This was an unambiguous triumph for me.

  Her desire for strength and power had never been stronger; her willingness to pursue that power, especially over others, would be indispensable during our coming crusades.

  She would need to be a conqueror, a warlord, someone not just willing to dominate, but reign as something superior to anything and anyone else.

  When I inevitably sent her out into the universe to claim words in the name of my God, she would need to do so not just in his name, but hers as well.

  Fanatical devotion always carried an undercurrent of self-aggrandizement, elevating oneself in the eyes of their Deity, or peers, for either acknowledgement or power.

  Those who claimed to operate solely in the service of their God were lying, or too devoid of self-worth to truly impact any stage larger than their immediate acquaintances.

  But this posed a threat. And I would be operating on a knifes edge at all times from now on. Giving her this gratifying lust for control would mean I was turning myself into a target for her.

  And if I were ever to damage our trust, or give her a reason to doubt me or my cause, she would not hesitate to usurp me—turning her will and desire for dominance on me just as quickly as any other enemy.

  I would constantly need to enforce my position at the head of this crusade, never allow her a single opportunity, or show any sign of weakness, or falter even slightly.

  But just this once, I would do exactly that. It was critically important that she knew implicitly that dominating me was possible.

  The belief that such an outcome could exist would be more than enough to keep her striving for it for millennia.

  I hoped.

  This level of manipulation opened me up to the actual risk of losing her. She could not think, even for a second, that I was the one leading her down this path.

  Her desires and ambition needed to be stoked in such a way that she believed they had originated with her and her alone.

  Otherwise, her trust in me would unravel, and I’d be forced to take measures in eliminating her as a threat I did not want to take.

  I knew this was a dangerous game, potentially one that could cause my abject failure.

  But on an operation of this scale, gambles like this, especially early on, would be critical to the success of my goal.

  She needed not just the physical means to conduct the will of myself and my God, but the determination to carry it out as well.

  I cranked my perception of time up, slowing the world to a crawl.

  This would need to be played out as though it had been a legitimate victory for her; she needed to walk away from this event believing she had capitalised on a moment of misjudgment from me.

  I kept slowly circling her, watching for any sign she was about to attack; the mad look in her eyes hadn’t diminished by so much as a fraction.

  I wanted this to start off looking like a leisure activity for me, effortlessly parrying and redirecting her attempts to hit me but slowly increase the look and feel of my desperation as the fight wore on.

  As she was pushed harder and harder to make contact, I would feign backpedaling, getting sloppy, panicking as she grew ever closer to taking advantage of my error.

  It wouldn’t take much; she was a seasoned veteran, and the last real fight I’d had was back in elementary school. Playing the desperate fool would be an excellent role for me.

  It became apparent that she was trying to wait me out. After thoroughly trouncing her in our last sparring match, she was being cautious.

  That helped me as I could ham things up a little by rushing in confidently, overplaying my hand, and being rebuffed by her.

  I made sure to exaggerate my movements before tilting forward and dashing in, giving her ample time to react and brace for the coming attack.

  Tensing too many ‘muscles’, a little extra sway of the hips, everything I did was screaming I was about to launch myself at her.

  She recognized this instantly and dropped into a more stable stance, shuffling her feet out wider than her shoulders and flapping her elbows once to resettle herself into a ready posture.

  I pushed off the ground, careful to moderate my weight just enough to cause my left foot to slip ever so slightly in the loose dirt.

  I wanted to plant this deep in her mind. She had perfect recall now; every small part of what I did would be perfectly captured and replayed to her in crystal clear resolution.

  The barely imperceptible slip of my foot would be a massive red flag going up in her head that I was less experienced than she was.

  Firmly cementing her belief that she might just possibly have a chance of getting me. I flew over the ground, my legs pumping in excruciatingly slow motion.

  Halfway between us, I dropped my right shoulder, swivelling my fist to show an incoming uppercut.

  Pivoting my hips to indicate a follow-up left hook. She stepped to her right, trying to dodge out of the way of my uppercut and use my momentum to grapple me.

  To counter this, I readjusted my weight and then pushed off hard to my left using my planted right foot.

