As the city faded into the distance, I let all the rest of it go, my mind having rarely felt so blank with only one focus, one goal. I felt like my entire being- my plans, ambitions, desires- had all been stripped down to one simple destination, one single purpose for my existence.

Save him.

Bring him back.

It was a long ride through the dawn and into the next night to the next Turyn Temple. It was in Morrigan Territory; only one Temple had been brave enough to set its roots in Ildanach, that I knew of, and it was gone now. I partially expected to find nothing but ruins when I arrived, even in Morrigan, yet I was greeted at the door by acolytes in simple black masks. They bowed slightly to me as I approached, despite my being covered in dried blood– my own, Dahl’s, Hector’s–, but I ignored the gesture and simply pulled the unmoving form of my best friend from the back of the skiff.

The acolytes stared at me as I walked past them, carrying a corpse, ignoring the confused calls of the priests and priestesses of the temple as I strode through the hallways and into the central room.

The main room was circular with a domed roof- there was one main entrance through which I had come on the south wall, and then statues of stately women at the compass points of the remaining three walls, depictions of the Three Sisters we all served, not unlike the smaller version back in Ildanach. I immediately walked forward to the central figure, the Sister of Death.. I knelt in front of the image of a beautiful woman in a long dress, a raven perched on her shoulder that she was gently feeding, and placed Hector’s body on the floor between us. Then I bowed my head and prayed.

Time seemed unmoving, but I was vaguely aware of the whispers of the priests and priestesses. No one dared disturb me though. I was permitted to be here, the mask was proof enough of that, and no one would disrupt me while I prayed.

A few times, I saw one of the old teachers out of the corner of my eye, looking at me with an evaluating eye. It was clear enough for what I was asking, and it was not within the code. But they did not approach, and I did not move.

Acolytes passed through the halls around me, their eyes gazing at me with pity. Soon, the priestesses and priests looked at me the same way.

I didn’t want or need their pity.

Yes, Hector was dead.

But he would not stay that way. I would not let him die like this. Not like this. Not when there was so much more to be done.

He couldn’t die like this.

My knees, my legs, my back, my neck, my chest, my ribs- my entire body ached from holding the position, from the conflict from which I had taken no time to rest. The priests had started whispering, wondering if I were ever going to move, wondering if I would die here with my friend. My lips were dry and my throat hurt, my stomach grumbled from lack of food.

It had been days. Nothing had changed. Yet still I prayed.

“Boy, you need to stop,” one of the priests said, the first to speak to me since my arrival, not touching me but standing very near. “You are going to die before your time.” It was clear he meant it; disturbing the prayer of another Turyn wasn’t normally permissible behavior.

I didn’t move. I didn’t respond. I did nothing. Honestly, I doubted I could have spoken if I had tried.

My lips were so dry that they were coated in beads of blood, but it didn’t matter.

He would not die like this.

Eventually, the priest wandered away.

Night fell on the fifth day. I was barely conscious, half falling over now from exhaustion and dehydration. Part of me was vaguely aware that anyone else probably would have been dead by now, but I had an advantage. The word was bitter in my mind.

You are going to die before your time, the priest had said.

I felt laughter bubbling in my chest, the first sound I had made in nearly a week, rough and broken and ripping through my dried throat. Before my time? My time had long since come and passed. I had cheated death so many times— Hector was a better person than I was. He had more to live for than I did. Surely he deserved to cheat it just once.

“Elyon,” a voice said quietly behind me, and I turned so fast that my head spun and I ended up on the floor next to the cold body of my friend. It distantly dawned on me that he should almost certainly smell by now but for the preserving effects of the Temple.

A warm hand landed on my shoulder, gently pulling me upright, and the fact that I was freezing hit me. It had seemed so minor compared to everything else that I hadn’t even noticed.

I waited for the room to stop spinning and then looked up at the person who knew my name and was awake in the middle of the night. I froze, staring at him. I recognized his face from the murals. This was….

“My name is Gabriel Eros,” the Harbinger of Death, her hand upon the mortal world while she cared for the dead, said to me gently. “We have heard your prayers.”

For a moment, I felt elation. It had worked! It had paid off. Hector was going to get the second chance he deserved!

My exuberance must have shown on my face despite the mask, because Gabriel grimaced.

And suddenly I knew. “You were hoping I would give up,” I whispered, my voice nearly inaudible and strained. “You were waiting for me to give up because you didn’t want to come tell me… no.”

“Elyon,” Eros said in that same soft voice. “Do you know how many people have begged us to return their loved ones? How many Turyn, even? The world could not maintain balance if we listened to them all.”

