Seconds fell to minutes. Anxiety welled within me, making it difficult to stand still. I kept stealing downward glances, trying to get a gauge for how much longer the descent would take.

  I never saw the bottom.

  Part of the nervousness was the unflinching magnitude of the stakes, and how intimately they coincided with the shadow standing next to me. I'd gathered enough information that this venture would not be a waste. Even now, Thoth was far more clearly etched in my mind than the dark shades of the storybook monster I'd once considered her as.

  But for any of this to be worth what it cost, I needed to understand what happened. Truly understand it. The series of events that led me here were nigh unrepeatable. And even if they had been, the idea of asking Maya to repeat her sacrifice, endure what she had all over again merely because I'd squandered her parting gift was too sickening to entertain.

  Though I'd studied and scraped together what little knowledge could be found, I knew precious little of ley lines. They were eternally mysterious even to the esoteric, a mix of legend and truth.

  And the reigning expert was standing right beside me.

  Thoth had grown quiet during the descent. She stared down, directly through the gaps in the swirling magic of the aegis, her gilded eye glimmering with anticipation. The gloved fist of her left hand clenched and unclenched.

  Went wrong with the void mage topic by showing too much interest. Yet she's happy to rattle on, so long as the particulars don't provide an answer I'm desperate to hear. Affect should be reserved, bordering on indifferent.

  "The stench is considerable."

  "A severed sewer line most likely, one that ran beneath the castle." I glanced at her trembling hand. "I know why I'm nervous."

  "Mmm." She didn't tear her eyes from below.

  "Knowing it happened and seeing the source of it are two entirely different things." I breathed. "Then again, it's my first apocalypse. What's your excuse?"

  Finally Thoth looked up, irritable at the interruption. "Must you speak?"

  "Ah. My mistake. Let's just keep staring silently into the hole then. Abyss gazing. Crevasse contemplating. Chasm examining. Orifice ogling."

  Long minutes passed before Thoth scoffed. "This should be a moment of gravitas, and you're ruining it."

  "If I understood why, I might be less enthused to comment further on the aperture inspection."

  Thoth's face twitched, as if she might laugh, then immediately wiped to cold stoicism. "They are getting worse."

  "In what world is 'aperture inspection' worse than 'orifice ogling?'"

  "Enough." She shook her head. "There is, of course, the significance of the disaster it caused. Beyond that it's the only sizable ley line I've never laid eyes on." The second part was a clear afterthought, but it was all I could focus on.

  "What?"

  "Don't act so surprised. There are places in this world even I've never been."

  "It's a ley line. My understanding was that they are key to keeping the corruption in check. Not to mention it running beneath a city in human territories, likely where the iterations began. And you somehow never checked it?"

  "We—" She emphasized, glaring daggers, "—painstakingly put together a record of ley lines at risk of weakening, especially those likely to propagate the corruption. This one has never failed. At least, not until Ragnarok is well under way, and by then all of them fall. Sometimes it's the last to go, which has made Whitefall the last line of defense more than once. There are no convenient places to examine it above ground like the Prime Ley Line in the sanctum, because, as you can fucking see, it's very far beneath the surface. Checking it was never necessary."

  The self-righteous denial woke a cold bitterness in my core.

  "Clearly."

  "Such judgement for oversights you yourself were blind to." Thoth spat, flame of hatred embering in her gilded eye. "Perhaps if I had not been left alone in a blazing house with nothing more than a bucket to put it out with, we could have afforded the luxury of contingency."

  I kept my gaze forward, even as her gilded eye seared into me. "Or perhaps you've grown so enthralled with starting fires you've forgotten how to quench them."

  In fairness, I didn't really think that was going to be the comment that cost me my life. I'd made similar jabs over the previous days which had been taken with little effect, to the point that not making them would be telling.

  All that accounted for warning was the briefest of touch.

  The shove that followed left no room for deliberation. Air whipped past my ears, and I felt my stomach drop as the world beckoned me downward.

  Shit.

  Seconds passed before I landed hard, air evacuating my lungs, somewhat shocked to be alive. Strange silhouettes surrounded my vision, twisted and amorphous. Thoth descended from above like a hellish angel astride the aegis. She held out her glove, and an orb of light appeared in her palm, flaring out in the darkness. After hovering for a moment, it hurtled away, sticking against the far wall of the chasm. Another three followed, each heading in a different cardinal direction until dim light overtook shadow.

