We had a feast on the far side of the river that evening. The sun had set on our victory, and the hordes of Beauties and mortals were dead or put to flight. Wilson was off chasing them down, along with Glimpse and the nomads from the reserves who were still fresh after the battle.

Their plant magic had taken a toll towards the end. Eruptions of growth whose thorny limbs had ripped my men and Huskar apart. I ignored the sounds of feasting outside and cast Heal Other on Jandak again.

"I thought you knew how to dodge?" I asked him, only half joking.

"Didn't expect him to take himself out as well. If you don't care if you survive, it's pretty easy to kill a man on your way out," he grumbled.

"Haylin is angry with you?"

He snorted and shifted, his tattered left arm knitting back together a little more as the glow faded. "Don't tell her how low my health points got. She worries."

I chuckled. Haylin was not a worrier. Or if she was, it manifested as a personality that felt more like a force of nature than anything else. "Faye is with her. I'm sure you'll only lose one eye to your wife."

"It's not my eyes I'm worried about."

"I shared out the Souls I got, but I saved you some," I said as I laid a hand on his undestroyed shoulder and sent him fifty thousand. It had been a good day for the harvest. I'd boosted Prender up to almost match Kos and Jandak, and every man and Huskar who hadn't received Souls from me before were now my Soulbound servants.

The myriad of threads that stretched out from my mind was a tangled mess. When I accessed the strange other-sense of my bonds, I felt elation, determination, and a fierce loyalty coming back from tens of thousands of warriors. It would seem that the nascent God of Killing had robbed the Wargod of his favourite people.

"Where do we go next?" Jandak asked.

"Tomorrow we rest. Then we march east again, into the rising sun. Jeremy must have another field army. The towns and cities this side of the Worldspine are huge. He has a massive population to draw on that we can't hope to match," I said glumly, sipping from a cup of ched.

"Shit sitters," Jadak sneered, shifting and raising his head. "They're nothing to us. If they won't come to us like the cowards they are, we can run for days and bring them down."

"Exactly what any brave warrior should say," said Kril as he slipped into the yurt. "But perhaps not what a wise warrior would think."

"Dreamer, they're chaff on the wind before us."

"For every trick we've learned from Mond, they'll have something similar from their lord. I've been questioning prisoners. His capital is a vast garden, where everyone just eats the fruits from the trees, and no one works. They paint and write poetry, dance and sing. It sounds rather dull," said Kril.

"No raiding? No struggle? What's the point?" Jandak snapped, hissing in pain as the movement pulled at his injuries.

"It's ugly," I said. Aphrodite was all about love, or lust at least, and the aesthetics. War couldn't be beautiful, not to any sane mortal. The tribes understood the costs well and had limited themselves to low-level raiding among each other for generations. They only united when the southern cities gave them an offence to justify a warlord's rise to unite them.

For all their savage brutality, they were more civilised than they liked to think. The austere, resource-poor lands they'd occupied had been more important to their character than their internecine fights. When you were permanently one misfortune away from your doom, the weak and the cowards were naturally weeded out.

"Be that as it may, boy, my Dreams have been troubled lately." Kril spat into the fire, making a hiss and a pop snap out from the embers. "Aresk is getting concerned about your independence. And starting a war between Mother Earth and Father Sun took him by surprise. Surprising the god of tactics and ruses isn't an easy feat." He stopped speaking for a second to give me a gap-toothed grin. "Well played, Mond."

"My aura is blanketing this area, but don't speak about that outside of my presence. To anyone, Kril. It wasn't intentional." I sighed. "I should speak to him, I suppose. I need to speak to a few other gods as well. See if I can get them on side. The tribes are happy?" I asked. They had seemed pleased with the victory, but it wasn't that long since some of them had been baying for my blood.

"Everyone likes a winner, lad. How is the.. You know?" Kril pointed at my heart.

Assimilation of the Source of The Cycle: 59% complete

"Still ticking upwards. I've got a little over a month, assuming I don't need to rebuild my mortal body again."

