get sick of loving from afar?”

I’d listened to him. Really, I had.

Perhaps the knowledge of the obstacles, of all the barriers in the way, had made it all the more appealing to the doomed romantic in me. Familiarity, after all, breeds contempt: There’s a peculiar appeal in longing for something you know is impossible, pining for someone you can never truly know.

Mostly, it was because Ri-na was beautiful. Fair hair almost silver, pale skin smooth and flawless, her eyes grey like rain. That had been irresistible to me - She’d seemed ethereal, otherworldly, impossibly exotic. Like one of Marquis Éighir’s daughters, I suppose, though I’d never had a chance with any of them.

I remember how small she’d looked, one of my too-large shirts draped over her form as she sipped from a cup of steaming broth. Both hands curled around the mug, her pert nose wrinkling at the taste - It was a revitalizing fluid, meant to ease the distemper of awakening, but she’d always complained about the taste.

“Tell me,” she would say, her bare legs dangling over the lip of the bed. “...What made today worth living?”

It was a joke we shared, I suppose. We never talked about the future, when we were together. It was enough to take each day as it came, knowing that now was all we had. By Ri-na’s reckoning, if the day wasn’t worth getting out of bed for…Well, obviously you were doing something wrong.

“Can you have no regrets, Morgan? In this life? None at all?”

Did I love her? I don’t know, but I think I really, really wanted to. Part of me longed to feel that bittersweet mix of joy, yearning and despair that invariably came with true emotion, instead of the earthier, more visceral sensations of (say) punching someone’s head in.

I was reminded of a poem I’d heard once, a long, long time ago. A fragment, really:

A lightning flash... then night!

Fleeting beauty, by whose glance I was suddenly reborn-

Will I see you no more before eternity?

At that time, it’d seemed at the time like the height of sad sophistication, the confirmation of all my darkest, most dramatically adolescent ideas of myself and the nature of love.

Ri-na had laughed - a low, soft laugh - when I’d (in my halting, faltering way) quoted it to her. “You’re too sentimental,” she’d said, chiding me, though her smile had taken the sting from her words.

She was too good for me, and I knew it. The nature of her circumstances, her half-and-half existence, meant that she was (in her own way) desperate to be loved. To be valued, to be adored for herself, rather than for her role as a small but essential part of the city’s defenses.

Even by someone like me.

On the few days we had together, we would walk through the blue twilight, listening to the babble of the crowds above the hum of the trams and cafe music. I remember beautifully-dressed people, carefree in their lingering. Men wearing suits without ties, hand-in-hand with women in light dresses of swirling colors.

When the fountains bloomed, great plumes of water would swirl and dance, as if conjured by some invisible hand. And then there were the grand buildings themselves, all white marble veined with gold. Built not out of need, but for opulence’s own sake.

Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

For the primal, human desire to create something that would last, in a universe that did everything it could - every day - to make you feel small and insignificant.

With the enviro-shields up, you could almost forget that there was a war on.

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In a world of red skies and ecological disaster, with half the continent lost to extra-dimensional invaders, there was little room left for sentiment. New rifts opened every day: Telemetry from the few remaining satellites had located the great, growing horror of a Hive being raised over what had once been Eastern Contana.

The Maw had hewn the megastructure out of living rock. They used the distortion effect the same way we did, but with far more proficiency than any enhancile could ever hope to exert. It was, after all, second nature to them - Before the scientists of Unity stole their power, and found a way to put it in humans.

The most optimistic projections predicted a ten-year period before the Instrument, with its space-time singularity payload, could be made ready. That meant another full decade of holding actions, of the indiscriminate use of weapons of mass destruction to keep the enemy from gaining another foothold.

Lyun had known that she would never see the end of the war. Neither would I, but in a different sense: I simply wouldn’t be around long enough to see how it ended.

But an entirely different kind of doom would arrive much, much sooner, from a direction no-one had anticipated.

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The work-camps had long been City Zero’s not-so-secret shame. The devastation of the Central Rizia landmass had led to mass human flight, exacerbated by the collapse of the Carlyle Federation. Famine and disease had ravaged what remained, even as the campaign of aggressive terraforming by the Maw’s megafauna had turned the land itself against the survivors.

Near-constant atmospheric disruptions had rendered high-altitude flight nigh-impossible. Any craft that dared to venture into the upper reaches of the troposphere was doomed to be torn apart. Sometimes figuratively, by rogue meteorological phenomena, sometimes literally, by the claws and fangs of aerial predators of no known terrestrial origin.

