Years Later

  Grease hung heavy in the air, the smell strongest through the center grate. The top of the forge ziggurat was broadly level, but complex lines and divots carved in the stone made for deceptively treacherous footing—varying dips and grooves just deep enough to occasionally, and worse, inconsistently, snatch the edge of a misplaced boot. Still, it was a wide surface, nearly as spacious as the throne room.

  Once this was a site of production, used to assemble dwarven wonders at a shocking scale.

  Now, and every day that had followed our arrival at this cursed place, it was the stage of my undoing.

  I brushed sweat-matted hair out of my vision, never taking my eyes away from the fog. It was a trick of alchemy, and a rather impressive one at that. It moved fluidly, gathering in one place, dispersing, forming a column at the next that looked very much like a figure approaching in ambush before it toppled, spreading across the treacherous ground below.

  One mistake. A single lapse of focus and it would all be over.

  I let my mana trickle out in the shape of a sphere, going through the additional difficulty of binding it so it didn't simply disperse. Passive usage of magic was allowed, while anything more offensive or direct was grounds for disqualification.

  A glint of blade caught my eye to the right. It was a feint. If she meant to attack from that angle, I'd have seen no hint of her at all. Instead of reacting, I pivoted, responding to the displacement of mana I felt behind me, spinning just before a massive sword came barreling down at my head.

  The world spun as I flung myself backwards, hand roughly finding purchase with the ground, and I launched with all my strength to avoid the immediate low swing meant to catch me on landing.

  My opponent waited impassively as I regained my balance, her cold visage unreadable.

  "Quite the implement of ambush." I eyed the large blade.

  It was massive, a sword my father might have used. Its oddly triangular hilt and black pommel marked it as something other than human, though anything more specific than that was lost to me.

  As she so often did, Thoth ignored me, seeming to take the moment to evaluate. "We've exhausted the avenue of surprise." She announced, almost sourly.

  "As in you've tired of it?"

  "As in, thanks to my efforts, you are a great deal faster than you used to be and there's no point in treading this ground any further."

  "Hold on." I smirked. "Is that an admission I've actually learned something?"

  "No. You've absorbed the imparted information adequately, and future efforts would be better focused elsewhere." She swiped at an upswell of fog that attempted to block her vision, cleaving spirals in the air.

  Silence was power. That was another lesson I'd learned. Demands, argument, and sarcasm all wrought the same unhelpful reaction. But if I was silent, content to stew in the tension and discomfort, it would often draw a response.

  "How did you sense me?" Thoth finally asked, lip drawn in a firm line.

  "The sensory mana—"

  "Was not nearly large enough in radius to account for your reaction. Tell me."

  The flatness of her tone left little room for argument. I'd learned that as well. As unhinged as she sounded cackling to herself, laughing at my failures or teasing some unknowable mystery, that was actually when I was safest. It was when anything resembling emotion drained away, leaving nothing but frigid stone beneath its surface, that she was at her most dangerous.

  "The misdirect." I said, referring to the glinting metal.

  "You saw through it." Her eyes lit in recognition.

  "No." I scoffed. There'd hardly been time for that. "It was that I saw it at all. We've been at this for ages. Occasionally, you miscalculate, but you never make mistakes. Especially not obvious ones, like botching a stealthy approach and giving yourself away directly in front of me. Logically, it was a feint."

  "And knowing that, the most obvious angle of attack was from behind. Disappointing. But we'll leave it there." She paced lines, frown deepening. "What would you like to work on?"

  "I—" I cocked my head. "What?"

  "You've achieved progress, however insignificant. And I expected it to end shortly. It might not have been the lesson I wanted you to learn, but it was learned regardless. So the day is yours. Choose."

  It was a surprise. Not entirely pleasant—regardless of topic, our lessons always ended the same way—but welcome, nonetheless.

  "Melee. Start with that monster, since you barely had time to raise it."

  Thoth nodded, giving the blade a wide swing, fog still curling at her feet following its path. "And you?"

  "Short blades."