“I’m not asking you to listen to them all,” I snapped, strength surging through me from a foreign source and giving me the ability to stand. I knew my eyes were glowing violet. I didn’t care, just as I didn’t care that what I was asking was the peak of selfishness. But I didn’t care about the rest of them. I just cared about him. “Just this one.”

“And next time he gets in trouble and dies?” Eros demanded. “You do not decide when his life has come to its end.”

“I gave everything to you,” I said quietly, vibrating with power and rage. “I have served you both without hesitation and without restraint.”

“You have,” Gabriel admitted.

“I have done your bidding without question! I would do whatever you wished. Save. Him.”

“That’s not how this works, Elyon,” he said, so softly, so gently.

I felt hopelessness, crushing despair weighing on me like the sky had fallen, and I alone had to hold it up. But I wasn’t giving up. “I have begged you for five days,” I whispered and fell back to my knees. “I will beg you for as many more as you need. An eternity, if you wish. I’ll be your faithful servant, whatever she wants, whatever you want. Save him,” I pleaded.

Eros hesitated, something flashing in his warm brown eyes, but then he closed them momentarily and angled his head away. “Elyon,” he said tightly, “if we could, I would. In a heartbeat. I don’t want to see your friend die, and you have no idea… how much I would like to take what you just offered. How much I would love to give you my mantle and have you serve my Mistress. But it goes against the laws of life, death, and nature. We cannot break the natural order.”

I growled in anger and bolted back to my feet, wrapping my hand around his neck as he stared in surprise, taken off guard. I didn’t know how I had the strength, but I slammed him into the wall of the shrine, the stones shaking slightly with the force of it. “Then break the rules!”

“We can’t!” Gabriel snapped. “If we could, do you think I would be stuck here for an eternity while she lives in the Underworld alone? The rules cannot be broken. We are not above the dictates of the Fates’ order!”

I searched his eyes and saw nothing but truth there. He couldn’t. They really, truly, couldn’t.

I let him go and stumbled back, exhaustion hitting me again, my vision swimming.

Eros took a step towards me. “You need rest and water.”

“No,” I snapped. “If you can’t help me, I’ll find someone who can.”

“Elyon, no one on this plane has that power,” Gabriel said, almost pleading with me.

I wondered why he cared what happened to me. Did I really look that pathetic? Or was my service somehow that valuable?

Or was he just trying to keep me away from the truth?

“Then I’ll ask someone not from this plane,” I said, the solution hitting me like a ton of bricks.

“Elyon-” Eros started again, but I ignored him.

I walked over to where Hector’s body rested and picked it up in my arms. His skin almost didn’t feel cold to me; the temperature difference was so minimal.

“You are going to die!” Gabriel shouted after me as I left the temple.

But I couldn’t die.

I stumbled out of the doors of the shrine, the acolytes on guard staring at me like I was a ghost or a demon. I almost laughed again, but I didn’t have the energy to spare. I struggled into the nearby woods, out of sight of the shrine, and then fell. I held Hector’s corpse like it was the most precious thing in the world, and hit both my knees and head on the ground in an attempt to keep his body safe.

I laid there on the ground, unmoving, staring up at the sky and the moons above me.

Cyren, Khane…. No, the Fates wouldn’t help me, even if I could get their attention.

I closed my eyes. There was nothing I wouldn’t do. No one I wouldn’t call. Nothing I wouldn’t sacrifice. I had to save him.

I struggled back to my feet, almost falling again when I stopped to pick up his body, and then I kept walking, one step at a time, until I reached the grove behind the temple. There was an altar there, and I carefully laid Hector down next to it, his body unnaturally preserved by the magics of the Temple. Then I took a deep breath and called out with my mind, Teris. Teris, come.

He flew down immediately, my faithful companion and familiar, landing on the altar in front of me, not perceiving my intentions for even a moment. I’m sorry that— he started speaking, but he couldn’t finish.

I didn’t let him. “I’m sorry,” I whispered through a broken throat, and then I took my knife and plunged it through his body as he made a cawing sound of shock, pain, and fear.

The raven’s body dissolved into black smoke, and I slumped down, leaning on my knife point against the altar.

I felt a great rage boiling within my mind that did not belong to me. The forest around me grew darker, deeper, while the wind picked up, swirling the leaves and branches around me. Thunder crackled in the distance as though the Fates themselves were showing their displeasure with what I had done, but I knew it wasn’t the Fates that I had angered.