Compared to that, oceanic travel was significantly more survivable. I heard of - but never saw - rumors of great boat-cities, made from hundreds of ships lashed together into improvised rafts. Imagine: Seaborne shanty-towns, filled with thousands of refugees, all desperate for sanctuary.

Each of the twelve Great Houses dealt with the influx in their own way. Some raised great walls and machine-gun towers, others conducted a relentless naval campaign to redirect or sink incoming ships. House Hun-Du’s stance, to put them to work, had struck me as resolutely humanist and moderate…At least at first.

You see, the catalyst required to create enhanciles could only be harvested once it had sufficiently matured. Like a parasitic fungus, it needed something to grow on, feasting on the host’s substrata until the first hair-thin filaments of raw catalyst grew through their flesh like fur.

Specifically, it needed a living host.

The regular sweeps of the work-camps and ghettos, the constant search for catalyst-sensitive individuals amongst the refugees…It had all been in the name of cold-blooded calculation, driven by the singular need to create more high-grade superhumans.

The perfect city, the house of reason where I had become my very best self, was built on human bones.

I hadn’t known, but I was complicit all the same. I hadn’t asked questions, hadn’t even considered what was being done to the families that had passed the exacting barrage of tests. Men and women had died, in great agony and by inches, to make me what I was - And I’d been blissfully oblivious, the entire time.

When Ryan found out, his rage had been unstinting. Unlike me, he'd lived amongst the refugees for months. He'd been part of their desperate exodus, crossing the ocean in a rotting hulk of thrown-together, barely seaworthy boats.

I’ve mentioned how he was telekinetic, powerfully so. He'd acquired it on his second world, where the wielders of magic battled those who channeled the powers of the mind. Ryan had picked his side, and the adepts of the Quantum had embraced him as one of their own.

The gnostic tortures and esoteric elixirs of the Horizon School had unfettered his mind, empowered deep potentials. The power of the Invisible Hand was much-feared, and it'd rapidly become Ryan's greatest asset. Sure, his telekinesis didn’t work on living things - not directly - but he’d long thought of ways around that limitation.

With a twitch of his will, he could crush you to paste within your own armor, sweep aside bullets and blades. You had to keep him distracted, overwhelm his senses to break his focus...But doing so was no small thing.

Each time I fought him, he would tear up the ground, surround himself with concentric rings of debris. They weren’t just for show, or solely for defense. He’d hurl them at you with tremendous force, like shots from an onager or rounds from a mortar, each impact comparable to an artillery shell.

Compared to that, his Zerite glaive was a more personal kind of terror. Forged from the frozen heart of an ice dragon, it wasn't just cold: It actually slowed down molecular activity around him, made existence a slow-motion nightmare. If he willed it, bullets became slow-tossed tennis balls, beams sputtering out as they lost power.

You had to fight the inertia of your own limbs to get close, and he made you suffer every step of the way.

Ryan could even fly, with some effort. He had a spell-worked cloak that let him hover, boots that let him run on air, but it was his mind that let him soar. The laws of momentum didn’t seem to apply to him: He could turn on a dime, come to a dead stop at will, his mere existence mocking the very idea of physics.

Worst of all, however, he wasn’t alone.

His previous world had been a vast boneyard, filled with the remains of long-dead titans. They were vast, incomprehensible creatures, so huge that they contained multiple souls. Even after they died, their complex, manifold spirits lingered within their corpses: First in their rotting flesh, and eventually their bones.

Crushing the bones, setting them alight, released those soul-shards from their mortal remains. Breathing in the smoke allowed you to take on aspects of their greatness, at least until the effect wore off. That meant inhuman speed, unholy strength, and the distressing ability to endure immense amounts of punishment before finally expiring.

You didn't even need to be catalyst-compatible (like I was) for the soul-smoke to do its work. All you needed was the willingness to take your life in your own hands, for the aftermath would most assuredly kill you. Some people burned up in ghostly flames that shed no heat, others would hack out their last breath along with the escaping spirits...But most just fell apart, flesh sloughing off their bones, like decay in fast-forward.

There were thousands of people in the camps, willing to do anything - Literally anything - to claw out a better life for themselves and their families. Even if it meant horrible, agonizing death.

