Godslayers

The problem with the pentathlon events was that it was really annoying to cheat.

An Eifni deicide team is a precision instrument designed for slow insinuation into a culture. We are the boiling pot, introducing change so slowly you don’t notice before it’s too late. You don’t know you’ve been visited by godslayers until you wake up three hundred years later and no one believes in the old religions anymore.

Even the heaviest ship will turn if given a slight push over decades. The Eifni Organization has optimized to create that push by utilizing social influence, soft power, and an absolute information advantage.

Turns out, none of that is useful when it comes to rigging a contest about running really fast.

The five events of the Estheni pentathlon were wrestling, swordfighting, javelin, distance running, and swimming. Cades and Markus were certainly going to do well, but they had to do better than Pereges. Otherwise we’d end up with a conduit event involving a godseed of Varas and a demigod of Kabiades, and instead of killing Kabiades we’d have to watch as both of them grew stronger.

It would have been great if we could just drown Pereges during the swimming event, but it was canceled this year. The water was still unsafe, even though the blood was mostly gone from the harbor. The Empress had decreed that they weren’t gonna fuck with Horcutio’s wrath—I’m paraphrasing here—and knocked it down to a quadrathlon.

Convenient for our boys, who hadn’t gotten a lot of swimming lessons over the last year. But suspiciously convenient for Pereges, who was now much harder to get rid of. Given who was ultimately behind the harbor closure in the first place, it raised some worrying questions.

This wasn’t like Elsinat, where Kives had trolled us over passengers for our fake pilgrimage. There was no humor to it. She’d managed to arrange things so that this op collided with a Merisite operation years in the making, then set up an obstacle in the form of Pereges that would punish us if we pulled out.

She’d maneuvered us to a position where we had to thread a very narrow path, and that path ended with Markus within bite range of a godseed. Most concerningly, she’d passed up every opportunity to stop us.

From a Velean perspective, the implicit offer was clear. We could cooperate, or she could force a trade. And Kives had more pieces to spend.

“I don’t like the idea of a demigod hooking up with a godseed,” I said. “Depending on what happens in that relationship, Pereges might develop into a godseed too. Then all of this becomes worse than pointless.”

“Kabiades can’t immediately rebirth himself in that case,” Val said. “We’d have to assume that Kives can pick the best possible timing to restore him from the godseed, but a successful strike on Kabiades would leave a lasting wound in etherspace. He would have a shadow of his former power.”

“None of that matters against someone who can call her shots this well,” I argued. “I think Markus should focus on knocking Pereges out of the contest, even if he loses too.”

“I’d be willing,” said Markus. “But let’s not give up hope of winning yet.”

“That’s how Kives hooks us!” I said.

“We’ll consider it a last resort,” said the commander. “For now, let’s wait and see.”

“Hold on, they’re briefing us on the pentathlon,” Markus told us. “Sounds like we’re running a lap around the city instead of swimming down the coast and running back.”

I steepled my fingers. “That’ll take them near the ship.”

“Oh—grandfather of an octopus,” Markus swore, a phrase from his culture of origin. I’d never dared ask what it meant; the etheric overtones were heavily sexual. “You know how the top-ranked performers in the passion events get to go first? Pereges is in our group.”

“He shouldn’t be,” said Abby.

“Someone put their thumb on the scales,” Markus said. “Well, we tried.”

“Are we sure you can’t outrun him?” I asked.

“With all those blessings? I don’t know what all of them do, but I’m not arrogant enough to think I can outperform that much etheric power just because my muscles are made from extra-spicy meat.”

Abby tapped her fingers on her chair. “If we can’t speed you up, we can slow him down. Val, rig the translation engines for carbon dioxide.”

“Clever,” Val said. “I should be able to walk the output in front of him. Markus, make sure you stay out of the affected area."

“I’ll need to keep Cades out of the way,” Markus subvocalized. “Let me go talk to him.”

“Tell him I said he’s allowed to stab people,” I said.

“I will not.”

*

Pereges jogged right through the oxygen-free zone like it wasn’t there.

