The light was the first to change.

The soothing blues and greens from the pastoral scene above quickly shifted to the deep crimson of twilight, and soon even that faded until all was darkness.  Stars sprinkled their way into existence like fireworks, spinning and whirling bursts of light, forming patterns guided more by whimsy than reality.  And yet through all of that, the sun was still clearly visible in the sky beyond the dome.  It was the glass that had turned to night.

Still, these things were mere theatrics.  A trumpeting herald for the single, great hand that then speared its way through the sky.  It hung there a moment, a false moon over the cathedral’s horizon, glowing softly from some inner light, before slamming to the earth below.  Though mere glass and joins of coppery tin, the sheer presence behind that one, illusory appendage pressed me down more surely than a slab of iron.  I felt as if I were holding dozens of spells, each far beyond my capacity.  It was all I could do just to look upon a depiction of divine flesh.

Then came the rest of Her.  

The horns rose first.  Twinned spires of curved bone snaked their way over the horizon like rivers carving a path through the firmament.  Great baubles and chains of gold dangled from them, each link the size of a comet.  Emeralds and rubies shone from within settings like lakes, so lustrous, they glimmered and sparkled as though from a distant mob of paparazzi.

One by one, the newly formed stars began to wink out.  A new wave of darkness, far deeper and more profound, swept over the sky until all was black.  Until even the true sun was obscured.

Then She swept her hair aside.  And we were bathed in a new light.  The light that was Her.

Shimmering black eyes lanced through me just as surely as spears.  I felt as if my heart was being squeezed by a vise.  Every beat of it reverberated through me, forcing blood through veins so compressed, you would think I was on a rocket to the moon instead of this farcical banquet.

The distant sound of retching came to my ears.  I was not sure from whom.  I could no more move my head than any of the rest of me—an ill omen for the poor victim.  I could only hope they, at least, had managed to collapse to one side first.

However, it did serve as a reminder, and I began my grim yet silent work.

Pulse.  One to Jax.  10… 9… 8…

“So…”  The voice that hit us was as feminine as it was licentious, yet so grand in scale, the bass of it rattled the tableware in front of us.  “Our dear, sweet Donum finally deigns grace us with his presence.  How delightful.”

Sarcasm.  Great.  I could deal with sarcasm.

Gritting my teeth against the pressure, I gasped, “H-Happy to be here.  Wouldn’t… wouldn’t miss it.”

Puls—oh, fuck!  Don’t look at Her!  To Arx!  To Arx!

Even reduced to this crystalline facsimile, She was beauty personified.  Every sweep.  Every line of Her.  She was at once muse and art.  Aphrodite in glass.

Which was neat and all, but I could ill afford the dip in blood pressure.

Curiously, even amidst my inner turmoil, I distantly noted how exactly she looked like Mia—or perhaps, as she would have were she rejoined with the rest of her heavenly origin.  I could not possibly describe the difference.  Only that, once seen, it could not be unseen.

There were, of course, a host of minor deviations.  The hair.  The eyes.  The horns.  But in the face?  They could have been twins.

“Truly?” She boomed.  “How bold of you.  I would have expected more contrition given the circumstances.”

Contrition?  I squeezed my eyes shut again.  Somewhere in there, I had lost count, but I was pretty sure Jax could handle another dose.

Pulse…  Pass…

“A-and what—” I sucked in as deep a breath as I could manage.  “What would those be?  Y-you never actually explained what made you so angry.  I’ve… I’ve tried identifying your items before.  N-never… never reacted this way.”

We had previously discovered a riddle referring to some bargain or other which had been broken in spirit.  Vague a clue as that had been, I had still put together a scenario with the potential to explain at least a few things.  However, that involved a lot of ifs, maybes, and my own transitory dreamworld.  And I was not about to put words into Her mouth.  All I knew for certain was that the last time I had heard Her voice had been immediately after trying to figure out the secrets of Arx’s new pendant.

Never did get that one pinned down.  It had something to do with her particular tastes, as I recalled—that being the main reason we had traded for it at all—but of course, we had since discovered that she enjoyed possessiveness.

Hmm… now, what would that mean…?

“What are you blathering about?”  Though comparatively light in tone, her voice was still so thunderous, I could feel my teeth vibrating.  “You were supposed to figure out what it does.  That’s the whole point of the the thing!  Did you think I would reveal the location of my Isafel over something so piddling as that?”

