Elinor smiled while hanging from her chain, high in the sky, as illusionary monsters prowled the fields under the two visible lunar globes overhead; Thor and Kulitta had already gone ahead to their next destination nearly forty kilometers away, the songstress preparing the town for her arrival.

Garu remained by Nelika’s side as a cheerleader for the girl. She wouldn’t be able to make the journey in a day, but if she pushed herself, Elinor assumed she might be able to cover it in two. Kulitta and Thor left enough of a trail for the teens and tracker to find them if they hurried.

Valentina and Nelika would have their tracking skills put to the test; the tigress’s instincts and the desert ri’bot’s training would be strained to the limit. Elinor was happy to observe their progress, watching carefully for when Alisa and Sal’s connection to her children would blossom.

It was sporadic at this point and unreliable, which likely made her impatient daughter fume inside Irkalla’s walls. Her visits to Valentina were an escape from the prison she oversaw and was trapped inside, much like Tiamat.

Pulling herself up, Elinor sent another chain horizontally to rest upon, bracing her feet against a second, allowing her the ability to lean forward and rest her chin on her bridged fingers; ever since she’d begun this journey, she’d been internally flexing her spirit to increase her power.

Many cultures had developed their own name or version of Core strengthening, some better than others, yet it all came down to the same principle; one’s spirit was the medium by which the Intelligence exercised its will, and the body responded to the spiritual signals.

Typically, the stress the spirit put on the physical form would be the greatest method of building one’s faculties, utilizing the many internal avenues within the Oltera Nexus that housed everyone’s essence.

However, this Seed had abandoned her physical body for this Death Energy-based artificial replica, which she could see the purpose in; when the Seed had shattered the chain binding her abilities, latching onto the surface of her Oltera Nexus, her frail human form couldn’t handle the primordial force, and so it created something that could house her necrotic spirit.

Still, it also limited her ability to expand in a normal fashion, and that meant only by injecting power into the Seed could she increase her faculties; if she hadn’t, just the radial swing of Thor’s hammer would tear this form to pieces, and her diamonds’—which housed her Core now—structures would crumble.

Then again, her diamonds weren’t entirely eternal and were breaking down over time; she needed something more robust than diamonds if she was going to get stronger, which this world could provide. It was a weakness she had to remedy.

All Elinor heard high in the sky was the wind as she silently observed the teens cautiously moving through the fields of ri’bot corpses. Apate was using a carrot-on-a-stick strategy with spurs if the kids moved too slowly; she appeared to be enjoying the experience for the first time since most of her restrictions had been lifted.

The trickster’s story had surprised Elinor; in a way, the woman was looking for a new family, and pranks were a part of her love language. Why had she lost much of her appetite for games? It’s because Apate had lost her family due to the nefarious plots of the Primordial Olympians; she was empty.

If everyone continued as it was, Apate might start to find something else to add to her hollow heart. Each of the teens had their own piece to fill in the puzzle. Of course, they had a long way to go, and in a short time to be ready for what Elinor needed them for.

A crease moved her mouth as her focus drifted from the moonlit fields to an area the artisans and supply caravans of the Great Clans had gathered in the clearing—they were still mourning their dead, preparing the colossal number of fallen to return to their families to be honored in their customary way for dying in combat.

Rising to balance on her chains, she used another to propel her to the location where a group of ri’bot was stacking the piles of dead forest animals they’d slain to sustain themselves; it was fairly large due to the number of mouths they needed to feed.

A few jumped as she landed near them, hands resting behind her back.

“E-Empress?” one stammered, falling to his knees.

She figured more than a quarter of those in this camp probably hated her due to Ishtar’s belief system’s blank spots, and she could even draw strength from those that rejected her so long as they believed she was in some way divine.

Elinor used their customary hand gesture that a Great Chief would use when addressing their people as more recognized her and made similar responses. “Do you plan to use these for anything involving the dead?”