  It looked… wrong.

  Twisted black growths, wide and round, three times as wide around as a man, spiraled out from a central point, hopelessly tangled upon the rocky ground, dirt and debris from the detonation forming clumps and piles of detritus around them.

  It looked less like a conduit than the roots of some poorly fated plant.

  Whatever had been at the center was completely destroyed, the mass that had once been there utterly obliterated by the explosion.

  Stale air came to me in wheezes, each incrementally easier than the last as the spasms in my lungs calmed.

  "Somehow, I get the sense you're very aware of my fear of heights." I grunted.

  "Shut up." Thoth said, a rising urgency in her voice. The aegis vanished as her boots met stone, echoing across the walls. Bordering on panic, she scanned our surroundings again and again, as if expecting some hidden secret to divulge itself to her, stalking among the mangled tendrils and following them toward the center. "This… isn't right."

  A number of spells were cast in the blink of an eye, flashes of fuchsia, green, and gold in quick succession, the wave of gold extending out, covering the entire craggy ground until it faded to nothing.

  It wasn't difficult to ascertain why. It didn't look at all like the ley line in the Sanctum, which had been a more obvious conduit, intended to carry mana throughout the subterranean. There were too many branches, none larger than the other, all leading to the center point, silver threads of a spider's web turned black.

  She shook her head, brow lowering as her hand flashed, a half-dozen spells cast in the span of seconds, none, from the look of things, yielding the answer she was searching for.

  "Multiple pathways coming together at a single point," I realized, examining the mess with awe. "This isn't a ley line. It's a nexus."

  "It shouldn't be here." Thoth said.

  "Regardless of what should be, if that's truly what this is, a meeting place for multiple ley lines—"

  "—prime ley lines," Thoth corrected, growing whiter by the moment.

  "—then that goes even further to explain why the detonation was so volatile."

  It felt like a momentous discovery. Which is why I couldn't understand the lack of reaction. Leather brushed the blackened tangle as Thoth slid down. Almost lethargically, she crossed her arms over her knees and rested her head between them.

  "Fucking deviations." Came a murmur, barely audible.

  I considered approaching, then thought better of it. Thoth's volatile shifts of mood were often preceded by violence, and we'd clashed on the elevator enough that I wasn't keen on pressing my luck twice.

  Instead, committing as much as possible to memory, I circled the entire chamber, looking for anything noteworthy—tampering with the roots, equipment left behind, any evidence of entry or exit. An ancient passage would go a long way to explaining how someone had gotten down here before the blast, but everywhere I looked, the walls were solidly sheared from stone. None of them bore the abnormalities in striation that would mark usage of earth magic.

  Until it erupted, the chamber had been completely closed off. Possibly airtight.

  Eventually the wide circle brought me back to her. I gave her a wide berth, staying well out of range. "Is there a variation of earth magic that can perfectly seal up a tunnel behind a burrowing mage?"

  "No." Her voice was muted, absent emotion. "They have to cover it from the emerging side, otherwise it stands out like a sore thumb."

  "It occurs to me we have no way of knowing how tall this chamber was before the blast. From above then?" I turned around, looking up at the various outcroppings that occurred along the wide circle. "Prepared what they needed in the lab and descended in a similar manner to deliver the payload."

  Thoth's head lolled back, some of the ash from the connecting ley line she leaned against evident in her hair. Her eyes were distant, expression crestfallen. "It wasn't detonated. There was hardly a need."

  "I don't follow."

  "Look at it. Does it look healthy to you?"

  "…Obviously not."

  "Desperate roots seeking purchase, long before the world ended. They only shrivel like that on the verge of failing." Thoth pointed to one of the spiraling lines. "Because there isn't enough ambient mana in the area to sustain them. And it takes decades to get to that point."

  It hit me. "So… it's always been this way." I looked around, feeling the sickening sensation from before returning full force. "…How can that be? If this has never happened before..."

  Her lips widened in the ghost of a smile, and her shoulders raised in a shrug. "It hasn't."

  "You've lived longer than most lineages. Learned things that most could never dream of. Surely you have some idea, a theory, or—"

  "Here's a theory." Thoth cut in, her voice bitter. "We were lied to, same as always. They always told us only what we needed to know, and guarded their secrets even when it acted against our interests. We wrested most of it out of them, eventually. Clearly, not all. So there was always a nexus beneath Whitefall, always in a terrible state. Maintained and monitored. No, it's worse than that. Before, and every other iteration prior, something was actively sustaining it—traces of divine energy lay heavy in this place."

