Our walk out of the forest was long and quiet.

We retraced our steps, the trail of carnage we had left on our path through the forest. It was a deeply unpleasant thing to experience, but I feel as if it was required. To see what we had done after the adrenalin had faded from our systems, leaving only weariness and an overwhelming melancholy.

Rethi hadn’t commented on the bisection of the beast that had attacked us, but I think he gained an insight into just how powerful I had become. There were not many that would be able to survive a blow like I had dealt to the beast.

I wasn’t even sure if Mayer would be able to survive that blow head on, though I’m sure he’d be able to dodge it with practiced ease.

I was convinced that the beast I had slaughtered was weak, only a step or two up from the forest wolves themselves. The power that I had used to kill it was unrefined at best and needed to be trained correctly before I could possibly face something stronger than that, if the danger factor of these sorts of beasts scaled exponentially.

I could probably win against stronger beings, but it would be a more brutal fight, one that was unlikely to be solved by be sending out a kinetic blade and bisecting them. Especially if they had a more significant intelligence or the ability to shift at all. Any mitigation to my own power would mean that I’d be reduced to a really good punching bag.

We finally made it back to the camp, emerging from the tree line and quickly venturing down the path to our small collection of belongings.

Alena was there, of course. She looked furious. No, incensed. But she took one look at Rethi, who was coated in drying blood, and she began to fuss over the boy in a total shift of temprament. I walked down to the river only a few minutes away from the camp and washed my hands of the blood.

It was a sad action, difficult and frustrating, but something that I was sure would punctuate every battle I am in. After my hand were clean I laid back in the damp grass and just let the sounds of the water soothe me, as if being close the gently meandering water cleansed how I felt inside.

I heard yelling and argument from the camp. Probably an emotional moment between the couple. It went on for a few minutes before it became quiet, and I could only hear the soft sobbing of two children who really shouldn’t have to tortured by the world like this.

Impending wars, terrifying monsters lurking in the further reaches of Virsdis, taboo magical powers, and a fragile, juvenile love being strained by a duty to the world and to a strange man with a silver hammer.

We had originally intended to move off as soon as we were done with the wolves…

But I think the town can wait, if just for a night.

I didn’t return to my tent that night. I spent my time by that river and relaxed under the dim moonlight, unworried by anything that might lurk in the darkness. I stared up at the other world that circled this one, what was displayed to us mostly shrouded in the dark on night-time. I wondered what life was like there, what was happening on that pearl in the sky.

Had the Champions already started to stake their claims? Had there already been battles?

I couldn’t possibly know.

The hours passed as I contemplated, looking up at the stars and into the other world. The sun slowly began to rise, lighting up the worlds erratically at first, and then slowly bringing a more complete shine a few hours later.

I tore myself from the comfortable patch of grass that I had laid in for the night and moved towards the little camp. Alena was awake, keeping watch over a small mound of quiet coals. I nodded to her, and she did the same.

No words were exchanged as I prepared the horses, something that very quickly became second nature on the trail, despite my disuse of the horses themselves. I slowly gave the horse a clean and a brush before preparing the saddles and strapping much of our items to them. Rethi was up by now, being helped by Alena in taking the tents down and packing them up. Before long, the horses were fully packed, and we started our journey back to the village.

After the afternoon of melancholy, Rethi, Alena and I began to joke around again. Idly chatting the trip away. There was lots of discussion on what had happened, and Rethi managed to keep the retelling remarkably genuine, enough for Alena to understand. Though he did leave out his mistake in cutting a pregnant wolf’s belly.

I also began to force Alena into healing self-inflicted wounds, or wounds that I obtained through training spars with Rethi. Most of the attempts were for naught or doing far more damage than the initial wound, but every once in a blue moon, in tens of tries, the wound would heal almost perfectly, disregarding scarring and a certain amount of function loss depending on the injury.

What was impressive about the healing, was not that my flesh was being healed but that the injuries that were being healed were the sorts of injuries that medical science back on Earth had nightmares of. Massive amount of muscle, nerve, and spinal cord damage.

In one extremely exciting example, Alena managed to heal a severed spinal cord, right at the base of my neck, effectively making me a quadriplegic. I don’t even need to say how extremely impressive that is. The only issue that I seemed to have retained was a slight numbness in the outer fingers of my left hand. Why that was, I couldn’t possibly tell you, but going from entirely functionless to slight numbness in a few fingers?

It was those few days of travel that I think Alena came to understand just why I thought her healing abilities were so impressive. Sure, a generous seventy percent of the time, she turned the wound into a self-perpetuating tumour that would consume any regular person’s body in a matter of minutes and effectively eat itself to death or turn you into a totally different organism. But the few times the healing worked, it would turn a person from entirely uncapable of movement or control over parts of their body, all the way to only minorly inconvenienced by their disability.

I had even let her try to heal a brain injury once, a pretty severe one that Rethi had caused by accidentally shoving his sword too far into my eye socket. I was left very confused and unable to find my balance, having difficulty with speech. Though I somehow made it obvious that I wanted Alena to try heal me before I let my ‘natural’ healing take place.

Let’s just say that the feeling of a tumour suddenly exploding inside your skull, and rapidly leaking out of your eye socket isn’t the most fun experience in the world. She didn’t heal for the rest of that day. Thankfully, I can regenerate my brain from basically any amount of damage at this point, my divine power not being as precious about the head as my other regeneration factor had been for whatever reason.

Though the next day she managed to fix a concussion really easily, so there is definitely potential of healing more advanced or complicated brain injury, which would completely change the landscape of injury as this world knows it.