One spoke, shifting his gaze to the piles of bones around them, his frame shaking a little from the fear of just speaking to her. “We separate the cleaned and best ones to be used in crafting caskets, but… there won’t be nearly enough for all of the dead, Empress.”

She sighed, glancing left to see the Great Chief’s tents, where the two resurrected ri’bot leaders were currently finishing their orders before returning to their capital cities to break the news to their citizens.

“I will only use those unfit for your needs; inform the organizers from Nethermore to see if more supplies can be sent from the city. Show me where the piles that aren’t being used for the ceremony are.”

“At once, Empress.”

She sensed a bit of surprise from the ri’bot as he took her to a picketed-off area, and she let him return to his job. Most of those nearby paused to watch the flurry of butterflies that flew out of the emerald flames around her arms, raising creatures of all sizes.

Roughly five hundred poor and normal-quality unintelligent undead came from the graveyard, frightening and awing those that watched. They wouldn’t last long enough to be a drain on her daily supply; Elinor sent them after the tricker’s group. Valentina would have a tough night, as would the rest, and they were told to kill; more followed as she went between boneyards.

* * *

Sal groaned, stomach squirming as Apate drove them in a swift pace through the moonlit night; they couldn’t use the forest since they needed the bright sky to guide their way, yet the horrific sight they walked through made him want to vomit.

Alisa was holding up by keeping her eyes closed and holding onto his shoulders from behind, trusting him to guide her—he did enjoy her touch and trust, however.

Apate sent dozens of fantasy creatures to prowl around them, but Adoncia smashed them with a single blow every time. Her favorite recently was this cat-sized rodent that was wicked fast and had made several imaginary rips to his sister’s clothes; it had to be fake since he doubted they could actually damage Violet’s specially crafted outfits.

The woman appeared to be targeting specific places to fluster Adoncia, which had his sister blow up on the smug trickster an hour ago; Apate didn’t seem to care, though, vanishing on the spot to show she wasn’t even traveling with them and saying they should thank the empress for their terrible treatment.

Adoncia wouldn’t say anything negative about the goddess, and Apate seemed to notice, continuing to badmouth their empress to agitate his sister. Alisa didn’t like the talk, and Sal had noticed that the spiteful trickster was a lot softer toward his girlfriend than everyone else. He was most worried about Valentina since the tiger girl had been missing since the previous morning.

Valentina ejected Apate’s dubious offer to carry them across the expansive river, and it had been over six kilometers to the opposite shore from where they’d traveled; he didn’t want to think she’d drowned, but he’d expected her to be caught up by now. Then again, the trickster had dropped him three times into the chilling water, so maybe she was being delayed.

He could handle this much, and Alisa convinced him that Apate was just putting on a mask; when he asked how she knew, his girlfriend told him to trust her. Everything they were going through would be worth it in the end; she believed it with all her heart.

So, he bore through the pain and misery; his clothes were still damp, but at least Alisa hadn’t experienced the icy waters.

Sal tried to keep his mind away from the gruesome silence around them; it was impossible to avert his gaze, though, since he had to guide Alisa through the mass of fallen weapons, gore, and severed limbs.

He had been here to witness the full thing, yet had turned away shortly after it started; it was one thing to see it in movies, but witnessing it in real life was something else entirely, and now walking through the smell and visceral scene, it had him thinking about the ri’bot attack on their small town.

Every one of these lifeless eyes had something they were looking forward to; they had the misfortune of facing a literal goddess made flesh and were used as an example. If he were being honest, he respected Empress Elinor but was also terrified and confused by her actions.

His sister blurred, club coming down on a lightning-fast group of rodents that launched from behind a pile of bodies. “Ugh… Apate.”

“Hmm-hmm. You rang?” the personification smeared, blinding them in a dazzling light that made them squint to look at her. “Oh. Too bright? Hehe. I hope it doesn’t mess with your ability to navigate… oops!”