  "A deity?" I asked, feeling growing dread.

  She covered the top of her face with a hand, a violent tremble shuddering through her.

  Her voice was despondent. "As gods go, this one showed surprising longevity. Not that it mattered for shit. In the end, they proved as unreliable as the rest."

  My mind raced. "What about the laboratory? The mana harvesting equipment. Someone was doing something—"

  "A piece of a different puzzle." She responded dismissively. "One that is no longer of interest."

  "Far too much of a coincidence, it's literally directly above the ley line."

  "Wingspan." Thoth snapped. "And if you were to catalogue the number of dark mages with shady dealings who have the wherewithal to place their lairs in proximity to a ley line for the regeneration benefits alone, you'd run out of parchment."

  "Maybe…" My vision blurred as I grasped for something, anything. "Maybe the deity took issue with what was happening above their station. Intervened."

  Thoth stared at me, something unnerving behind her eyes. "If some divine genuinely took issue with atrocities, they'd already be long gone from this place." She pointed a finger skyward. "Whatever was happening up there, to whatever end, I have done so much worse. And so have you."

  A chill went through me. I shook it off, trying to stay focused. "If we can figure out which deity it is and beseech them properly—"

  She barked a harsh laugh. "Do you believe they just linger like a scorned dog, waiting for someone to call them back to their place beside the hearth? No. Once the decision to depart this plane has been made, they are gone. And after the world resets itself, they will still be gone." Thoth pushed herself up to a standing position. "Now I have another impossible problem to solve. If it even can be."

  A memory of the untouched house in the central square repeated in my mind's eye, along with the small shrine that had chilled me to my core.

  But I stopped, just before giving it voice.

  The change was subtle. But there was a blankness in expression, an emptiness that hadn't been there before. Her head tilted slightly to the side, and her gaze remained fastened to the ground. When she spoke in an idle murmur, the voice was someone else's entirely. "The bounty's spoiled. Need to separate the wheat from the chaff."

  "What does that mean?" I asked, suddenly wary.

  Almost immediately, her attention snapped back to me, misplaced frustration and anger flaring. "If I knew what it all meant, we wouldn't be in this situation, would we?"

  "Not that. A moment ago you said something, about a spoiled bounty."

  "I didn't."

  I blinked. "Yes… you did."

  The anger returned, more irate than before. "If you plan to carry on with this scattershot foolishness, feel free to do so alone." With that, an aegis smaller than the first encircled her feet, jettisoning her back towards the surface. I watched her go, more confused than anything else.

  What the hells?

  /////

  It took the better part of a day to crawl out of the pit.

  Only one curving surface was craggy enough to scale, and even then, the climb was more harrowing than any I'd made in the sanctum, largely due to the mana limitation. I was hesitant to use it, which meant limiting my usage to small efficient lights, and an aegis to perch on when my arms simply wouldn't hold me anymore. I dipped heavily into my alchemical stores during the rests, quaffing nearly everything I had that would aid in mounting the summit.

  The excruciating length of the climb gave me plenty of time to think. Heart of Anjeire and Blade Root, two of the ingredients Thoth had brutalized the spare for, dealt with maladies of the mind. One treated routine hallucinations that stemmed from a disorder, while the other stabilized mood. I wasn't aware of any combined benefit, but that didn't mean there wasn't one.

  This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

  And in retrospect, Thoth had been slipping for a while. The dearth of mana affected us both, slowed cognitive function, but she seemed more than a little slowed down.

  Two possibilities stood out to me. The larger your mana pool, the more reliant you were on the same amount being readily available. It was one reason adults had to leave the sanctum before their tenure became permanent. Thoth's considerable power in ordinary circumstances could work similarly, making her more susceptible to the absence of mana and poison in the air.

  The second, and more concerning of the two, was that her mind had been fraying long before the world ended, and she'd been using her apothecary mastery to tend herself.

  In a way, it seemed a little obvious now that there'd inevitably be some erosion. Thoth had lived for gods knew how many years, and I'd learned long ago that lingering effects from mental scarring and trauma persisted across loops. Just because your limb was restored after being torn off by some terrible beast didn't remove the memory of flesh being rent, or teeth shattering bone.