“Uh, Val?” Markus said.

“Give me a moment,” Val snapped.

Watching through Markus’s feed, I saw him glance back at some runners following behind the giant demigod. The effects were diminished, as Val was targeting Pereges, but several of them started wheezing and one had to stop and gasp for air.

“Wasteful clown of a god,” Val seethed. “I can’t believe this.”

“I’m pretty sure the clown god is Rucks,” I said.

Val ignored me. “Kabiades put individual blessings on each muscle. And—why would you ever do that to his lungs? Who in their right mind uses reflexive translation for godflaming oxygen?”

“So the god of himbos also gives you dumb himbo blessings?” I asked.

“Seems so,” Markus said. “I don’t think Cades and I can catch him, but we won’t fall too behind.”

I looked at Abby. “Let me know if you want me to shoot him.”

“Keep a level head,” she ordered me. “Val, enough. We have more chances at this.”

“That’s what Kives wants us to think,” I said gloomily.

“This isn’t my first kill,” the commander said. “Stay focused. I will not allow us to get lost in a meta-strategic game of subverted expectations. Kives does not control us.”

“Yes’m,” I sighed.

“Let’s prep for the next attempt,” said the commander. “It’s the javelin toss after this. The utility translator is in the corner.”

“Where?”

“There.”

“I’m not seeing—goddamnit, commander.”

“Glad to see you’re keeping up with your absence meditations. Try not to get skewered.”

I waited until I was invisible to flip her off.

*

The Kabidiad was not the Olympics. There was that beauty pageant element to it, and a lot more emphasis on what we’d consider the fine arts back on Earth, but it wasn’t a sports tournament.

It was training for war.

There wasn’t a break. After completing their jog—some of them more oxygenated than others—the athletes were immediately handed a javelin. They had one minute to paint a symbol on the tip. Then they had to hurl it at a cluster of wooden shields on the other end of the course of honor. The competitors who punctured a shield would score well—if it was farther back, even better.

The weak point of this system was the lack of instant replay cameras, like we had back on Earth. If the symbol on a winning spear were to suddenly change, who could prove it?

I grinned, invisibly hefted the utility translator, and stepped out into the arena.

Markus and Cades came in together, right on Pereges’s heels.

“Make sure you get a look at the beefcake’s autograph,” I subvocalized to Markus.

“On it.”

I pulled up Markus’s feed. The priests of Kabiades were hastily ordering the athletes into groups of twelve, and our favorite muscleheads had just missed the cutoff for the first group. Markus craned his head, zooming in with his eyes to catch a glimpse of the demigod’s symbol.

The first group finished painting. Rather than let them catch their breath, the Muscle Pope led them all in a hymn to the Lancer while the paint dried. That was a common trick for the clockless Estheni—the length of the hymn served as a timer.

“Val, can you calculate the traveling arc on those things or something so I don’t get impaled?” I asked. “That would be such a dumb way to die.”

“That’s doable if the commander keeps them in her field of view,” he said.

“On it,” the commander said.

Through Markus’s feed, I heard the Muscle Pope bellow the order to launch. Twelve javelins hurled through the air, following dotted lines that my comm projected in augmented reality. Val had been kind enough to make Pereges’s line a different color.

I lurched forward invisibly, lugging the translator with me. Out of the corner of my eye, I watched Markus and Cades prepare their own lances on Markus’s comm feed. I had to hurry.

“What did you write on yours?” Cades asked Markus.

Markus looked at him warmly. “Honor.”

Cades returned the look with an expression so tender I thought they were going to start making out on the spot. But instead, Cades showed Markus his own spear.

Courage, it read in Estheni.

“I’m so proud of you,” Markus said softly.

“We’ll make it to the end,” Cades said. “Together.”

“Together.”

They stepped forward as Muscle Pope began the next round of hymns.

Meanwhile, I’d just reached the shields, feeling my stomach sink like a rock.

The shields were all set in these little frames that tilted them toward the sky. The idea was clearly that a lance that punctured a shield would fall back, tilting the shield off the frame and preventing future javelins from hitting the same shield until the ranks of slaves on the sidelines could retrieve .

