Staring straight at the god, Vic opened her mouth wide. She overcharged the smoke spell and puked out an eruption of ash cloud, cinders and volcanic ash plumes rippling out in waves, smoking the expanse of the street. Everything turned dark while her shadow-armoured back dragged on the gritty wall behind her until she slid down to the ground. She was crouching. She was crouching. She was technically behind a wall. She was crouching behind a wall. She was out of sigh, crouched behind a wall.

  She closed her eyes hard while looking away, squeezing them to the point it hurt. Her breathing evened. One last gambit. It would work. She didn’t look at it. She focused her mana sense on herself and only herself in case the blob’s senses could detect her perception of it through mana alone. She could feel the last of her mana wrapped around the space of her last spell as its disturbance turned to nothing.

  FOOL.

  Victorya did not move. She breathed so quietly that she didn’t think that she had. There was no world that could exist where this wouldn’t work. This would work. This was the only way out, and there was only one way out and it was the one she had taken, so it would work. The sound of wind cracking against stone blew at her ears. She wasn’t moving, she didn’t exist. It might blow out the smoke that was hiding her, but she’d slipped out of its sight, she was crouching behind a wall now, this had worked before, this had worked before, she was fine. It had worked with stupid, single-minded monsters, never with people, so it would also work this time around.

  REPEATING THE MISTAKES MADE BY MANY BEFORE you, RUNNING THROUGH THAT VERY SAME PATH… THAT IS HOW you STAND.

  It had worked, it had worked, it had worked. Vic didn’t breathe out. Victorya kept the air in. She’d won, it was going to leave. The flowing sound of millions of succeeding tiny arms ricocheting away filled the air.

  BUT DISTANCE BRINGS NO ESCAPE. You WILL FIND YOURSELF; LIKE THE OTHERS; BROUGHT TO ME.

  An uproar boomed outwards. Heavy ash whipped the ground.

  Ah. AH. No, she didn’t want to open her eyes. She couldn’t open them only to find out that she was staring straight at it.

  She stayed crouched, eyes firmly closed. Its stupid triumphant theme was still playing. It had left, but not far enough. Yes. No. What if it was still there once she opened her eyes? What if it had played with her again? What if it had pretended to loudly leave? No, no, it had to have worked. It had worked with stupid monsters before.

  Why wouldn’t it work with this god? Even more than that, no, no, her shadow armour could cut off mana and any connection to spells. She was leaving no trace of mana. She couldn’t… couldn’t… be detected…

  Her eyes were squeezed so tightly that it stung. There was that sensation of crawling ants again across their surface.

  It had invaded her mind, hadn’t it? How could it overtake fragments of her brain if it hadn’t infected her? If she was infected, that’s why it had found her easily before, but… no, it had been bad luck last time- she was fine, she had to be fine, it wouldn’t be there when she opened her eyes.

  It didn’t know where she was and it had left. She knew it. It wouldn’t be there perfectly still if she opened her eyes.

  Explosions burst, somewhere far behind her. Vic’s eyes shot open. Fragments of volcanic glass and cracked rock crunched beneath her hand as she stumbled to her feet. Nothing but pale ash lingered in the thick grey fog. No glint of shining gold could be seen. No threads, nothing. There was a pit in her stomach. She’d been right. It had left. It left her.

  Of course. Of course she’d been right. She’d wasted time.

  She needed to- to move, to hide. It was searching for her.

  Her throat was dry when she gulped down. She needed to call Alberon to gain more information about its weaknesses to know how to escape it. Their conversation filtered through the governor had gone unfinished so that was a good excuse to call him.

  …Oh. For that call to happen she’d need to remove her shadow armour. Another implosion’s impact, not so far, reached the street. The clouds of ashes spun and twirled, washing over the lacerated pavement. Oh. It’d gotten lacerated by the god on its way out. She’d been missed by a few metres. It couldn’t have known she was there, it hadn’t purposefully missed her. It hadn’t known. It couldn’t have known. She crouched back, staring pointedly at the ground, pinching her eyes close before reopening them. She couldn’t look at the blob, she needed to avoid it. She didn’t want to discover if it could detect her watching it. Ah. AH. The craziest and smartest move would be not to move from here. It wouldn’t expect her to still be there instead of anywhere else if it thought she’d run off. Her fingers found her head and dug in her hair, massaging her scalp painfully. She was losing her shit. Oh. She nearly grazed herself with her mini-lightsaber. Not good. Ah. Ah.

  She wanted to leave without giving a look back. Fucking shit, she should. None of Alberon’s minions had helped. She was being used.

  Another explosion, but this time longer. Parts of the blob’s circular hp bar had gone down, starting to replenish once again.

  She dryly gulped. She… needed to remove her shadow armour fully for the telecommunication device to work. She deactivated her layers of shadow armour, one by one. Soon, there was only one left. Insane. She was insane. She couldn’t remove this, she shouldn’t.