  My mind wandered freely, worrying over both the state of the nexus and the lair we'd discovered. Eventually it went mercifully blank for the last small infinity of the climb, and cresting the summit became all I could think about.

  Even then, when the edge finally gave way to the sundered marble of the throne room, I collapsed upon it, vision narrowed to barely more than a pinhole, sodden with sweat, thin air coming through heaving rasps as I stared up at the wide hole in the ceiling.

  Something foul reached my nose, the stench of iron.

  Wariness flooded my tired mind, insistent enough that I finally forced myself to sit up.

  Thoth sat on her knees amidst a glut of viscera and gore. Blood pooled around her knees, and various organs were strewn about, as if they'd been carved out and cast aside. There was no obvious corpse the mutilated remains belonged to, just the internals.

  A knife rested beside her folded legs, something about the curve of its blade familiar.

  A shudder went through me as I finally placed it. The same blade had been lodged in my lung, at the end of my first life. Intended to close my loop, ensuring I had no memories of the iterations. And it would have, had Alten not intervened.

  But Alten wasn't here to save me this time.

  Briefly, I considered making a break for it. Slipping beyond her sight and sprinting away, as soon as my steps were out of earshot. But Thoth, as I'd learned, wasn't so different from the many predatory monsters in the Sanctum. Her violence was often instinctual, born from reflex. And even though she had yet to acknowledge me, it was possible any rapid movement her subconscious interpreted as retreat would get me killed.

  As much as every instinct in my body was screaming for me to run away, I approached the lion, and stood at the edge of the still spreading pool of blood, measuring the distance between where she sat and the chasm's edge.

  It would be a shame to fall back down after all the effort it'd taken to get here. But if the only alternative to losing memories and potentially power was to take a plunge, I'd take it gladly.

  "What happened here?" I asked quietly.

  No response.

  I snapped my fingers in front of my face and she roused, taking me in, then briefly examining the surrounding room, as if she'd just woken from sleep.

  "Don't mind the mess." She grinned, sharp teeth flashing in the low light.

  "What happened here?" I repeated.

  "Ah." Thoth flicked a piece of something free from her thigh. "It seems my attendant concluded that aligning herself with an enemy would be preferable to servitude."

  Barely suppressed disgust roiled within me, threatening to break free. "We weren't colluding. All she wanted… was to live."

  "You were colluding. The two of you were having discreet, undisclosed discussions about how to handle me which this one desperately hoped I'd be too distracted to ask about." Thoth recited pedantically, clumsily rising to her feet, nearly slipping on the mess. "The degree to which matters less than that it happened. Despite knowing exactly how poorly such a thing would be received, she chose to betray me."

  "So you brutalized her to death. How unexpected."

  Thoth snorted, taking another step towards me, blood rippling out beneath her boot. "If she wanted to keep the fragment of soul longer, she really should have stayed in line. But no matter. This was always going to happen, eventually. Her mind absorbed into mine, our essences rejoined. A fitting end. Same as yours." The knife glowed green in her hand.

  She was nearing the end of the blood pool. As soon as she stepped out of it, her traction would be assured, and my chances of reaching the chasm before she caught me neared zero.

  For some reason I stayed.

  It wasn't fear, though I was terrified.

  I'd learned much about Thoth over the journey. Gleaned insights into how she processed information, what appealed to her and what was immediately rejected. Dozens of small insights that eventually added up into a whole. She wasn't a force of nature. Impeccably trained and extraordinarily talented to be certain, leagues beyond what I could ever hope to achieve in a single lifetime.

  But I didn't have a single lifetime.

  I had eternity.

  This is what you want, isn't it? To make the most of the price you paid.

  It'd been circling in my mind, a connection I never wanted to make and couldn't silence. There was no world in which we eventually fought where I didn't lose. She was too experienced, and had centuries to track down the rarest and most costly methods, hone what should be cumbersomely inefficient until it barely cost her anything. The odds were impossibly stacked against me.

  Unless I found a way to cheat.

  I drew the high-steel blade. It glimmered in the growing twilight, metal refracting the starless sky above.

  "So. A fight to the death then." Thoth said, switching her grip on the single dagger. She stopped closing distance and circled, the movements disturbingly smooth.

  "Isn't this how it was always going to end?" I asked, my voice neutral.

  "Wouldn't have it any other way."