  This had the effect of altering my course enough that I would undoubtedly shoulder-check her centre-mass.

  This caught her off guard but she reacted promptly, twirling in place to help gather centripetal force in order to fling her right leg out, dropping into a one legged crouch, no doubt planning to launch herself up and into my stomach as I rushed past.

  All I could do was block her impending attack and retreat to regroup. As I had predicted, as I entered the air where she had stood, she drove up using both her legs to maximum force.

  I had brought my arms down in order to catch her shoulder, which was destined for my gut. I palmed her clavicle and heaved back with all my prodigious strength.

  I made sure to grimace briefly, not in pain, but in concentration. A brief look that she could not have missed if she had tried.

  I had redirected most of her upward momentum into a horizontal flip, and we spun away from each other, both of us twisting in the air to land on our feet and recollect ourselves roughly 5 metres apart.

  “BY THE RAPTUROUS GOOODDDSSSSSS!!!! WOOOOOOOOO!!”

  She let out a booming howl, throwing her head back and exulting in the sheer maelstrom of exhilaration she was experiencing.

  Her elbows cocked at her sides, fists clenched and the fury of battle all but flooding off of her in a miasmic aura.

  “THIS IS FUCKING IT!! OH GODS I FEEL SO FUCKING ALIVE, VITA!!! DID YOU SEE ME?! HOW FAST I MOVED?! THIS IS AMAZING!! HAHAHAHA.”

  She was revelling in her transformation, the full breadth of what had happened to her only now coming to the forefront of her mind.

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  I didn’t let my guard down; no doubt she was using this opportunity to replay what had just happened.

  Even though the exchange had lasted all of 4 seconds, she could study every microsecond as though it were a detailed picture.

  I was certain she was picking apart my form and flagging my errors for future use.

  “Ohhhhh, Vita… there is nothing I could ever do to repay you for this gift…”

  She was staring down at the palm of her hand. Examining it. She looked back to me, her eyes glassy with a mixture of appreciation and wonder.

  I allowed my guard to falter slightly, letting her think the moment of raw emotion was drawing me out of my focus.

  “You’ve given me so much… you—I… I mean there’s nothing I could give worth more than my life.”

  She implored me. Practically begging me.

  “Will you take it? Here and now, will you swear on your very soul that you will take my life in exchange for this gift?!”

  I was genuinely confused at this point. Was she asking me to marry her? Or was this an owner/owned scenario? Was she pledging herself to me under some tradition?

  She was standing, feet spread, hips cocked, hands resting patiently on her waist, clearly expecting my reply. I decided not to over-analyze things and just respond to her with my instinct.

  “Of course, Armela. I accep—”

  “NO, NO, NO!! YOU FUCKING APE. Get your ass over here and do it fucking properly. I will not devote my heart’s blood to some bumbling halfwit who can’t even accept a woman’s pledge with real dignity!”

  She pointed to the ground in front of her as though I were a dog coming to heel.

  “There is a way this needs to be done, and if you’re going to truly accept my oath, then I demand you abide by the Wolfkin Calling!”

  This got my hackles up; I was still relatively confident this was a ploy. But I hadn’t detected a hint of deception from her.

  If she was stringing me along, then it was being masterfully concealed from me.

  Cautiously, I dropped my arms.

  “Armela, can’t th—”

  She cut me off by pointing at me and snarling.

  “Vita, I swear on all the stars I will break your jaw and piss down your throat if you do not do this for me. This bond is precious to us Wolfkin; we don’t make it lightly. It is the highest rite any of us can aspire to.”

  Now I was fairly certain this was serious, and she was offering me something far more important than I had suspected.

  “I’m not just bonding my life with you; I’m bonding my very soul to yours. I know you don’t get what’s happening because you’re stupid, but please stop being such a fucking rock skull and let me do this. Please.”

  I didn’t see how this would be any different from when she had agreed to serve my God. Perhaps that had been a less… permanent agreement between us than I had thought.

  I supposed until I had altered her body, she may have thought we would be parting ways at some point in the distant future.

  But now that I had remade her, she didn’t really see a future without me in it and had decided to enact the rite of her people in order to legitimise it in her own eyes.