You can see how that was a problem.

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Understand this: The refugees weren’t bad men. Rather, they were desperate, made more so by the scale of the horrors Ryan had unveiled. Every man and woman who fought alongside Ryan knew that their lives were measured in hours, for the titan-souls they’d breathed in would inevitably consume them from within.

Yet, they fought all the same. If they could just seize the catalyst, they would have true enhanciles of their own.

And, at long last, the balance of power would be readdressed.

Pound-for-pound, we were stronger than the possessed. The superhuman creation process was a comprehensive one, with full activation spanning anywhere from weeks to months - I've yet to see anything truly surpass it. But there were a lot more of them than there were of us, and they fought like demons.

When the revolt started, I saw Epilson and Zeta-class enhanciles being mobbed to death: Lions, brought down by jackals. Aris, Non and Xung did better, but the carnage was appalling. The unaugmented security forces simply couldn't stand up to that level of violence, once it became clear that bullets didn't stop the spirit-ridden.

You had to blast them apart to stop them, or tear them limb-for-limb...And neither could be done easily, or even at all.

We would learn, too late, that poisoning the host body or setting it on fire would drive out the animating spirits from the possessed. By that time, the camps had risen in general revolt, the city’s entire complement of enhanciles dispatched to crush the uprising by any means necessary.

That included me, of course.

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I was furious, then. Furious at what was happening.

Furious at what I’d been made to learn, and what that said about me.

Mostly, I was furious at Ryan Trent.

I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone as much as I’ve hated him. Not just because of what he'd done, but because of what he'd shown me about myself.

I'd been seduced, you see. The bright dream of Unity had drawn me in, and I had embraced it in its entirety. I had dared, if only for a while, to believe that I'd found a purpose, or perhaps a kind of redemption.

But now the dream was ending, and I was humiliated - deeply, on a personal level, like a bankrupt or a cuckolded husband - to find that I was the only one who hadn't known.

I'd never even thought to ask.

Reeling through the convulsing streets, I bled from burst blood vessels as I hunted Ryan through City Zero, gunfire streaming through the air like horizontal rain. The indiscriminate use of flame projectors and thermobaric weaponry had done hideous damage to the arcology, but mad, confused fighting continued the entire night.

When we tore into each other, I had the bleak strength of despair driving me on. I killed every single one of his men that I could find: Those who tried to stop me, those who got in my way, and finally those who were simply trying to flee. I spared no thought for the buildings I brought down, for what I was doing to myself. It felt like my head was about to split in half from overload, but I didn't care, not even when my suppressants ran dry.

I would end him, or be ended myself.

I was stronger then, the way all enhanciles are strongest right after full activation. I blitzed Ryan with spheres of disruption lightning, blasted down his defenses with shot after shot from my long-barreled Dominator. The gun's photonics burnt out after four dozen shots, and I had to hurl it away before it exploded in my hand - But I still had my concussion mace, and I broke half his ribs with a single wild blow.

It was almost enough.

I remember the shock on his face, the way Ryan aspirated blood as he spiraled through the air. This was the worst he’d ever been hurt, I think, and the pain made him falter. You never think it'll happen to you, and it's always a shock when it does: I remember him rising, unsteady as a thrown rider, his jaw clenched as he muttered enumerations beneath his breath, staring down the pain for just one vital instant longer...

A desperate surge of will tore my weapon away, and violet pyrokinetic flames - wild, barely controllable - set me alight. I went for him anyway, hands clawing for his throat as I bathed in raw flame. The second skin of liquid fire clung to my nanoscale armor, but I was raging, unstoppable.

For the red mist had come down, and all that remained was to see it through.

I think, at the moment, I wanted his blood more than I wanted to live.

I would have killed him, right there and then, if he hadn’t hurled his glaive into my chest. I remember how it felt, so cold it burned, all color going out of the world as I crumpled.

Thinking, distantly, that this couldn't be the way it ended.

Realizing, as darkness blossomed in my vision, that I should have gone to Ri-na. That I should have fought to protect her, instead of simply to destroy.

Somehow, I survived that, but I would never truly recover. Even with the scar-ward stitching me back together, seared tissue re-knitted into fresh and healthy skin, some hurts ran too deep to ever heal.

Not just in flesh, but in spirit.

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The funny part was, I was fighting - in my own way - to save the world, while Ryan was fighting to doom it.

