Level 200

Primary Stats: Body: SSS Mind: A Soul: A

Available Souls: 50438

Secondary Stats

Physical strength: 100 Reflexes: 60 Health: 1000

Magic strength: 40 Focus: 42 Mana: 1000

Path of Divinity unlocked. Patron: Aresk Foeslayer

Divine Ichor: level 2

Divine Physique: Level 3

Divine Intellect: Level 1

Well, that was new. It had auto-assigned some of these new levels based on my previous stats, it seemed. I wasn't sure what Ichor did, something to do with my blood, maybe? I pulled out my dagger and nicked the edge of my thumb. Sure enough, instead of the traditional red, I now bled a mixture of blue and gold.

"Kril, Fay, I need you both in the north. Who else can I trust to lead my empire?" I asked them, earning glares from the pair.

"At least take us with you!" Jandak snapped, waving a hand at Kos.

"Jagapan is still in Settal. I need to rally the nomads who've scattered in the wake of the wave. I need you to do that. Consolidate at Urkash and rebuild our stock of enchanted weapons and trinkets. What use are giants and horsemen when it comes to hunting down ships?" I ignored their wounded expressions.

"Husband, how long will you be?" Fay asked as she settled our son, shifting him to her other hip. I assumed the movement was deliberate, a not-so-subtle reminder of my responsibilities.

"I don't know. I can sense him. The others are too far away for me to tell if they're moving, but Amir is close enough that I can feel him cutting to the southwest. Glimpse will take you back to the Legions, then come back to carry me south." My voice was firm, and I optimistically hoped this would be the end of the argument.

The idyllic island, with a balmy Mediterranean climate, had been scoured by the nomads to look for any threat. Unsurprisingly, there hadn't been any monsters or vile-beasts lurking on the spit of land in the azure sea. It was just low trees and verdant bushes set behind a golden shoreline.

The peaceful setting erupted with more shouts and disagreements from the various tribal warriors. Still, I ignored them, took Fay's hand, and walked a short distance away, leaving Kril as the unwilling defender of a plan he didn't agree with. He wasn't cackling today. He knew how badly Poseidon's tidal wave had hurt the armies.

Based on the far more manageable, but still huge, number of threads binding my soul to those of my followers, I'd say I had lost about thirty per cent of my nomad troops. It could be higher; large numbers of them weren't Soulbound. The Legions seemed to have fared better, perhaps only ten percent losses in my heavy infantry. I had no means to rapidly recruit more warriors, though, so this was a massive setback, and at least in part, my motivation for choosing to try to take down Amir solo. I had always done my best work as an independent operator.

"Ray, why not take more warriors with you?" Fay asked in a worried voice once we were far enough away that our quiet words wouldn't be overheard.

"It's not going to be a war like before, love. If he deploys a field army, the nomads and the Legions will ride out to meet them, but why would he bother? He likely knows from his patron that he wouldn't stand a chance. Poseidon is cheating. If we try to build a navy to meet him at sea, it will be storms and untrustworthy currents for us, smooth sailing for that bastard. Besides, the giants and the nomads aren't sailors. Glimpse can fly me in, and I've just leveled up a lot."

"I saw the letters change. So will all your enemies when you get there, on your bloody own!"

I grimaced at the thought of the scarlet letters hanging over my head, an instant alert that not only was I empowered, but also how strong I was.

"I won't be playing fair. I have a set of skills from back home, the same ones I taught to the kill teams. This is going to be a clean kill, in and out, and then we turn to face the east. Expect them, love. The other Shikrakyn won't wait anymore. All they know is what the sea-bitch told them about me on Earth, and the fact that I've now killed two of us exiles. They'll be coming, and we need to be ready, love. Gather the tribes, the scattered Legions, and prepare to face them." I ruffled our son's hair, still thin and short, and smiled at his chubby face as he craned his neck to look up at me.

She leaned in, pressed her body close, and kissed me. It was long and passionate, but also bittersweet.

"I won't be long, Fay. Trust me."

"You better hadn't be." She took my hand and we returned to the ongoing bickering session.

"Enough! I've told you how it's going to be." Glimpse landed on my shoulder at my mental request. "You need to prepare for the armies of the other Shikrakyn that will come from the east. I've got this Amir-bloke. Haylin, set up another run for Golem cores. Kril, mass production. I want assembly line levels of production for trinkets and enchanted gear. I don't know how long we'll have. They feel very far away, but assume it isn't long. Maximum effort!"

"Am I reduced to a crafter now as well?" Jandak snapped.