  Across from me, Thoth stopped pacing, balked, then laughed. "Again?"

  The mockery was earned. It was far from an ideal matchup. In almost any other situation, I'd prefer a utilitarian, practical, hand-and-a-half sword. The problem was my opponent was too fast. Light blade to light blade, light blade to medium, she shredded me every time. Strong as she was, with more flagrant use of magic tabled, strength was still a limiting factor. Her skill with heavier class weapons was impeccable, but the motions were fractionally slower, easier to parse.

  As a teacher, she was capable enough. But with typical armaments she was either unwilling or unable to slow herself down enough to make the gap between us anything other than gargantuan.

  "Humor me." I drew two lowhil knives from the standing tool repository we now used as a weapon rack, pausing on one to check the edge.

  The slightest displacement in the air sent me to the ground, and a moment later the whirling blade of the giant sword THUMMED overhead, whirling off the side of the ziggurat and disappearing into the darkness below.

  "Or we can do whatever it is you'd like to do." I stood, knees bruised from the sudden impact, and gave her a wry look.

  "What I'd prefer is if you were dead and gone, no longer cursing me with distraction."

  A smile played across my lips. Though it was impossible to say how, exactly, I'd annoyed her.

  Good.

  It occurred, just in time, that I'd never heard the massive sword hit the ground. In a hurry, I sent my sphere of awareness backwards, spreading it out, sacrificing focus for width and coverage. It was a small adjustment, arguably trivial and not terribly practical. But I'd committed to practicing magic in small, economical ways, and in that singular moment it helped more than any fire ever had.

  The blade was returning in a spinning gale, from the direction it'd come. Fast, but lacking the hellish haste that its master possessed.

  Mentally calculating, I took a step to the side, raised my leg and stomped downward. My boot slammed metal against stone, sending an unpleasant shock up my thigh and pinning the blade to the ground.

  I let the moment linger until the flush of anger spreading up her neck was too clear to be anything else.

  "As stated earlier. An interesting implement for an ambush." I kicked the crossguard of the blade and sent it sliding across the floor towards her, slowly rotating until the hilt came to rest beneath her shadow.

  "No complaints? No whining about the use of magic?" Thoth baited, her cold eyes flashing.

  "I'm here to learn. In whatever manner you choose to teach me."

  Cheating was nothing new. In truth, I'd be more surprised if she didn't. It was the same reason I had no intention of actually going through with the very duel we were preparing for, even if I felt ready—which couldn't have been further from the truth.

  "You think you're better than me?" She growled and circled. "That honor makes you better?"

  I frowned. "Honor is meaningless."

  "No. Even when your head was on straight, you've never believed that."

  "There is no balance in the world. No grand scale on which we can judge ourselves, or be judged. You've been beating that truth into me for countless iterations." I raised my arms and shrugged. "Guess it finally stuck."

  I'd been watching her eyes, waiting for the slightest indicator of another attack. It wasn't that she didn't have tells—she did, some that were very similar to others I'd encountered. The difference was the blistering speed and dampening of experience. Small shifts of weight that immediately preceded terrifying escalations to violence.

  The dry air of the subterranean foundry eventually got to me, however, and I blinked.

  Immediately, she was above, plunging downward like a falling star, weapon poised to split me from skull to groin.

  I shot forward, closing distance instead of backpedaling, ending directly behind her as she landed, the only place I wouldn't be immediately vulnerable for a follow-up.

  And then the dance began. Much like Koss, the early steps were often similar. Thoth would keep up the offensive, staying in a flow of wide, brutal strokes that attempted to range. My role—the only role of a short-range combatant in my situation—was to close that range, neutralizing the benefit the armament provided while maximizing my own.

  It'd taken an unspeakable number of attempts to get this far. To the point I could stand toe to toe without the lesson being imminently cut short.

  I rushed her, slipping beneath the diagonal strike, a dagger rushing up towards her guts, just as she'd been wounded in the sanctum all that time ago.

