I couldn't smell, for which I was profoundly grateful, and I wasn't certain how I was able to breathe. As far as I could tell, my lungs were currently transformed into fire as well. Fingers scratched and clawed at me as the thing shifted like the amagams had, but this was just a baby in comparison to Ashrot, and I'd burned enough of them from the inside to know how to deal with it.

I found something that didn't just melt and latched on with one hand. Muffled screams echoed around me as I pulled my catch into a fiery embrace. Clouds of putrescent gases erupted around me, and my health started ticking down rapidly. I pulled, levering myself against something relatively solid, some crafted structure of bone in the corpse-things' pelvis.

"Poseidon!" His face emerged from the muck, a tendril of metamorphic flesh snapping clear of his mouth as he sucked a ragged breath of the air that was both scaldingly hot from my magic and toxic and rotten from his.

"Tell her I'm coming for her next," I growled as I pulled the fat man into a hug. His tunic resisted; it was Shop-bought like my own, but he must not have taken the Fire or the Life Affinities. His clothes weren't destroyed, but being so close to me caused his fat to start to boil under his skin, and he screamed as steam burst from his pores, and rents appeared in his flesh as the pressure sought any possible release.

My body flickered and faded, and his skin began to suck at the mass of corpses around us to knit itself back together. I'd left my mace back on the spire. Fucking unprofessional, and I cursed myself, but it had seemed like a fairly useless weapon when it came to digging into a pile of dead bodies.

He flailed and fought back. Despite the damage I'd done, he looked to be healing quickly through whatever high-level Death spell he was using. I snatched a breath and coughed brutally. The air was thick with poison. My eyes were watering, and everything had become a blur. But I still had a grip on the bastard. I didn't need to see him. He glowed in my mind as Hunter's Gaze had locked onto him completely.

His flesh and muscles squirmed and twisted, but I wasn't letting go, and I clearly had an advantage in terms of strength. One hand found his face, and I drove my index finger into his eye, feeling it pop, spraying fluid across my face. My thumb forced its way into his mouth as my other hand found the back of his head. Then I clenched everything. My finger and thumb struggled for a moment, the bone of his skull putting up a steadfast resistance, but then there was a crack, and thumb and forefinger pinched together somewhere in his brain. The hand behind his head pulled forward and squeezed at the same time; my hands met somewhere in the middle of what had once been his head, my left fist encased in my right hand like Bruce Lee saluting a master.

One of the Six has fallen! Raymond Cobbler has killed Robert Mortimer! The second Exile has fallen!

Raymond will have access to a curated selection of rewards for taking the second step on his true path.

Shikrakyn slain x1.

No Souls harvested.

Choose one of the following rewards.

Stolen power. You will inherit the Water Affinity from Robert Mortimer, spells unlocked to his levels.

Bargain Prices: Shop costs reduced by 90%

A boon from a god of your choosing.

Make your choice…

I was falling, bits of corpse-thing tumbling around me. The tsunami had spent its fury, and huge swaths of my army were gone. The waters were still deep, and now a terrible rip tide was pulling everything out to sea. The water spout had gone. Mortimer and the bodies he'd melted together were falling just above me towards the waters below.

"I choose the boon!" I yelled as I slammed into the water, tons of inanimate flesh landing on top of me and forcing me deep underwater. Everything became a whirlwind of bubbles and murk. I couldn't tell what was up or down as I tumbled through the liquid, being dragged down and out to see. I kicked and fought, but couldn't escape, couldn't find air to breathe.

Gradually, my efforts became weaker as my oxygen-starved muscles began to flag. The bits of Mortimer's construct kept battering me and pushing me down. I couldn't touch the bottom to use Shape Earth, couldn't think of anything as my brain started to shut down. They say that drowning is a peaceful way to go, once you're past the panic. After that first lungful of water, it's like going to sleep. That is bollocks. My heart thundered as I snatched a breath of water, the last of my air escaping in a damp cough. My eyes slid closed, and darkness took me.

This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

After a moment of limbo, I found myself back in the meeting place of the gods. Aresk stood over me in his full Titan form. Kronos and Poseidon were both scowling at me from across the neutral zone where the divine auras mingled. Aphrodite and Death both smiled and nodded to me in a worryingly friendly way. Thoth was inscrutable with his raven-head; beady bird eyes stared fixedly at me like I was an interesting lump of carrion to be eaten.

"Which God do you want a boon from?" asked Aphrodite. "I've got a wonderful idea for you!" She undulated forward and held up a golden apple.

"I choose Kronos!" I snapped.

"You killed my champion, and you are currently drowning back on Urth. I am not sure this is wise." He kept switching appearances from young to old while he talked, but his voice was a constant boom. "You should force Poseidon to give you a boon, like gills!"

"You won't let me drown. Poseidon cheated. Mortimer couldn't summon that tidal wave; no mortal could. She cheated, so you won't let me drown."