"You two–" I included Kos in my words with a nod of my head to my brother-in-law, "–have the greatest responsibility of all. Guard Fay and my boy. Train the warriors. You might have a few months." I said this last quietly, having just lit a fire under the crowd of warriors with the thought of imminent war to motivate them; I had no wish to disabuse them of the notion so quickly. "You might not. Get them ready for me, get them ready for the next war."

"And you're going off alone?" Kos asked angrily.

"No, brother. I'm taking Wilson, Glimpse, and Bob, so hardly alone. Sometimes one man can go where an army cannot and kill the only enemy that matters."

"It's underhanded, Mond," Jandak grumbled.

"Nobody said I had to play fair!" I grinned at them, then sent a mental nod to Glimpse. They vanished into the necklace of enchanted stone beads that the crow clutched in one claw.

"Be careful, boy. Crathan cities are strange and seem wonderful, but they've got a dark side to them." Kril warned as he vanished into storage as well.

I received a hug and another kiss from a worried-looking Fay as she and the boy were stored last of all.

I was left alone on the beach with a murderbot and a giant wolf.

"Sounds like the start of a bad joke," I chuckled as I sat down beside Wilson and ran a hand through his fur. "A golem, a wolf, and a demigod walk into a bar…"

"You are not yet a true demigod. You will no longer raise your stats and gain levels. You must now spend souls on your Path."

"So you know more than you're letting on? Is this Bob or is this Aresk? I can never tell with you."

"I am Bob. Aresk does not need to possess me if he wishes to speak to you," Bob replied in Aresk's voice, and a divine chuckle at the back of my mind reinforced the bot's statement. "You are only taking the first steps on a different path."

"I wonder if there are any shortcuts?"

I watched the surf roll in as I tracked Glimpse in my mind. The bird flew far faster than a normal crow could dream of. Most light aircraft from back home would be jealous of the speedy creature.

From my bird's-eye view, I could see hundreds, probably thousands, of corpses floating out into the inland sea. Glimpse's hunger for eyeballs spiked, but I sent a gentle nudge to leave these dead be. They would be a feast for the aquatic life, and would likely be washing up on the opposite shore in a week or two. Word would quickly spread about what had happened here at the northern edge of what on Earth would be the Black Sea.

The coastline south of Urkash was devastated. Scrubland had been wiped clean, replaced with a muddy morass that stretched for miles. Glimpse passed over nomads, horses lost to the wave, trudging through the pools and mud on their way north. The Legion engineers were using magic and huge planks of wood, which they must have brought south from the forests that lined the tundra, to set up resting points and thin, temporary roads out of the killing grounds.

Pertabon was organising the rearguard, not that there was anything left to defend against. A professionalism that I appreciated motivated him to ensure our retreat and regrouping were handled properly. As badly as my army had been hurt, almost none of Mortimer's forces had survived. The handful of minor amalgams, two or three men melted together into his lesser undead abominations that had made it through intact, were crushed by the Huskar as soon as the monsters pulled free of the cloying muck.

I directed Glimpse to land at the edge of the battlefield closest to the city and let out my survivors. Kril and the Fangs immediately set to organising the nomads. Rapid Growth was used to weave mats of grasses into bridges reaching out towards those still struggling through the bog left behind by Mortimer's suicidal attack. Fay and the coven set to work healing the injured, and the Fangs began to organise the survivors into units to march back to the city.

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I pulled some meat, dried and seasoned in the Areskyn fashion, into tough, leathery jerky from my storage space and sliced off a chunk that I tossed to Wilson. A waterskin and a shallow metal bowl followed. I poured out some water that the wolf lapped up greedily before whining for more.

"You're going to have to go into storage, puppy." I refilled his bowl.

He gave me a whine and a quiet snarl in reply.

"I know. It's the only way. Unless you want to swim across the sea?"

A tail wag and a nod. I smiled and ruffled the bronze fur on his side.

Hurry back, crow! We've got places to be! I sent down the telepathic link with Glimpse.

I hope you appreciate my passing up on the feast Mortimer left for us carrion feeders! came back down the connection.

The army just took huge losses, watching my pet bird eat their dead mates' eyeballs, and just the eyeballs, wouldn't be good for morale.

I am not a pet!

I know, bloke. But most of them don't know that.

Raymond, you must increase efforts to educate your people. I am God-Forged and Soulbound!

I sent a wave of affection down the link, but didn't want to try and argue the point. Most of the men in the tribes refused to learn to read, despite how useful it was in little things like organising far-flung detachments of fast-moving cavalry. Fortunately, the Huskar were all literate and were also highly mobile, able to outrun the cavalry over long distances with their monstrous endurance and long legs.

The tide had peaked and was moving back out by the time Glimpse returned, drawn by our bond like a homing pigeon to its nest. He flapped to a halt, and I passed him some meat while we watched the waves retreat for a while.