  This situation was perplexing me. We had been fighting just moments ago, and now she was seeking to bind our souls in some kind of ritual.

  This was emphasising just how little I truly knew about the nature of these people. Or the world overall.

  Armela seemed to shift through emotions and trauma in a strangely rapid manner, and while there was no way to know for sure… I wondered if the other people, or species, of this planet handled events like this in a similar manner.

  Time had become a little more ephemeral to me since my transformation, and the stark lack of sleep I’d had since coming here had only served to jumble my true sense of time.

  It had only been four days, and yet she had just announced that she intended to unite our souls.

  This level of commitment to another person was rare on Earth. And in the instances where relationships like this formed, they usually did so over years.

  Learning the small eccentricities that shaped your partner, establishing a connection deeper than attraction.

  Shared interests and hobbies, meeting friends and relatives, travelling, developing a deep care and affection for them over many shared experiences.

  I was not at all used to this. But in the context of the grander scale of my adventures in this universe, I supposed that this may actually be one of the more mundane occurrences.

  I genuinely cared for her beyond simply utilising her as a tool, and in the long run following through on this procedure would likely produce a better outcome than I had imagined.

  I was going to have to start rolling with the punches, accepting the oddities, and adapting to events as they unfolded.

  Armela was offering me a connection that could not be severed, at least for her, and I needed to take it.

  Regardless of how quickly the decision had been made, or her true motivations behind it, this was another opportunity that had simply fallen into my lap, and while the suspicion of subterfuge was still strong, she had projected nothing but genuine intent through the interaction.

  Tentatively, I stepped towards her. She responded by rolling her eyes and then dropping onto one knee.

  “Hurry up, you dick; my blood’s cooling by the second.”

  I came to rest directly in front of her. Unsure of what I should be doing.

  “Kneel just here in front of me.”

  I dropped to my knee, mirroring her posture.

  “Yes, like that. Good. Alright, palms up and lay your hands over top of mine.”

  I did as she asked, letting her lead me through the process.

  “Yep, just like that. Alright, so this part is a little stuffy, but basically you’ll just have to recite what I tell you. We also don’t have a sanctifier here to drive the stiletto blades through our palms, so really this is more for my sake than anything.”

  I could feel her breath as she pushed air in and out of herself with nonexistent lungs.

  We were almost nose to nose, looking deeply into each other’s eyes, though I was looking down at her with a significant pitch.

  She mentioned having knives driven through our palms, and I pondered the different kinds of symbolism that held. The bonding of two lives? Perhaps just the joining of bodies?

  It occurred to me that doing this with a flesh and blood body would run the very real risk of severing tendons in the hand, rendering some fingers unusable.

  The sanctifier would need pinpoint accuracy in order to evade any of the densely clustered nerves and tendons; otherwise, the procedure would leave the couple crippled.

  Did the Wolfkin have the ability to heal such wounds? Were there sigils capable of repairing that damage?

  It was a moot point for the two of us as our bodies were no longer capable of sustaining any appreciable damage, but it interested me that they would risk the use of their hands for a ritual like this.

  Very metal.

  We were in a beggar’s pose, as if either offering something to the universe, or expecting something to be given.

  Perhaps it was both at once. Offering our prayers or thoughts to what I presumed to be Dersio, and in return receiving their blessing for the bonding.

  She had said there were no sigils involved, and the lack of a sanctifier would even further remove this ritual from the realm of Godliness, but as we had assumed the position, I did feel a thrum of energy surge through me.

  I couldn’t quite place the feeling. My sensors hadn’t detected anything, and it was just barely on the edge of my perception, but it was there.

  I shifted slightly.

  She smiled at me; it was one of the most beautiful things I’d ever seen, filled with so much warmth and affection that I began to feel a lump forming in my throat.

  “O’ God of endless sight.”

  “Upon far shores of boundless light.”

  “Bless’ed be thy names and power.”

  “To join us in this blissful hour.”

  Her eyes drifted shut as she recited the lines, and I dutifully followed along.

  She waited a beat before popping one open again to peek at me.

  “Close your damn eyes, Vita. You’re ruining it!”