Sal snarled as he tripped on an arm, only just catching himself and Alisa before they fell into a pool of blood; large areas had been gathering points for the spilled liquid.

“You okay, Sal?” Alisa asked as she pressed up against his back.

“Eh-heh… peachy. Here, just follow me over, ack… over here,” he choked, trying not to barf as Apate showed a few bloody corpses rising from the dead around him.

“Really?” Adoncia huffed, hopping over to batter them away; she’d become far quicker at reacting to her realistic illusions. “The dead?”

The glowing woman shrugged from within her radiance. “Isn’t it appropriate? Oh, Valentina is getting the worst of it, so don’t you worry, dearies,” she snickered. “You should hear the things she’s… Hmm?”

Sal paused with his sister as the woman’s glow diminished with her amusement, looking off into the distance. “Huh? This was not a part of the deal, Empress! Ack. How annoying, and they’re totally brainless, so they’re not affected by my illusions… Great. Oh, you are such a slave driver.”

A tad confused, he saw her vanish with all the undead; even the environment cleared of many pools of gore and bodies, but the smell lingered.

“Sal, what’s happening?” Alisa whispered.

Adoncia snickered, club resting over her shoulders as all the damage to her outfit faded. “Seems our trickster has her hands busy with something else; my guess, the empress had a surprise for her.”

“Unless this is the trick,” Sal dully grumbled. “It wouldn’t be the first time.”

“True…” Alisa sighed. “Can I open my eyes?”

“Probably,” Adoncia returned, motioning for them to follow her across the fairly flat field. “I can see a lot of… Sal?”

Alisa’s hand left his shoulder, eyes widening as she looked into the sky. “It’s so… pretty.”

His vision blurred, the world around him freezing, and the natural sounds of the night died. A lump dropped down his throat, knees hitting the moist soil and palm pressing against his forehead; loud ringing hissed in his ears, making his vision hazy before a hand came into focus.

Sal followed it up to Namtar’s strong features, and the field of gore was replaced by a colossal walkway of colorful stone. “I apologize for the rushed transition; I’m afraid my mother is pushing us, which is very like her.”

Blinking, he accepted the strong grip, and Namtar—the current stand-in ruler of Irkalla—lifted him up.

“Where are we?” he asked before his focus settled on the heavens; dark, gray clouds shifted in mesmerizing patterns not too far above them. “Irkalla?”

The Supreme God shook his head and gestured for him toward the battlement, not too far away from where they stood, taking the lead on the way over. “Not precisely; consider this a daydream of sorts. It’s far more pleasant when eased into it when you’re in a state of rest. Tell me how things have gone since we last met.”

Recalling Valentina and his sister’s explanation of meeting their patrons, he hesitated. “Do… we really have time?”

“I suspect my sister and Tiamat will be making contact with their God-Touched soon,” he calmly stated, peering over the edge at a swirling abyss below them. “This is the highest point of Irkalla beside the central spire of the palace, which only my mother has access to… I often come here to think.”

“Here?” Sal questioned, shifting to see nothing but an endless walkway on all sides except for the battlement they stood beside. “It’s okay… I guess. Are Adoncia and Alisa okay?”

Namtar chuckled, bending down to sit at the edge and dangle his feet over the side. “You needn’t worry about them; Ninazu reached out to your girlfriend when I connected to you. They are touring my mother’s floral garden that she keeps for all those who enter the gates to her realm; at least, the impression Ninazu has of it.”

Excitement filling his breast as the confusion passed, he hurried to join the god. “So… I’m going to get my powers now; what do I get? Can I be like Superman and just fly around with super strength and invulnerability—oh, and laser eyes—frost breath?!”

The man took a deep breath and eased it out. “It depends on who you wish to be, Sal.”

“Oh…” Sal mumbled, cheer dampening a bit.

