Of the road into what would become the Crimson Grave, only a skeleton remained.

  Not an ant foraged among the soot, and not a bird swooped across the sky. In that in-between land, even the vegetation grew sparse and dull, doting her path as often as the results of olden rock slides and erosion fissures. At least the signs and buildings left behind, those that by a miracle were never entirely devoured by the tragedies of the past, offered some guidance across the narrow valley, and the things that still rooted about the dilapidation, malformed and lifeless from the brief glimpses she got, were as eager to give way as she was to take it.

  The Sun was just about to set as she reached the plains on the other side, and the remains of the valley's gatekeeper.

  To judge the size it once bore when alive was impossible, bisected and shrunken as it had become, but she wouldn't doubt it had dwarfed God at its peak. It didn't take a genius to see the sheer wrath taken to its body in death, several places carved up to the innards, but she didn't have the time to dwell on it further. Around the mouth of the valley, a double line of heavily armored and armed men—and women as well, she understood now—formed a semi-circle blocking her passage.

  And sat by the old deity's roots was Menoux, nude, legs and arms crossed.

  Worse than him, however, was the presence right besides him, a brush of her Will catching such naked, unfathomable bloodthirst as to send shivers down her spine. Bearing the proportions of a hefty knife despite being nearly as tall as her with its tip buried in the dirt, its was colored a faintly discolored golden, and it was perhaps the most exhaustively decorated weapon she had ever seen since Blade's own: its handle bore such an uncanny resemblance to an enormous femur she could be convinced it had been one bathed in metal if not for its opposing, skull like tips.

  The blademost, missing its jaw and buried to its strangely bent, tusk-like fangs, had a jointed socked for its one enormous eye, iris and pupil both embossed in steel, shrieking with twist as it followed her steps.

  "The Lord gave the Prophet an ancient gift, transmitted from master to craft through the holy bonds of blood." Menoux announced out loud, golden eyes burning bright in the fading light. "Many are the myths made about the Living Metals us, his followers, can create. Is it tougher than regular steel? Does it make a blade sharp enough to slice a falling leaf in half? All of those things, yes, inherently even, but those are only consequences of its intended effect. I ask you, Godling: what is the single most effective way of turning a weapon, any weapon, into a tool worth of the divine?"

  "I need to go." She held Agare tighter to herself. "I don't need what you're offering."

  Menoux fist struck the flat of the horrid, gigantic knife, releasing a deafening ring across the clearing. "You allow it to kill. To imbibe from your opponent's life blood, again and again, carefully maintaining it so it never breaks and loses cohesion during the process."

  He slowly stood, and she backed away. His adoring gaze was thankfully focused on to his blade, a hand caressing the spot he had just hit up and down as if in apology. The thing, of course, hadn't show a sign of interest for anything but her.

  "Outsiders call them Phantasmal Tools, but to me, they are simply the sign of a true smith's craft. And this? This was forged by the Aenexias himself from his carotids, tempered through thousands of his enemies, named across history as Igvaz the Murmur Eater and famed as one of the Prophet's Five Terrors." Menoux shook his head. "Not that ignorant Godlings would know the significance. Just remember, such is the One Body: Priga is all, all is Priga, and if its master lives, so may the steel seek to."

  "I-I already got your lesson!" She still tried, anything to delay the inevitable. "You wanted Holly Seneschal gone? S-she will fade away! Now let us go!"

  "It all comes back to life. Such a basic adage, isn't it?" Menoux said. "Can be applied to anything that does not bear it the way you and I do. A weapon can come to thirst for flesh, a domicile can love its owner to its death, and even a corpse... well, you have seen it with your own eyes, haven't you?

  "Except, it's not that simple." He chuckled. "Turns out, the purity of the source material does play a big part in the process! I would know. Made enough experiments to learn I should be making peace with my lot instead."

  "...You aren't going to listen to me, are you?"

  The horrid Igvaz was wrenched of out the grass, releasing a keen so sharp it gashed her ears from the inside out. Twisting like a dagger under Menoux adroit wrist, it came to be pointed right at her chest as her hearing returned, marred by nothing but an incessant ringing.