Without City Zero's vast particle accelerators, constantly firing to produce dark matter in its inert form, there was a very real chance that the Instrument would never be completed. Pure chance alone determined when and how often the rare five-quark baryons were produced, one at a time, and it took trillions to make one of the antimatter reservoirs, sealed in titanium, that the bomb would require.

The last I heard, at least fifty thousand would be needed for primary ignition. In the past year, the city's entire output had produced forty-three.

Not that it would have changed anything, I suppose.

Fīat iūstitia ruat cælum, he’d have said, with perfect sincerity.

Let justice be done, though the heavens fall.

Well, fuck him.

After that, I think, I learned not to care as much. Not to put too much of myself in any single cause, in case they let me down at the end. To accept that I would never know how it all turned out, in the end.

To live a life with no regrets, and to mean it.

I like to think I can learn from some of my mistakes.

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With Tauruskhan going all-in on this year’s ascension attempt, it fell to His priesthood to gird me for the challenges ahead. For, in a very real way, this would be the most significant moment of His existence since the rise of Tulgar…And that meant the Ivory Vault.

The Ivory Vault.

The name itself conjured the image of a labyrinth, of burning braziers and bloodied blades, of secrets locked within secrets. Ensconced in stone, hung with doors of solid bronze, only the elect of Tauruskhan - his priests, and those they blessed with their key - were allowed to enter.

No one outside their ranks spoke of what was stored within, or what went on there…But all knew. There was no doubt, none at all, that the Ivory Vault was where the worshipers of the Horned King kept the greatest treasures of the Twenty-Six Tribes, the panoply of war that once clad Tulgar’s body and killed in his hands.

Even at the campfires of the Graven Star, I’d heard the legends. A bow bent from the spine of a dragon that fired arrows tipped with its teeth, the whip of spiked chain with links of living gold, the sword of purest emerald that could cleave through anything, and the massive gauntlets with which Tulgar tore down mountains and cast them at his enemies.

Needless to say, I’d been really looking forward to seeing that last one.

Normally, I’d have taken the stories with a pinch of salt, but I’d seen things on Phosphiach that would have been impossible in any other world.

And hey, a man can dream.

Truth is, I shouldn’t have got my hopes up. Weapons like that are the tools of the Gods, and generally don’t outlive their wielders. Those in power tend not to appreciate it when their gifts fall into the wrong hands. After all, puny mortals can’t be allowed to get ideas above their station.

Lesser wonders are a different story, but something like the emerald sword? I may as well have asked for a nuclear bomb.

Now, it didn’t mean that I walked away empty-handed, of course. A number of useful relics were made freely available to me, and you best believe I took full advantage.

For instance, consider the pouch that always held a loaf of ever-so-slightly stale travelers’ bread. It wasn’t the most exciting fare, other than as a kind of chewing exercise. If you ate it for too long, you’d start seriously considering cannibalism as an alternative, just for the novelty.

But for someone crossing the steppe alone, it was priceless. Especially for me, who could shovel down rations meant for five men in the span of a single day.

There was a flask that served much the same purpose. No matter how much you drank, it was perpetually half-full of tepid but potable water. With watering-holes few and far between, it could mean the difference between a full day of travel or the beginning of disaster.

Then there was the compass, ensorcelled to point the shortest way to Adrijanopolj and the Platinum Spire. Make no mistake: Without that, my trip would’ve taken twice as long, and been half as fun.

Between mapping apps and the ubiquity of smartphones, my sense of direction had been so thoroughly rotted, I probably couldn’t have found the way out of the Grazing Lands without a guide or outright divine intervention.

But it was the weapons I’d come for, and Praya had some ideas about that.

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“How will you kill him?”

The High Priest’s voice was mild, as though he was asking for my opinion on the weather, or what was for lunch.

I looked away from the Vault’s stony shelves, from the wall of weapons before me. There were swords and blades of all kinds, for sure, but there were also maces, morning-stars, hammers, polearms, bucklers, bows and devices that combined sharp edges and points in ways that I’d never seen before.

Every one of them held some cultural or occult significance, and it wasn’t always clear which was which. Moreover, Taurushukan’s faithful hadn’t believed in writing anything down. Like all cults, they were firmly in favor of obfuscation, which was all very well until you needed to get something done.