  It was silly to think that barely a week ago this meagre level of protection is what she was used to. Only one layer now and she felt naked like a coughing baby facing a hydrogen bomb.

  She removed it. It felt the same as all the others, until the burning, ash-filled air choked her lungs. She coughed and coughed and put back one layer, running to another street and entering the ruin of a cracked building still protected with a veil of thinning ash. She ignored the smithing tools and pushed them away to better hide, hitting one with her foot and swearing, before crouching behind one of the standing walls of this warehouse.

  She removed her layer of shadow armour there, breathing in the thinner air before turning on the calling device.

  “Victorya! Victorya? What are you doing? You have to continue attracting its attention-”

  Victorya interrupted him.

  “HEY, EMPEROR Dipshit, where the FUCK were you?! I nearly died there,” she spat.

  “You need to keep distracting it. No one else can. It is necessary for the only plan that I can imagine working against it,” he lied, because there had to be other ways to defeat it, like having the blob do enough of its special “fuck you” laser beam attacks for its hp to be low, and then and only then nuke it with her Nuke. “We have until dawn t-”

  “Plan my ass! You’re just making me do your dirty work while hiding! There’s no such thing as ‘we’. I, alone, handled it-”

  “It is a predictable enemy,” he interrupted. “It will unleash its power without restraint if we’re so much as in close proximity. It is binding its time. I cannot come and fight it alongside you.”

  “How convenient,” she said. “The cowardly coward gets to be a coward for reasonable reasons.” At the other end of the call, a barely perceptible, muted, strangled noise remained strangled in his mouth. Close enough to a grunt. Dude was acting like a cow.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  “I am preparing. I have been using surrogates to make it think I am desperate. It needs to think I’m desperate to avoid it. That is essential but I do not have that many lures to use. All you need to do to play along this charade is t-”

  “I think I could manage to beat it alone at this point, you fucking coward.” She didn’t want to go back. She held herself against the wall, putting a hand against it, the other at her ear, staring straight at the grooves of the stone bricks.

  “Doubtful,” he spat back. “It’s still gauging you up. That god is trying to use the least amount of mana it can to beat you in order to conserve the most energy that it can. It always has. It cannot afford anything else.” Doubtful. It just wanted to defeat her fully. To the point of annihilation, like it had something to prove. “It will only accrue its strength proportionally to yours and spend no more than it strictly has to.” Should she tell him about the fact that she might be infected? No. No she wouldn’t. He’d use it against her and hold it over her if he had a cure. “I would advise you not to reveal the extent of your hidden capacities to keep it occupied the longest you can with your wild cards. I do not know what you’ve done to force it into this form so quickly. Stop showing your hand.”

  “Well three cheers to that,” she laughed. “Too little too late. I’m pretty sure I gave it an aneurysm with my little finger.” She stared at it. It was still there, coming out of her thumb’s nail, burning brightly in its purple glow. Maybe next time she needed to use her middle-finger as the focus point of her pinprick spell.

  “Nevertheless, we have a time constraint,” he said in an annoying way at which she rolled her eyes. A horrible sound of crashing debris echoed outside. “Ah, charming, it’s doing meteor strikes with debris it’s grabbed. I have someone taking care of that, but, alas, it must absolutely be defeated before dawn, at any cost.” She squinted.

  “Shit out your plan. But be honest. If you’re not going to be honest, I’m going to throw myself out of this garbage bin city of yours t-”

  “Indeed. A betrayal would work most brilliantly,” he said. “We must pretend to argue and for you to turn against me to betray me. It will enjoy the theatrics of it all. Lead it to the arena. You are not far from it.”

  “The arena?!” she said. She frowned. He couldn’t mean…

  “Yes, you are already acquainted with it,” he said. “The plaza where we once faced of.” Vic stared at the wall. He was probably getting some sort of sick pleasure out of the idea of making her return there. “The one where you broke off a chunk of my statue.” Wait, she’d done that? What statue? “It’s where it still thinks the heart of my power is as it was not easily movable back in the days. There is a decoy mimicking its effects deep underground. You must lead it to its surface, and it will enthusiastically follow you because it will try to strike two birds with one stone. I’ll trick it into thinking it has cornered me then, be prepared. You will know what to do when it happens. It will be similar to the mana-draining spell my high priestess used on you twice, a sennight ago, when it was believed that your power came from a patron god.”

  Oh. Oh.

  Oh. Wait.

  “…Is this… not the actual god? Is that just a vessel?” she asked. It was an apostle. Was it using… bluetooth? Wait. Wait. Wait. Her shadow armour.

  “No, that forsaken god is not here,” he said with a derisive tone. “I would have to be much more proactive if it were. It’s been constrained by those limitations.” Vic numbly looked at the ground. She slowly looked back up to the ceiling. Her shadow armour cut off not just magic, but divinity. It’d happened with Alberon and the big, pointless spell he’d tried and failed to use at their final showdown at the wall. He’d gotten disconnected from it.