Eyes shut.  Pulse.  Pass to Arx.  Deep breath.  Open again.

“Isafel?”  Where had I heard that name before?  “The rivers?”

She snorted and looked away, finally relieving some fraction of the hellish pressure of her gaze, and I took the opportunity to get as much oxygen into my system as I could.

“Rivers, you say?  Is that what they thought?  Ha!  How delightful.”  Her chuckle of amusement set the baubles adorning her horns to tinkling, then she again fixed me with a bit of a side-eye.  “Isafel means ‘the winding dragon,’ you know.  In… one of the older tongues.”

It took me a moment, but the pieces did finally click together.  “You’re talking about that Mouth, aren’t you?  It has a name?”

“They all do.  My precious children, each and every one.”  

“Your ‘precious child’ destroyed an entire town!” I shouted indignantly—then flushed with regret.  Provoking Her was about the last thing I wanted to do.  

However, either She did not understand why I was getting upset, or it was simply beneath Her notice.

“Yes, many hundreds of people,” she admitted without even a trace of remorse.  “Rarely am I so magnanimous.  I suppose I’ll have to hide her somewhere else now, though I fear the game is spoiled.  With the Words she can gift…?  No, mustn’t leave her exposed.”

Game?  Pulse, pass.  And Words?  As in plural?

“You’re talking about people dying like it’s some kind of joke.”

“And you’re talking as if I were my sister,” She retorted immediately.  Then, perhaps as a minor concession, She shook her head sadly and laughed.  “I suppose it is a bit of a joke though, isn’t it?  How many thousands of years has it been now?  I can’t even remember.  And yet still… they all die.”

“That tends to happen when you throw them into a death trap,” I muttered.

She tutted, turning to me again, and slowly leaned down to the point where her face began to distort over the dome of the ceiling.  All the while, her presence increased, measure by measure, until it was all I could do to stay conscious.

“There is no use debating the Purpose with me, little Donum.  We are all slaves to our own destiny.  Mortals most of all.  At least some of us strive against it.”

I had no idea what to say to that.  Not that I could have, anyway.

Each of the goddesses had made mention of this ‘Purpose,’ though none had elaborated much beyond its name.  All I knew was that it was in some way tied to the way things worked around here.  But ‘strive against it?’  Against what?  Destiny?  The Purpose itself?

“Don’t…” I just managed to force out.  “…know… P-Pur…”

“Hmm?”  She began to grin.  “Not bad.  Impressive, really.  For you to be able to speak even now?”

For a single, blessed moment, her eyes shifted away from me, and I just managed to gasp for air.

“Very well, I shall give you a moment’s respite.  You have managed to divert me from my cause here, and I haven’t all day.”  She smiled again.  Breathtakingly.  “Besides, I doubt your companions can take much more, and here I had been so looking forward to meeting with Jax again.  Our sparring matches were always the highlight of my day.”

With that, She turned and strode some distance away against the false horizon, finally pausing to simply gaze up at her own mirage of stars.  I doubted whether She was in any way truly distant—the glass was not exactly moving—however, Her presence had receded to the point of mild inconvenience, and that was enough.

Her mention of my companions had me worried.  I had not heard a peep from them since Xhinn’s arrival, and I knew Jax well enough that she, of all my girls, would not have missed an opportunity to snipe at our antagonist.  However, when I looked…

Lynnria had collapsed to the floor in a puddle of her own sick—which solved one mystery.  I could not tell whether she was still conscious, but she was at least still breathing.  Meanwhile, Jax and Arx seemed… better?  But only marginally.  If I had to put words to it, I would say they looked a bit like they had just sat through a bad movie marathon while locked in a burn pit with a bunch of plague victims.

“Jax?”  I stood, pushing my chair away so as to lift her head from the table.  She was trembling like a leaf.  “How we doing here?”

It took her a moment, but her eyes did just fix on my own.  And when they did…  “Yer standing?” she breathed, on the verge of weeping.  “Ye spoke.  Ye looked Her dead on and spoke!  And now yer standing?!”

I nodded ruefully.  “I told you it would be bad.”

Another skill cycle, but held longer this time to account for the reduced pressure.

Jax gasped as yet another round of Lust coursed through her but, far from the usual depravity, her eyes had taken on a wild, glassy look, like she was hovering somewhere just on the edge of madness.  The impulse to hold her close and whisper sweet comforts into her ear—to tell her everything would be fine—was strong.  But those would be lies.  And she would know.