The problem was that someone—or more likely a whole sweatshop full of someones—had needed to produce hundreds of these, and they looked kinda cheap up close. They weren’t all that sturdy.

And Pereges’s spear had hit the shield so hard it broke the stand. It was super obvious which one was his. The crowd was chanting his name.

“Oh, come on,” I said.

“Lilith! Get out of the way!”

I looked down at a dotted line traveling from my stomach into the ground.

“Oh, fuck me.”

I leapt to the side. The javelin embedded itself in the sand of the arena, spraying grit everywhere. A loud wooden thud sounded somewhere to my right.

“You’ve got attendants moving in,” the commander said. “Do the swap and get out.”

“There’s no point in swapping Pereges’s symbol,” I said. “It would just tell everyone we’re messing with him. Looks like Cades missed the mark, though. I’ll swap him instead. I’m telling you, Kives has us over a fucking barrel.”

“That’s enough about Kives.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

As a horde of bald people descended on my position, I used a highly sophisticated military device, channeling energies that were once the sole purview of angels and gods, as a glorified spray painter. As far as the priests of Kabiades were concerned, Cades hit the damn target.

*

I hadn’t expected the Estheni to figure out tournament seeding, but apparently I should have known better. The athletes were grouped by how far they’d thrown their javelins, then distributed sequentially in wrestling rings around the arena. Those who had hit the farthest targets—including Markus, Cades, and our demigod friend—wouldn’t face each other until the upper brackets of the wrestling event.

The goal was to hit the top sixteen, because apparently the swordfighting event worked differently at the Kabidiad. Rather than duke it out in a bunch of 1v1s, they were splitting everyone up into small armies of about twenty. The wrestling champions would each get command of one, and the event would culminate in a giant sixteen-way battle.

But first they’d need to make it through the wrestling event, which meant Markus and Cades finally had to split up and head to their assigned areas of the arena. I kept Markus’s feed up as I lugged the utility translator back to the box that Abby had commandeered.

“Fight with honor,” Markus said, resting his hand on Cades’s shoulder. “If they want to give us glory, we’ll take it gladly.”

Cades puffed himself up. “Even the gods could not stop me from—”

“Cades,” Markus said softly.

“Thala?”

Markus gave him a sad smile. “Don’t hide. I know your heart.”

Cades slowly breathed out. A wry half-smile crept over his face.

“I’m a half-man,” he said quietly. “I have the strength to cross the shadowlands, but my passion is diseased. Kabiades would never sponsor an ass-lancer into the Blessed Vale. The Kabidiad changes nothing.”

Markus shifted his grip to the back of Cades’s neck and pressed their foreheads together. I instinctively looked around to make they’d gone unobserved before I remembered the Estheni considered this normal behavior between comrades-in-arms.

“My ass is excellent,” he said matter-of-factly. Cades nearly guffawed. “But I know that’s not all this is to you. You treasure my heart, as my heart treasures you.”

“I do,” Cades whispered.

“Don’t give up,” Markus murmured. “We’ll have time to sort out the rest later.” He released Cades, smiling and returning to normal volume. “But for now, we have glory to reap!”

Cades returned the smile. Not a mask; just a smile. “I’ll see you in the victor’s bracket.”

*

“Should I even be surprised at this point?” I said, popping a grape in my mouth. “Pereges has been holding out under that choke hold for a while now.”

“It helps when your hack job of an etheric enhancement suite obviates the need for breath.”

“And that’s the match,” the commander said. “Val, your intel says the captains get private changing rooms, right?”

“It does.”

The commander pursed her lips. “Then I suppose it’s my turn. Hold the position, Lilith.”

I popped another grape in my mouth and threw her a thumbs-up.

The commander slipped outside—seemingly, nothing more than an orderly of the Lady Yotharios on a private errand. I pulled up her feed as she passed through crowds without attracting so much as a second glance.