  "What will you do, I wonder? Left with more problems than solutions. It will take some time to solve them, even for an immortal. And if you truly intend to wait for the next iteration to revive the spare, after I'm dead, you'll be all alone."

  "I'm always alone." Thoth said. But the placidness with which she spoke was too perfect, too absent any affectation.

  Finally getting under her skin. But to what end?

  Unhurriedly, I gave the sword a few practice swings. "It's funny. Someone could train their entire life, focusing on magic, dueling, and assassination, purely dedicated to one day collecting that wretched scalp of yours. Yet it wouldn't matter. Isn't that…"

  "Unfair?" Thoth finished, mouth widening in a cruel smile.

  I shook my head and looked at her with feigned pity. "I was going to say boring." The stab in the dark landed. Thoth stiffened, and I quickly carried on before she could retort. "Doing the same thing over and over, striking down the same rote enemies who deploy the same techniques and styles. After an eon, I'd imagine you're familiar with practically all of them. Nothing new under the sun. Until, of course, the corruption becomes too much to bear, and you fail at the same point you always have."

  "Well. I had considered making this quick—"

  "—Why?" I cut in, harsh and indifferent. "That's never been a concern before. The spare told me how erratic you grow when there's no more blood to spill. Little more than a beast forfeit purpose."

  Her eyes searched me, trying to find the angle.

  I prayed to all the gods for the providence that I'd never tried this before.

  Thoth's voice raised in pitch. "Because I dislike tormenting things that have proven themselves useful. And this is perhaps the first iteration in five hundred years that you have been anything other than insufferable. A passing, foolish thought—"

  "—If our roles were reversed, gods know I wouldn't let you off easy. You've killed everyone I've ever loved. Repeatedly. I'd want to drag it out as long as possible. Really highlight how pathetic you were. Little more than a worm beneath my heel."

  She stopped, holding her position—still ready, wound as tense as a spring. But no longer moving. Then cocked her head.

  "Why make this worse on yourself?"

  So far I'd bought a moment. I needed longer.

  "It's not hard to see which way the wind is blowing." I pointed the tip of my blade at her, estimating. "You lunge at me. A fraction of your usual speed, still ungodly fast but I'm used to that by now. If I'm focused, best hope is a single parry. Maybe a clean pivot and subsequent avoidance of the follow up if luck's on my side."

  "And then?" Thoth prompted, sliding her tongue along her lips. She was picturing it already, of that much, I was certain.

  "What else? It's over." I said, point blank. "My positioning and balance are compromised, child's play to capitalize on. A crippling injury will slow me immensely, and from there you'll simply overpower me. As you always have. No real satisfaction to be gained, accomplishing a feat as easy as strangling a child in its crib."

  "I think I prefer it when you beg." Thoth said sourly.

  "Then I'll be clear." I smiled, channeling her own brand of cruelty. "There is nothing left for me. No answers. No one to protect. Not a single thing I want, other than to watch you die, choking on your own blood."

  "As unlikely as it's ever been."

  "I'm not as certain." I paced to the side, and she turned, casually keeping me in her eyeline. "Magic's the greatest differentiator between us. With the ley lines collapsed, physical ability becomes far more relevant."

  "You think I'm incapable in that regard?" She asked, the question obvious bait.

  "Not at all. I witnessed how easily you felled the king, an opponent that should have given even the strongest warrior a great deal of trouble. Vanquished without so much as a single wound or cast spell." I tapped my lip. "A sight to behold."

  "Enough foreplay. Get to it."

  "Fine. I want you dead. I want it so badly it aches. So much more now that it's the only drive I have left, and by the same coin, the only desire you have left to deny me. Something you enjoy a great deal."

  "Such a strange way of stalling—"

  "—Poisoning you, or slitting your throat during a moment of rest or weakness wouldn't be enough. In fact, it'd hardly matter, because of that damned immortality. Any death along those lines would be disregarded for what it was. A lapse in vigilance. Potentially avenged mere moments after the world turns back on itself and your next iteration begins."

  I shook my head, still discreetly watching for any sign of movement. Thoth was an unpredictable opponent. Just because she appeared to be listening one moment didn't mean there couldn't be a blade in my lung the next.

  For now, it held.

  "The best I can hope for is to shatter your pride instead. To make you remember, whatever happens in the iterations to come, that once, you were bested by someone who should have been nothing to you."