  She hissed at me before slamming her eye shut again. I hesitated, but followed her example.

  “Grant our hearts an iron bond.”

  “Forged in blood and etched in soul.”

  “From now till death and beyond.”

  “One betrayal, twice the toll.”

  I followed her words as she spoke them, matching her cadence and emphasis. Listening to the small tonal shifts reverberating out of her mouth.

  The volume of her words was constantly increasing, the speed of recital coming faster and smoother as she went, until it almost seemed to me like something was either pushing or pulling the words out of her.

  And upon focusing on it more deeply, I distinctly detected vocalisations coming from her on sub-audible frequencies.

  There was a second voice masked under her own, as if some remote speaker had tapped into her.

  Either joining in the chant, or puppeting her recital like had happened before. But the same sense of dread never came, and her consciousness never faltered.

  She was still firmly in the driver's seat, so whoever, or whatever, was piggybacking off her words was simply along for the ride this time.

  Was it a god? Was I listening to Dersio joining in prayer with one of their flock?

  The intrusion disturbed me. The powers at work here were far too mysterious for my liking, and their ability to come and go from one’s body could not be taken lightly.

  Regardless of the level of control, this spoke of an unmitigated risk to both our privacy and our security.

  Obviously, the prayer had something to do with it, probably behaving like some kind of ‘conduit’ through which this… entity… could temporarily link up with Armela.

  But what if that wasn’t the case? What if it wasn't temporary? What if it left her vulnerable?

  These thoughts flashed through my head as her recitation continued to pick up steam.

  “We shed our flesh to be rebound.”

  “Through riven steel our path was found.”

  “In dark of night and toil of day.”

  “May this blessing guide our way!”

  The soil beneath our knees vibrated with the intensity of her intonation.

  “Our lives together form one fate!”

  “Both in joy and in sorrow!”

  “I claim this soul to be my mate!”

  “AND BONDED, WE’LL RISE UPON THE MORROW!!”

  She absolutely shrieked the last line of the last verse, and I followed along right behind with a bellow of my own.

  Not understanding the need or purpose of such fervency, but all the same feeling the extrasensory need for it. It was a compulsion. A craving. My soul vibrated within me.

  As the final syllable was uttered, two steel spikes thundered through our palms, embedding deeply into the ground and pinning us together.

  There was no pain, but all the same I felt a thunderclap rocket through my system until it struck directly against my soul. The sensation wasn’t dissimilar to when my God had named me.

  I could hear my soul ring out like a bell as it was hammered by whatever force had gathered between myself and Armela.

  I knew in that moment that an accord had been struck between us, an unshakable bond sanctified by the powers of a god. I opened my eyes to inspect the rods piercing our hands.

  I traced them up from the ground through our hands, and back…. Into Armela's shoulders.

  She, in turn, was staring at me. An absolutely manic look on her face.

  “Vita, this was a miracle. This was a miracle. Vita, do you have any idea what this fucking means?”

  She started out whispering, almost mumbling, but the rods vibrated as she gathered speed and volume, clearly unable to understand what had happened to us.

  “We’ve been blessed, Vita. OUR BOND HAS BEEN WITNESSED BY THE GODS THEMSELVES! There is no greater honour than this for the Wolfkin!! WE WERE FATED. MY FATED MATE, VITA.”

  That’s when I realised she had gotten me.

  The ceremony itself was legitimate, her emotions were legitimate, her desire for me to be her mate was legitimate; this had all been what she truly wanted.

  AND she had used it to land her solid hit on me.

  The rods retracting from our hands slowly crept back into her shoulders, and she was left studying the holes punched cleanly through her palms—perfectly circular reminders of our bond.

  I instructed my cells to close it in, but as they did, a pale ring formed around where the hole had been.

  I couldn’t believe my eyes, so I scanned the pale ring with every instrument I had, and there was absolutely no damage to the cells.

  As they passed through the circular shadow, they temporarily changed colour before going back to normal the moment they reached the other side.

  I was baffled, and more than a little put off by the power being wielded against me.

  Once again, I was unable to identify how this power was interacting with me, or what effect it would ultimately have on me.