Snatching a serving tray, she located Pereges’s room and stepped inside. To the left of the door, an armor stand held a helmet, a skirt, and a back-heavy shawl that basically looked like a cape. A wooden sword and shield waited next to it. The fabrics were light green—almost certainly brightflower-based dye—and a priest of Kabiades was painting Pereges’s symbol on the shield in the same color.

“Godsmile,” Abby said politely.

The priest greeted her in return, finished his work, and left. It was far from uncommon for athletes in the Kabidiad to receive propositions from the nobility.

Abby waited a few moments to ensure no one else was coming in. She began stripping.

“Don’t tell me you’re—oh no,” I said.

“Complain on your own time, Lilith. We need to use every available weapon. If he gets caught being unfaithful to the Empress during the Kabidiad, that’s it for him. One of us had to try this.”

The commander pulled out her hand amplifier, set it to a combination of “breathtaking beauty” and “unrestrainable lust,” and hid it inside her growing pile of clothes.

“That’s—” I said. “Okay. Okay. We’re godslaying. Gotta do icky things sometimes. Right.”

I closed her feed regardless.

A few minutes passed before Abby pinged for “enemy contact.”

“Godsmile, big man,” she said seductively. “I liked what I saw on the field.”

There was a long pause where I tried not to think about what was going on down there.

“Impressive,” she said. “Pity. Well, I’m falling back to safe house two.”

“What happened?”

“He had enough self-control to run screaming for the guards. I’ve been made. The good news is they probably don’t think I’m a whisper.”

I leaned back and stared at the sky. “Oh yeah?”

“I left my clothes behind. They will certainly remember that they saw me.”

I kept staring at the sky. Somehow, I got the feeling that Abby running naked through the operations area was actually a prank on me.

“I hate Kives. I hate Kives. Fuck it, I’m just beating him to death.”

Val snorted. “Just like that?”

“It’s a battle. Lots of things happen in a battle. Fuck it! Fuck it, we’re doing this.”

*

Did Kives set out to troll me? Or was this her revenge when she looked into the future and saw me blaming her for everything that was going to go down?

There’s no such thing as alternate futures. There is, was, and only will be one future: causally closed, the sum consequence of every decision made by every agent. Oracles might have more impactful decisions than most other agents, and Kives more so than other oracles, but knowledge is not power. Sometimes you see the muzzle flash too late to get to cover. Sometimes there’s nowhere to hide from the oncoming train.

I was going to teach Kives the difference between knowledge and power.

I picked up one of those wooden swords the boys were using. They were heavier than they looked; it felt like there was metal inside. The wood itself was light and porous, and each “army” had been provided with long, thin containers of dye to dip their swords in.

The Estheni had invented medieval paintball, and that was cute, but a heavy club is a heavy club.

By the time I hit the field—cloaked, of course; precisely enough that people would avoid me without noticing me—Markus and Cades had already formed an alliance with one of the men from their caravan, who’d made it to the wrestling finals.

Two of them had ganged up on a lone army while a third screened the skirmish from opportunists—namely the opposing coalition that was coalescing around Pereges. Light green, pastel yellow, pearlescent off-white, and some hellish shade of maroon were the colors of the dark lord as he advanced on our heroes in blue and teal. The unaffiliated groups maneuvered out of the way, waiting for an opportunity.

Was Kives baiting me into a trap? What would happen if I failed?

Well… Pereges didn’t get his head smashed in, I guess. Either he survived and took the victory, or he got injured, everyone blamed it on whispers, and we rolled the dice on whether the legend of Oathkeeper Falerior was enough to keep Meris at bay.

I reflected ruefully that the commander had probably made a cost-benefit analysis just like this one before Kives had sent her packing. Or not packing, if you catch my drift.

I dipped the sword in a container of maroon and sprinted for the battle.

Men were leaving the melee in droves, bearing pigment-covered bruises in the shape of deathblows. A ring of Kabiadesian priests dutifully tallied the fallen so that the captains could be appropriately scored at the end. Blade in one hand, hand amplifier in the other, I set phasers to “foul betrayal!” and struck one of the green-skirted dudes from behind.