  "We have so much to still talk about, Godling! For example, have I ever told you how I came to meet the Di Aila family, and host them in their exile?"

  Watching the line of guarding warriors become unsteady and confused from the noise, she froze at the familiar name.

  "Decades ago, a conspiracy was unveiled among the nobility of Skawla, and its Lady of the Lake spared no efforts to excise it. Can you guess who stood among those purged?" Menoux said, his smile growing with every word. "Ah, but the Di Aila escaped with a slap to the wrist, a kowtow and a teary promise they knew nothing of their children's rebellion. The apology bought them less than a decade before they got embroiled in more schemes and got culled to a fifth their numbers, or rather, until they managed to swallow their pride and flee with their tail tucked between their legs."

  "I don't have anything to do with-"

  "I had spent countless years missing my Mistress. Yaziya, last of Aenexia's children, and a goddess in truth! If only my words could do her a hundredth of the justice she deserves! Mark this, you will never understand true power without seeing her become half interested in a fight, never understand the extend of the One body without seeing how she was part of her faithful just as her faithful were living extensions of her vision!" He gave her a woeful smile. "Perished in an ambush by the Faceless. A whole siege, made to take down one lone woman. Can you imagine it?"

  Curiosity would get her killed, she knew as certainly as she knew the Hollows, but she needed to hear more. What was Menoux planning now?

  "I longed, long for her wisdom every day. I spent those decades thinking to myself that if I could find divinity a quarter as brilliant as hers, maybe I could accomplish all those dreams she left on my shoulders. Maybe I could finally reach her expectations." Menoux said. "And so came the Di Aila to me. Carried by the flood, desperate for any perch they could grasp, no matter if it came from some mountainous barbarian or another. I offered them a place in a town ruled by our faith's outer circles, served by our neonates with every luxury we could afford.

  "I did not expect much. I did not need much. And yet, never in the near two hundred years of my life have I ever known such disappointment."

  Glares met, and she felt an inkling of kinship with the monster before her. She knew the feeling well. "You think I have? M-my sister spent years trying to imagine what kind of hero our dad could be, and then he was so, so-"

  "Pityful." Menoux said. "Pathetic. I gave Glashii Di Aila every chance to prove himself, and when that man wasn't bemoaning the amount of Gobans at the lakeside settlement he was so graciously allowed to begin his life anew or playing games of humiliation with our recruits in a vain attempt to bring us down to his level, he spent dreaming of a revenge he never worked towards! I can swear on the honor of my mother, I have never laughed harder than the day I heard he had departed towards the Bear's territory and its rival cub in some marvelous plan to drop all his wishes on the lap of a daughter he had practically never met!"

  He sighed, light giggles escaping with his breath. As if on command, his face turned stone rigid, expressionless, the moment of warmth over. "But you know what is worse? Despite being a failure as a man and a god, Glashii Di Aila, by mere fact of existence, surpassed me."

  The first time she heard it, she though it had to be a fruit of her imagination. Through the ringing, something like a wet suckle, light and fast. The second time, stretched to a tortuous length, she wasn't so sure anymore. She caught on before the third, as a small stream of blood poured from the underside of Menoux's wrist.

  The insides of Menoux body quivered as if filled with serpents. Red rivulets bloomed in straight lines up his limbs, across his chest, over his bits, tracing the contours of his face. When the first object pushed its way through the skin of his bicep, thin and razor edged, she knew he was intent on making good on his promise.

  "Aenexias granted the blessings of the Lord to his wife and children. My Mistress, in turn, went to absurd lengths to create believers as divine as she was, knowing she had not the same gifts as her father. Me?" The clenching of teeth joined the gruesome cacophony. "I spent a century honing her gifts, studying what little we had left from the tablets transcribed from the Prophet's own, granting me and mine lives as the Lord in Iron once demanded, and what do I get? I can make strong soldiers. A divine eunuch, condemned to watch his Mission die with him.

  "And that despicable mollusk shaped like the Dashi he so loathed, who squandered himself like some useless aristocratic in the woes of ennui, not only enjoyed the full of his power, but could pass it to his seed by matter of fucking?!"

  That was enough. She charged to her right, seeing no breaches or openings to take advantage off, propelled by the simple notion that if she stayed here, she would die.