  It got the reaction I wanted. She took one hand off the massive blade to stop me, vice-like fingers tightening around my arm, hatred blazing wild in her eyes.

  A boot to the chest sent me skidding backwards. I paused.

  My breath came in ragged heaves, while hers was unbothered.

  No, not unbothered.

  She was hiding it well, but after so many similar clashes I could see the beginning of fatigue in the way her nostrils flared. Progress. Not much, but progress just the same. I waited until she relaxed, opened her mouth to deliver some cutting aside.

  Then dashed forward again.

  This was her style. Aggression tethered to a single target, only retreating when the alternative would be punished with a mortal wound. It was liberating, throwing caution to the wind, putting every drop of effort into connecting, as your enemy did everything they could simply to slow the torrent.

  Problem was, she could outlast me, even with the heavier blade. Ranging out a short-range fighter was an effective strategy but draining—especially to those who were both agile and incessant.

  She switched tack, blade raising in a cross-stance. I recognized it immediately and backed off, letting the aggression subside. On the surface it looked weak, as if the wielder was holding the blade out before them as a deterrent. In reality, it was a therian guard, a dark elf method of substituting offense for defense, maximizing reach, albeit modified and iterated upon. When attacked, she would strike before the blade was even remotely close, shutting down each individual strike with punishing precision.

  It was a powerful counter to the madness of the knives.

  Which is why I'd wanted to see it again.

  I feinted twice, faked commitment to the third.

  Her blade lashed out, ready to skewer me if I had. In the scant seconds that passed, I saw her surprise turn to rage, and retreated as she lapsed into the first style again, then into several others that prioritized encroachment. Seconds passed like agonizing hours of barely dodging the strikes I could, taking a few glancing blows, paying no mind as my blood spattered the floor, then when she flagged, pushed her again, waiting for the Therian.

  As soon as she lapsed into it, I committed, driving the blade directly at her torso.

  It shouldn't have landed. I wasn't fast enough. Her experience made mine look like a noble tourist's in comparison.

  There was a hollow thunk as I drove it home.

  For a moment, we both just… stood there. Utterly in shock.

  Her eyes glittered. "You've been practicing with these. Far more than you've let on."

  A fist as fierce as stone found my guts. I tightened too late, the impact rocking me to my core, not quite doubling me over but making it impossible to stand up straight. Looking up from an odd angle, I watched as Thoth dropped the sword, then tore the knife free from the bleeding wound in her torso, giving it an experimental flip.

  "Lowhil." She scowled. "Too heavy to sing, but for this, a whispered chorus will do just fine."

  I stood as straight as I could and tried to prepare myself.

  It didn't matter.

  Once more, she was gone within the span of a blink, a flash of her pale visage all I saw before the pain hit, and steel carved through flesh, my arm brutalized, searing pain traveling from shoulder to elbow as snapping tendons receded, leaving it useless by my side.

  The tempo changed entirely.

  It wasn't the first time we'd fought with short blades. The knife was her preference, the very first thing she'd taught me. And her ability to wield them cannot be described as anything other than exquisite.

  She took me apart, one brutal cut at a time, and her defense became impeccable. There was a certain push-pull to a knife fight that Thoth understood, better than anyone I'd ever known. All her openings were intentional, and any attempt to punish them was immediately met with the fire of her razored reprisal.

  I endured. Even as the divots below drank my blood and ferried it towards the grate, I endured. Waiting for the one opening that was real, hellbent on sustaining this for as long as it took for her to make another mistake.

  Something snapped in my leg, and my weight collapsed, sending me sprawling to the floor.

  Thoth loomed over me, a panting shadow, rage and confusion and—was that pride?—warring for dominance in her expression, before fading to impassivity again.

  "All that work for a minor wound. Bravo."

  I grimaced, barely conscious enough to keep a hand firmly pressed against my guts, stopping them from spilling out.

  "Come now. I'm sure you've something colorful to say. Say it." There was something dark in her voice. Something that had tired of the charade. She wanted me to give her an excuse.