Honor is such a fragile thing. Pereges’s coalition dissolved immediately in a flurry of shouts and imprecations, each side thinking the other started it. Pereges tried to rally everyone, but the damage was done. Markus’s teal regiment slammed into their flank, and a stream of teal-streaked casualties began to separate out from the battle.

I walked through it all like a shadow. I holsted the amplifier and drew my pulser, closing in on the demigod, who stood head and shoulders above the crowd. Markus was trying to carve a path toward him, but I pinged him to back off.

This target was mine.

A gap appeared in the fighting and I saw my chance. I raised my pulser and fired.

Pereges slumped, but didn’t fall.

“Don’t tell me he has fucking pulser shielding,” I subvocalized.

“Those asinine blessings release a lot of radiant energy,” Val groaned.

“These are some of the best useless blessings I’ve ever seen,” Markus said.

I grit my teeth. Kives could only react. If the reaction wasn’t good enough, she lost.

I fired again. And again. The blessing disrupted most of the pulser blast, but his consciousness had to be feeling fuzzy now. I squeezed the trigger twenty, thirty times, then holstered the weapon with a snarl and swung my maroon paintsaber at the side of his head.

It connected with a clang. Slowly, momentously, the demigod fell.

*

“So Markus,” I subvocalized, sprawling invisibly against the arena wall. “I think we’re gonna win at this rate.”

“I think you might be right,” he said. He didn’t sound happy about it.

“It’s getting close to now or never, man,” I said. “Are you really going to go up there and stab a godseed?”

The sun was setting, and the Course of Honor was lit up with a thousand ghostlights. A circle of lights, shielded so as not to disrupt the competitors’ vision, had been set up in the middle. The Kabidiad would end with 1v1 exhibition matches after all, featuring the four greatest warriors in the Imperial Coalition.

With my timely intervention, our boys’ boys had amassed more kills than any other army. That, according to Kabidiad logic, meant they were the greatest warriors in the land. The other two were random dudes I didn’t know; Pereges was supposed to get one of their spots, but no one could wake him up.

Cades wearily disarmed his opponent and pantomimed a strike at his throat. Equally weary, the other dude bowed out of the ring. I really felt it. It’d been a super long day.

I heard Markus sigh over the comm.

“Cades won,” he said with a mixture of relief and fatigue. “That decides it, then.”

“Okay, great, so there’s an exit by your rooms—”

“No. I’m not aborting. Let’s see this through.”

Abby’s voice had undertones of sympathy. “I am updating the record. Eifni operative C3-32-3204, self-designation Markus, social officer, has waived an offer to abort the mission.”

Val simply murmured “my friend.” My comm registered nothing; what emotional depths lay behind it, I had no idea.

Markus exchanged a few words with Cades and the two men embraced each other. Then he stepped into the ring, lifting up a blunted exhibition sword.

His opponent was a lean man, whipping his sword around in the light. They saluted each other, then began circling.

“Markus, you don’t have to fight the godseed,” I said.

“I’m not.”

Before I had a chance to process what that meant, Markus struck.

Kabiadesian dueling techniques are built for show. Eifni operatives don’t train that way. He never stood a chance.

The blow shattered the man’s femur, crippling him. Markus immediately threw his sword away, crouching as if to help the downed man, but the priests descended on him and pulled him away.

“Thala!” Cades shouted after him.

“Courage!” Markus shouted back, then they dragged him past me into the arena.

Cades looked after him, dumbfounded. So did I.

Inflicting a crippling injury was grounds for disqualification in the Kabidiad. In one stroke, Markus had eliminated both of Cades’s opponents.

Cades had won the Kabidiad.

*

The first lesson I learned about Velean adulthood was that everything they say is a lie. Performative half-truths, exaggerated misstatements, misleading implications; every act, every word a performance to convey the proper image.

There were other lessons sprinkled over the course of the Kabiades op. They were important in their way. But the last lesson was that the lies—weren’t lies.

Let me tell you how it happened.