"We should head down the coast to the west. The northernmost Crathan colonies are that way, and they are the major naval power in the area, other than Amir." I reached out with my divine sense to locate the enemy. He was still cutting steadily to the southwest, a few hundred miles away. From all the maps I'd seen of this world, I was certain he must be south of the Bosphorus, somewhere in what passed on Urth for the northwestern Mediterranean. I could use a break on a sunny island.

I glanced ruefully around my own little island and shrugged. Not this one. It was going to be one of the first to get the bounty of the sea, the floating, bloated remains of mine and Mortimer's armies.

It took several minutes of cajoling, and at one point, I had to chase the wolf halfway across the island with the cackling laughter of the crow following behind us. Still, I finally got Wilson to accept the temporary oblivion of the storage space. Bob went into my personal pocket dimension without an issue; the bot was ever obedient.

"Put us down outside the biggest port city you can find. Just let me out first, thee and me can get away with fitting in, the bronze war machine and the giant wolf… not so much!"

You think I can pass as a crow?

I looked the oversized bird up and down. His metre-wide wingspan would make him an abnormally large specimen by any standards.

"Maybe a raven?"

Pah.

The world vanished and then reappeared changed. I blinked as my toes settled into damp sand. It was no longer golden, but volcanic black, glittering under the light of the twin moons. Glimpse immediately took to his wings again and spiralled up into the darkness, black feathers blending into the midnight above us. As he gained height, it became clear he had hopped us across the Black Sea. Unless I missed my guess, the narrow channel to my right, only a few miles across, was the passage of water that separated Europe from Asia back home.

Small villages glowed faintly down either side of the water, but a mile or so from where I stood, a stone city glowed from the light of hundreds of fires. Glimpse had excellent night vision, far superior to that of a human, and within the huge walls, easily four metres thick at the top, rows of neat stone houses lined dark streets. People moved about, some carrying torches and throwing off just enough light for the bird to get clear images.

Their clothing was different from the nomads; they didn't wear trousers for one. Long tunics hung to their knees, and some kind of toga or kimono-like robe was worn on top of them. Glimpse circled lower and flew along the circumference of the walls. Men clad in bronze breastplates strode along the tops, long spears clutched in one hand and large round shields hanging from the other.

Everything was colourful, even in the fitful light. Walls were painted in vivid colours, reds, blues, and greens dominated, but bright yellows lined many of the eaves of houses. Statues and fountains filled the streets, and even at this time of night, the market was clearly active. The yells of hawkers came through to Glimpse in a dozen languages, including the polyglot language of the shit-sitters south of the steppes that the nomads shared.

Glimpse circled around to the docks, set in a huge natural harbour that had a dozen major vessels, multiple masts with the sails tied neatly to booms, and the banks of oars were all raised vertically, giving the ships the look of upturned, many-legged insects. Smaller rowboats plied back and forth even at this time of night, taking goods from the trade vessels and delivering them to the docks, where caravans of mules pulled carts towards warehouses or directly to the markets that seemed to fill every other open space within the city.

I had found civilisation on a scale that the people in the north merely mimicked. At a guess, I'd say the city housed perhaps fifty thousand people. Some multilevel structures seemed to be this world's equivalent of apartment blocks. I couldn't imagine a single family group occupying one of the massive structures.

I pulled out some simple clothes and hid my impenetrable tunic away in a storage ring. I kept my marriage dagger on my hip but wrapped the gleaming sheath in a strip of dull red cloth. Barefoot as was my wont, I strode along the beach towards the city in the distance.

Ships were still coming and going. I sent Glimpse out to check, and sure enough, the waterway beyond the harbour had another half dozen slowly rowing in. As one sailed out past the crude lighthouses that marked either side of the harbour, another would move in to replace it. This was what I needed. A naval centre, a place where all the traders came. It should be easier to blend in among such a mixed group of people, and it should be an excellent place to investigate Amir and narrow down his base of operations.

He was eternally at sea, it seemed. The beacon in my mind that pointed me to him hadn't stopped moving, and while it was a lot closer now, it felt as though he was just over the horizon. I knew it would be impossible for Glimpse to transport me to him directly for now. I would have to go into storage for the flight, thankfully sparing me from in-flight meals, and I wouldn't be able to track him. If this didn't work, we might try it. Have the bird stop every few miles to put me down so I could point the new direction, but I was hopeful that such a well-connected city would be able to provide some more direct information.

After all, a bad hunter chases; a good one lies in wait. Seeing as I would be alone on this mission and catching the enemy at sea was too difficult, I planned to find his base and set an ambush.

You could just let me burn down every ship on the water, Glimpse sent in an amused tone of thought.