The darker shadows of the trees on the edges of the clearing began to shift and move of their own volition, separate from the waving of the trees in the wind. The shadows gathered in front of me, just a few feet away, and started to slowly coalesce into a pillar of black smoke. The features of the pillar began to separate and distinguish itself then, shapes splitting off to form arms, legs, a head— and then the glowing violet eyes of that now humanoid form opened, and with them, violet lightning began shooting through the black cloud as though it were a walking storm.

It opened its mouth and snarled at me in wordless rage, charging forward, no doubt to slam me up against a tree or a wall as it had done in the prisons, but this time I stopped it.

“Rastin Etheril,” I said, proclaiming his name with as much strength as I could muster.

The smoke stopped, and the form solidified further, becoming a man who looked not dissimilar to me, with similarly toned dark skin, wearing tall black boots plated with metal, black pants, and a dark gray button-up shirt. His hair was a bit longer than mine and even less kept somehow, but his eyes retained that inhuman aura, as though they were made from the very Rifts themselves.

“I was under the impression you wanted to keep our contact to a minimum. Now you’re killing my servants and proclaiming my name?” the demon demanded of me, sounding simultaneously amused and annoyed. “Tell me, did you want to feed me that corpse there? Because I have better things to eat.”

I clenched my jaw, refusing to rise to his bait. “You know… why,” I whispered and then suddenly a wave of energy went through me. With a gesture of his hand and a slightly stronger glow of his eyes, I felt my body repair itself, hydrate despite a lack of water, strengthen despite no intake of food, allow the weariness to flee even though I had not slept.

“Your voice is annoying enough when you can speak properly,” he said as explanation before going over to take a seat on the stone, the very altar itself conforming to his will, melting and reforming to craft itself into a throne. He set his elbow on the armrest and leaned back as though terribly bored. “Now, try again. What is it you want?” His eyes glowed with the weight behind the question.

“Save him. I want you to save him.”

The demon rolled his eyes. “Now, why should I do that? You’ve been asking for help quite a bit recently, pushing things beyond the terms of our bargain. And I’ve been lenient— terribly so! I gave you a comrade, since you were so unwilling to go about things my way, I’ve lent you power and even called Riftlings to your side. And now you have slain my servant and invoked my name to demand further favors. I’m beginning to think you’ve forgotten our positions in this partnership of ours.”

“First of all, Teris is fine. We both know his true form has nothing to do with the bird, and he probably felt barely a twinge of discomfort. I was sorry to do it to him, but I think getting you here would have been a feat otherwise.” Rastin shrugged, not denying it. “Second of all, I think you misunderstand. I am not asking this for free.”

The demon’s eyes glittered, eyebrows raising slightly. “Oh? Tell me, what would you give beyond your life? I am already the only thing that keeps you alive.”

“And I pay for that in kind!” I snapped. “I live, you get to dwell in this realm, get to use my body as a base as you manifest your own form and go about your business.”

“Yes, yes, it’s a partnership, as I have said,” the demon waved off in irritation. “That still begs the question of: what more can you offer me? I am the source of your life; that bargain is struck. What more could you give me? In the olden days perhaps I would have demanded your firstborn, but,” he smirked, “I have little use for more slaves, and you are quite incapable of providing one regardless.”

“Anything,” I said, quiet but sure. “I’ll pay any price, Rastin,” and I watched the way his eyes glittered again at the mention of his name. “Bring him back. Save him in his humanity. I will pay.”

And the demon smiled, sharp and cold. “Any price?”

I took a breath, a little unsteady, but I had made my decision. There was nothing left but to commit. “Any price.”

Rastin hummed thoughtfully and then reached out with his boot and nudged Hector’s corpse. “He’s quite dead.”

I took a breath, refusing to lose my patience in these last moments. He was so close to giving me what I wanted, so very close. “Yes.”

“I cannot save that which is already long past.”

“You saved me!” I snapped.

“You were not dead,” the demon rebounded. “You rotted, true, but you were alive. He is dead.”

And the last of my patience slipped from me as the demon cruelly stole from me my last hope. I fell to my knees, the strength gone out of me as though it had never been restored. My brother was dead, and I had failed him. Neither the gods of this world nor the demons could return him to me, return him to the life that he ought to have led, to the future that he should have lived. I was defeated, spent, and there was nothing left.

“And so you break?” the demon asked me, amused and disdainful, cruel as ever in his inflection. “So little it took after all. If I had known your strength was so small, perhaps I wouldn’t have extended my help all those years ago. I can see, now, how Sylas made you his weapon.”

The name went through me like a lightning bolt, and I flinched.

The demon scoffed. “So much for any price, hm?”

I clenched my teeth and lifted my eyes to meet his glowing, unnatural ones. “You said you could not do it.”

“I cannot,” he said, but his eyes glittered with amusement this time, and I could see the trick behind his words.

