Ylia had witnessed many terrible things in her time, but never antyhing quite so terrible as the anger of a god.

  They had been led into some kind of strategy room, a technological marvel unlike anything Ylia had ever seen. Large panels adorned the walls, showing moving inages and glowing pictograms. But what disturbed Ylia was that she recognised one or two of the symbols. They were rendered in a more simplified form than her father’s elaborate calligraphy, but they were the same signs, shining out of these illusory plates twenty years after he had vanished from her life.

  For a moment, she had flown backwards in time. She remembered the old barn, which had been converted into her father’s weird and wondrous workshop, full of old treasures and nonsensical drawings and musty books. She remembered her father drawing these same pictograms on sheets of parchment with a painted brush, or carving them into blocks of fresh beeswax, like an official seal of some kind. She always thought of the symbols as his special mark, a signature, an emblem of who he was. Seeing them here unnerved her, for it implied there were things her father had not told her, that there was a side of him somehow connected with gods and monsters.

  He’d told her only a little of his past. Before he’d met Ylia’s mother, Elena, he had been an explorer, and had even ventured into Memory. But he had never been willing to talk about his adventures. Ylia was certain, as a child, that if she had been on such grand adventures, she would have talked the ear off whoever would listen. Now she was older, and fairly well travelled herself, she understood his reticence a little more. Some experiences could not be translated into words, not even in poetry.

  But still, what didn’t you tell me dad? Why were you writing god-language?

  Beltanus stood in the centre of the war room, hunched over some kind of glimmering projection. It looked like moonlight shaped by a dreamer’s hand—so fine, so delicate, yet having a substance all its own. She wondered, then, who was steering the ship. It glided through the air without Beltanus’s presence at any kind of tiller. Magic, she thought. Though she had a funny feeling the god did not see it that way. Magic is a matter of perspective, perhaps. Just like power.

  “You have reached a decision?” Beltanus said, his voice eternally a growl, issuing as it did from the strange black mask. His ruby-tinged eyes scoured them all. She shuddered as his gaze momentarily fell on her.

  Telos strode forward like some elected spokesperson. We should be worried a thief speaks for us all…

  “I have,” Telos answered.

  “I meant your companions,” Beltanus said drily, drawing himself up to his full, giant height. He marched around the projected map, his footfalls like hammers triking an vils, the hiss of unseen pistons accompanying every step.

  “I know,” Telos replied. “But they have made me realise a truth: I have debts unpaid. Qala needs my help. She was taken by mercenaries and the others will need my help to find her.” Telos tapped his nose. “Enhanced senses will come in handy…”

  Ylia had no time to process what Telos meant by “enhanced senses”, for then came the god’s rage. He raised his black iron fist and slammed it down upon the strategy table, shattering it in two. The halves collapsed inward as fire and lightning erupted from the rend. She saw strange machinery within: wires, bundles of knotted metal, and green-tinted sheets of metal enammelled with gold in strange, spidery designs.

  The god howled.

  “You dare spurn my gift?” His voice was pure thunder. “You dare to spit in my eye?”

  Telos held jp his hands in a gesture of placation, opening his mouth to talk. Always opening your mouth when you shouldn’t, Telos, thought Ylia. But she hardly felt smug. The terror of the god was too palpable. Even immutable Jubal had taken three steps backward, the hairs on his nape erect, a wild animal fear in his eyes that made him seem less than he was, as though under great stress he might revert to the bull he resembled.

  Beltanus gave Telos no time to speak. With his normal hand, he lifted Telos by the throat and slammed him against the wall with such force the ship shuddered.

  Danyil watched all impassively, his face a dancer’s mask—home to many, elusive meanings.

  Telos gasped, spluttered. He turned scarlet as those fingers—forged of flesh and bone hailing from another planet—squezed the blood vessels and airways to crisis point.

  “I remade you!” Beltanus roared. His voice was a gale-force wind, if wind were made of Engine fumes. “I gave you life beyond your reckoning! I elevated you out of the miserable condition of your species! You think it is out of love we save you? No! It is out of pity! Pity for the wretched weakness that you are!”

  Just when Ylia thought Beltanus would snap Telos’s neck, he released the thief. Telos collapsed to the ground, struggling to breathe. The noises coming from his throat were piteous, made her stomach turn.