Still, I needed her head in the game, so I delivered a solid thump to her breast.

“How are we doing?” I asked again.  Significantly.

“Close,” she grunted, shivering with pain and pleasure.  However, when she opened her eyes again, they seemed much clearer.  “Be close now.”

Only close, huh?  

This whole thing was going to fall apart if I did not get some Life in me.  And sooner rather than later.  I did not know how much longer I could keep Xhinn distracted.

With a grimace, I happened to glance at the plate in front of Jax and its neglected ‘offering’ of a meal.

Hold on…  All the gold in the world comes from here, doesn’t it?  

I could not recall exactly when or where I had discovered that little tidbit of information, but recall I did.  The most reasonable assumption was that it was mined in the process of digging out all the myriad corridors of the Dungeon, but that was hardly the only possibility.  Especially with magic on the table.

Curious, I snatched up the coin and gave it a sniff.  Smells like metal.  And when I extended my tongue: Tastes like metal, too.  Damn.

“You cannot unbind it, my lord.”  Mia’s voice came but faintly.  That she dared speak at all with Xhinn so near was a risk, but one she must have deemed worth it.  And that told me a great deal.  “You do not yet know its Name.”

My eyebrows gathered into a pensive furrow as I distractedly sent another packet of Lust to Arx.  Mia almost never spoke clearly when new knowledge was on the table.  But she would hint.

I don’t know its name?  No… its Word!  I tilted my head as possibilities spun through my mind.  If I could not ‘unbind’ it—presumably an important step, given the emphasis—would that not leave these Dungeon Golds useless to us?  And if that were so, why give them to us at all? 

Unless…

The furrow of my brow relaxed upward of its own accord.  I might not have known the Word for gold, but I did know another, and so similar, the coincidence strained the limits of credulity.

Hastily, I jerked open my Coin Pouch and exchanged the gold for a single silver piece.

“One coin should be as good as another,” I mused aloud.  They all come from the same place, after all.

“Dearest?” Arx wheezed, but I ignored her.

Now what do I do?  Just scratch Silver on it?  And what would that accomplish?  It already is silver.

“Dearest!”

I sighed with frustration.  Could she not see I was trying to keep us all alive here?

“What?” I said, turning.  Then jerked just about out of my skin.

Xyn was standing over me—or more accurately, lounging over back of Jax’s chair—and watching with a casual disinterest.  With the arrival of her divine counterpart, I had forgotten she was even here.

“Was the gold too good for you, then?” she asked, affecting innocence.  “Why didn’t you say so?  I could have arranged for something more… modest.”

The irony of her use of that word was not lost on me.  With her so near, the raw sensuality of her naked body was nearly overpowering.  Her skin almost glowed, it looked so soft, and the pendulous sway of her breasts, hanging unfettered and completely unconcerned with my nearness, almost blanked my mind.

So it helped that she was being a bit of a bitch.

“I’m sure you knew exactly what you were doing.”

A sly grin spread across her face.  But what she said was, “Do you know what you are doing?”

“Not even slightly,” I admitted.  It was not even unwilling.  

Wizardry of this kind seemed esoteric by design.  Sure, go around, collect Words, and you too can fulfill your dreams of magic.  But did anyone ever explain how?  Not on your life!  It was no wonder the Lady of Power had to assemble spells for people.  No one would ever break into the mage game otherwise.

“That’s a shame,” she observed airily.  “A person could get hurt that way.”

I sighed.  “Are you here to offer advice or just to watch me squirm?”

“Oh, I always enjoy watching you, Donum,” she returned, twisting her hips slightly.  “You are so very beautiful, after all.  You almost make me forget myself.”

Jax’s clawed hand instantly swiped toward her, but Xyn danced away, laughing.  For a moment, it almost looked like Jax might try to pursue.  However, what faint pressure still remained seemed enough to rob her the strength of her legs.

“Away ye, slag!” she yelled instead.  “Dare touch me master, and ye’ll draw back a stump!”

Arx hissed weakly in agreement.

“Will I?” Xyn teased.  “And how will you accomplish that, I wonder?  With my mistress here, your fangs are nothing but strawgrass.  Besides, you can’t expect me to offer anything… without giving something in return.”