  What saved her was still keeping an eye on Menoux. One moment, he stood staring at the spot she had just been. The next, he was gone, cracking ground around twin craters the only evidence of his presence. The blade Igvaz came a finger's length from severing her face, leaving only wind on its trail to blow the dust out of her carapace, a cloud of dirt rising over where she had been supposed to stand.

  "And then there is you. Holly Seneschal, Mariwa Di Aila, Naive Godling, second spit right onto my cheek, from no other than that cursed family!"

  "I-I have nothing to do with that!" She screamed, retreating, struggling against a body suddenly gone cold and stiff. "You know didn't ask for this! I wanted to stay human!"

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

  "Oh but of course, can't blame somebody for the circumstances of time and birth, can I?!" Through soil and grass, jaw pieces expanded below bulging gums, splitting lips and chin open like a flower. She could see teeth bobbing and tongue slithering, but she couldn't imagine he was speaking through his mouth anymore. "No, it's the fact you endure without bending, without breaking, without so much as listening to my truth that makes you an insult to everything my Mistress tried to accomplish, a goddess who shirks the very duty she was created for!"

  "What duty?! For whom?!" She hissed. "You all keep talking about responsibilities and duties like I'm supposed to know what you're talking about by instinct! The only people I own anything to don't even talk about you!"

  "Oh, but you will! The true believers of Skawla clamor for a savior to set things right and drown the corruption devouring them head first! And who could be a more perfect candidate then a goddess harking back to the lineage of the Brave Sailors, yet raised outside their embrace?"

  And then, finally, it clicked. The fear left her mind, and she hunched to her ankles, laying her free hand on the ground, careful not to lower Agare too much. "Do you want to know why I call them comrades? Why I can still barely bring myself to care about what my comrade here did when what that stunt down below makes me want to puke?"

  "Now, of all times?" He laughed. layers of faded golden plates covered most of his body by now, marred by crimson and the white lace of hanging dermis. "You it's going to matter in least when-"

  "Because they listen!" she said. "They want to use me as badly as anyone else I ever met, but at the very least they had the decency to listen to what I have to say and talk to me, to be honest about their intentions and not hide behind all these big concepts all of you keep insisting on! And if it wasn't for Marquise and Agare... I wouldn't even be here!"

  At the name, he froze. "Did you say-"

  She burst into movement, dashing towards his leg.

  He would predict her movement, that much she knew. She couldn't rely on her body alone.

  And so, her Will expanded outwards in a great deluge, grasping at everything within sight. At that moment, she reached deep inside herself and called for the final home she would ever have, for the one she had been denied and denied herself for so long.

  Priga was all, and all was Priga. Her call was answered.

  And suddenly, as if she had bathed the world in light, she saw. Into the innermost depths of the cultists around her, uncertainty evident through cold sweat and wide eyes, exhilaration in the beat of their hearts at the monster they would soon face, and into Menoux as well, a bastion of flesh and spirit in one, moats and walls shifting to accommodate jagged palisades and spears yet never losing sight of offense, striking down at her.

  The kick nicked a cut on her forehead as she passed under his calf. Feet returning into a stomp to her back, she pounced, once to get out of the way, then one more time, ending in a shoulder tackle with all her strength to the lines of Citrine.

  At first, she assumed they had parted, predicting her movements like their master. Then she saw, as if time was slowing around her, warriors being knocked over, half a dozen who had braced together sent flying on impact, a shield of the hardest steel deforming around her silhouette.

  She didn't have the time to gawk. Recovered from the shock, the Citrine line moved to corner her, and she fled suit.

  They were not alone. She felt, saw all around her as steel armors revealed themselves from behind tall grass, from the natural trenches of erosion and digging beasts, dozens rapidly turning into a hundred, silent army growing larger still as several more broke through the tree line ahead in loose clumps.

  They were all around. Cleavers chopping down to stop dead at her limbs, shining steel tipped arrows heavier than any ever used in the Lesser pricked her back and hairs without ever piercing deeper than skin, and those poor few who decided to stand their ground were walked over. Each and every, though failing to cause any significant harm, slowed her down some, and allowed Menoux to calmly bridge the distance.

