The fight flowed on. Jenae’s next turn, she stepped in and healed Adan while simultaneously and politely ordering him to step things up and kill their opponents, please. Adan obliged, but the cultists were handier with their shortswords than Nico would have expected. They split their attention now, at least, swinging not just at Adan but at Jenae and Nico. Nico, evading the slash of a sword, allowed himself a grin.

Then the stone-hound once more lunged at Adan. Once more, a rock-like texture riddled Adan with bleeding cuts. Nico’s elation faded.

Nico lost sight of Esperanza. He glimpsed a shroud of silver light around a cultist that he thought might be her magic, but no combat messages clearly indicated her presence. She could have been anywhere in the chaos of scattered, half-destroyed, and burning wreckage of a camp.

The shimmering black orb remained. Nico thought it might have grown larger. Caught as they were in a bottleneck with the hostile cultists, he wasn’t sure what they could do about that.

Maybe that’s what Esperanza is up to.

Nico wasn’t sure if that was reassuring or not.

Overhead, radiant light and stone black clashed. Saqra spewed another petrifying, disintegrating cloud and battered at Morediel with her wings. Morediel swung his namesake maul of glowing golden light. Dread silence and furious music echoed into every corner of the tower’s interior.

Nico’s turn came around again. Still on an adrenaline high, he attacked cultists with the curved blade topping his staff as well as with his fists and feet. One more cultist fell. Another was left seriously injured.

We’re winning. We can still do this.

Jenae again healed Adan while also sweetly reminding him to kill their enemies instead of dancing with them. As she spoke, her gaze drifted toward the stone-hound. Its eyes glowed.

“Jenae!” Nico forced the bark of a warning through the turn paralysis holding him.

Jenae visibly jerked her head around so that she wouldn’t look at the hound.

Adan’s falcata cut down a cultist. With a flourish that involved the drum and rattles hanging from his belt, he shouted a sharp cadence of notes. The notes stretched into a long, angry-sounding vibration. Two more cultists clapped their hands over their ears. Blood dripped from their nostrils, and they fell dead.

The stone-dog compacted into a tighter formation, as if cowering under the sonic assault. It swung its head toward Adan.

Nico’s heart leaped. This time, he couldn’t force out a warning cry.

Don’t look, Adan. Don’t look!

Adan’s note ended. His gaze swung toward the stone-dog. The dog’s eyes flashed.

Adan froze in place. Dull green-gray patches spread across his exposed flesh.

The stone-dog surged past Adan and lunged at Jenae. Its deadly breath swarmed across her, cracking skin into a series of tiny bleeding cuts.

[Jenae takes 19 damage.]

In addition to the stone-dog, at least two more cultists remained to deal with. Adan was seriously hurt and on his way to being petrified. Now Jenae was gravely wounded, as well. Nico’s temper flared.

Where the hell is Esperanza?

On the far side of the camp, partially obscured by fitful flames and smoke and the dust of Saqra’s destructive breath, the black orb pulsed. It had grown larger, Nico was positive. Sudden dread filled him.

We’re not winning a damn thing.

Overhead, Morediel flared with orange-gold light. The note he spoke-sang was one of anguish and fury. Again, the sound sparked under Nico’s skin, as if igniting the magic of Sol which Nico already carried.

On the ground near the black orb, a cultist lifted his arms skyward. From the orb, a silver-gray mist emerged. As if the cultist were a conduit, the mist flowed through him and angled upward toward Saqra and Morediel. Behind him, the orb shifted from black to silver.

Saqra’s teeth and talons slashed through Mordiel’s form, dragging free tendrils of light on sharpened points, where the light withered and died. But Saqra herself had faded as well, her scales gone from shiny jet black to an ashy gray.

The mist channeled from the orb struck Saqra. As silently as she’d done everything else, she vanished.

The sense of dread gripping Nico increased. Nothing good can come of an invisible dragon.

The mist returned a moment later, smaller and closer by. It swirled not around Saqra but around a more familiar form, one that wore a misty gray cloak and stepped with careful, hesitating motions from between tents not far from where the orb stood.

Esperanza lifted her hands and tipped back her head. Cool moonlight and silver mist shredded through her form, and like Saqra, she vanished. When she reappeared, she stood on a ledge not far from Morediel. Her body stretched and grew, until she was nearly as tall as the Radiant whom she faced.

