'That's a fucking large crow,' or some Juntian exclamation along those lines, are not the greatest last words that a man could hope for. It was better than a heart attack on the shitter, or the phrase 'what bus?', but not by much. Something along the lines of 'big bird' was the final thing to slip past the lips of the lookout who was perched high on the central mast of the largest Kentanii.

Normalis Humano slain x1

Ten Souls gathered.

I had reached out as soon as Glimpse had released me from storage and crushed his neck with one hand. I curled his body into the small space and took in my surroundings.

The Juntian ships were schooners, or cogs, or galleons, or whatever. I wasn't up to date with medieval naval lingo. The others were twin-masted, longer than the Windspite by about fifty percent and much broader. But the one I perched unobserved in was the real prize. Three masts, the front one shorter than the others, ran down the centre of the ship, and it was easily twice the size of my recently liberated galley.

Up so high, I rocked slightly as the ship swayed with the waves, but the sailors below weren't concerned about the constant movement. It looked like someone had thrown a stone into a beehive. Men swarmed over rigging and the decks, frantically locking things down and tying things off as officers barked orders. None of them was currently looking up, but in the twilight of the moons, it would be almost impossible to make out that I had replaced the lookout anyway.

"So, what's best? This thing will have the charts the dearly departed Commander described. Do we really need the other boats?" I whispered aloud. Glimpse cocked his head at me and cawed quietly.

It would seem the crew is largely unnecessary now. Perhaps we should just collect Wilson and go on our way?

"Nah. I need to upgrade some magic, which means I need Souls, and we need to take this ship intact. Or at least avoid sinking it."

I began to cast a series of Firebolts. The almost-invisible fists of fire appeared twenty metres away from me, and down at deck level, before they arced off towards the nearest of this ship's sisters. They slammed into the other pirate vessel and deleted large sections of its hull. As it listed to the side and began to sink, the secondary fires caused by the detonations spread quickly along oiled planks and tarred ropes.

Normalis Humano slain x89

Eight hundred and ninety Souls gathered.

That was more like it. None of this chump-change gathering of Souls. Screams of panic echoed out across the sea as the sailors below stopped in their tracks. Frantic shouts came from the officers. The barrage had come from this vessel, as far as the witnesses could tell, and soon they did what I had hoped.

Men in rich tunics were screamed at and herded together on the foredeck. They all wore arrays of jewelry, looking more like rich wives than human weapons, and each carried a short cane similar to the Commander's.

A number of officers, scarlet B's and C's floating over their heads, harangued them as the Battery-Mages switched from arrogance to confusion and back again. An argument erupted, one of the mages shoving back an officer who got too close to him.

I repeated the trick on the next closest ship. Another line of holes appeared along the hull that instantly turned that side of the ship into a conflagration. Some of the Battery-Mages below started pointing and yelling as yet another part of the fleet began to sink beneath the waves.

Normalis Humano slain x107

One thousand and seventy Souls gathered.

The officers below stared in confusion for less than five seconds, then began screaming at the rest of the crew. Soon, the regular sailors were hurrying to their positions, and a dozen of them began scaling the rigging below my aerie.

"Deal with the last ship while I sort out this lot, will you, please?" I said as I stood up. The crow slipped off the edge of the railing around the lookout's nest and spiralled unnoticed into the sky. I drew my sword and leapt over the edge as well, holding my blade out to slice through the ropes as I fell.

A man stared in shock as I dropped past him, then he joined me in the fall as the ropes above began to unravel. I slammed into the deck, bending my knees to absorb the fall, but the wood still creaked and cracked from the impact. The unfortunate sailor landed with a crunch and a faint moan. I released Bob from storage, and the bronze golem spread out his whirling limbs.

"Have fun. Secure the maproom. Don't break the ship," I told the machine. My sword flicked out and cut through the mast at an angle, causing the upper section to collapse away from me and land with a splash in the sea.

"Without breaking the ship?" The multiple blue lenses set in Bob's face whirred and narrowed as he looked at me.

"Don't sink the ship. Fuckers aren't going anywhere now."

The machine nodded and took off towards the rear of the ship, slaughtering anyone he came across. These were pirates, slavers, and probably rapists. My code was perfectly happy for me or my bot to cut our way through them.

At first, they threw themselves at me as I made my way towards the Battery-Mages still clustered at the front. Taking the wizards out wouldn't be hard; stopping them from blasting holes in the ship was going to be the tricky part. Sailors dropped from above only to be snatched from the air and tossed over the side or split in half with a flick of my blade. Should I give the sword a name? Or was that kind of lame? It was one of a kind, unless one of the others had spent the Souls to get something similar from the shop. Did it deserve a name? It had one function: cutting things in half, or bits off of other things. It was hardly romantic.