  She dropped under a bisecting swing, and got lucky on the follow up, managing to keep a duo of Citrine cultists in between her and the pursuing giant, forcing him to halt the slash in its tracks. A group stuck in her way, a club getting halfway to her head before she barreled into the vanguard's chests, and whichever advantage she had got was lost in trying to cross over the pile.

  A hand wrapped around her ankle, imperceptible if not for the noticeable weight she was now dragging through the ground. She glanced back, finding a young man with intent eyes reaching with his other arm, as if it would hold her better.

  She kicked back, hoping to push him away. Instead, his helmet crumbled under her foot, covering her toes with a dark substance as he went down with a choked gurgle

  Something was wrong. Everything faded from sight as she focused on that one spot, trying to puzzle out the numbness spreading inside her mind.

  She caught herself already flying, the metallic slap of Igvaz's flat still echoing through the battlefield.

  She rolled to a stop, and only then noticed the disappearance of her comrade. Searching side to side, she found him prone over a small bed of wilting buds, and tried to hurry besides him, before a jolt sent her down again. Her arm was shattered inside and out, elbow to shoulder, useless. With more care, she crawled forward-

  Only for a boot of overlapping plates to stomp down between them. A moment's confusion afforded her a sole to the face that sent her spinning back.

  On her back, she saw the treeline again, tantalizingly close, if not for the entire battalion now standing in the way, lines reinforcing each other stronger and stronger, forming a wide circle that pushed her towards the worst of her enemies.

  Menoux's transformation was complete. The metallic shell flared outwards, casting off dripping red and a final few ribbons of scalp to reveal a grotesque masterpiece, forged with a careful eye to emulate the anatomical lines of musculature and skeleton. defined abs, a radial gorget protecting he neck, the vague ridging of ribs, all combined into a thousand pieced statue of a flayed man still walking.

  "Wonderfully done. Or a start, nonetheless." Off the man of meat and blood, all that remained were the lidless eyes, bulging behind a mask like a monstrous, bloated skull. "I gave you too little credit, although I must ask, where was that Gift back when we first met?"

  Menoux efforts inside her Will redoubled, a delicious panic creeping over her skin like a spell of gooseflesh as her Innermost self failed to contain the parasite's trashing. Her teeth shut tight, arms and legs being forced still so she wouldn't prostate herself. She looked up, and briefly considered the faint golden tint of the moon.

  "Deny it all you want, you crave the life all gods feed from." he said. "Keep starving yourself, eating from simple animals until your body and sanity cave, then you will realize that pretending was never an option. That, my foolish Godling, is how Demons are born."

  "Uuh- Uugh." Her mouth babbled, and her Will hurried to correct, still functional despite the struggle. "All gods do is destroy and control. How is that any better?"

  "Good? Silly you, of course it won't be good for everyone!" Though the golden maw could only barely quiver, it was easy to read the smirk from his voice. "Gods exist for the sake of their followers, just as their followers exist for the sake of them. They embody perfection, all for this ultimate transaction of guidance for survival. Do you think the Prophet reigned on the strength of ideals alone? The fallen clamored for him out need before anything else."

  "What ideals? bloodshed, violence, cruelty?!" she spat, tasting metal at the back of her tongue.

  "A respect for power and those dedicated to cultivating it, an acknowledgement that your next's life is worth a thousanfold more than that of any heretic, a commitment to a living paradise where all your innermost desires can be fulfilled so long as you love the pack..." He chuckled. "And by extension, all that you just said. Do you think a single believer here is unaware of the way they are seen outside our faith?"

  Through the haze of desires, she felt a fist clench. Her neck was as stiff as wood, but with great effort, she managed to look into his eyes, and hiss. "Even if I let her go, even if I become something else, I am never becoming like you. Never like Glashii. Never like- !"

  A deep, guttural dismay prevented her from continuing. She managed to sit over her knees as Menoux watched, silent. He turned suddenly, resting Igvaz over his shoulder as he stalked towards Agare.

  "No, wait!"

  "The killing of Xamuz the Temperate, who abandoned the ways of the Prophet for a hermit's life of peace, and his hundred exiled disciples. The Red Month that plagued several settlements around Mt. Salog. The Black Year of Skawla, and its over two thousand deaths. Do you know what all those have in common?" Menoux said.