"That's my boy!" Aresk stepped over me and shrank down to be merely very large, as opposed to gigantic. "The boy's right. The wave can't be his end."

"Bullshit! He's going to drown, and the fish will eat his eyes!" Poseidon barked. The tentacles that replaced her legs slapped back and forth angrily.

"No, fish-tits. He won't," my patron said in my defence.

"I agree with Aresk. This is far too interesting to let it end now. He will not drown."

The gods stood and their lips moved, but I couldn't hear anything. Aresk gesticulated wildly, agitated and argumentative. Poseidon smirked and winked at me, and Kronos gave me his ever-changing stare.

After several minutes of this, Kronos made a cutting motion with his hand, and suddenly I could hear them again.

"Very well, Raymond. You have asked for a boon from Old Father Time, so a boon you shall have. The gift of foresight is yours; much good may it do you. No one appreciates a prophet in their own time, especially not one whose future contains only violence and war."

Boon of Kronos

Limited prescience. See into the future. The closer to the present you look, the more accurate the vision will be.

"So we're agreed?" asked Aresk.

"I haven't fucking agreed!" I said quickly.

"You've got your boon. Beyond that, mortal, I'm afraid your opinion doesn't matter at all. I concur." Thoth nodded his beaked head definitively.

"Now wait a second! What about Poseidon? She needs to be punished for cheating!" I argued. Bird-like eyes, so similar to Glimpse's, glared back at me.

"Her punishment is none of your concern. Your fortunate escape from Davy Jones' Locker and my clutches is part of it. The rest is not your concern," said Death. He was in his dapper human appearance, as he had been when I claimed his source.

"I'm sorry, boy, but this is how it has to be," Aresk said sadly.

"My fucking army! The cheating bitch killed half my fucking army! I want her head!" I snarled, and the goddess snorted and blew a bubble in my direction, which Aresk blocked with one arm.

"Nothing to do about it now, Ray. Go on." He waved a hand, and rage boiled up in me, and as the world faded, I threw myself forward to try and snatch at the aquatic goddess with my bare hands. I faded from that world before I was halfway across the distance.

Was I hanging in limbo? Or was this the way they were sparing me from drowning? I couldn't tell. Finally, some pressure forced me to cough, and I spat a lungful of water down my front as I struggled to sit up.

The sea here was normal, not covered in floating corpses, no rip tide or devastated landscape. I reached out with one hand and pushed the hair out of my eyes. I was tangled in seaweed, and I pulled it away from my body in thick clumps.

This seemed to be a perfect desert island, with tropical trees, balmy weather, and crystal blue seas. I reached out and found that the threads that remained in my mind were all impossibly far away. I used my other sense, the semi-divine one. The two poles in the east that drew my mind like a compass needle seemed to be about as far away as they had been before. The one to the southeast was a lot closer. Perhaps a few hundred miles now as opposed to thousands.

I'm coming, Ray! sent Glimpse.

What about the army? I asked him.

Routed. The legion is gathering the survivors and marching back to Urkash. I've told them you're alive! I can take you back north in storage.

Maybe. Maybe not.

I emptied my storage rings of people, and just over two hundred nomads spread out around me, moving to investigate the island without being asked. Spears poked suspiciously at the alien-seeming vegetation.

"You always take us to the loveliest places. Where the fuck are we, and where's the rest of the army? Where's Haylin?" growled Jandak.

"We're somewhere in the south."

"What happened? Why didn't you let us fight?" asked one of the nomads whose name I didn't know.

"You can't fight a tsunami. I saved your lives. A lot of the army wasn't so lucky. When Glimpse gets here, you can get a ride back if you want. But I get the feeling this is not a very subtle hint as to what I'm supposed to do next from those dickhead gods." I stared towards my next target on the horizon.

"You going to sprout wings?" Kril asked. "We're not a people famous for nautical skills, Mond."

"I think we can work something out. Here." I extended a hand and he took it. I passed him fifty thousand Souls, and did the same for Kos and Jandak.

"I assume my sister is well?" asked Kod with an arched eyebrow. Three hundred grand gone in an instant. It was less than half of what I had. I started doing the numbers. Call it two hundred and fifteen survivors here with me, carry the one… Yeah, this could work. And I'd still have plenty left for Fay and the coven when Glimpse dropped them off.

On second thought, it might be better to have Glimpse take the women back to Urkash. I was not looking forward to the berating I was going to get.

Fay would pluck me, stuff me, and feed me to you roasted if I kept her in storage, Raymond.

Fair enough. We'd best let her stretch her legs before she goes home.

I looked to the south and saw the empty ocean that stretched out ahead of me. I could sense my next target. Maybe this one could be left alone? Maybe I should just go back to Urkash. I had an empire to run in the north.

My eyes were locked in the direction of that threatening, glowing beacon in my mind.

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