“Then who can?”

“The power to pull a new soul into this plane is not one gifted to me, at least, not in a way that would satisfy you. But I have a bargain of my own with one who has many at his call.”

“And what price would this one demand?”

The demon shrugged, leaning back once again on his throne and manifesting an apple out of nothing, bringing it to his lips. The juice was colored red as blood as it ran down his hand after he took a bite. “Not sure. Probably your freedom.” His eyes glinted.

“He would demand my service.” It was a restatement more than anything else, but it hurt to even speak to some extent. What else did I have to give, though, in the end?

“Yes. That would be my guess, anyway. You’d have to speak to him.”

I got to my feet, taking another breath. “How do I do that?”

The demon smiled, sharp and broad, before standing, the throne crumbling back down to an altar as he rose. He waved his hand.

The world distorted, crackled and warped, the air itself bending and rippling with the force of his power as a horrible scream that went beyond mere hearing suddenly echoed through the forests, as though the world itself were crying out in pain. A hole was rent in the fabric of reality and the universe both. A new Rift crackled into existence, crackling with diffracted violet light. The forest shuddered under a new shadow, and then everything fell still once more, aside from the whispers coming from inside the Rift and the sounds of lightning and storm within it.

I stared into the darkness as it whispered to me, hissing and calling out, and I remembered the last time I had stood this close to a Rift. I remembered the feeling of the maelstrom inside pulling at the very fabric of my existence and being, at my soul itself, attempting to rend me asunder. I remembered the pain that had gone beyond any physical experience of my life, the horrible feeling of losing my identity into the cold darkness as whispers surrounded me and things beyond my comprehension tried to consume me.

And then the quiet voice, whispering in the back of my mind, What brings you into this void, little one? Tell me, would you care to make a bargain?

“Fond memories?” the demon who had spoken to me all those years ago asked, coming up behind me.

I shivered slightly. “No. I need to go in there to speak to him?”

“He will find you swiftly.” The demon shrugged. “Probably.”

I swallowed hard, peering into the abyss, taking a deep, shaking breath. “Well.” I looked back, back at the broken body of my brother and friend. “Wish me luck.”

And then I plunged into the darkness.

The darkness was deeper than not being able to see— it was as though I did not have eyes. The silence was deeper than not being able to hear— it was as though I had never been able to hear at all. Yet, the whispers still came, penetrating my mind, and though I could not feel in the formless, empty void of the infinite abyss, the fiends that made it their home slithered past me, jostling me about until I had lost all sense of who and where and why. My mind slipped through fingers made of smoke, dripping into nothing, taking with it the memories of my youth, the names of my siblings, the names of my brothers, but there was one name that I held onto still— the reason I was here.

Hector Wolfe.

I spun in the infinite, endless darkness, losing sight of all else, and then–

G O D K I L L E R

The word did not seem to slither into my mind, but was rather broadcast, shouted in a way, beaming out from a single location like a wave, a physical force in this place of no physicality, ramming into me and the horrible shades that tormented me.

A presence descended towards us, and the other beings fled.

I would have fled too, but I did not know how.

Elyon Kazere.

The creature spoke my name, and, in doing so, my name returned to me. I felt a person again, whole, temporarily shielded from the nightmare that surrounded me, momentarily free of the loss of my own personhood.

I could see through the eyes of my mind the being before me as a great mass of shadow, with a long neck, covered with scales. It had many waving limbs that seemed to serve both as hands and feet, and a multitude of eyes, a swirling, disordered mix of yellow and black that pierced into my soul and mind both. It was horrible to behold, yet I could not look away, enraptured and terrified all at once by its awesome splendor.

You seek my aid?

I did not have a body with which to take a deep breath, but I tried to anyway, tried to do anything to steady myself in the presence of this thing. I suppose I couldn’t even know if this were the being whom Rastin had sent me to find. It wasn’t as though he had given me any descriptors.

I felt amusement, once again, broadcast like a physical wave from the creature. Not true laughter made with vocal cords and comprised of sound, but the psychic equivalent of it in a way.

I am…. 

There was a moment of silence, as the being paused and seemed to be contemplating what indeed it was, or perhaps just what to tell me it was.

I am the Imit yl’Hakiir, possesser of the Great Dragon.

I had no idea what that meant, but I supposed it didn’t really matter. Can you save my friend? Bring him back to life, wholly human? Retore him as he once was?

It is within my power to command it so, the being confirmed. What price would you pay for such a gift?

And there it was– the moment of absolute truth. I knew in my deepest depths of my soul that there was no turning back now.

I would do anything.

The being seemed to smile, and my fate was sealed.