Fortunately, Praya knew every weapon here. His expression was relaxed, dark eyes focused on what was in front of him, as he paused to rest his hand on a blade or grip. He’d been quick to explain the provenance of whatever caught my eye, in a clipped, measured tone quite at odds with the Old Testament speech he’d given at the Trial of Fire.

And you know what? I think he was actually enjoying himself.

I’d got my hands on a heavy, fork-tipped sword once wielded by Koran son-of-Jarrow, and was testing its balance. Even as the weighty edge whistled through the air, I could see - immediately - why the Jarrow ancestor had given it up. It was the kind of weapon that needed years of practice to master, and I had nowhere near the time or patience to make that happen.

You see, I’ve always, always wanted to use a sword. Who hasn’t? Sure, it’d been out of fashion for longer than I had actually been alive, but something about it - the romance of it - had remained fixed in the collective unconsciousness.

In my very first world, when the Marquis had offered me the use of any weapon in his armory, I’d made a beeline right for the swords. Iron was poison to the Gentry, but just meant their craftsmen had to get creative, turning glass, crystal and wood into the keenest blades.

I’d had my eye on a hand-and-a-half sword of the purest moonsilver, so baroque and ornate it looked less like a weapon and more like a piece of art…Until Éighir had suggested, in his subtle-yet-condescending way, that I start with something simpler.

He’d been right, of course. The gauntlets of black jade had fit like they’d been made for me: More importantly, they made my flesh as hard as stone, which was the only thing that had kept me alive in my first fight. Even then, it took me months to unlearn a lifetime of bad habits, to figure out how to use them at their fullest potential.

I’ve seen men keep fighting with wounds that you wouldn’t believe. The best way to kill someone is to make their skull a very different shape. Flatten it, shatter it, punch holes right through it. There may be someone who can live without a head, but I haven’t met him - or her - yet.

Anyway, swords had a tendency to bend (sometimes at right angles) or snap, in my hands. They were surprisingly delicate instruments, and ‘delicate’ isn’t something you want when you’re fighting for your life.

“Champion-”

I blinked. Shook my head to clear it.

“Sorry - Just thinking,” I said, as I placed the sword back on a waiting rack. “By ‘him’, you mean…?”

Praya didn’t quite sigh. His patience had no limits, which probably came with two centuries of continued existence. Good thing, too: In his place, the constant need for explanation would probably have driven me nuts.

“The hero-champion of Adrijanopolj,” the High Priest said, as steady and unperturbed as the fall of night. “The one that stands in your way. He who would bar the Iron Hoof from ascension.”

“Ah,” I said, then “Ah,” again, just in case he thought I hadn’t been listening. I chewed my lip, furrowing my brow as that calm, unblinking gaze speared into me.

“-I can’t say,” I said, at last. “In fact, it’s better if I don’t.”

The corners of Praya’s mouth drew up, in the ghost of a smile.

“You don’t have the faintest idea what you’re doing, do you?” he said, sounding amused rather than annoyed. “In a way, I pity you. To strike at the enemy at the God…That must be a daunting task, indeed.”

He stared into the middle distance, gaze fixed on something only he could see.

“Tauruskhan’s wisdom, His word, has long steered the Twenty-Six tribes. Through His faithful, His will is made manifest. To be bereft of His guidance, to know that your choices alone determine victory or defeat - It is a burden that would weigh heavy upon any soul.”

I winced, despite myself. I knew very well what he meant.

“Tell me about it,” I muttered, with a distinct feeling. “Well, I’ll find a way. Believe me, I will.”

After all, I was a dead man if I didn’t. I fought down the little voice that whispered You’re dead either way, turning my attention back to the relics on display.

“What about this one?” I said, lifting a rough-hewn shield from the wall. It was heavier than it looked, the wine-dark wood telling the story of countless trials: Fire and acid had mottled it, the relentless blows of axe and sword gouging both the petrified surface and the brass-tipped horns that crowned it.

Momentary emotion flickered across Praya’s graven features. For a rare moment, he looked almost pained.

“That is Tulgar’s own shield,” he said, gesturing to the silver boss at the shield’s center. I looked again, closer this time. Beneath a layer of tarnish, I glimpsed the engraved image - the shape of a blowing storm-woman had been cut into the metal, her lips forming a pouting ‘O’, her brow furrowed.

“-There is thunder in the wood, and lightning in the metal, or so the legends say. The King-of-Tribes took it with him into a hundred battles: as long as he bore it, the spirits of the air spared him from the slings and arrows of the battlefield.”