I grimaced.  Something told me asking was probably not in my best interest, but I was so starved for knowledge, even the faintest whiff of it was too strong a temptation to pass up.

“State your terms.”

“Master?!”  Jax turned to me, horrified.

“Enough,” I said forcefully, then shoved another dose of Lust down her gullet to follow it up.  And this time, I was rewarded with the faint trickle of Life in return.

Finally!  Now, we’re getting somewhere.

“My terms?” Xyn replied, playing it coy.  “Why, whatever do you mean?”

“Quit your games, wench!”  

Oof.  What am I?  A thirteenth-century duke?  But I hastily shook off my qualms.  If I was going to play the part of the master, it was important to portray self-confidence.

“I want to know how to turn this coin into Life.  You know how to do that.  What do you want in exchange?”

She eyed me silently for a moment—which was off-putting given she only had the one.  

“What I want…”  She sent a cautious glance toward her distant mistress and lowered her voice.  “…I doubt you’d be willing to give.  But I would accept… a single moment of your regard.”

I quirked an eyebrow.  “My regard?”

She nodded solemnly.  “Touch me.  Let me feel the spark that first kindled in you when you looked at me.  Do that, and I will tell you.”

“You ‘stit-sucking…”  Growling, Arx began to writhe in her chair, clawing and scratching at the arms in an effort to rise.  “That is not something for the likes of you!”

“Which is why she is offering to trade for it,” I countered, punctuating the statement with her portion of Lust—and was fed in turn.

Excellent.  Phase one complete.  Now I just have mine to go.  This little side-bar was turning up aces for our chances.  It was a stroke of luck that She had granted it.  Actually, maybe just a little too lucky.  Damn it, there’s an angle here I’m not seeing.  There has to be.

I glanced at the foreign lilim suspiciously.  “I know your kind well enough to anticipate their needs, and you’ve said you don’t always get to feed on the best of emotions.  But why the touch?  What do you get out of that?”

The beauty tilted her chin upward challengingly.  “Do you want to know that or the method?”

So there was something.  But trying to figure out what it might be without first filling up my Life capacity was a non-starter.  If I did not get this skill going post-haste, we were done.

“The method then,” I replied.

“So touch me,” she commanded, pleased.  “Touch me with desire in your heart… right… here.”

Her hand lifted to accompany her words and traced a delicate path just over her breast.

“Where?!”  Jax strained mightily, but there was nothing she could do to counteract the pressure.  And Xyn had deliberately positioned herself just out of her view.  “I’ll kill ye, ye poptae!  Master, nay listen to this rank scaffie!  Be a trick sure.”

Of that I had little doubt, but I saw no recourse but to play this through.  Even so, Jax’s pleas did make me hesitate just long enough to glance at her… and then Arx.  The two of them were on the verge of digging through the backs of their chairs, they were so pissed.  If Xhynn had not been standing… wherever She was, I had little doubt anything I said could stop the coming onslaught.

But at least they were not wilting under Her stare anymore.  It was just a pity the same could not be said for Lynnria.  She had yet to move from her little puddle of befoulment.

Well.  Nothing else for it.

With as much confidence as I could muster, I took the few steps necessary to close the gap between myself and this Xyn.  But as I neared, the bravado seemed to fade from her visage, replaced by a sort of nervous apprehension.  

I could not fathom why.  Was this not what she had asked for?  Yet now that I was this close, I could see a sort of vulnerability lurking behind her eye.  It was like she was afraid.

Abruptly, she thrust her chest forward.   “Well?”

The challenge was echoed by a redoubling of the growls and snarls at my back, but they seemed done with insults.  The Dolilim had already been provoked beyond the capacity for words.

Slowly, I lifted my hand.  However, for all its splendor, I did not look at my target.  I was gauging her expression.  Watching for those barely-there moments of fractious indecision cresting the barriers of her mask.

I paused, hovering close enough to feel the heat rising from her flesh.  “Are you sure you want this?”

She glanced up from my hand to find my eyes, and she looked at them searchingly.  “I want you to want it,” she whispered.

I stared at her a moment more, then allowed my gaze to flick down to her heaving breasts.  They sat high and full, wonderfully pale against the black of her scales and with bright, pink buds almost quivering in anticipation for my touch.  How could I not want them?

And yet… yet…

“I barely know your name,” I observed quietly.  “You want to kill me.”

Her lips moved.  But no sound came from them.  Even so, I could see the word they had formed.  