Soon, the sailors were throwing themselves out of my way, often jumping into the sea to escape my advance. I didn't pay them any attention; they were gnats at best. Unleveled humans were as much threat to me as a mouse is to a lion. Unless they wore a myriad of enchanted trinkets and could see me coming.

Stopping by the foremast, I paused and took stock of the situation. The mages were still bickering and shouting at each other in their rough language, barely paying attention to anything outside their own little gathering. Still, I was too tall to pass unnoticed if I just tried to stroll up to them with my silvery sword hanging at my side. People quickly start paying attention to that kind of thing.

It was only ten metres or so, but that would give some of them enough time to react foolishly and start lobbing spells before I could put them down, even with haste and Enhancement active. I was out of charges for the haste amulet today, so that was off the table anyway.

The nameless sword went back into storage, and I dived over the side of the ship. The murky waters were cold as I arced through the dive and resurfaced. As I bobbed in the waves, I could see sailors frantically swimming for the distant shore. Good luck to them. I could sense Wilson sitting patiently on the beach, watching for his dinner to arrive.

Glimpse, wait for my order to hit the other ship! From the bird's sense, I could see he had circled up high and was now preparing to make his attack like a falcon stooping on a pigeon. A mental affirmation came back, and the crow took up a holding pattern in the sky above.

I swam over to the prow of the ship and began hauling myself out of the water along the thick timber where the two halves of the hull met. I reached the bowsprit and my fingers bit into the softer wood, pulling one wing off the bare-breasted harpy.

"Sorry about that, miss," I muttered as I got into position just below the railings, bare feet balanced on a head and a boob. Do it.

Glimpse fell, a barrage of fireballs leading the way. They weren't as hot as my own, nor nearly as fast, but they landed unerringly, tracking a line of explosions along the ship. Splinters as thick as my wrist and the length of an arm, as well as charred bits of sailors, flew into the air as the fires caught.

The arguing above had stopped as the Battery-Mages turned to watch the latest group of explosions, throwing flickering light across waves. I heaved and landed among them, activating Enhancement as my sword once more appeared in my hands. My aura spread out around me, pressing against the souls of the terrified men. I whirled, the blade not even slowed as it passed through limbs and torsos, then blurred around the shocked outliers, the ones who'd escaped my first slaughter.

Normalis Humano slain x22

Two hundred and twenty Souls gathered.

Professional. I nodded in satisfaction at the mess as I set off to hunt down the Soulbound officers. I went through the top two decks looking for the bastards, but either Bob had found them first, or they'd decided that retreat was the better option and had jumped overboard. I sent a warning to Wilson that some of his prey might be a bit stronger than normal. The response was a mental image of bronze teeth flashing along a stony shore as gasping men dragged themselves out of the sea in triumph, only to die as the wolf charged back and forth among them.

Well, at least he was happy. I found Bob outside a crude doorway in the aftcastle, on the second floor of the strange little house stuck on the end of the ship. The stairs wound to either side of the structure, and the missing door on this side revealed a dark room with a large table at the centre.

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Piled atop said table were leatherbound tomes and charts, some of them rolled up, but a few were spread out, weighted down at the corners with lead sculptures that looked like crude carvings of obese women.

"Great. That's a shit load of paper."

"Logically, the chart you seek will be locked away and not on display. Eighty-four percent likelihood."

"Never tell me the odds. OK. Let's strip-search this place. We'll take the lot and sort it out back on the Windspite." I pulled all the papers and books into storage as the golem began dismantling the wall panels, plucking them away from the rest one at a time.

"My estimate was too low." It was the first time I'd heard Bob sound anything other than mechanical or murder-ey. I glanced up and behind the latest panel he had ripped free, he had revealed a small cubby hole. Moving over, I saw that there were simple hinges along one side of the fancy woodwork, and within the dark space behind it were a number of pouches that jangled when I poked them, several books, and three rolled-up charts.

I scooped them up and surveyed the ruin Bob had wrought on the once tidy room.

"We should get out of here before someone catches us."

"I believe we have killed all the threats on this vessel? Bob replied.

"Fair enough. No need to linger, though." A loud caw came from outside the maproom. "Our chariot awaits."

Outside, I stared along the length of the ship. Blood and broken bodies lay scattered everywhere. The ship was largely intact, but cleaning up to refit it would be the kind of job to give a normal person a lifetime of nightmares.

"Glimpse, pick up Wilson, then drop us let us out at the Windspite. We'll figure out where we need to go from there."

The wolf won't want to– Glimpse began, but I sent out a compulsion to Wilson. He would get into the bloody stone without making a fuss this time. A submissive whimper, unhappy but compliant, came back.

"Won't be a problem this time."