  She… just needed to wrap the blob- the vessel- with her shadow armour? Its… spear had seemed unable to expand its weird fractal invasion between her layers. But it could pierce it with momentum, still. Was it really momentum that it used to pierce her shadow armour?

  But… It… could work. She could win by wrapping up the god’s vessel in her shadow armour.

  She’d cut off connection to divinity with her shadow armour when she’d protected the governor by wrapping him with it. That’s why the guy had lost connection to his “god”. The shadow armour, just by wrapping someone, could cut them off from divinity. It could work. It’d worked twice. Why not a third?

  “Victorya?”

  “I threw off your bishop nearby after his arm got badly burnt by the god. Good luck fetching him before he dies. You will have to hurry to save him, you probably should” she said. She heard him hum. She ignored that because it didn’t sound good. That was exactly why he didn’t deserve to know that she could hear the blob talk. It’d lead to nothing good. “Karah. How’s Karah?”

  “Some people don’t belong to the battlefield,” he said. “A priestess with depleted reserves is a hindrance. She was fine, if a little shaken. Hm. Do not try to mitigate losses on the population. I haven’t had the time to evacuate this district, but luckily, it is an industrious one less populated than the others. However, it isn’t your place to attempt that. Losses are acceptable. All for the greater good and the lesser evil, indeed. The most you can do is to lead it towards the arena as quick as possible to avoid any unnecessary losses.”

  Something was quietly seething in her chest.

  “Hey, you one hundred percent certain that it can’t hear what you’re saying? It’d be the stupidest secret plan if it’d heard all of this,” she said.

  “Certain. Our earpieces are imbued with my divinity. It cannot hear us through them.”

  “Oh, so that’s why I felt they looked stupid,” she said.

  “Keep that spirit up for when we’re supposed to argue before it,” he said.

  “All the contrary,” she interrupted. “I need this. When I’m about to bullshit, I need a warm up, contrary to you.” She shut off the communication device.

  She breathed out. Alright. A plan. That was a plan. She got up and stepped away. Maybe she would try to get closer to that plaza before getting back the attention of the god’s vessel. She didn’t think she could outrun it.

  She heard the communication device reconnect at her ear, its distinct background noise greeting her right ear.

  “And a fair warning, Victorya. I’ll make a signal for when you’ll have to look away from it,” he said. “Once it realises what I’ll be doing, it is possible that it spitefully decides to inflict as much damage as possible before it is cast out into the aether. You must not meet its gaze if it does so. You will have to look away. It will have no real power, but you won’t be rational if your eyes crosses its own. Now good luck, and goodbye.”

  The line shut off.

  Vic blankly stared ahead. What. Did he just… try to get the last word? That was so incredibly childish. Pathetic, even. What a pathetic man.

  __

  In the darkness, Damian’s shallow breathing persevered. He tore borrowed, small gasps of air from the tight grip pressuring his chest. There was a small victory and small defeat in every single one of them. He couldn’t move much. Only his head could writhe against the stone. Something moist at the side of his head was trailing up his cheek and dripping upwards. It’d stuck some of his hair to his forehead.

  The thumping of his heart wouldn’t stop. Repeating mantras from his days as a young acolyte helped focus his mind onto something tangible that he could wrap his hands around. It didn’t quiet down the thumping at his temples nor the ringing at his ears, but it helped soothe his heart.

  “Hear me, o Divine Authority, I am here, though hidden. My breath remains, my name remains.” He would be found. Fast, hurried chanted words quietly went. They warmed his chest, like so many times before during night prayers at the isolation ward, under quiet candlelight. “Hands in hands, as the lost are sought, so am I sought. As the living are called, so shall I answer. Let the Humane hand find me, I am not abandoned nor forsaken. Among the living, beneath the sky, I- I-”

  A strangled noise escaped his lips from the surprise of feeling elation. The chokehold against his chest felt lighter. Oh. Oh God. Ah. Found. He was found. Divinity filled his floating lungs. Fear drained away from the dripping sieve of his mind. Relieved breaths returned. Even the surrounding debris cracked from the pressure of renewed strength. Such a foolish dream, to think that he could save himself on his own, but no, he was known, he was found, he was saved. His God’s presence washed over his mind, a balm spread upon each pain that dripped up his face. The sensation of power and relief filled every crevice of his broken body. Never before had such an intense fragment of his God been revealed to him. His vastness humbled him. Relief oozed in every breath. He would be found. He would live.

  Glorious music and burning golden light filtrated through the cracks of the wrecked debris. Damien’s eyebrows slowly raised. He was upside down. A cracking burst hammered from beneath him. Dust flew upwards. He coughed, but the pure divinity within his chest intensified. He could, he would- whatever this was- he would take one more breath and face it- yes- he could, he would-

  One moment, he was breathing. The next, he began to feel the peeling burn of his flesh starting from his feet, until all was embalmed in a golden, glowing viscous liquid that filled his lungs until it burst out by his nose.