"And then what happens?" His eyes glittered as he sat down by the fire, partly from the dancing flames reflecting in them, but mostly from keen interest in my fate, I suspected.

"I don't know. I either become a full god or I die. The first step is winning the game, that much I've been told."

"And then we all disappear, and you rise to the divine realm. I must confess I am not enthusiastic about our choices," Kril replied drily.

"We aren't just figments that can be cast aside," Jandak grumbled.

"To the gods, we are. All of them, except perhaps one who hasn't quite completed his trials," Kril muttered.

We lapsed into silence. I had to win the game to live, but in doing so, all my friends and comrades, my wife, and my still unnamed son would vanish. After a while lost in gloomy reflections, I excused myself and left Kril to continue healing Jandak. He'd be on his feet tomorrow, complaining about the sharp pains that lingered from his magically restored flesh.

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I walked out of the camp and wandered for a while, moving through the night like a ghost, and finally retired to my tent. Faye was already buried in the furs, only a slender pale foot sticking out to moderate her body temperature. I looked down on my son, nestled in furs of his own, wrapped up tight. His face was pink and chubby, and his dark brown hair was already thickening into a respectable fringe. He'd get his first haircut soon and start to grow the clan mullet. I smiled wryly at the thought.

All this, the beauty waiting for me in my bed, my firstborn child, my friends among the tribes and Huskar, I couldn't let it be destroyed. But if I didn't bring that to pass…

I undressed and slipped under the furs next to Faye. She adjusted her position once I was settled, pressing herself up against me and twining one leg between my own.

We ate breakfast together the next day with only a few words spoken. She could sense my mood, I was sure of it, but she didn't press me. Her eyes searched my own as our lips parted in farewell.

"You will find a way, love. I know you will." I smiled with false confidence, said goodbye, and headed back out into the fresh snow, leaving the camp behind. I found a lonely tree growing along the river, its roots half submerged after the recent flood Prender had caused, and sat down above the waterline, ignoring the damp soaking into my clothes as the snow melted beneath me.

White flakes began to fall again, aiming to further bury the bodies of our enemies before they could be gathered up and burned on the huge pyres being built in several places along the shore. I reached out with my aura and tore open a portal to my domain. Dusting off my tunic to clear the thin layer of snow, I stepped back into my own world.

You brood, Tezca purred. This is good. Our role in the universe is a sombre one.

You've been talking to Aresk. I didn't bother using my voice. Here, the very air was my throat.

In our interests. Your ascension is sponsored by the Wargod; we need him.

For how long? At what point do I stop being beholden to him?

He is doing us a great favour and only has our best intentions at heart.

I physically snorted at that assertion. The shadows swirled around me as I hung in limbo, the faint outline of a jaguar circling slowly around me.

You have concerns. Perhaps he can put them to rest. You came back to the ether to speak to him, no? He wants reassurance that our path aligns with his goals. Give him that, and he may help us further.

I drifted to the edge of my domain and passed through to Aresk's mountain. I dissolved my body as I crossed over, sending it off to wherever it was stored while I utilised as much of my divine authority as I could. The cat was using collective pronouns too much for my liking. There was no 'us' as far as I was concerned.

I floated up to the plateau that crowned Aresk's domain and drifted around the relics and museum pieces that spun on their marble plinths. The arms and armour of mythic heroes glittered in the sun or hid in the gloom of the mighty bronze statue. I could feel the void of the core of his power all around me.

I was staring at a long, curved sword of grey metal, the hilt adorned with blue and red gems, when the statue stirred. It strode off down the mountain, and I floated along behind, hiding in its shade. Aresk stopped near the entrance to my world and looked around.

"I can still feel it, your domain. It's hidden within my own, and now you've managed to hide it even from me. You are here somewhere. I've had killers watch me before, thinking themselves concealed. It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand up and gets my heart pumping with joy at the fight to come," Aresk said.