  Urgal had been growling the entire exchange. His mane was like a forest, the hair standing taut, on end. He let out a hiss and started towards the god.

  But before Urgal could pounce, Danyil stepped in the way. He placed a single palm on the felidae’s head, uttering a word that rang as though bellowed through a brass tube.

  “Ky’leth!”

  Light flashed. The cat staggered as though struck.

  “Don’t hurt him!” Ylia snarled.

  But Danyil was frowning. Urgal shook himself, suddenly calm, looking slightly dazed. He sloped over to the ide of the room and lay down. His eyes remained open, his tailed flicked, but otherwise he looked like he might be about to sleep.

  “That evocation should have instantly put him to sleep,” Danyil said. “But no matter. The desired result is achieved.”

  Ylia noticed that both Beltanus and Danyil were all logic and strategy until their emotions suddenly erupted. In that way, they were strangely like children.

  “I declare our experiemnt a failure, Danyil,” Beltanus said. He had withdrawn to the other side of the room, his back to them, the heavy cloak of volcanic hue suddenly like a wall of fire between them. He is hurt because he feels like he opened himself up to Telos and now Telos is rejecting him, Ylia thought, amazed that eternal beings could be so petty, and even more amazed that Beltanus cared. For all his bluster about how humanity was nothing but weakness, he clearly felt wounded that a mere human should reject his friendship. It’s like Qala said. The Kwei Shin are quixotic, capricious even. They do not know themselves as well as they think. And they are also beholden to the great laws of things.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “We should abandon the cause, wait for the next cycle to begin. In three thousand years, the world will be as it was when we first found it,” Beltanus went on. He turned, looking at Telos with unmistakeable disgust. “What is the point in saving humanity if humanity is not even willing to save itself?”

  Danyil merely sighed.

  Telos stood, still clutching his throat, where the mark of a hand was still visible. Ylia thought of the old idiom, the “Black Hand of Eresh”, a metaphor for depression. She wondered, grimly, if it had a more literal origin.

  “You didn’t let me finish,” Telos croaked. “I have not abandoned the quest, merely postponed it.”

  “It is not for you to postpone anything!” Beltanus said, his anger rising again, lightning crackling about his black, metal-wrought hand. “You, who know nothing of time, should not dictate its usage!”

  “I ask for postponement only to increase your chances of success,” Telos said. Ylia could have smiled then. This was classic Telos, reeling them all in with the same grandiloquence and scheming. Even gods listened to his madness. She had to admire it, even if she wanted to throw him into the sea all over again.

  “We need Qala to recover the Nergal,” Telos went on. “Not only is she an sorceress of some note, she is also the heiress of Qi’shath.”

  “You think human politics matter to me?” Beltanus sneered.

  “Of course not. Not of itself. But what this means is that people will rally to her cause. If an expedition is to be mounted in Memory, Qala can secure us the manpower. No one will listen to a theront—no offence Jubal.” The theront waved a hand through the air, dismissing the remark. He was watching Telos so intently, Ylia was surprised flames were not springing up on Telos. “Nor will they listen to a thief like me. Ylia is respectable, to a degree.” He flashed her a wink that made her roll her eyes. “But she has no influence. And the captain… Well, I don’t know you.”

  Xheng let out a cold, harsh laugh.

  “I have no ship, no crew, not even my imperial cape of office. I am no captain, anymore.”

  “Then you have the perfect ground to start again, to become something even greater,” Telos said, quickly. “But to return to the issue of Qala: she is the one who can get us what we need, and what is more: help prepare this world for the coming Daimonic threat.”

  Ylia could tell Telos had Beltanus’s curiosity piqued. The anger had faded, replaced by the more claculating demeanour he had exhibited earlier. Absently, he traced the jagged grooves of damage he had dealt to the war table. Lightning occassionally leapt out and sparked him, but seemed to deal no damage, simply to be absorbed by his machine-like arm.

  “Go on…” he prompted.

  “Creating a bunch of enhanced warriors like me is only going to help your chances so much. After seeing what Daimons can do, I’m more certain than ever your plan isn’t going to work.”

  “And what is that?” Beltanus asked, coldly.