  My voice barely reached my own ears. "Thank… you… for the lesson."

  As my vision faded, there was an audible scoff, and I grunted as a swift kick cracked my ribcage. Then stone slid beneath me, and consciousness faded as I was dragged off the platform.

  /////

  I woke covered in blood.

  In the blurred darkness, a glimmering arm of bronzed metal that ended in a ball joint and two curving appendages meant for clasping attended me with a rag, wiping the blood from my throat. There was a tightness at my neck, and the fabric of the cloth caught lightly against the thin extrusion of sutures.

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  Another loss. No surprise there.

  This was the cost of my tutelage.

  It'd been many years now since we'd departed the capital, though it was impossible to say for sure how long it'd actually been. Dwelling underground had a way of scrambling the senses. We took permanent shelter in Couha'zen, a dwarven stronghold around a month's travel from Whitefall on horseback. The reality of guiding multiple wagons through treacherous passes meant it took nearly twice that.

  But once we arrived, there was no denying that Thoth picked a solid location. As irritating as that is to admit.

  The dwarven stronghold was painted in varnished gold and smattered bronze, floors glossy in treated mica that sheened along wide walkways like thin ice. The barricaded tunnel and thick lowhil gates weren't enough to preserve the seemingly thriving population of dwarves who took shelter behind them when the wave rolled through, but the location being deep underground had done much to preserve the majority of the architecture, along with around a third of the food stores. What would have barely supplied the fortress for a week, in turn, stocked two people near infinitely.

  Between the ample unpolluted cisterns and an absolute trove of pickled and preserved goods, not to mention Yaksul, a gray paste meat substitute that was terrible to look at but sated both appetite and body quite well, every other distraction I had fell away.

  The proffered space of a mostly functional, city-sized stronghold meant we rarely saw each other outside of the daily clashes.

  When she was lucid, Thoth picked lessons according to her own agenda, using whatever was convenient or caught her whimsy. Weapons as varied as her approach. Saber one day, staff the next, occasionally big bastards like the one she'd started with earlier, flung around like it was nothing. Rarely the knives. The instruction was stern and entirely focused, and would inevitably end with me beaten and bloody upon the ground, then the attendance of the automatons whenever I regained consciousness again.

  "Good morning, noble guest." A monotone voice echoed, and I shifted to better see over the side of the bed where it stood. The automaton struck an odd silhouette, vaguely pillar-like in body with a stone-cut face, levitating a finger's width above a rolling stone ball that provided its locomotion.

  We'd activated a few early on, more after the benefit they offered became more obvious. Unlike many dwarven creations these were shockingly mana efficient, not to mention helpful, albeit riddled with quirks that made them off-putting at times.

  "Greetings, Shale. Fancy seeing you again." My chest spasmed, and I put a hand to the bandage, forcing myself to relax until the pain faded.

  "We have had similar interactions three-thousand-six-hundred-and-seventy-five times before the present day." Shale rattled off, emitting a soft whirr. "My presence should be commonplace by now, noble guest. If it is not, there is a possibility you may be suffering ill effects from the many, many concussions—"

  "It was just—" I sighed, surrendering. "You're right. Now that you mention it, us meeting this way is commonplace."

  "Indeed." Shale chirped. "It is good to see you are still of sound mind. I have had doubts."

  "Worried?" I pushed myself up into a sitting position, wincing as my entire body seemed to shudder from the effort, and managed a smile.

  "Worry is not within my capabilities. But I am capable of pattern recognition, a manner of processing thought you yourself appear to lack."

  I rolled my eyes. "We've been over this. I'm exactly where I need to be."

  "So you've insisted."

  "What's the damage?" I asked, glancing down at the bandages on my chest. Leaving the injuries partially unhealed was our current standard, but even for that it stung a great deal.

  "Mending. Ready for imprinting, though it would be wise to rest at least a few more hours. There is no current risk of infection or aggravation of wounds. The arch-mage spent longer than usual tending them."

  "Huh." I leaned my head back on the pillow. "That's a surprise."