There’s a subfield of paraphysics called “conduit theory” that talks about how to bridge the gap between etherspace and realspace. If you just want to muddle people’s judgments for a bit, you can use a hand amplifier to bootstrap a frequency from etheric background noise.

But if you want to build an antenna straight to God, you need to start with something significant. You need to conjure the idea of God so strongly you can practically smell him. And then, if you’re in the godslaying business, you need to break him.

The Empress was a walking symbol of the Imperial Coalition. She wore a golden headdress, carved with the sword-and-scales of the Varasite faith. The many-colored layers of shawl spoke of disparate elements of society, united with gold and cowed with the sword. When she stood, she was statuesque—powerful, important, larger than life. When she walked, it was the inexorable march of military prowess and market pressure.

Standing across from her, Cades stood like the Divine Himbo himself. He was wearing the widest shawl I’d ever seen on a man, standing before a marble stand with a smaller, silver crown. His muscles gleamed in the ghostlight. Slinky the Rogue would have been proud.

Completing the trifecta, the Muscle Pope stood before both of them, expositing on the Kabiadesian values of who the fuck cares, it’s an oppressive sexist matriarchy. But the audience was just lapping it up—and from a conduit theory perspective, that’s what matters. Ten thousand pairs of eyes, staring down at the image of their gods and only seeing… their gods.

Real shame if something were to happen to them.

The priests that took that boyfriend-endangering fuckhead away were unarmed, and the commander had a spear. Getting him out of the room they’d stashed him in was simple enough that it was almost beneath notice.

That heartless fucking bastard didn’t take up a weapon of his own. The commander, wrapped in a combat exoskeleton, stayed hidden in the shadows of the entrance. When she shifted, the matte reflection of ghostlight played over the smoke-darkened steel of her spear.

He walked out onto the sand. Calmly. The Empress’s guards moved to intercept him and he stopped, showing no fear.

Why should that two-faced backstabber show fear in the face of violence? What does death mean to a Velean? We’ve slain it. Death is just another role, to be picked up and discarded when we feel like it.

Cades saw him out there.

Markus smiled, and he told one of those Velean lies that also happened to be true.

“Cades,” he called. “I love you. You don’t need to hide.”

It was true. He did love Cades. He did want Cades to be free of all this shit. But only a motherfucking sociopath puts their boyfriend in front of a soul-eating monster for the greater good.

But Cades had no idea that he was a means to an end. It was as if some great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Cades stood taller, and he smiled almost disbelievingly, as if he couldn’t believe the situation he’d found himself in.

“Enough,” he said clearly. “Enough. I am a man of honor. Enough. Hear me: I am Cades, son of Calades. I am a lover of men, and I will not live a lie. I cannot marry the Empress.”

For a moment, the world stood still, as if everyone were frozen in time. The shocked silence stretched out into a timeless moment, as if the Imperial Coalition itself were processing what Cades had said.

Val’s laughter rang in our ears.

“Got you.”

The world—cracked.

Cades’s transgressive moment swelled and bulged, bouncing between the hidden amplifiers in the arena, choking out all meaning except this one instant, this one idea: the champion of Kabiades has refused the hand of the daughter of Varas.

The champion of Kabiades is a lover of men.

The champion of Kabiades is an abomination.

It grew deeper, stronger, until the air was thick with it, until you could taste it. The amplifiers poured hundreds, thousands of tetrons into the growing mass of blasphemy, condensing it as Val used the barriers of Kabiades’s own temple as a focusing lens for the weapon that would kill him.

The shock, the violation, the wrongness built up, so strong that my comm warned me about conceptual bleed.

I felt the pressure even through my comm shielding. Most weren’t so lucky.

I watched people collapse all over the arena, their souls crushed by the sheer weight of it. Others would be lucky to escape with permanent changes where their souls didn’t align with the conduit event. We’d probably just single-handedly turned an entire generation of athletes gay.

“Amplifier 6 burned out,” Val said. “Compensating.”

“Burn them all if you have to!” the commander ordered. “Kill it!”

“They die,” Val snarled.