Let's just keep that option on a back burner for now, I thought ruefully.

The city gates were closed overnight, despite the activity at such a late hour; it seemed to be entirely focused on the docks or entertainment. Alehouses lined the wide streets that led from the water into the city proper, and brightly lit amphitheatres were scattered among the housing, crowds cheering and cursing at people on the stages who wore strange wooden masks.

Public entertainment among my people tended to revolve around the gelding of a captured enemy and the conversion of his head into what passed for a football. The songs they sang of their heroes and legends on festival days and ceremonial events had a savage beauty to them, but there was no organised entertainment other than perhaps a drunken Kril telling stories outside the command tents to any of the younger warriors he could convince to stop and top up his cup with more yalk.

I approached along the beach for the most part, enjoying the feeling of wet sand between my toes, but as I drew closer to the walls, I cut inland and moved quietly through the scrub. Unfamiliar spiny bushes snagged at my clothing, but were rebuffed by skin. Very little short of shop-bought weapons made from exotic alloys was capable of threatening me at this point.

I approached the wall by slipping from shadow to shadow and waiting for the lozenges of light that marked the torch-bearing guard's passage above me to pass me by. The towers were tall, with arrow slits serving as windows up the sides, and they were built from carved blocks of what looked like granite. Mortimer had clearly never gotten around to this place; the presence of so many people proved that. If he had, he would have killed most of them to form more of his massive amalgams.

I snuck up next to the wall and tore a hole in reality. A tear-shaped aperture, lined in pink light, appeared, and I dove through before snapping it closed. I was in.

I moved slowly and deliberately, no longer trying to be stealthy. Looking like you belonged was often enough to get people to pass over your presence. I might look a little rough, with my hair matted with salt from my earlier near-drowning, and my bare feet dusted with dirt and sand, but I shouldn't be so objectionable as to warrant much more than a cursory sneer from the more well-to-do citizens.

I fell in with a crowd moving towards the markets, using Glimpse, still circling above, to guide me through the winding and slightly alien streets. The sussuration of the peripheral parts of town gave way to a steady hum as people bartered, advertised their wares to passersby, or the quiet cacophony of alehouses full of drunks.

The food was inspired by the fruits of the sea. Shellfish, tiny shells that were boiled briefly in batches and then ladled into bowls. Some kind of sharp-smelling citrus fruit would be squeezed over them, and they were consumed via a thin, wooden spike that was used to lever the flesh out of the shells. People either bartered with salt or used metal tokens, square bronze coins embossed with the aquiline profile of some local leader.

I pointed to the man selling cockles and raised one finger. He babbled at me suspiciously in a language I didn't recognise. I turned away and pulled a small pouch of salt out of storage at an angle that shielded the fact that it would have seemed to appear from thin air. I waved it at him and poured out a small pile of salt. He squinted at it, dipped a finger, and licked it before nodding to me, suddenly much more friendly.

He chattered away as he dunked another batch of shellfish to their boiling deaths and pointed at a set of scales set at the edge of his cart's work surface. The weight was fixed in place when I poked it, and he made more noises that meant nothing to me, then mimed pouring something into the other tray. I obliged, carefully tipping out salt until the pans were level. He swept up the pan I'd filled and poured it into a sack he produced from beneath his chopping board.

Once I had my food, I made my way deeper into the market as I ate, listening for someone using the steppe language. I found myself passing a man offering crude stone jewellery, and arguing with a woman who was sneering at him and pointing to his wares. The stonework reminded me of the tribes, and the man had his hair cut in the style of the Jagarnyn, the tribe who had adopted Sulk the smith and joined forces with me over the winter.

I had just moved on when his voice shifted and he spoke more softly.

"Shit-sitter bitch!" he muttered, and I spun in surprise.

The woman had moved on without buying anything, but he noticed me turn and barked something at me in the local dialect.

"Shit-sitters can't be trusted, brother. Never been on Koryiolis," I said affably, and he grinned.

"True enough. What tribe?"

"Mondyn. We split the herds with Areskyn and set out on our own last year."

"Hakubin lost the love of the Hartik?" he said with wide eyes, and I nodded. It was close enough to the truth. "I've been too long away from home. The blue sea can never replace the green one of the steppes! What brings you to Gretapolisi, friend? Do you have anything for trade? My stone jewellery seems to have fallen out of vogue with the noble ladies. Alas, I lack the funds to purchase passage to Helipokyn. Say, could you help a fellow warrior out by any chance?"

He had truly been away from the steppes for too long. No nomad would ask a stranger for help like that. They would never need to; the family units existed to provide the mutual support network that bound the clans and tribes together.

"I might be able to help a fellow warrior, but I'm going to need your help in return, brother," I said with a smile.

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