  "Ambitious." Her eyes glittered darkly. "But delusional. Not to mention, a drastic overestimation. There's no silver blade to be found here. No hidden master to ply for secrets." She spread her arms wide. "I've traveled every continent, seeking the exceptional and accomplished. Perfected their instruction. Challenged them in subsequent iteration, just for the practice, for fun, until each and every one of them no longer poses so much as a passing threat. Even if I left your memories intact—which is out of the question—provided who to seek and where to search, it would take no less than a century to assemble the knowledge. Far longer to implement it. And a small eternity to tie it all together."

  I prepared myself. To express something so averse to my own desires, it was nauseating to even entertain.

  But it was the only way out.

  So I said it anyway.

  "Why bother seeking others whose teachings would be inferior, when I have you right here."

  Silence fell. Outside, the wind picked up, wailing against the crumbling rooftop. More ashes rained down from the opening above. A powerful gust swirled downward, sending bits of detritus and loose rock tumbling around us.

  Her brow furrowed. "You're… asking me to teach you."

  "Yes."

  "To my own detriment."

  "That's right."

  "Why the hells would I do that?"

  My smile was more snarl. "It's exactly the sort of thing you would do. Because right now, you're as lost as I am." I pointed to the hole. "The nexus presents a fresh problem. One with no obvious solution. It will take time to plan around. So as tempting as it might be to air out your frustrations and smite me where I stand, the passing satisfaction will be just as quickly lost."

  She nodded along, as if every word made perfect sense. "And instead, I should instruct my oldest enemy in the method of my undoing."

  I spread my arms, then let them drop. "What better way to be certain? I'm barely a shadow of what I was. Even now. That's why you keep hunting me, iteration after iteration. Why any fulfillment gained from succeeding on that front is ephemeral. Because it's not me you want. Not really. It's my predecessor. The one who—once—was beyond you. Your ally who left."

  "He is gone." Her voice tore, raging and raw, emotion pouring out of her in a cascade of frustration. "Whatever work of fate conspired to alter you so in the first few iterations cannot be duplicated. I've tried. Worked off of what I was told. Retread the same ground countless times in different ways, endless variations that all spiral to the same tired ends."

  I stared her down. "You said this was new. That the way I am now differs from every other iteration."

  "One anomaly does not alter the norm."

  "Maybe it should. Gods know discovering what was down there did." I flicked a glance towards the chasm. "And I can only guess how much this obsession has cost you. This iteration at least—even before the detonation, you'd only gathered a fraction of your usual forces. But I'm guessing the real answer is far, far more."

  Her face grew gaunt, mouth tight, weight of eons pressing down on her from above.

  "So… teach me. Use every method at your disposal to mold me into a force to be reckoned with. It won't be perfect, but with enough time, it'll be closer than you've ever managed before. You had disciples once, students who sought your tutelage. I'm here. I'm willing to learn. And I have no intention to leave."

  "Because there's nowhere to go." Thoth pinched the bridge of her nose, her voice pained. Her hand slid down her face, and I watched as she realized it. The fatal flaw in my strategy. Even if her efforts were wildly successful and led to her defeat—unlikely, but enough of a possibility to give pause—it wouldn't matter after the world turned back on itself. Because perfect mastery of the sword didn't count for much when your arms were little more than twigs.

  No matter how hard I worked, or what efforts I'd put in, it wouldn't matter. Because once the next iteration began, I'd be a child with little more than magic to fall back on.

  It was the trap I'd laid for myself.

  And there was nothing she loved more than watching me tumble into snares of my own design.

  Either way, she won.

  From the smirk that spread across her lips, it was clear Thoth realized it too. The leer disappeared quickly, replaced by something impassive.

  Steel flashed. The ceremonial dagger struck outward in a sweeping motion.

  My spirits sank, even as my body instinctually moved to counter, drawing the blade in a wide motion, aiming just above the pommel. Metal rang against metal, and before the singing of steel had faded, she attacked again, a wide horizontal that would have slit my throat easily if I hadn't ducked beneath it—

  A knee smashed into my nose, snapping my head up and sending me backpedaling to the ground. I slid back, dazed, trying to get my blade back in position.

  It suddenly held steady.

  Through the blur of my vision, I saw Thoth catch the wavering edge between her fingers. "Advanced as you are for a noble, when push comes to shove, panic still rules you." She murmured thoughtfully, pushing the sharpened tip aside for a better look at the sword itself, then released. "That should have been straightened out years ago. Correcting it will take considerable effort."