Nico’s throat closed. Something Esperanza had said earlier, what now felt like a lifetime ago, came back to him—that gods could of course occupy more than one form.

She’s with the dragon. She was with the dragon all along.

From Esperanza’s hood, a spray of dust flew forth, just like the Dragon’s breath.

Stone tried to encapsulate Morediel’s form of light. For a long moment, gray rock and golden brilliance did battle across Morediel’s body, like hot molten rock trying to avoid cooling and crystallizing. Bit by bit, like fireflies being extinguished, the light winked out. An angelic statue hung motionless for one split second and then exploded, scattering debris and dust.

As what remained of Morediel drifted from air toward the ground, the heavily wounded body of a black dragon appeared on the ground near the orb. Saqra’s wings were tattered white shreds, her body a dusty gray covered in scorch marks and bleeding where scales had been battered loose by multiple blows from Morediel’s maul.

Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

She’s almost dead. All I have to do is finish what Morediel started, before she can regenerate or some other OP thing.

Silver mist formed between Nico and the fallen dragon. When it solidified, Esperanza’s hooded form stood between Nico and Saqra.

All I have to do is get past Esperanza and finish what Morediel started.

On the tactical map, Esperanza’s square darkened. Nico’s lit.

Nico’s pulse deafened him. To his right, Jenae twitched in her turn-based paralysis, slow-motion bringing her cudgel around toward the threatening stone-hound. Ahead of Nico, Adan didn’t move at all. Veins of stone spider-webbed across his skin.

Morediel had been vanquished. Esperanza had betrayed them.

I’m all that’s left. It’s up to me.

In Nico’s imagination, his father snorted in disdain. Nico tried to ignore him.

Nico’s movement for his turn got him as far as Esperanza. As he moved into range, some held action must have triggered, because a deep, bone-disintegrating chill settled into him.

[You rolled a 3 for Endurance.]

[You take 7 damage.]

[You have gained the Despair of Eternity condition.]

An echoing silence like the bottom of a pool filled Nico. Even the pulse pounding in his ears faded to nothing.

Esperanza leaned closer. If there had ever been a face inside that hood, it was gone now. Instead, shadows shifted and spun, forming a churning void. A bottomless depth, from which there could be no return.

From dust you come, and to dust you shall return.

[You take 5 damage.]

The abyss within Esperanza’s hood stretched around Nico, drawing itself into him as much as it drew him closer.

Immortality is a lie. But so is mortality. Everything is nothing. Nothing is everything.

Ice whispered out from the words and trickled into Nico’s pores.

Nothing is all there is.

His father had always said Nico was weak. Deep down, Nico believed he was right.

I am weak. I’m nothing.

[You take 6 damage.]

The Despair of Eternity condition—it must be damage over time.

If I don’t do something about it, it’s going to kill me.

The thought came with no accompanying emotion. Muffled sounds swam beyond the eternal silence which blanketed Nico. Flickering flames, debris blowing in a growing wind, perhaps voices.

Nothing that mattered. Because nothing mattered.

No. That’s not right.

Within Nico’s veins, heat flickered rebelliously, as it had whenever Nico endured his father’s assertions that Nico must do with his life exactly what his father thought was best.

What’s best for you is not what’s best for me. You don’t even know me.

Ice and silence pushed back against the heat.

[You take 5 damage.]

It doesn’t matter. Nothing matters.

Something Nico had read once, he couldn’t remember where, came back to him.

If nothing matters, then everything matters.

And right this moment, what mattered more than anything was not allowing the despair to win.

Sparks lit anew in Nico’s veins. They felt like scorching sunlight and smelled bright like oranges on a hot wind.

I don’t have to live down to my father’s expectations. Those are among the things that really don’t matter.

Sound rushed in, banishing the freezing silence. An orange glow filled Nico’s vision. He drew it into and through him as he slashed at Esperanza with the curved blade on his staff.

[You used Melee Attack on Avatar of the Veil. 18 hits!]

[Esperanza takes 11 damage.]

The curved blade at the end of Nico’s staff sliced through Esperanza’s robe. Rather than blood, silver light leaked through the gash. He leaped into the air and aimed two quick kicks at her abdomen.

[You used Unarmed Attack on Avatar of the Veil. 21 hits!]

[Esperanza takes 9 damage.]

[You used Unarmed Attack on Avatar of the Veil. 22 hits!]

[Esperanza takes 8 damage.]