"Perhaps I don't need your protection anymore?" I said, my body forming around me. I was ready to dissolve back into pure power at a thought. Recovering from the damage I'd suffered in Apollo's world had cost me half my remaining time on Urth.

"Perhaps not." The statue shrank down to the size of a man and turned to smile at me. "They grow up so fast."

"I didn't have a choice."

"And the war between Earth and Sun?"

"Winter's request. The ice will have weakened Poseidon when I strike, and empowered Morana, who will be our ally."

The bronze man laughed uproariously. He slapped a hand on his hip with a clang and grinned broadly at me.

"What have I unleashed on us? You truly will be a terror when you ascend."

"I don't want to if it means the end of my new world."

"Then you will die," Aresk said, with a sadness I almost felt was real.

"Is there any alternative?"

"Without your victory over the other exiles, your ascension will almost certainly fail."

"Then there is a chance even without it?"

"Vanishingly small, Ray. Look, little brother, sacrifices must always be made. You cannot amass enough authority, our divine power, before the Source in your chest matures. Life and Death are at war. Earth and Sun are at war. Tell me, how did it feel to land the blow on Mother? You used an Apollonian blade, but your hand wasn't touched by the fire."

I remembered Morana's arm burning as she passed me the knife, the flames melting up her wrist from where she delicately gripped the handle between finger and thumb. To me, it had just felt warm.

"I think… I like knives."

"Go on," he said eagerly.

"No. There must always be a sacrifice for knowledge as well as power. I stole something from them both. A little of Life and Sun's power, but I didn't give up anything in exchange."

Aresk slowly blinked metal eyelids at me. "I would like to see that. It's been… a very long time since a demigod displayed that ability. Of course, Tezca would know how to do it. The cat told you, didn't he?"

"It was more of a happy accident."

Aresk held out his hand to me. "Try to take some from me."

I rested a hand on his arm, the metal cold under my fingers, and sent the most elusive form of my aura through his limb. His body was his aura, crashing shields and ringing blades echoed in my mind, but it was stronger than I'd ever felt his power. My daggers slipped past his shields and between the plates of armour, then returned to my body.

I held up the palm of my hand. The skin gleamed faintly bronze. Then the residue of his aura did what it was meant to do: it fought. The metal gleam began to spread across my hand. In open battle, an assassin's blade isn't as good as a longsword or a warhammer.

I strengthened my aura in my body, drawing the invading presence up my arm. The Source. I had to use the Source again. I wrapped it around the powers of life and death, separated by a thin line of fire, and shaped the bronze energy into one of its most common forms. A shield. Then another.

My daggers cut and sliced, breaking Aresk's power into smaller pieces and guiding them back together in the form I desired. It took me several minutes, sweat pouring from my brow as I worked. The statue watched impassively, all expression gone from the metal face, while I worked.

When I was done, I sagged slightly and held up my unblemished palm for him to see.

"I could sense it in you for a while. Doing what it is best at. But you were able to master it. Life, Death, Sun and War combined. Or at least able to be combined. Fascinating. Raymond, I have not been entirely honest with you."

"About many things I expect."

"True, but it is hard for us to relate to the ways that mortals think. Some are better at it than others. Life is constantly absorbed in the petty details of mortal affairs. Sun cares only to be loved, and his domain is beyond the scope of most mortal comprehension. The more… atavistic gods like myself lie somewhere in the middle. We exist not as true forces of nature."

"You're the product of intangible things, like war doesn't exist without men to fight."

"Yes. You are like me in that regard. There is another element, the choices of the other gods can feed such as us as well. But your power is a… residue of something even more ancient. You are deliberate, conscious murder. But Life has many pets, and they have all gone to Hadesti in the end. Often before their time, as mortals would conceive it. Nature is red in tooth and claw. Perhaps you should witness what a war between the gods looks like?"

"Why?"

"To see what your existence will become when you ascend."

The Wargod's sudden confidence in my chances took me by surprise.

"I will show you the war you started with your schemes. It will be an opportunity for you to take more power from our brothers and sisters."

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