As Tybalt’s eyes adjusted to the new space, he saw only two distant figures, and he still did not understand how he could see at all in this place—though it was also strange how well he had been able to see in the other space, since there had been no sun, moon, or stars visible.

  Magic, he reminded himself.

  One figure was the shape of a woman with what Tybalt considered a perfect figure, hourglass-shaped, almost too ideal to be real—and wings.

  So, the voice from before was a sort of angel.

  The other figure occupied a great vast space in the darkness, and as Tybat laid eyes on it, his blood chilled. He swallowed a lump in his throat, forcefully averted his gaze, and resisted the feeling of wrongness that swept over him from just looking at the thing as best he could. He had a powerful urge to vomit, though nothing had happened that should have affected his stomach.

  It was just the sight of the thing.

  Though it was very far away, he felt a terrible sense of imminent danger and visceral horror from just looking at it. Like it was a living embodiment of every fear he’d ever had.

  This is no minor god or false idol, he thought. I’ve been lied to, and probably so were the people who taught me what to believe…

  The monster had a disturbing majesty. Tybalt could only imagine that what he was experiencing now must be on a par with being in the presence of Astara or Vika. He didn’t think he could be more awestruck.

  Even as he felt seized by fear, nausea, and discomfort, he could not resist another look in the deity’s direction. He needed to know… though exactly what he needed to know, he wasn’t certain.

  But he might never see something like this again.

  As his eyes lit on the massive entity, a vision overtook Tybalt’s sense of sight—something like a hallucination that overpowered his physical senses.

  He saw a vast crowd of many thousands of people of all races—humans, beastfolk, elves, dwarves, and others, some of which he didn’t recognize—all standing in the desert. A vast shadowy entity appeared on the horizon. Tybalt only saw it as a massive multifaceted shadow. He knew immediately that it belonged to the god. The thousands of worshipers threw themselves on their knees as the figure appeared, clasping their hands together so forcefully that Tybalt guessed a few of them might have broken fingers afterward. And they prayed.

  He knew that what he was seeing wasn’t real, but it was clear that this was a representation of the god whose presence Tybalt was experiencing, just in a different time period.

  Tybalt blinked and found himself back in the darkness again, his body covered in a fresh sheen of sweat. He could still feel the heat of that desert and the intensity of the crowd’s adulation.

  Was that some kind of warning?

  For a few seconds, Tybalt remained paralyzed, eyes downcast, avoiding glancing the god’s way too directly. If that had been some sort of dominance display, he didn’t want to seem to challenge this being in any way.

  But the god he had wanted a peek at did not move within his peripheral vision or even acknowledge Tybalt’s presence at all. He decided that the hallucination had just been a sort of natural phenomenon; the god’s presence was so weighty that looking at it was hazardous, like staring directly at the sun.

  He still wanted to glimpse divinity, if only for a moment.

  So he gathered his courage and finally took another look at the deity.

  On a second viewing, the main impression Tybalt had was of the sheer immensity of the god’s form. It was so large, the great distance was actually necessary so that he could make out anything of the figure’s shape.

  As for the physical details, they were not all horrifying in theory. There were four heads, each of a different sentient species—and he estimated each was roughly planet-sized. One was a humanoid head, another the head of a dragon, another the head of an elf, and the fourth that of a beastman with six different animals’ ears and two sets of horns. The entity had at least a thousand limbs, which seemed to spring from hundreds or thousands of species. Tentacles, hooves, and human feet were all equally at home as parts of this behemoth’s body.

  Tybalt knew in his bones that he could never kill something like the God of Death, even if he lived to be a thousand years old, growing stronger all the while. He didn’t even dare to make eye contact with any of its heads. Just the thought made his heart race.

  Even if he had a one of a kind powerful class, all efforts would be futile…

  The presence filled Tybalt with an awareness of how small and weak he still was—and the vastness of the universe in comparison to himself.

  That irritating sensation helped pull him back to himself a bit. Tybalt was annoyed at the thought of a mountain that was too high to climb.

  Yep, gods are too strong. Better not try my luck…

  “Watch yourself, human,” said the voice of the angel.

  The god remained silent and still did not seem to have so much as moved since Tybalt entered its domain.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  But the angel seemed to be paying a lot of attention to him.

  Tybalt shifted his attention to the angel, who appeared to be moving closer to him. She hadn’t been nearly as distant as the god, so her features sprang into sharp relief quickly as she drew nearer to Tybalt.

  She must have stood at something like ten feet tall, towering over him. Her nude figure was completely exposed, but even Tybalt’s rather depraved mind could not decide whether her appearance was erotic or disgusting. Every inch of exposed flesh was pale, with varying shades of purple and blue visible just beneath the skin in many places. Her right arm was only bone, and the right side of her face appeared partially decomposed. Still, that left side… it almost compensated for everything else.

  She had large breasts, a slender waist, child-bearing hips, an impossibly perfect face…

  In short, she looked like a beautiful woman in an uneven state of decomposition. Only her black-feathered wings looked healthy, normal, and fully functional—and as long across as she was tall.