  "You lost a great deal of blood, and your injuries were far graver than normal. It was, quite literally, the least she could do." Shale retorted, monotone hinting at sternness.

  "Well, don't let Thoth hear you talking like that."

  "No." Shale agreed. "That would be unwise. Thankfully, she cannot."

  "And don't make assumptions just because she doesn't seem to be present." I warned him. Shale wasn't perfect, but I'd had far worse attendants, and his obsession over technicalities reminded me of Vogrin to some extent. It'd be a shame to lose him.

  There was a grinding click. "It is not an assumption. The arch-mage left twenty-three hours ago. Five hours after that she tripped the auxiliary perimeter, placing her several wingspans away from our location. She has not yet returned."

  "Thoth left again?" I asked, frowning. "Just took off?"

  "No. She packed supplies. Enough for a few days' journey. If she intends to return, it will likely happen before the fortnight ends."

  I paused. "Did she say anything that gave her automaton cause to believe she wouldn't return?"

  "No. The arch-mage offered no explanation whatsoever, as is her custom. It is likely wishful thinking on Gneiss's part."

  I snorted, feeling a degree of sympathy towards the smaller automaton that assisted Thoth daily. It was not the first to take that role, and the others that preceded it had been poorly fated. Since she'd destroyed the initial few, those that remained activated bore an obvious grudge.

  "Guess we'll rest easy for a while."

  "If I were a mortal being held against my will, under daily threat of duress and harm to my person, I would consider using the absence of a warden as an opportunity to… improve my situation."

  "Then it's a good thing I'm not being held against my will."

  He tilted, grubby chirps emitting from near his base. "Sometimes those who were once held against their will develop friendliness towards their captors—"

  I reached out and gave his head an affectionate push, watching as he leaned back, then corrected his balance. The gears within his chassis ground audibly. But he finally let it go after that.

  Around an hour later, I reviewed the spar. It was projected by another automaton, similar to Shale, albeit much less chatty. The playback analysis was a recent development, something I'd only started doing over the last few years, after the little dwarven machines had let it slip that they recorded most of what was happening around them. With only two people left to occupy their once city, that was mostly us.

  They wouldn't show me Thoth—as much as they seemed to prefer me, she had been the one to power and reactivate them, which made her their de facto master.

  Right there. That's what I missed.

  After we'd switched to knives, in the lightning-fast exchange of blows, Thoth had repeatedly pulled strikes—not long, simply holding them for fractions of a second longer than her usual swiftness. I'd missed it entirely because of how close the engagement was.

  More importantly, it highlighted one of the precious few predictabilities.

  I jotted down a note on my parchment.

  More mirroring.

  When I'd wounded her, it was with a feint. A rather gormless one. Spite had always been her defining trait, but it'd taken a while to realize how deeply it was woven into her essence. Combat was a perfect example. It wasn't that she didn't want me to learn, more the opposite. If I failed to grasp a concept she was attempting to teach, her mood quickly grew sour and mercurial. Yet if I grasped it too quickly and used it against her, or did something unexpected that resulted in an advantage, it was extremely likely she'd turn the same tactic around and use it repeatedly against me.

  Hardly a shepherd's heel—but with the sprawling repository of techniques and tactics available to an immortal, anything that limited the options was invaluable.

  The rest of the review was less illuminating, though going through it all piece by piece always helped to a degree.

  I tore at my baked Yaksul. When the paste was cooked, it could almost pass for stale, yeastless bread, and it was important to build up energy for the next step. After washing down the last few tasteless bites, I crossed my legs and retrieved another object from my satchel.

  Other than the silent, brutal lessons, the gleaming object was the only gift Thoth had ever given me.

  At initial glance, it was a high steel chisel, folly in its very existence. It'd been tossed across the room to me like so many other sharpened projectiles, followed with the vaguest of instructions.

  Focus on it to more quickly commit the lessons of mind to body. Otherwise this will take centuries. Don't fucking lose it—I'll tear your arms off if it goes missing.

