I loathe godlings.

I despise them the way a shepherd despises wolves.

They aren’t the most dangerous things one can encounter from the other side. Indeed, when they first arrive they are quite pathetic creatures, the same way only an ant or a worm can fit through a crack in a wall. But, once inside they gorge, and they grow, and then they can become true monsters.

The aberrant salamander Lucius encountered would have grown, perhaps as much as the dragons of old that could raze entire cities to the ground. The age of men might well have seen a clash between the divines had it gone unchecked. But it had made the mistake of lodging itself somewhere it had been noticed. It had the misfortune of meeting my pupil, who was already wise to the ways of those from the other side.

There, in that forgotten vault with arches of stone like ribs overhead and the glowing heart of a giant in the center, the godling knew it had been caught. There was no escape for it, for when it had squirmed in through the fissures in the ground, down through the very world itself, it had been little more than the nucleus of an idea. Now it was fat and filled with fangs that hungered.

It lunged off the arcane rock and dove for Lucius.

He dropped his lantern, the light was hardly needed, and pulled his shield off his back. The engagement had been long, and the leap great, enough for him to evade. The godling pounced on the ground he had stood upon, and whirled to catch him.

Lucius sliced, cutting through the thing’s lips. Blood splattered as it recoiled and shook its serpentine head. It arched its back, making ivory quills dance. When he hacked once more, his steel bit into the godling’s forelimb; an enormous and wrinkled limb as though an elephant had a human’s arm. It didn’t screech in pain, but blood dribbled free when Lucius jumped back.

It stomped knuckles on the ground, sounding like a crash of rock on rock. Years of gripping the giant’s heart had mutated the graspers into dull claws, but each limb had the strength of an ox. A dozen sets of eyes blinked open along its neck; onyx orbs with no iris nor pupil. The roar it let out was akin to an orchestra suddenly snapping their strings and subsequently murdering their conductor.

Then they were in a brawl.

A brute hammering of fist to shield and body, sword to arm and belly. Lucius sliced three eyes blind. It burst his shield in kind. He broke its fangs and split its jaw. It ripped his armor with horrid claw.

Blood blackened ancient moss and sand. For every blow he dealt, he took one too. For every wound he healed, the godling did too. The magic of the beast was thick through its body, and loathe to change. It held onto its form as a boulder holds onto its place.

But Lucius kept pushing, for he knew it would tip. Even when it bit onto his hand and swallowed his arm, flaying the skin and the flesh down to the bone, he stabbed it through and through. He pierced the vestigial organs and ripped the half-formed lungs until the beast’s blood flowed like burning tar over him.

It fell off of him, twitching and screeching, unable to fight back until it had healed. So too did Lucius have to heal. His stigmata had been stoked into a frenzy by the godling’s blood, like pure air forced into a furnace. Without even losing consciousness, the muscles and sinew of his flesh grew down his bones and returned him his arm.

The godling began to panic for it had never imagined it would meet a human such as him. It was not out of options however. With a second set of arms, which it had kept couched to its belly and could hardly hold up a rock, it grabbed hold of the long spine quills emerging from its hind flesh and ripped two free. And then the beast too was armed, holding them like spears.

To think of those quills as mere ivory would be a shortcoming of imagination. The pygmy elephants of Aillesterra have polluted the public perception of what ivory is capable of, for their handlers grind away the tips to blunt caps. What the godling produced was more akin to a porcupine’s defenses, but thicker than a man’s arm.

Lucius had to dance around the vault, leaping and jumping back as he tried to parry the thrusts away. The heat had begun to put a delirium into him barely kept in check by his stigmata. His ability was nothing more than a bilge pump on a ship, fighting a storm, and there were limits to what it could do.

He had always been sharp with his mind though; something he developed as a cripple and never lost.

The beast had a weakness yet. Half-formed as it was, it had only been so fast by virtue of using its arms. Its legs were stubby and required the support of its serpentine tail to balance it. With both spines pointed at him, he could hardly close the gap, but he had another plan.