  With great effort, she rose into a crouch.

  "All were caused by these so called Remnants of Eligor." He nudged Agare with a foot. "A massacre of unwilling enemies. Attempts to root out a cult nobody knew, blind to the difference between foe and innocent. An attack against an entire nation, which destabilized countless lives and entrenched corruption so deeply it can now only be amputated."

  "And how are you any better? How was my dad?"

  "We aren't." Menoux shrugged without glancing her way. "I won't speak for the Di Aila, but ever since I saw the light of the Mission, I have never hidden my nature! I am a monster, I will forever be a monster, but these things? These crying little killers who accuse us of being foul, degenerate, a blight on this island, yet would not spare a stray thought to killing a child than crushing a blade of grass? I laugh because I shouldn't cry! Loathsome hypocrites all!"

  As she wrestled Menoux's parasite under control, she stood up.

  She looked down at the masses of Menoux's followers, and they braced themselves for another fight. Menoux kept his back towards her, but she knew better than think she could best him. It didn't really matter, as she wasn't planning to get away, not by herself.

  Rather, she was considering her words carefully. She knew most of these cultists spoke Yine, she was sure they had been reacting to her words as much as their master's, but maybe it would be better if she spoke in Awi- Ivian? She had this feeling in her heart of hearts, that they deserved to hear what she had to say.

  "A-at least... " She hesitated, afraid of all the ways her tongue could fail her. "At least they were honest."

  Menoux sighed. "Don't you ever listen? Or do you think I'm lying about all those events?"

  "T-they tried to be a little clever. Agare kept tons of things from me on the road. But they never pretended they were doing otherwise, never hid that they planned to use me for their own purposes! It only lasted as long as it lasted because I let it be, so long as I could enjoy the journey they had crafted for me..." She felt a knot in her throat, but pushed through, "Menoux, why are we all here?"

  "Oh?" he asked. "And what are you implying right now, Godling?"

  She threw caution to the wind. "H-honestly, I don't know. You could have killed us that night, then again back at your prison, then again at the soft layers. Y-you could have taken me down before I even realized what was happening on the way here, b-but because you were waiting instead, I-I think I-I, I j-just-"

  "Breaking down does you no favors, Godling." He spread his arms wide, sword dragging across the ground with a wretched moan. "Come! If you are making an accusation, speak loud and clear!"

  She glanced behind him, behind Agare's, at the figure just in front of the circle's furthest lines, the one that did not get up. Those that should have been his comrades did not so much as look at him, in fact did not react to his presence any more than they might react to a dead bug on the floor boards. Was that all he mattered?

  " ... You made a show out of taking me seriously." she said. "You tore yourself open, brought an entire army and t-that monster of a sword to intimidate me, and then you just play around? Do you think I'm stupid, that I wouldn't see how weird your game is?"

  "Oooh, that? Is just the principle of the matter, Godling. I need to make a lesson out of those who-"

  "T-that's the thing! You keep talking about lessons, when you can never tell what you're trying to teach straight! So I ask you again: Why are we here Menoux? What do you actually want?!"

  She grasped at the Citrine around them. The situation did not look in her favor: they were not shaken in the least, no more than before.

  Rather, the only change came from Menoux. There was a glint in his eyes, that burning intensity that had almost made her melt before, the kind that made her feel proud of herself. She had struck a chord, somewhere deep down. She had to have.

  Maybe, then, she would have got a proper answer to her doubts, learned a way to escape with both Agare and her life intact.

  But at that moment, Menoux's pupils shrank, and his head snapped upwards so fast as to loudly crack his spine. She followed his gaze above, to the beautiful twilight sky, countless stars already unveiled.

  Only through them did she see the shadows. Slim, quick, darting in a great swarm that was nonetheless almost imperceptible in the dark.

  She knew everything was about to change when Menoux lifted Igvaz in between himself and the swarm. "Shieeeeelds!" he bellowed, too late.

  Beneath the sky, a second canopy of stars blossomed to life, a gorgeous field of shining lilac flowers like she had never seen before.

  And as one, the flowers crashed down to the earth.