webcrawl/APGTE/Book-4/tex/Ch-097.md.tex

\hypertarget{interlude-inheritance}{%
\section{Interlude: Inheritance}\label{interlude-inheritance}}

\begin{quote}
\emph{``Dearest Edda, beloved daughter. I would offer you words of
wisdom or comfort, but after a lifetime of ink I find my hands have
finally taken leave of me. I have written of good and evil for many
years, seeking truths, but in the end I have no answers to offer. All I
have, my heart, is a prayer. That you be kind. That you leave the world
a little better than you found it and teach your children to do the
same. And maybe, just maybe, one day we will be what we pretend we
are.''}

-- Last will and testament of King Edmund of Callow, the Inkhand
\end{quote}

Wekesa had fought three wars in his lifetime, and had slowly come to
realize that the Tenth Crusade was nothing like the others.

There'd been so many skirmishes over the years he could hardly recall
all of them, so many faces and names and defiant -- or accusatory, or
castigating, or a hundred different tones only ever hiding the same fear
-- speeches. Enough dead heroes to make a mansion of the corpses. There
was no glory in it, Warlock had known from the start. How many of those
young men and women had soft faces, barely into adolescence? Those
fights had not been part of a war, though Amadeus fancied otherwise when
he murmured of his old argument with the Heavens. It'd been\ldots{}
ratcatching, Wekesa often thought. Trapping and killing vermin before
they could grow to be a true problem. Even using the word execution
would have implied a sentence, an act of judgement. There'd been none,
though. Nothing behind the slaying save the decision never to allow
those rats to grow and spread. It sometimes amused Warlock that for all
his old friend's talk of the fundamental disparity between the lot of
heroes and villains, when given the opportunity to deal out the same
treatment he'd not hesitated for a moment.

It was not a deep argument, he knew. The differences were many. Amadeus'
high-minded distaste was for a perceived imbalance between what heroes
and villains as a whole were allowed to achieve by their stories, not
particular cases, and the Black Knight would likely argue that even
similar actions would have different meanings when carried out by
mortals instead of Gods. Wekesa could and had appreciated, even when
they'd first met, that Amadeus was driven by what could be called a
philosophical principle rather than mere lust for power. It'd been a
refreshing change, after the then-Apprentice's years spent rubbing
elbows with the nobility of the Empire. It was a deplorably limited
understanding of the world, perhaps, but a notch above what any of their
contemporaries had been able to contemplate. In the end, though, it was
still missing the forest for the trees. Seeking redress for scales
uneven was still putting stock in the scale itself, when it was that
thing's very existence that should be questioned. There was no fixing
Creation, Wekesa suspected.

And if by some miracle it was, the Gods would promptly break it again.

And so Warlock had put his energies where they rightly belonged: his
research, his family and his friends. Disappearing into some remote
locale to study in peace would have been short-sighted, unfortunately.
An old monster alone in the mountains, meddling in things man was not
meant to know? He would have been the proving grounds of a dozen heroes.
Besides, keeping strong ties to Alaya and Amadeus' empire had secured to
old libraries and a steady source of income and materials. If that meant
occasionally making an appearance at court, disciplining a few ambitious
sorts and smothering nascent heroism when it sprouted? Well, it was a
decent bargain. He did not regret making it, not even now. There'd been
some frictions before the understanding was properly reached, of course.
Amadeus had wanted him to found some sort of mage academy that'd
supplant the teaching cadres of the High Lords, and not quite understood
why Wekesa had refused. He'd tried to lower the years Warlock would have
spent as headmaster of the institution, before Wekesa flatly told him
there was nothing to compromise over. Warlock had helped to create this
`modern empire' of theirs because it mattered to them, not because he
himself particularly cared about the state of Praes. The country could
be an empty desert and it wouldn't matter to him.

He'd fought the wars that saw them rise on personal grounds, not
principled ones.