I reached out a hand to the crow, and the world vanished from around me. Normally, time spent in storage simply didn't happen. I went in, and I immediately came back out somewhere else. On this occasion, it was different.

Opening my eyes, I found myself in a world of swirling shadows. It wasn't a large world, perhaps twenty metres from edge to edge, and beyond it I could see the familiar marble plateau lined with statues and slowly spinning weapons and armour on plinths. The giant bronze statue that usually dominated Aresk's god-world was missing.

"Ahem. Permission to come aboard, captain?" I spun and found a man-sized variant of the god's physical form standing just at the boundary between wherever the hell I was and the god's domain. He waved jauntily at me.

I couldn't move. I glanced down, and my body was lost in shadows below my shoulders, like I wore a swirling cape that covered me completely.

"You don't need a body in there, Raymond. But if you focus on it, you can have one. You can do whatever you like in that place." I glared at the god. Suddenly, a nose appeared at the bottom of my vision. I hadn't noticed it was missing. I willed myself to have a body and brought up my newly formed arm in front of my face as a rich red tunic, cut in the style of my nomads, flowed into being around the limb.

"Where am I?" I asked, still staring at the limb I'd just manifested.

"You've woken him up. Well, not so much woke him up. Started to bring him back to life. Can I come in?" I nodded as my senses detected him stepping into this world. My world. Something ancient lurked at the edge of my perception. Something ancient… and professional.

"Your domain will grow. It's still nascent. Once you come into your power, I won't be able to shield it from the others. But I won't need to, either. Any chance of a chair?" Aresk gave me a shiny grin and waved behind him.

Imagining a chair was a lot harder than you might think at first. Thinking the word conjured so many images that what appeared was amorphous; it looked like the idea of a chair, or lots of different types of chairs trying to exist in the same place at the same time. I squinted, and the blur resolved into a simple armchair. As Aresk sat, I summoned an identical one and moved over to sit opposite my patron.

"This is my place." It wasn't a question. I could feel the control I had here. Everything shifted as I focused on it, resolving into what I wanted it to be. Mostly swirling shadows, if I'm honest. But with some effort, the moving morasses began to resolve into the inside of mine and Fay's yurt.

"A home away from home. Or your true home, to be more accurate," Aresk said as he nodded at the felt walls and simple furniture. "The last one of you to get this far was Narbo."

"He died." The man who'd created an empire thousands of years ago on Urth, the Roman general who created the Huskar, had fallen like all the other competitors.

"Did he? I'm afraid his story isn't mine to tell. But you, you're perfect!"

I didn't like the sense of smug self-satisfaction that rolled off the god in waves. It hung in the air of my domain like oily smoke. My shadows thickened and condensed around him, but he just shrugged and chuckled.

"Not yet, little brother. Far too weak to trouble myself or the other Potentates. Some of the small gods might tremble at your presence, though."

"What has happened to me?" My voice was flat and cold. I had a suspicion that all I needed was more control, more time to practice in this strange space, to bring it completely under my will. Then he wouldn't be quite so fucking smug.

"What was your quest, brother? Your heart's desire," Aresk asked, switching to a serious voice that took me aback.

"Deal with Amir and his pirates. Then the others," I snapped. That much was obvious.

"Tsk. Such puny foes."

"You try taking out someone with stupidly high stats." I realised it was a dumb thing to say as soon as the words left my mouth. If Aresk was free to act on Urth, only another god could stand against him. He laughed again. A little like how any army with a shikrakyn could smash whatever force was arrayed against them if one of us wasn't on the other side as well.

"Think of them as practice. Your real prey is a much bigger fish." A metallic chuckle followed his statement.

"Poseidon?" The burning desire to kill the bitch who'd tricked me into this world had taken a backseat recently, largely due to the exigencies of dealing with the war with Mortimer. Having seen how powerful these deities were, I'd reluctantly accepted that the most I could do was fuck up their plans on Urth.

I was as much a bug to them as normal humans were to me. But that wasn't the only reason, if I was honest with myself. Fay, my boy, my friends. I didn't want to go home anymore. There was nothing there for me to rival what I'd found here.

The yurt walls had faded as darkness thickened the air around me. Could I do it now? Take my revenge on the being who'd betrayed me, played me for a fool?

"If anyone can kill scaly-tits, he can. Or you can when you fully wake him."

"Who the fuck are you talking about, brother?" I growled.

"Feel for him. He's all around us, or the ghost of him is anyway. What do you sense? Don't try and control, let it be and feel its natural form."

Reluctantly, I stopped pressuring this world to conform to my will, and the shadows thickened again, the yurt became a faint outline around us, and something stalked slowly around us in the dark. Gleaming fangs, a midnight body. Feline and strong. No. A man. Gleaming stone knives flashing in the dark, and sometimes atop mighty stone ziggurats under the sun. Lines of slaves awaited their turn, drugged and confused as they were led to the altar.