Working his way back round the vault, he returned to the iron gate entrance, and there he snatched up the fallen lantern once more. The burning cage of oil was flung at it. The weapons were interposed, but the lantern shattered regardless; spraying it with a film of oil.

The fire soon chased after it.

The conflagration blinded the creature and seared skin and eyes. It thrashed so wildly that it broke the stone it stood upon; but it did not see Lucius’s approach.

He leapt up with sword in both hands and stabbed it into the godling’s throat. With his weight and his strength both, he dragged the steel down, down through neck and shoulders, chest and gut. The burning oil scattered across him, searing his flesh as the godling’s boiling blood splattered across him.

His screams of agony echoed out through the halls.

The crypt keeper and his subordinates heard it and prayed for salvation, but no other scream came. Not Lucius’ death, nor the conquest of the godling.

Golden preened himself and departed shortly before the priests worked up the courage to descend. The most ghastly of corpses greeted them. Skin burned away entirely. Eyes sticking out like opals. The beating of his heart could be seen by the throbbing of his arteries as he laid next to the corpse of the godling.

“Water… no, make that wine,” he asked, his voice cracking through his exposed teeth.

Charles the crypt keeper broke down in tears and held his hands up to shout prayers to his goddess.

By Your mercy we pray not for strength but for the descent of your disciple. For every flock needs a guard dog.(1)

Lucius snarled, as much as his burnt face would move. “For a heretic, you sure like your scripture. Don’t call me a dog.”

The priest, who by orthodoxy should have confessed the location of the tomb, grabbed hold of his chest. “You were delivered to us by an emissary of our goddess. How could you say you were not sent to us in our time of need? And your pay! What a pittance; a day of honest labor to build something anew. My friend, my savior, this is a wondrous day.”

“I want your wine, not your praise.”

The old man laughed. “Yes, yes of course. You shall eat and drink till your stomach bursts.” And so, he put his shawl around Lucius’ chest and picked him up. He had shrivelled; much of his bodily water boiled off till his muscles were like ligaments. As the two of them exited the mausoleum of the soliedar, a pair of masons leapt to patch the false wall anew and hide it in the shadows.

A veritable festival collected around him from the scant hamlet that lived on the slopes about that forgotten keep. All manner of luxuries--as they saw them--were given up to him. Bottles of wine collected from half the world. Dried figs and oranges and delicate slices of fatty sarkuteri. Objectively speaking, it was a meager feast for a Vassish nobleman, but even in my years, it is rare to taste praises so freely and honestly given.

T’was a shame for him that it should be so soon spoiled.

He was back on his feet before he returned to the Vassish encampment, his body rejuvenated and restored, Not even a scar spoke to his troubles, just the fatigue in his eyes.

What awaited him was but half, and the sickly half at that. The auxiliaries and the freed slaves, and a contingent of voluntaries to hold the road. The sickly Lieutenant Alf, aforementioned and afore-ignored, met him on the western side of the chasm. His counterpart, Tyrion, had not perished by Lucius’ hand, but it had become a toss up of who was less fit to command. Alf could hardly speak, constantly interrupted by coughs, gags, and slurring. The man fought terribly with his decaying body and mind, and forced from his lips the words, “Lieutenant Tyrion has taken command in your absence and gone to harry the Cynizia. He took the veterans and means to crush them like a hammer against the walls of Rackvidd.”

Lucius immediately regretted leaving the insubordinate man alive.

Liturgy of the Wolf

On the journey from our birth to Your embrace, we can but tread the stone to dirt and from the dirt wring sustenance. In the shadows of giants, we seek Your light as the measure of our actions.

We know however that this is not Your path, but ours. That this is the journey of mortality. The shadows of the world hold evil, made by man and more. We know that every flock of sheep draws in the wolves.

And so we tarry on our path, we labor with the stone and fashion spears. On this journey, ‘tis better a sword than a cloak, for we may suffer the cold but will not suffer the foe.

Lo! But beware the great wolves, the fallen kin of Roma that eat the light. By Your mercy we pray not for strength but for the descent of your disciple. For every flock needs a guard dog.