“Haha. I know it’s not the most direct answer,” Namtar mused, waving his hand to show Nungal in a large, opulent throne room decorated in a gothic theme with her tigress pupil. “Valentina fights with her body because she can rely on it when tools fail her. Yet, I suspect my sister will show her the strengths of using both weapon and body in unison as time goes on; she is the weapons master of our family, after all.”

Curiosity budding in regards to his girlfriend, he had to hold himself back since he knew she’d love to tell him herself. “What about my sister?”

“Well…” A wry tone touched the man’s cadence. “I cannot see Tiamat in the same way I can peek at my sister’s training methods; I doubt she will share her experience with you due to the secrecy Tiamat expects. What else is on your mind?”

Sal leaned back to stare at the sky, folding his hands behind his head. “Wow… I’ve mostly been just trying to survive minute by minute with Apate’s constant attacks. I haven’t really thought about what I wanted to do. Thor’s hammer is cool—he’s cool, in general—but I don’t want to copy him… What are your powers?”

“Hah. Many, Sal,” Namtar whispered, falling back to join him in studying the dark heavens. “I can perceive the future, corrode souls, and have the ability to utterly dissolve the essence of a creature…

“Disease is a staple I generally employ. I am the hand of my mother, which means I must have the fortitude of will to enact and accomplish what she desires. I will be whatever she requires of me as her son and sukkal. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know, to be honest,” Sal mumbled, closing his eyes and taking just a moment to rest from his weariness; they’d been pushing to catch up to the empress for over thirty hours, and the extra long days didn’t help his fatigue. “I want to be strong for Alisa.”

“Immune to Apate’s influence?”

Sal thought for a moment before shaking his head against his linked palms. “No, not necessarily; I know her torture is helping us, so I don’t want to stunt my growth. Huh…”

“Hmm?”

A frown creased his brow as a depressing realization hit him. “Am I hurting Alisa by shielding her from some of the challenges, like when I guided her through the fields?”

“That’s a complicated question,” the god hummed. “On the one hand, you’re deepening her trust and bond in you, which is not a bad thing. Irkalla functions in a hierarchy of absolute order that only works because of trust in my mother; there is power found in that bond.”

Pondering the direction he wanted to take, Sal sat up to stare across the clouds below and above, momentarily wondering how many layers there were. “All I know I want is to not die here… to keep Alisa safe from the things she can’t handle.”

Namtar pulled himself up by his core muscles, a small smile on his face as he waved his hands for the clouds below to show an image of his wife. “I understand that feeling well, Sal. So, you want a perceptive mind and spirit to sense the difference between those close to you and your opposition?”

“I think so,” Sal laughed. “It’s probably not the best thing to ask for when I could ask for, hehe, ultimate power! I don’t know if that’s the right answer, but I most want to know what Alisa can handle and what she can’t… I don’t want to just shelter her like a fragile doll; I want to be a team.”

“The mark of a leader,” Namtar mused. “You want to compliment those around you, filling whatever role is required to help them succeed, which is a tall order.”

“Haha. Sorry to be a pain!”

Namtar shook his head, showing a thoughtful gleam in his eyes. “My mother carefully selected every one of you for a reason before bringing you into Irkalla. Do you know what the connection between a God-Touched and their deity is?”

“Kind of?” Sal shrugged. “You give us powers, and you get to act through us in a way you can’t do since there is some kind of rules blocking you from entering our planet at full power? That’s what Thor told us, anyway.”

Namtar nudged his head away from the edge, and Sal followed him to a mat that shimmered into being. “Sharpened senses, an indomitable will, and the strengthening of your spirit to adapt to any circumstance; a god is the smith, and the God-Touched the material on the forger’s anvil. A strong mind, body, and spirit; we start at the foundations.”

Sitting cross-legged, Sal began his first session with Namtar; they didn’t practice forms or fighting styles, and not even magical techniques. Days seemed to pass in what he came to realize was his spiritual Core as Namtar instilled into him an understanding of his own desires that acted as the hammer to mold his essence with the god’s infusing energies.