He fell silent for a long time. Contemplating the weight of history, perhaps.

“It will be hard to see it go,” the high priest said, at last. A kind of quiet followed his confession, as I turned the shield over in my hands. It was heavy, the kind of heavy that was freighted with significance.

You needed to be strong to lift this, stronger still to raise it against harm. To my surprise, I could do both. It wasn’t even hard.

For a moment, I felt a kind of pity for Praya. The high priest, despite his faith, was a man torn between two loyalties - His people, and his God. To serve one was to defy the other, where before they had been one and the same.

It’s hard, watching things change. Hoping that the world as you knew it would stay the same, knowing that it could not.

“As the Iron Hoof wills,” I said, and he speared me with a swift, sharp glance…Until he saw my expression. Like he’d been expecting mockery, and received sincerity instead.

I’d meant it, of course. There are no coincidences when a God’s involved, and I had a distinct sensation that this was Tauruskhan moving in mysterious ways. There’d been nothing to distinguish Tulgar’s own shield - Last Breath, they called it, after the sylph that had been murdered in its making - from the dozen-odd other bucklers, targes and roundels of lesser renown that had been lovingly preserved in the Ivory Vault.

“...Perhaps one such as you might be permitted to use it,” Praya said. Some of the deep lines to his face relaxed, as if the concession let him breathe a little easier. “For the God’s glory, of course.”

I grunted at that, taking a practice swing with Last Breath. After I’d confirmed that, yes, it would hit like a brick wall studded with spikes, I slung the shield on my back, the horns rising over one shoulder. The long strap of the guige wasn’t leather, but a woven rope of something as fine and smooth as silk.

Maiden’s hair, I suppose.

With the matter concluded, Praya turned and strode towards the doorway, and I followed. I could have stayed, of course: Given sufficient time, I could probably have found Tulgar’s sword, his spear, his armor, and maybe his old jockstrap in the bargain.

But, champion or not, it never pays to wear out your welcome. Besides, with the Horned King’s power coursing through me, like it or not, I was already a weapon mightier than all the rest put together.

Perhaps that was the lesson Tauruskhan had wanted to impart. That He would have my back, as long as I upheld my end of the deal.

That I could trust Him to act in my best interest, as long as I did the same for His.

As we trudged back the way we came, a thought came to me. Not from the God, but from somewhere rather closer to home.

“I need a favor,” I said, as I walked with the priest.

Praya gave me a level look.

“You need only ask, Champion,” he said, in a way that suggested indulgence had limits. Not that he’d have been overt enough to say that out loud, of course. His opinion of me may have been less-than-flattering, for he knew that strong arms and big muscles alone did not make a hero.

But Praya would be true to the end. It was his way, and he would not, could not, change.

Not now.

“Good to hear,” I said, and made myself smile. “If I’m off to do God’s will, the least He could do is throw me a farewell party first.”

For sometimes, all you can do is to cherish each moment. To live as fully and vividly as possible.

So that when your time comes, you can tell yourself: I regret nothing.

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

Tulgar the Invincible lived on only in myth, legend and the Supreme Herdsman’s eternal memory. His shield, however, was a rather more substantial existence than that.

I carried Last Breath all the way to Adrijanopolj. Across the Grazing Lands, the Great Mire and the Desolation of Istofar, it sheltered me from blades, javelins and yes, the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.

Like so much else, Last Breath met its end at the Platinum Spire. Lightning-kissed wood and thrice-blessed brass would shatter beneath the pounding hammer of Tor Gagaroth, as I fended off the howling ghula with fists, dagger and a scavenged axe.

But in death, the shield would avenge itself. A last, desperate effort drove both brazen horns through Gagaroth’s throat, distracting the Wormgod’s Chosen long enough for me to split her skull. Even then, the grinworms within her lashed and snapped at me like angry snakes, fanged mouths yawning open to bite as I hacked them to pieces.

It was a worthy end to that most hallowed of relics, saving its master one final time. Letting me seize victory from the jaws of defeat, as a point-blank disruption blast put an end to her cursed existence.

And yet, no tales would be sung of the venerable shield’s destruction, and all mention of it would vanish from the sagas of the Twenty-Six Tribes.

For a great many lives were about to end, both by my hands and those of others, at the Battle of Dalat.

TO BE CONTINUED