The world cracked again, deeper this time, spiderwebbing in some ineffable way through the heart of everything, and then the pressure was gone.

I had to know, but I couldn’t move. I didn’t dare speak.

Abby had no such compunctions. “Val. Status.”

The pause before he spoke was the longest of my life.

“Kill confirmed,” Val said. “Kabiades is dead.”

*

The scene descended into violence almost immediately, but it wasn’t my concern.

I was emotionally numb, completely exhausted, and I had just watched a god die. But I had one last loose end to take care of.

“MDO is showing activity at Amplifier 6,” Val said. “I need you to investigate.”

I pinged him in the affirmative, wrapped myself in the floating warmth of my cloak, and went to kill the target.

I knew who it was. Somehow, deep in my soul, I knew. Kives had thrown Lirian in my path one too many times, so I was going to take her fucking toy away.

“It’s Lirian,” Val said.

“I know.”

“Do you want me to freeze her?”

“No.”

“Suit yourself. Don’t take too long.”

“I won’t drag it out. She needs to die.”

I wondered if it was also that I needed to kill something, but the thought of cutting her down didn’t shift the emptiness I was feeling. If anything, it just felt like—checking off a to-do list item. Fold laundry, get groceries, take out the fucking trash.

I said nothing, and knew that Val heard everything.

I rounded a corner, dodging between screaming civilians, and headed for the supply room where Amplifier 6 was located. The door was open, and there was wine and spilled food everywhere inside.

I drew Lilith, dropping the cloak and sinking into absence meditation.

She was there in front of me, and she was a complete mess.

Her hair was frizzy and unkempt. The normal smirk was gone, her face instead dominated by bloodshot eyes rimmed with dark bags. She staggered out of the doorframe of the ruined storeroom.

“What have you done to me?!” she screamed at me. “Eyes all the time! In my sleep! What just happened out there?! Who are you?!”

I contentedly observed my pounding heart and what felt like a deep-seated muscular need to rip her limbs off. I would settle for the sword. I strode forward.

“Tell me,” Lirian sobbed, falling to her knees. “Tell me, tell me please.”

I noticed that she was in extreme emotional distress. The sword would fix that. I kicked her—not really even a proper kick, just a shove with my foot. She was just crying now.

“I can’t believe that this is how you’re going to die,” I said. “I always thought it’d be more climactic.”

I raised Lilith for a strike, but was interrupted by every alarm in my comm going off at once.

Just behind Lirian stood—me, but not. Not whatsoever. She was naked and bloodstained—and I’d seen that body enough in the mirror to know it was definitely mine—except for a hooded cloak, which covered all of her face above mouth full of sharp teeth. That mouth was smiling now, slicing its gums with its own teeth, causing little driblets of blood to trickle down its chin into a gaping neck wound. Blood poured freely out of her throat.

Messages scrolled freely past my eyes as my comm practically began to implode.

Warning: Divine manifestation!

Warning: Etheric shield degradation!

Warning: Error establishing etheric tunnel!

Warning: Scanner suite offline!

Warning: Etheric shield critical!

I couldn’t move. The cloaked woman rasped, but no words emerged; only blood gurgling from her mouth and the gash in her neck.

Lirian looked up at the manifestation, sighed, and fell unconscious.

A strong hand grabbed my hair from behind, yanking my head back, and then someone dragged a knife through my throat.

It hurt. Getting stabbed hurts really bad. But my thoughts were mostly on trying to save the arterial blood that was now spraying everywhere from my ruined trachea.

I collapsed to the floor, choking on the warm blood filling my throat, pressing uselessly against the fountain of blood. It was getting dark.

I needed to leave this body.

Warning: Error establishing etheric tunnel!

But I couldn’t. I tried again and got another error.

“So this was our killer,” said the man who’d killed me. “Amateur.”

Warning: Error establishing etheric tunnel!

As the last light left my consciousness, reaching desperately for anything that could help, my oxygen-starved mind slipped into a meditative mindset.

I felt the etheric tunnel connect. With a sigh of relief, I died.