Please.  Just that.  Please.

I could not say who made the move.  The next instant, palm met flesh, and my consciousness was suffused with the sensation of her pillowy softness.  Triumph lit in her eye, but I could not see the reason for it.  No assassins leapt from the shadows to protect her honor.  Poison gas did not fill the room.  Everything remained just as it appeared on the surface: one touch fueled by desire in exchange for one scrap of hidden knowledge.  

And I did feel a moment of desire for this creature—else I doubted she would have looked so pleased—but most of all, I felt regret.  Regret that we had to be enemies.  Regret that I could not feel certain of her own intentions.  Regret that I could do no more than simply touch.

But I could at least show her what she was missing.

Scarcely had my power flared to life than she leapt back with arms crossed over her chest.  Even so, I could tell she was struggling to hold up her own weight.

“No one asked you to do that!” she hissed.

This time, I was the one to grin in triumph.  “You were willing.”

She had to have been.  The Hammer did not shed its Glory on those who did not want it.  And now that she had felt its touch…

“Your mistress will hear of this, traitor!” she growled.  “How long will her protection last, I wonder, when she finds out how lax your loyalties have been?”

Ahnbe’s protection, huh?  That confirmed one or two of my suspicions.  Still, I could only quirk an eyebrow.  

“If that was your game, you’re a lot braver than I am.  I barely survived the last time She smelled a lilim on me, and I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to be the lilim in question.”

For all that my benefactor had technically forgiven the matter, that had not stopped Her from tossing Jax about a quarter mile into a nearby river.

Xyn’s expression faltered.

“Now, I believe we had a deal?”

She sniffed and turned her back to me.  “Stuff your deals!  You’re dreaming if you think I’d give you a thing after that mouthful of disgust.”

“Lies…” Jax hissed.  I had not noticed until just then, but in her enraged fervor, she had managed to slide out of her chair and drag herself about halfway toward us.  “Ungrateful reprobate!  I’d ought to kill ye just fer the slander.  He wants ye, fer all ye never deserved such.  And regretted he could nay let his ownself feel the more!”

It might have been a sign of how used to my lilim I was becoming, but it scarcely crossed my mind how strange her reaction to this situation was.  I knew she felt no sense of betrayal.  She was only angry my enemy had dared tempt my regard, and now that it had been granted, she was doubly pissed it had not been appreciated.

Xyn scoffed.  “As if I should listen to the opinions of some impure, little—”

Abruptly, pressure again flooded the room, almost driving me to my knees.  And then it faded.  It seemed Xhynn was in no way as distant as she seemed… and clearly did not care for her underlings reneging on their deals.

“Fine,” Xyn said shortly.  “Just scratch its Name away.  And may you choke on it for all the good it will do you!  As if a mortal could ever use the Words as they were intended.”

“Seems someone hasn’t been watching all that closely,” I replied with a smirk.  Then I flung an arm to one side.  “Observe!”

Man… that would have been much cooler if I had a cloak.  But at least I’m rocking the hat.

Of course, now I actually had to follow up my bluster.

Scratch its Name away?  Hmm… that implies the Name should already be there, but I don’t have the ability to reveal Words.  I glanced at Lynnria’s unconscious form.  And I can’t use her yet.  But Mia implied my just knowing the Name gives me some power over it.

I pursed my lips.  Well… I guess there’s no reason I can’t just scratch the Word in myself.  Silver was pretty soft, after all.  Even the nearby flatware would have been sufficient, but how was I supposed to account for the gesture with a table knife?  Experience had taught me that these runes needed to be inscribed in a single stroke and with as many as all five fingers at once—though Silver had only the three for some as-yet-unknown reason.  

You’d need claws or something in order to—

I blinked.  Ho-ly shit.  You cannot be serious?

It was way too much to be coincidence, but there it was all the same.  In order to scribe at all, you needed a medium that would accept an actual engraving.  The Words were too volatile, otherwise.  But how could that be when innumerable objects existed which held magical properties?  All of which came from the Dungeon—which held the only sentient race I knew of to naturally possess claws.

No wonder the kinds never figured it out!

“Jax—!”  I paused immediately.  No… mentals are too low.  “Arx, I’m going to need your hand.”

“Ho…?”  Xyn turned.  It seemed I had caught her attention.  “And what do you hope to accomplish with that, I wonder?”

“Just you wait and see,” I shot back, quickly rounding Arx’s chair.