  Her eyes were a beautiful golden yellow color, and they gleamed with a kind of sadistic joy. Perhaps madness.

  As he took her looks in, the angel’s lips twisted in a smile that matched the look in her eyes.

  That’s too many teeth for the size of her mouth, isn’t it?

  “You certainly know how to make a girl feel special,” she said. “The poets do say that the eyes are the window to the soul. I suppose I am less angry about your idle thoughts on my lord now that I know your first impressions of me.”

  Wait.

  “Are you reading my thoughts, angel?” Tybalt asked. This could be hazardous.

  The woman nodded, and Tybalt’s twenty-one-year-old mind instinctively decided, as his eyes reflexively darted down to the jiggling breasts with the swollen, blue-purple nipples, that he would indeed fuck the angel, if only to know what a half-dead angel thing felt like. He was instantly embarrassed, but the thought was out there already.

  “You are quite a character, huh?” The angel looked like she wasn’t quite sure whether to laugh or be outraged.

  “Please take any, um, stray thoughts in as complimentary a light as possible,” he replied, trying his best not to think too much for a change.

  “I have already decided not to disintegrate you,” the angel said, smiling cheerily.

  I guess that passes for, “She likes me,” around here, Tybalt thought.

  “Assuming that you will be useful to Lord Mudo,” she added, apparently in response to Tybalt’s unspoken thought.

  “What determines that?” he asked.

  The challenge was not enough to decide my usefulness? Wait, “Lord Mudo”? Isn’t that the same name the shaman invoked, when he prayed for my destruction?

  “The challenge was to determine if you were strong and resourceful enough to be of use,” the angel acknowledged. “You barely passed, but that was with the additional challenge of the thousandth monster, and you refrained from using the keep or the holy sword until near the end—so, still an excellent performance.”

  “So, what are you waiting for? What else do you need to test?”

  I won’t have to fight the angel, right…? No, she said that there wouldn’t be any more fighting in here. But then, maybe this is all part of their revenge on behalf of that shaman…

  “Why did you consent to the final test?” she asked, apparently disregarding Tybalt’s repeated internal tangents about the dead shaman. “By my calculations, your resources were already stretched to their limits.”

  Answering a question with another question is rather rude, you know?

  Tybalt was pretty sure he wasn’t going to be killed now, unless he failed some sort of objective test, so his thoughts turned rebellious again, with little effort on his part to control them.

  The angel pursed her lips and looked as if she had something to say to that, but she waited for him to respond to her question instead.

  “You couldn’t read my thoughts when I made the decision to keep going?” Tybalt asked, raising an eyebrow.

  “You were not yet in Lord Mudo’s realm, as you are now,” the angel replied impatiently. “And you are avoiding my question. If you want to obtain the full power my lord can provide, we must be certain that you will be of use. Otherwise, we will still reward you, but it will not be the reward you might have received…”

  Tybalt nodded. This made sense to him. Nothing for nothing in this world.

  “It was stupid,” he admitted, “and maybe this disqualifies me from being useful—but you’d know if I lied anyway, right?” He smiled savagely, showing almost all his teeth, and shook his head. “Well, I’m not usually reckless. But I am actually an extremely stubborn person. I hate to lose, I have trouble letting go of anything anyone has ever done to wrong me, and I—I felt like I was being mocked, with the question of whether I wanted to quit after all that fighting.”

  He waited with a resigned expression for the angel to tell him to get lost.

  But her expression had changed now, from one of impatience to a small, satisfied smile.

  “That is exactly the sort of answer I wanted to hear,” she said. “One more question: Do you have enough hatred within you to tear down the power structure of your world?”

  “Is that a serious question?” Tybalt asked.

  Is that the last qualification? Really?

  “I am afraid so. If you do not—”

  But she stopped talking, apparently irritated by the sudden sound of Tybalt laughing.

  “I’m sorry, angel,” he said. “I don’t mean to make fun of you. It’s just that if hatred is the last requirement, I’m overqualified. I might have barely passed the other challenge, but I should get extra credit here.”

  “Show me,” she said softly.

  “Show you?”

  “Call up some memories, so I can understand your motives. Remember that I can read your thoughts in this space. That includes seeing your visual memories.”

  Tybalt nodded. “Fine.”

  He was used to Commander Volusia giving him orders he didn’t know the point of. He supposed there was no reason the god and his angel should be any different. At least this new hierarchy put him closer to the roots of all power: the divine.

  He reached back into the deep recesses of memory and began reopening old wounds.

  As Tybalt looked inside himself, the great creature poised in the distance in the background space moved for the first time. The adjustment in position was so small for the massive organism that the human, absorbed in his memories, did not notice it.

  But the angel did. Her smile widened.

  Lord Mudo seemed to have taken an interest in this human. Whether that meant Tybalt would bring them victory or ruin, only time would tell.