"Who was he?" I whispered.

"You can feel his ghost? He was Tezcatlipolca. Aspects of him have had other names in different cultures, but that was the one he preferred. You've been a devotee of his your entire professional life. A regular thuggee. First in the army, then in your private endeavours."

"A god of killing? What about Hadesti? What about you?"

"Hasesti is more of a catcher than a thrower in that regard. I have taken on some of your predecessor's power since his internment, but again, War is so much more than just murder. Don't underestimate me like the others." It occurred to me this had been a normal conversation. Not in terms of subject matter, of course, but the god hadn't seemed to read my thoughts once. He was asking me questions. Was I now safe in my own head again? You're a lying cunt! I thought fiercely at the man of bronze sitting opposite me, and he didn't bat an eyelid. Interesting.

"So I'm a threat to you? To your power, I mean," I asked carefully.

"Oh, is that what you're worried about? No, aspects of the power and responsibilities of the Fallen naturally end up being absorbed into those of us who remain. I'd love to see you regain his glory. Mostly, we Fall as our faith fades. Superstition is far more impactful than mortals realise, when they stop believing we… dissipate. Think about the gods that you've met. What do we all share?"

"A love of the sound of your own voices?"

"That too. But it's something else…" He grinned at me.

"You aren't religious icons anymore. No one thinks of Mars as War back home."

"Pretty much. We embody ideas that are still all pervasive among the humans. Disease, War, Famine, and Death. But there are rather more than four horsemen."

"So I'm becoming the god of killing? How did he die, or Fall, or whatever? Suicide?" I asked. Killing was still very common back home. Murder rates weren't that high, but… still high enough.

"Why do people kill on Earth? Crimes of passion? Jealousy got rolled into Aphrodite a long time ago. That was a bitter cat-fight, I can tell you! War? That's my wheelhouse. Most of the reasons for murder have been absorbed by the rest of us." He shrugged. "But now on Urth, you've built a reputation. A warlord, but more than that, a murderer."

"Fuck you. I haven't just killed people. I've built something." Our surroundings shimmered as the anger ran through me. With an effort of will, I brought back the simple interior of the yurt.

"No one has stood against you and lived. You've killed everyone who physically opposed you. In front of many, many witnesses, I might add. You've started a cult of assassins who already worship you in their own pragmatic, simplistic fashion. You're well on your way, little brother."

Shit. The shadows swirled around me as I pondered his words. It had been close a few times, but I hadn't really lost a fight since… since I got there.

"You've got the right mindset, the right experiences, the right reputation, and now you've got the first inklings of the power. I will shield you as long as I can, Ray. And then, when the time is right and you've grown into what you're destined to be, you will unleash yourself on our enemies! There will be a slaughter among the gods as hasn't been seen since that Egyptian bastard came up with monotheism! You will have your revenge." He leaned back and rested his hands in his lap.

"Why? What's in it for you, brother?"

"War! Divine War! The best sort! Ah, it's been so long! My allies will join us, and we will punish our enemies for their slights, for their snide remarks, for their conspiracies! Fish-breath is cheating in your game, you know this? She has always loved to confound me. So many epic battles stillborn, never to make the annals of history, because that bitch decided to swallow an army before it could reach the land and fight!"

"So you want me to command your armies in some war among the gods?"

"Do I look like I need a general?" Aresk snapped angrily. "I am THE general! No, little brother. I want you to thin the herd, take out a few of the opposition's leaders, do the thing you spent a decade perfecting on Earth. Be the best, most professional assassin, the being that you've ever seen yourself as."

"I… I need some time." Bloody hell. The other exiles with their magic and enhanced physiques were trouble enough! This was an entirely different sport.

"I know you do. Time to come into your power, for a start. Deal with the mortals quickly, Ray, and then the real fight can begin."

The bronze statue dissolved into nothing, and the weight of his power vanished from my domain. With it once again my own, I reclined in my chair and imagined how I could kill a god. Nukes would be preferable, launched from a long way away, with me even further and hidden in a bunker. The image of a missile, sleek and deadly, the best Earth could produce, rotated in front of me, but a feline growl, a purr of disapproval, whispered from behind me.

"So not nukes then." I shifted the image to guns, tanks, spears, and clubs, but the air of disapproval from the ghost of a god didn't stop. Finally, a knife appeared. Straight blade, narrow and slim. Designed to slide between ribs and cut into the most vital of organs. The gleaming steel gradually darkened, becoming shiny black stone with a razor's edge that glinted in the shifting light of my world.

Something purred happily behind me.

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