After retrieving the sky-spear from the ground, Telos headed with Danyil back to the cockpit. As he resumed his seat, Danyil looked him over again, concern etched on his features.

  “Are you sure you are well? Daimons are known for their mental abilities. If you saw anything—”

  Telos waved him away quickly before he could arrive too close at the mark.

  “I am fine. It was a gentle nudge and nothing more. But it startled me, what with my newfound alacrity.”

  Danyil nodded, returned to his seat.

  Their descent was rapid. The ship juddered, then levelled off. They hovered amidst blackly gathering clouds. Below them, the sea was in a state of upheaval. The coastline had been decimated. The shore-hugging forests had been blasted and felled, trees now being dragged into the remorseless waves. The towns and cities that made their profits from the sea had been all but obliterated, reduced to flotsam and corpses. Telos’s mind reeled at the devastation.

  “This is a coordinated attack,” Beltanus growled. “The Daimon has planned this. It does not show itself to your kind, preferring to attack from hiding.”

  “What cities have been affected?” Danyil asked.

  “Cordron, Virnwood, and Wylhome.”

  Telos’s heart fluttered. Wylhome? That had been where he, Ylia, and the others were going before he fell. They had likely arrived safely, given that he had dealt with The Warden. That meant they were now in the path of the attack…

  The Daimon had made a catastrophic mistake. The visions it had shown him could almost have made him sympathetic to their plight, but now they had attacked his friends, people he cared about surprisingly much given their short journey together. All sympathy had vanished, replaced by a fury as brilliant as uncut diamond.

  His eyes feasted on the devastation, feeding the anger as it rose flamelike within. If this was the destruction the Daimon could reap from concealment, then he dreaded to imagine what an open assault would look like.

  “We have to go down there, help…” he said.

  Beltanus shook his head. But Telos saw Danyil out of the corner of his eye, his look more compassionate.

  “We cannot intervene. If knowledge of our return, and the threat of extinction, were to become more widespread, then there is no telling the disasters your former kin would wreak upon us—and upon themselves.”

  Telos felt a flash of annoyance at the god’s dismissive tone, but equally, Beltanus was likely right. Panic was never a productive emotion. However, it seemed nonsensical to advocate for humanity and yet do nothing in the face of countless deaths.

  “I thought you wanted to stop humanity being erased?” he blurted out.

  “We do,” Beltanus replied, without looking at him, his eyes fixed upon the secret hieroglyphics that flashed across his eyepiece, eternally feeding him information. “But sometimes, in war, small losses must be accepted for greater gains.”

  “And what gain is that?”

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  “The Daimons wish to draw us out into the open, so that they may then spring their trap. They will likely try to turn humanity against us. Or else simply assault in greater numbers. This ship is our greatest defence against them. But as you have seen, even then, it is not fullproof.”

  Telos gritted his teeth. He could hear, beneath the god’s cold and machinelike tones, a hesitation, the slightest tremor of emotion. He doubted he would have detected it without his supersharpened senses, but ironically, Beltanus’ gift allowed Telos to see through his mask.

  “You realise the Daimon is testing you?” Telos said.

  Beltanus turned in his throne, eyeing Telos with new intensity.

  “Testing?”

  “The Daimon wants to know your limits. It wants to know if you are afraid. And I’d say, you’ve shown them that you are. That’s power to them.”

  Beltanus snorted.

  “It is no power at all. So what if they believe us to be afraid? We will understand the truth.”

  Telos shook his head.

  “You don’t understand the game the Daimon’s are playing now. They tried fighting the direct war against you, the military campaign, and they lost. Now, they’re playing something different. A game of manipulation and deceit. That’s why the Daimon isn’t revealing itself in attacking the coast, but using the ocean as its weapon.”

  “And you think by playing on emotions they will somehow achieve victory?”

  “Of course,” Telos said. “Ten men can beat one-hundred if the ten are strong in mind and the one-hundred believe they are beaten. The mind rules all.”

  Beltanus stood from the throne. The ship continued to hover, obeying the last instruction it was given. He towered over Telos, but Telos resolutely met his two contrasting eyes. He tried to give more focus to the one that looked human, to the one that was still flesh and blood.

  “And you know all this how?” Beltanus hissed.

  Danyil and Beltanus were both staring at Telos. He was getting used to scrutiny like this, however. It seemed the whole world was looking at him these days—not even the gods knew why.

  “Call it my human instinct,” Telos said. He decided it was best not to reveal the true extent of the mind-link for now.

  Beltanus snorted again.

  “Human instinct? You forget, former mortal, that we made humans. We undersand your instincts all too well.”

  “I’m not sure that you do. Does the artist always understand the full depth and hidden meaning of their work?”

  Beltanus looked sharply at him. Telos had to suppress a smile. He knew that for all the machinery that surrounded Beltanus, the god saw himself not as an engineer, but as an artist, a maker and shaper of beauty. Experience had calcified him, caused him to don armour and surround himself with utility, but his heart was a forge fire, a flame, rather more poetic than his mechanical trappings.

  “Very well,” Beltanus said. “Suppose you are right, then what are you suggesting? That we charge headlong under the waves and fight the Daimon?”

  “Far from it,” Telos said. “We do not engage with the Daimon at all. But we can save those we can.”

  “For what purpose?”

  Telos frowned, as though the question were absurd.

  “You said you wished to prevent humanity’s destruction, didn’t you? Well, isn’t this the place to start?”

  Beltanus stared at him. Then he looked to Danyil. The Sumyrian smiled.

  “Do not make me regret elevating you to godhood,” Beltanus said, but Telos could tell the god had a smile on his face beneath the mask.

  The god retook his seat and began to steer the ship downwards. They broke from the cloud like a falling star, the wild, green landscape of Virgoda looming large beneath them.

  “To Wylhome!” Telos said, feeling a mixture of hope and terror at the thought of finding his friends alive.

  Or dead.