  “Because Daimons, by their very nature, work together. You don’t. It’s why you couldn’t beat them the first time round.” Telos smiled. “But humans seem to share something in common with Daimons in that respect. We form communities, hives, teams. Together, we can do more than apart.” At this, he glanced at Ylia, Jubal, and Xheng in turn. She sensed he was trying to communicate a hidden meaning, but whatever it was—other than the basic We should stick together—was lost on her. “You gods are slow to work together, and you are mostly divided,” Telos went on. “Hell, we’re up against Nereth, Lileth, and maybe others as well as the Daimons. The only way you can level this fight is by collaborating. Humans, gods, and those of us in-between.”

  Ylia’s eyes went wide. She saw it, then, the change that’d come over Telos. He wasn’t just healed from injuries that should have killed him, he was different—stronger not just of limb, but also, it seemed, of will.

  She remembered him lifting Jubal as though he were no heavier than a toddler. It was not trick of gravity or the ship’s mechanisms, she realised, but Telos’s new strength. And that’s also how he survived Beltanus just then. He would have died if he’d been mortal, but Beltanus knew he could take it… She remembered Beltanus’s words with a chill: I remade you…

  “When were you going to tell us?” she blurted, hating how hurt she sounded.

  “As soon as possible,” he said. “In truth, I am not used to it myself.” The sincerity in his voice silenced her anger. “Believe me, I had no choice.”

  Jubal let out one of his unexpected, ringing barks of laughter.

  “Ha! The man who decried the gods has joined their ranks. You could not invent such a pageantry!”

  “Maybe don’t remind them of the decrying bit,” Telos said.

  Beltanus was staring at Telos with all the inscrutability of a machine.

  “You are wrong, Telos,” the god said, his voice low and even. “We did not lose to the Daimons. We won. The Nergal wiped them out. It was only their blood—their cursed blood—that saved them. And The Nergal is how we will yet again defeat them. We need no alliances, no army. War is pointless. You humans do not wage war on cockroaches—you eradicate them with poison. That is what the Nergal is, Telos. You asked me once, so I will tell you: it is a poison such as you have never dreamed. Because it is a poison that only those carrying the Daimonic blood can know.” Beltanu’s eyes flashed, one with glassy hieroglyphs, the other with dark knowing. “It comes from our planet. Your world is diseased, riddled with parasites, and we are the cure.”

  Telos stared at Beltaus. She could not read his expression, but if he felt anything like her, then it was rage beneath the calm exterior. Her blood was boiling. Beltanus might be godlike in power and knowing, but Telos was right: the gods were not benevolent, nor worthy of worship, not if this is how they viewed the very beings they created.

  “I call your bluff, Beltanus,” Telos whispered. “I call your bluff. For all your bluster and rage, you care about us. Otherwise, you would have left me to die in the sea. And you would have left these people to drown. You pose as the cold and calculating machine, but the fire of passion is your true home. And that is why you are not going to stop us from saving Qala. You may not be able to intervene in the sense that you, like Nereth, are prohibited from actively taking a human life. But you will help us get there. You will set us down. And then, in three day’s time, you will meet us on the western side of Aurelia. Ylia, where’s a good place?”

  Ylia blanched.

  “Erm…” Then she remembered her father talking about the port town in Tezada from which he had set off on his adventures. “Dreamholding,” she said.

  “Dreamholding, I hear, is a nice place this time of year,” Telos said, giving her another insufferable wink. “We will meet and from there we will continue into Memory. In three days, we will cross this continent and have amassed an army. Or at least an expeditionary force.” Telos extended his hand. “What do you say, World-shaper? Are you a machine or are you a man?”

  Beltanus, and all the others, stood dumbfounded. The organic eye that remained to Beltanus twitched, as though with neurotic fury.

  Then, the god laughed.

  Telos stood there, hand outstretched, awkwardly shifting from foot to foot as he awaited the guttural laughter to die down. Ylia and the others held their collective breath. Even Danyil seemed unsure what was about to happen, whether another bout of explosive violence might ensue.

  Then Beltanus gripped Telos’s hand—with his iron one. Telos’s own hand, Ylia realised, was subtly metallic as well, as though his skin were held together with gossamer threads of silver. Telos grinned ear to ear.

  “I will give you three days,” the god said. “But if you fail to come, if you do not appear, then we will depart Erethia. And await the next cycle…”

  Everyone knew what that meant.

  Extinction.

  “No pressure then,” Ylia said, though she said it under her breath.