  At first I'd taken it as an unsubtle metaphor given in poor taste. It was reflective enough to double as a mirror, and beyond the material, seemingly ordinary. Then she'd kicked the shit out of me a few days in a row and, the day after, demanded to know why I'd ignored her guidance.

  So, feeling very foolish, I'd rested it in my lap and used it as a focal point for meditation.

  Then, something happened. A familiar sensation that turned my focus slightly inward, towards my soul. I'd experimented with similar methods before, carving away small extraneous pieces of it to optimize mana pathways—but the experience had felt too unguided, even with the assistance of a monitoring demon obviously invested in keeping said soul intact. There was too much I didn't understand, and thus, too high a chance of damaging something vital.

  Meditating while using the chisel's reflection as focus, I could see how everything was connected. Injuries, specifically, were highlighted clearly in the amorphous mass. Like Vogrin, the little watchdog demon was gone, either dead or entirely cut off from this plane. But so long as I worked around the chains of the pact, it was simple enough to repeat what I'd done before, to different purpose.

  Every strained muscle and wound left a small but perceivable matching blemish on my soul. If I treated it like a physician, excising the loose tissue, it brought both the blemish and the mistake that led to it into tighter focus.

  That technique, combined with the more intellectual insights that came from reviewing every bout, had accelerated my growth exponentially, and expanded my reserve of strategies and tactics for dealing with a far stronger opponent. Some required active honing, but most I kept to myself. If this came to a head soon, and she caught me off-guard with no avenue of escape or delay, I knew how I would fight her—assuming she didn't simply fall back on magic and blow me away.

  The chances weren't great. If I was being honest, under perfect circumstances, if everything I'd cobbled together worked without a single snag, I'd put the odds at around one in forty, maybe one in thirty if I really caught her off balance.

  In the living world, once time reverted, those chances plummeted. Magic was a huge point against me. She'd taught me some, more out of boredom than anything else, but for the most part had been exceedingly cagey on the topic. The mana reserves we'd gathered, and made an occasional trip back to Whitefall to refresh, had gone far—but they were waning as of late, and there were fewer and fewer ghouls from which to harvest.

  As much as it rankled to admit, the navy and modified siege weapons were likely still the best avenue of dealing with her.

  But my experience, and her training to unknown purpose, would not go to waste.

  I sighed as the refreshed pain of the last wound she'd dealt me faded from my mind. Thoth's absence meant I could focus elsewhere. A welcome solace.

  /////

  Days passed. Thoth had yet to return.

  The existence felt effortless by comparison.

  I passed the time easily, losing myself in the rigorous complexities of advanced alchemy, jogging long routes through the uniform, perfectly straight cross-hatched roads that formed the infrastructure of the shining subterranean fortress. Several combat automatons—fantastic resources I intended to source the second things at home returned to normal—assisted me in learning to defend against Therian, and more importantly, how best to use it myself.

  Around the third morning, the solitude turned sour. It wasn't Thoth's absence, exactly. Even in tutelage, she was ever the tormentor, always finding new ways to get under my skin, needling my mind until it was red and raw. But the constant, boiling tension between us was a worthy distraction. When we trained, my concentration had to be perfect, all-consuming, not so much as a flicker of doubt or distraction or the lesson would be quite literally cut short.

  That purity of focus worked well for distracting from the darkness that crept into my mind when I thought of home, and the many problems I'd need to face there once I returned. The ruptured nexus and missing deity; the lithid; the dubious laboratory and the truth of its purpose.

  Perhaps most of all, somewhere down the line, Maya had stopped appearing to me as she had over those first few months. Her visage was never far from my thoughts, nor what had transpired between us—vows uttered beneath the burgeoning storm, her sacrifice. The way she'd looked in the Timbermour's crypt, so still, pale and grey.

  I wanted to see her again. More than anything. But for some reason, the irregular visits had slowed, and then stopped.

  In an attempt at distraction, I fought the automatons until I was soaked through with sweat, and they refused to continue 'for my benefit.' Then I left them behind, jogging towards the side of the fortress that had been hit the hardest.