  She hauled me onto my feet again.

  I'd barely regained my balance before she attacked again—with a different weapon, some thin needle of a saber I'd never even seen her use before, let alone draw. Her style altered completely, moving to swift, brutal stabs and skewers. Each was telegraphed, either on purpose or due to some limitation of the style. I countered all but the last, which escaped my guard effortlessly, lancing beneath my neck.

  A fiery hot wave of pain spread down from my shoulder as she tore the saber free, blood spattering the ground beneath it.

  "Decent reaction, considering the absence of warning and introduction of a new variable. Bad follow through. You're slow of course, but that's to be expected." There was a clang, as she tossed the saber to the side.

  "Great." I said through gritted teeth, applying pressure to the oozing hole in my shoulder, barely keeping a grip on my sword. "At this rate—"

  The interrupting fist pulverized my guts before my mind could even conjure the proper response. Another knocked the wind from my lungs. It wasn't until the third strike, a vicious kick with a good chance of parting my mouth from teeth should it land, that I gave up on the "proper" response and just swung the damn sword.

  Thoth pulled the kick, saving her leg from a nasty gouge and lashed out again, catching the flat of my sword with her heel. The resulting force wrested the hilt from my fingertips and sent it skittering across the floor.

  "Ban any consideration of honor from your mind. It has no standing in this place." Thoth critiqued sternly.

  "Trust me," I gasped for breath, "I left honor behind long ago."

  "Fairness then." She amended. "It took the birth of several bruises to stop caring about whether it would be acceptable to swing your sword at an unarmed opponent. If there's uncertainty, be decisive in your brutality."

  A small bludgeon appeared in her hand. I saw it raise and reacted—or tried to. My lungs were still absent air and the second strike to my body had addled something vital. Instead of evading, all I managed was an awkward, embarrassingly slow stumble to the side, holding out one hand defensively.

  Thoth idly observed, emanating disappointment. "Gods we have a way to go." She rubbed her chin. "Malnutrition is going to be a compounding problem. I'll get weaker over time, but so will you. We need to go elsewhere. Shelter with better resources and safety. A few options come to mind."

  "If you keep putting holes in me, I'll grow weaker, regardless."

  Her eyes scanned from my posture, to the hole in my shoulder, and the slice down my center. "If we're going to move forward, the path will seldom be pleasant. If the current discomfort is already yielding doubt—"

  "The pain doesn't matter." I snapped. "I don't care how much it hurts. Or what it costs." I forced myself into a standing position, the knot in my stomach straining with the movement. "But if you intend to slowly whittle me down over time to the point I'm worse off than I already was, there's little meaning."

  Thoth reached out and grabbed my wrist. Her viselike grip grew warm, and a green light emanated from beneath her palm.

  Life magic.

  It was the first time I'd ever seen her use it. Maybe it shouldn't have been a surprise that she had it. Yet it was. Almost a desecration.

  And that was reflected in how it felt.

  When Maya used her abilities, even when the result was painful due to severity of injury, there was always a warmth, a gentle kindling that brought comfort.

  Thoth's life magic felt like shards of ice circling beneath my skin, tearing up musculature only to rebuild it. I could feel the mad itch of a scab as the hole in my shoulder closed, and the stitch in my side eased into a frigid numbness that made my teeth chatter. "I will do what I can to build your strength. Both through mundane methods, such as this, and more eclectic means. There is only so much that can be gleaned in a single lifetime, and the most effective methods will demand much from you. The result will likely be no different from what would take place if we finished this here and now."

  "If there is a chance, however small, I'll take it."

  "Just for the sake of satisfaction?"

  "Not satisfaction. Reprisal. On behalf of all the lives thoughtlessly trampled in your path. For Lillian. For me. After the breath leaves your lungs, and you die upon the spear of your own hubris, I'll greet whatever end approaches with a smile on my face."

  Thoth barked a laugh. When it faded, her mouth turned downward, oddly forlorn. "And all it took was the passing of countless centuries and a dead world for you to finally find a backbone. Aren't we a pair and a half? Alright, princeling. I'll play your game. We'll need to clear out of Whitefall. Sooner rather than later." Her gaze trailed to the hole. "And before that, we're going to need a lot of ghouls."

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