The pressure in the room rose fractionally.  It seemed I had gathered more attention than I had anticipated, but I ignored it.  She was not moving to stop it, and that was enough.

Arx grunted under the weight, looking about like I had felt under Her full gaze.  But we had predicted this much.  “M-master?”

I knelt, lifting her arm from the chair as easily as I would a feather.  “Here.  I need you to scratch the Word for Silver into this coin, but it has to be all at once.”  I had to think for a moment to consider the logistics, then lifted my own hand to mime what I wanted.  “Like this.”

Thumb, middle finger, and pinky together.  Out, turn, out, turn, out.  Flourish.

Arx looked at me like I had just sprouted a third eye.

Grimacing with frustration, I gathered her fingers and pressed them to the coin.  “Go on.  Try it.”

Her incredulous stare only intensified.  “Master… c-can’t…”

“It seems the mutt is still too much a mortal.  How shocking.”  Xyn sighed with barely disguised mockery.

“I’m a mortal,” I shot back.  “If I can do it, she can do it.”

“Master…” Arx wheezed, and this time, I began to feel the shaking in her arm.  The tension.  She was trying, I realized.  It was just that the effort of pushing the Word into existence was still too much for her.  

It was a feeling I knew all too well.  However, she was not attempting to activate some grand mechanism like with Lynnria.  This was just a base Word… and one which reflected the nature of the object already.  She was not actually changing anything yet, so where was the resistance coming from?

I had no answers.  But I could help her.

“Arx, sing for me.”

For a moment, I sprouted a second head to go with my third eye.  But then it vanished.  She understood.

So she sang.  It was the same tune as before, with its haunting melody and frankly bat-shit lyrics, but we were looking for its effects more than anything.  And this time, we deliberately stared into one another’s eyes.  Deliberately fell deeper.  Closer.  And closer.

Until the song ended.  And our lips met.

For the space of a single held breath, we were one.  One mind.  One body.  I could feel the blessed coolness of air filling lungs too long compressed.  I could feel the muscles tensing in a body sitting up, no longer perturbed by the presence of a hostile goddess.  I could see my own face looking back at me.  Could sense the near feral hunger.  The aching call of alien and unfamiliar loins.

But most of all were the powerful reverberations of joy sparking through every corner of her being.  Joy that we had succeeded, even tenuous and fleeting as it was.  Joy that she could be of use to me.  Joy that I needed her.

A joy I reciprocated.  For what greater joy can there be than in the certain knowledge of your own love’s affection?

Our fingers moved, easily and naturally.  Almost an afterthought.  

The Rune was.  And it was Silver.  Pure.  Axiomatic.  It always had been.  Always would be.  Happy to sit there humming away upon its little coin.  The universe was good.  All was right.  

And then a single diagonal stroke destroyed everything.

Suddenly, I was only myself again, but I had bigger things to worry about.  An angrily vibrating coin was now sitting in my hand that was trying to figure out just what the hell it was supposed to be if it was not silver.  As Mia had hinted, I had unbound its potential.  But I still needed to direct that potential or else it would do what all energy did when left to its own devices.  Namely explode.

So I shoved it my mouth.

Yes… I know.  Perhaps not the brightest of moves, but quick thinking has never been my strongest suit.  I suppose, if pressed, I might have given some rationale like only an idiot would have shoved a bomb into his mouth.  So clearly it was supposed to be food?  But in reality, it had been borne more of instinct than thought.

Now, I just had to convince the powers that be that I was not an idiot.

“Ha!” I said, turning to Xyn with as much of a victorious pose as I could muster—and loudly chewing upon what was still quite possibly an incendiary device.  “Who’z zya mutt, now?  I tol’ you zhe could ‘oo it.  And now zya Life Ener’zy is mine!”

Xyn stared at me a moment, however far from the pity or mockery I had expected, she seemed stunned.  And perhaps that was not all that surprising.  Even setting aside my potential success—and more probable lunacy—what Arx and I had just done defied explanation.

“So she did,” she agreed.  “But you should probably—”

Mid-sentence, the coin gave a single pulse of heat and dissolved like so much cotton-candy in a pool of water.  More Life than I had ever thought could exist in the world pulsed through me and with enough force to drive me to my knees.  And then more.  And still more.

“—oh.”  She sighed.  “Too late.  What a shame.”

Then came the laughter.