  Because that was where the archive was.

  Finding it at all was a stroke of luck and presented a solution to a problem I'd once found untenable.

  "Are the results in yet?" I asked, still short of breath and laden with sweat, keeping an eye on the treacherous descent. The entryway and the archive itself had been badly eroded from the shockwave of the storm and begun to crumble, more ramp than stairs.

  "G-g-g-greetings, noble guest." The archive automaton responded. It nested in the center of a circular desk, within a room of curved walls, an endless kaleidoscope of small gems uniformly inlaid into the rock. Unlike the others, efforts had been made to enhance its humanoid features. The stone arms, shoulders, and torso were easy to mistake for a person's at a glance, though its head was perfectly spherical and lacked a mouth beyond the small squarish grill of its speaker box. Its lower half was purely mechanical, little more than a ball joint mechanism that allowed the upper half to rotate freely, giving it full view of the inlaid gems at all angles. In the center of the "head" was a cyclopean gem, an eye of sorts, that seemed to dull and brighten in gentle golds when it processed. Though its voice and manner of speaking were similar to the others, it was pitched lower, and seemed to struggle with speech on account of the damage regardless of the many, many repairs it required.

  Still, after a lot of trial and error, it was finally working.

  "Yes, greetings." I added hastily. "Do you have anything for me?"

  There was a hesitation. "I have collated a great deal of information regarding—mythical creature, lithid—from our records."

  I leaned forward, drumming my fingers on the desk in anticipation. Most libraries were immensely damaged, filled with books with ruined covers and pages that turned to dust at a touch. Everyone I would typically turn to for answers or knowledge had died with the rest of the world. The prospect of getting any answers at all before returning was tantalizing, anything to help me prepare.

  "Tell me. How are they made? Why might one suddenly appear, when there was no history of it before?"

  "Yes. I recall the parameters of the query." The automaton responded testily. It rotated and pulled open one of the drawers beneath its desk.

  There was nothing in the drawer. It was a quirk, one of many. Whatever information it was recalling was etched within one of the many gems inlaid within the wall. If you inspected them you'd find an endless spiral of etched dwarvish, so small it was impossible to parse.

  "A lithid is, for absence of a better term, a parasite. It is widely believed they reside on another plane, only breaking through when specific conditions are met."

  "Conditions such as?"

  "First sightings often occur at sites that have staged considerable violence or bloodshed."

  I grimaced. "If that's the case, why aren't countless running rampant across the continent?"

  "An astute observation. Uskar is hardly a peaceful locale, and as such, bloodshed is not a reliable predictor. You could scour a hundred similar sites and not find a single one. But if you were to successfully locate a nascent lithid, it would almost certainly be at the site of some atrocity or another."

  I drummed my fingers. Most of the Kingdom's violence occurred outside the capital walls, but bloodshed wasn't exactly foreign to Whitefall. There'd been an unfortunate number of uprisings and rebellions, all of which were swiftly crushed. But those who bled the most were generally leaders and organizers, and thus the death tolls from such events were relatively small.

  "How would you define an atrocity?"

  "How would you define an atrocity?" The archive parroted back. Its central light blinked, awaiting response.

  I shifted uneasily. "Specifically, the sort of body count a lithid would be drawn to. Dozens? Hundreds?"

  "Ah." The light turned solid again. "Thousands. Potentially tens of thousands. However, it should be noted there are many, many historical battles that appear to fit the criteria, yet reports of lithids remain curiously absent."

  "That seems contradictory."

  "It is." The archive agreed, oddly enthusiastic. "And it took a great deal of cross-referencing to establish the pattern. Any time the conflict is a struggle, drawn out, with a great deal of push and pull, they are rare, practically non-existent. But if the conflict is one-sided, and the death toll is high, the probability increases exponentially."

  "So they're drawn to outright slaughters." I realized.

  "Correct." The archive agreed cheerfully. "Genocides and massacres at scale."