The Lesser Seed within him would only take him so far, which was why he couldn’t solely rely on it; the item was merely a jump start to set him on the journey into godhood, and when their time finished, he managed to wiggle his Core.

It was only a twitch, yet that movement marked his path. Namtar likened his Core to a heart, and the further he strengthened it and pushed his spiritual energy into a frenzy, the more results would follow. Control would come in time, and this forceful method would be painful—damaging his body as it tried to keep up—but there wasn’t a faster way.

Eyes opening to the orange glow of dawn, Sal released a pent-up stream of air, allowing the tingling sensations of his environment to send ripples through his spiritual network to be analyzed by the faculties he’d roughly started to develop, yet, what met him made Sal lock up.

Adoncia’s concerned face came into focus; she was cradling his head in her lap, Alisa stirring beside him. “Are you okay; did you meet Namtar? We don’t have long—oh, Alisa—heh, good of you to join us!”

Now, with his spiritual senses opened, he saw what had frightened Apate; within his sister’s worried blue eyes was something else—something peering through her—a serpent so terrifying that reason failed to comprehend its size and power.

“Ack…” Sal rolled away from his sister, trying to recover while filtering out the horror empowering Adoncia; his heart was trying to beat out of his chest as he tried to still his quivering spirit. “Eh… heh. Yeah, I’m good. Wow, Sis… you’re really something!”

“Hmm? Oh, hehe, can you sense how amazing your sister is now?” she asked with a sly smirk.

Alisa hopped up like she’d just taken the best and most restful nap in the world. “Wow! I feel fantastic. Ninazu is so sweet and caring… Oh, look, he gave me a little friend,” she giggled, holding up her arm as a cobalt-scaled viper slithered out of her spirit to flick its tongue in his direction. “Isn’t he cute? I named him Sky! I think I can heal a bit, too.”

“Helpful,” Adoncia congratulated, but her cheer dampened when the wine-haired personification shimmered into existence beside them. “Did you three enjoy your reprieve because the empress decided to up the stakes, and I was kind enough to guide the little buggers to you.”

Adoncia hissed while pointing them across the field, where a horde of zombies and skeletons were running toward them at an alarming pace. “Yup. Typical, Apate.”

“This is not my doing,” the woman huffed, arms crossed under her bust. “Your precious empress sent them running our way, and who happened to be in front of them at the time… Me. You should be thanking me for buying you more sleepy time. Well, chop, chop.”

She examined her left hand’s fingernails while pointing with her right toward the river. “The runt got a healthy amount, too. Will you backtrack to help her or leave her to fend for herself? Hehe. Isn’t the empress cruel, forcing you to go back for the dead weight? Scared?”

Sal was a little surprised as Alisa giggled and shook her head. “Not anymore. You helped us a ton with all the jump scares and monsters, Apate. We can handle some undead! Ready, Sal, Adoncia? Time to run! Haha!”

He smiled as his girlfriend took his arm, guiding them in the direction Apate directed. “I like the energy, babe, but are you sure you can keep up?”

“Totally!” she returned with utter confidence as Adoncia joined them, leaving the confused trickster to swallow his girlfriend’s praising words. “Ninazu and I focused on endurance over everything else! We ran for so long, but the view was amazing—haha, I just couldn’t stop—you should see the Empress’ gardens!”

The initial shock from what was in his sister passing, Sal’s teeth flashed as they entered a sprint; it was so much easier than before, and if he was focusing, he could sense dozens of spiritual signatures around them that outlined the rest, and he guessed Valentina was in the direction they raced.

He’d taken his first step toward godhood, and the hardship of the last few days melted away in Alisa’s laughter. She was right; this was all worth it. “Alright, Babe, Sis, let’s outrun these fools and meet up with Valentina; our legend is just getting started!”