The robe gave, as if Nico were kicking a burlap sack filled with nothing but air. The light leaking from her robe increased, like a spotlight suddenly uncovered. Behind her, Saqra the Veil weakly lifted her ashen-scaled head.

Esperanza exploded. White light filled the tower, accompanied by air that tasted like ice and dust. Nico thought it would have blown him into nothing but atoms, but fire filled his veins, and orange light flared like a force field around and curved back from him, encompassing what lay behind him, as well.

[You have lost the Despair of Eternity condition.]

True silence fell, less heavy than the previous soundlessness but instead filled with crackling flames and pattering dust and the eerie whistle of wind through the window slits.

And breathing. Nico listened to his own breathing for a long while, until he realized the turn-based paralysis hadn’t set in again and the tactical map had gone completely dark.

All that remained of Esperanza were the shreds of her empty robe collapsed onto the ground. Of Saqra, nothing at all remained. Only the orb spun in its place between the two statues.

Nico turned to find that no cultists remained standing. Of the stone-dog, there was no sign at all.

Adan stood utterly motionless, gray rock and silent instruments. Jenae pressed one hand against her bleeding side and stared past Nico toward where Saqra and Esperanza had been.

Toward the orb, Nico realized. He turned to face it.

The sphere hung in open air, still shimmering like a soap bubble but now a dull gray instead of black. It was smaller than it had been before, and visibly shrinking by the moment.

Nico walked toward the orb. With each step, he could see its details more clearly. The shimmers on the orb’s surface resolved into minute tears through which Nico glimpsed movement on a tiny scale. Figures moved on the other side of the tears, acting out moments from their lives—hundreds of people. Thousands. Millions? The snippets of lives drifted inside the orb like dreams inside a mind.

The mind of a god.

Deeper within the orb hung a black, void-like core. Some tendrils of lives drifted close to it and were sucked inside. Others emerged from the core, spun out like spider silk and set adrift with the others orbiting the orb’s center.

His life was in there somewhere, Nico suddenly understood. If he had died, out there on the cliff or here during the combat, his thread would have been pulled into that void at the orb’s core—at the center of the god’s mind. And he’d have been, what? Disintegrated? Reincorporated? Recycled?

If they were all just figments of a god’s dreaming mind, then was that the same thing as living forever? Did it count as immortality?

Maybe it really didn’t matter. For the moment, Nico was still here. His physical body was long dead, as was his father’s, but Nico’s consciousness was here in this moment, playing out some semblance of a life.

And his father was wrong. Nico wasn’t weak. Even when the dice rolled badly for him, he didn’t quit. He endured until he could find a way to fight back.

He couldn’t destroy the orb, Nico realized. What’s more, he probably shouldn’t. Instead, he stood before it and watched as it receded to the size of a beach ball, a basketball, a baseball. Finally, it swirled in on itself like the last of the water draining from a bathtub.

As the orb vanished, a familiar chime sounded inside Nico’s head.

[You have reached level 5.]

Lowered voices broke the silence behind Nico. When he turned around, Jenae stood with her hand on Adan’s shoulder, the light of her magic just fading around her fingers. Adan remained a sickly gray, but he’d lowered his arms and relaxed his shoulders and no longer appeared made of stone. The two of them crossed the rubble-strewn chamber and stopped alongside Nico.

“What a waste.” Adan looked toward the empty robes that Esperanza had once worn. He sounded sad, not angry.

“I’m sorry,” Nico said anyhow.

Adan waved away the apology. “You can’t help someone who doesn’t want your help. I suppose in her case, nothing was the something she wanted to be.”

Jenae made a small sound which might have been sympathy but was equally likely to be impatience.

“Yes. Well. She certainly made things interesting. Are we done here?”

Adan swung his head around and looked down at Jenae. She smiled sweetly up at him.

“I feel no need to natter about doing nothing. What’s happened has happened. We’ve accomplished what we set out to do. We should go see what’s next.”

“A rest might be in order, but we can at least get out of here. Nico, are you up to moving on?”

More quests, more XP, more levels to go. More bad dice rolls, too, inevitably.

And when they happen, I’ll deal.

“Sure. No more cliffs, though.”

“No more cliffs.” Adan clapped Nico on the shoulder. “At least not tonight. Tomorrow, though, no promises.”

Nico figured he could deal with all the other tomorrows when he got to them.