Alena now willingly does her healing on me whenever she gets the chance, slowly becoming just as excited about the possibilities as myself. Though I wasn’t fooled, she still had that deep set of swirling emotions that constantly assailed her mind when the thought was brought up, kneecapping any progress severely.

Otherwise, the ride home was remarkably quiet. No signs from Gallar or anyone from the Hearth Court, which was a little disappointing. I had felt such a strong connection to the man when I spoke with him, it was almost like being separated from an older brother you never knew you had.

As I mused about my Divine brother, the path slowly became better and better maintained, slowly progressing into the road that passed through the destroyed and derelict outskirts of the town and progressing inwards towards the centre, where the road was in far better condition, having been frequented with just about every human and animal that the town had to offer.

I tasked Rethi and Alena with the stabling of the two horses, which was really just a good excuse to leave the two of them alone for a while, say their goodbyes after the weeklong trip. I myself made my way towards Mayer’s home. Oddly refreshed by finally being back ‘home’.

The sound of the wooden steps up to the door, and the familiar creek as I opened it. The warm and scented air inside, washing over you as the door opened, the smell of tea and the warmth of a clean fire almost ever present. I pulled off the shoes I had been using for the past few days, letting them flop to the floor. Though I had taken time to wash myself each night, even having the luxury of a bar of rudimentary soap on our trip, my feet still smelt terribly from the general sweat, something I unfortunately hadn’t managed to overcome, despite my sudden divinity.

I walked down the hallways and poked my head into the lounge room and immediately growing a grin. Mayer sat in his luxurious chair, behind him the fire crackled gently, warming the room against the creeping chill of the eve.

“Good afternoon, Master Mayer!” I said, putting on my hammiest posh accent, drawing out the words in an overly conciliatory way. The older man, bushy eyebrowed and stern face cracked into a smile that you’d swear didn’t suit him but did even so.

“Good afternoon to you too, kid.” I waggled my finger in front of his face, moving closer teasingly.

“Tsk tsk. I’ll have you know that I am no longer a ‘kid’! I am a bonafide, newly minted man of faith!” Mayer’s right eyebrow rose, posing a question with it.

“Oh? Meet a God on your little adventure did you?” He jabbed. I laughed raucously, and he began to join me, finding hilarity in the notion until I cut him off.

“Of course I did, old pal!” Mayer went very still. The whole mood instantly changed, and his suddenly widened eye bored into mine.

“Who?” He asked.

“Gallar.” I responded. His brow creased in half remembrance.

“Court?”

“A First One of the Hearth Court.” The older man’s eyes widened still with my response. He quickly set down his tea and requisitioned his hand to his lap because it began to shake. I had never seen the man so perturbed, and it was starting to worry me.

“A First One, Max?” He placed a hand against his forehead and kneaded his scalp with the ball of his palm. “I haven’t heard of a First One of any Court greeting a mortal on their first interaction with Court.” The older man’s eyes darkened with worry.

“Well, he did make it pretty obvious that it wasn’t exactly normal for a God of his status to go walkabouts. Especially with all that ‘the other Courts are watching my Court’ business.” I said, treating the situation with a little more levity. Mayer was taking this harder than I expected. Maybe interaction with Gods was a little less common than I had brought myself to believe. Mayer was fiddling with his fingers and rubbing against his hair with a look of pure consternation on his face.

“What did this Gallar want? I hope you didn’t take any deals, Max.” I looked up into Mayer’s eyes and he knew instantly from my awkward smile that I had, indeed, made a deal.

“In my defence, the dude seemed genuine…” But Mayer didn’t let me even finish my sentence.

“Maximilian. He. Is. A. God.” Mayer thundered. I had never seen him so angry. Not even remotely close to when he had mentioned the last Champion War. But this was a seething, explosive anger.

“I understand that, Mayer.” I said, a steel working itself into my voice.

“I’m not sure that you do, Max. Making deals with a God isn’t something to be flippant about! Gods are historically conniving, almost regardless of their domains.” Mayer sighed heavily and got up to pour himself more tea, motioning to me if I wanted some and I nodded. Well, hopefully that meant he wasn’t too angry… I better wait until I get my tea before I tell him more of what happened. I might get my cup thrown at me.

A minute later we were both sipping from hot cups of tea, Mayer silently processing.

“What was the deal?” He demanded. I agonised over how to frame the situation, trying to make sure that he got as complete a view as he could of the context.

“Well, honestly Mayer. I think it was more that he was pleading for a deal with me.” Mayer’s eyebrow twitched.

“He wanted something you have?” He questioned, and I shook my head.

“I mean, in that I don’t think he could have forced it on me unless I wanted it. It seemed… steeped in tradition, to say the least of it.” Mayer grumbled, but nodded.

“So, what were the conditions?” I shrugged emphatically.

“Everything I was already going to do.” He gave me an odd look, his expression stuck between bewilderment and darkening.

“So they just wanted a Champion on their side? You’ve made yourself a pawn in their game?”

“In a way. I think they’ve been planning for this eventuality for a while. From what I could glean, it seemed like the Hearth Court has been forced into a ‘subservient’ role to the other Courts.” Mayer thought for a moment.

“Is that simply an effect of their domain?”

“No, I don’t think so. I think they may have been forced into subservience because of their political power and their ability to gather information. I think that they have had to sit back and watch horrors committed and ignored by Gods that are too vain, power hungry or paranoid to act.

“They want me to save the worlds from another Champion War.”