  "Nothing like that has ever happened in Whitefall." I drummed my fingers, now talking more to myself than the archive. "So the lithid was likely born elsewhere, and either made its way through the sewer system, or was placed there with purpose."

  The automaton leaned forward, hands flat against the desk. Its wide eye blinked. "Pardon. If I'm understanding correctly, you yourself encountered a lithid and lived through the ordeal?"

  "'Survived' would be more accurate. But yes."

  "I would love to get a firsthand account. Most retellings are secondhand, sourced from those watching on the fringes. It's unfortunate you're human rather than stonekin, but beggars can't be choosers."

  "Sure," I answered, not having to think much about it. Getting on the archive's good side could only help me. "But let's put a hold on that for now. We have another topic to cover."

  "Ah. Yes. You had other queries. The deities." Again it went for the drawer, making a great show of rummaging around. When it went on for a while, I leaned against the counter.

  Finally, it stopped, rising to the appearance of a sitting position behind the counter again. "I have little regarding Nychta herself. The drephin are highly secretive and not particularly fond of dwarves. From what little there is, she is a fairly standard goddess of the night, albeit with more specific, animalistic focus on death itself, as well as the den mother designation, which is fairly unique among similar deities."

  "And she's never been worshipped by humans, far as you can tell?" I tried.

  "It is possible, though unlikely. At the very least there is nothing in the archives that points to it."

  I grimaced, grasping at straws. "Can you think of any reason a Drephin death goddess would voluntarily dwell in a human city and sustain a mana nexus beneath its reaches?"

  "Very few." The automaton hesitated. "Although—keep in mind this is mostly conjecture—in the golden age of the pantheon, it was quite common for deities to be addressed by more than one name depending on who was offering worship. For instance, I harbor a growing suspicion that Nyx and Nychta are potentially the same."

  "The infernal god of night?" I raised an eyebrow.

  "There are far more similarities than differences. And their preferred sacrifices are suspiciously similar—always a freshly killed four-legged animal, a juvenile male goat or sheep being preferred. Additional associations with hunting and night. There's an amusing rationality to it. Nyx has never been a particularly popular goddess even among the infernals, practically lost to time until a sudden resurgence over the last decade. Why limit yourself to one source of power when it would be trivial to attain two?"

  "Or three."

  "Hm?"

  "Uh, Lune." I said offhandedly. "The human goddess of night. She bears a lot of similarity to the others."

  There was an uncertain whirr. The archivist rotated, checking the drawers beneath him, then turning and rifling through the filing cabinets behind him.

  "Is there a problem?"

  "Are you certain of the name?" The archivist said, voice through the speaker box uncharacteristically clipped.

  "Yes."

  It turned back, resting a chin on its hand, perplexed. "I have no record of Lune."

  That didn't sound right. She was fairly well known; I'd been hearing stories of her since before I could walk.

  "No recent records?"

  "None at all. There is no information to satisfy the query. Not so much as a reference to her among the rest of the deities, which is often the fate of minor gods." A flat, unhelpful voice returned. The archive automaton's single eye stared down at me in silent challenge, almost accusatory, as if I'd intentionally fabricated the question.

  "Well, humans and dwarves have something of a… turbulent… history. It could be your knowledge when it comes to human lore and history is less thorough than the others—"

  "That is incorrect. And a flagrant misunderstanding of the depth of my knowledge." The archivist snapped.

  "Alright, okay." I held my hands up in surrender. "Ignorance on my part. Relax. No need to get pissy."

  "I do not piss. I do not even have a lower half—"

  "Cairn."

  A gruff voice from the stairway sent me stumbling to my feet, turning to locate the source.

  It sounded like Thoth. But there was something in it that was unfamiliar, almost alien.

  Fear.

  Above, the arch-mage stood at the top of the stairs, looking down at me, distaste and something else warring in her expression, a heavy weight pulling down her shoulders.

  I gave the archivist an apologetic nod and took the stairs two at a time. "What is it? What's happened?"

  "Nothing to worry yourself over." She lied.

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