It was the worst argument they'd ever had and for that Wekesa blamed
Hye, who'd left before the Conquest even ended, and managed to both cut
Amadeus to the bone and leave him twice in love as before with the same
sentence when she walked away. The wound had never entirely healed, and
Warlock had ended up paying the price in a deadbeat Ranger's stead.
Typical of her, really. She never stuck around for the parts that
weren't thrilling, the sometimes tedious spadework of building and
maintaining relationships. Tikoloshe had noted it was almost mythically
hypocritical of him to blame someone for having bonds only on their own
terms, but his husband was wrong. He'd put in the work, afterwards, to
clean up the mess between himself and his oldest friend in the world.
Hye, on the other hand, simply made do with visitations every few years
that Amadeus came back from split halfway between longing and chagrin.
Wekesa's long-standing reservations about that arrangement had been the
tide that carried him closer to Alaya, as it happened.

When they'd first met her in the Green Stretch all those years ago he'd
not been as close as Amadeus to the woman who became Malicia: he and
Sabah had shared the seat of designated third wheel as those two strange
youths gravitated around each other, everything else falling to the
wayside of their long conversations. Still, he'd found he well-educated
for a peasant -- her mother had been a tutor to a minor noble line, once
-- and as charming as she was intelligent. He'd considered her a close
acquaintance, and been quite infuriated to hear she'd been
unceremoniously abducted by the Sentinels because the waste of skin
holding the Tower was hungry for seraglio beauties. It would be years
before they met again, after bloodily climbing the ladder of influence,
and when Wekesa next saw Alaya there were only shards of the girl she'd
once been remaining. He'd grieved for that, but the woman she'd become
had been fascinating. Broken, perhaps, but all the more brilliant for
it. But there'd been a war on, soon enough, and though they'd fought for
her claim his reasons for supporting it had been largely selfish. If
Amadeus had been the one aiming for the throne, there would have been
decades of war instead of years.

Praesi would have been violently disgusted at the notion of a Duni
claiming the Tower, much less one inclined to eradicate the aristocracy.

In the years that followed, however, his opinion had shifted. Alaya was
undeniably more fit to rule. She was Praesi in a way none of them were,
understood the people she reigned over where Amadeus would have messily
carved away at them until they were more to his liking. And though
Malicia used the Calamities, she did so sparingly: she preferred to rule
on her own merits, without other Named propping up her crown. She asked
little of them save friendship and the rare favour. It was an ideal
arrangement, in his eyes, and he'd frankly told her as much. The
confluence in their opinions had only grown as the years passed, and
while Amadeus busied himself with his Callowan projects Wekesa had spent
long stretches in Ater for his research. Seen the harsh demands
authority made of Alaya, and admitted to himself that Black would not
have weathered them so well. The Tower\ldots{} it magnified what you
were. Your virtues, but also your flaws. Malicia had mastered hers, but
the same influence would have made something ugly of Amadeus. Perverted
his best qualities. Scribe disagreed, of course, but Eudokia had stark
blinders. She'd only ever seen herself as a tool, Amadeus as worthy to
use her, and so to use everyone else. There was no place for nuance in
that perspective. That Sabah had never weighed in on the matter had been
telling, he'd thought.

She was ever only so circumspect when coddling one of them.

And now Sabah was dead. Killed by some murderous vagrant from the
Dominion at the behest of the Wandering Bard. Wekesa had wept for it,
after. For the loss of such a beloved friend, for the hole she would
leave in all of them with her absence. It'd not been the same since.
Amadeus had become reckless while telling himself it was calculated
risk, burning one bridge after another until it'd left him stranded in
the middle of fucking Procer with heroic wolves baying at his heels.
Alaya had been forced to become increasingly heavy-handed to keep it all
from falling apart while simultaneously the particulars of the Woe
prevented her from dealing with them as she legitimately should. Warlock
had made it clear that Masego was off-limits, of course, but was
increasingly coming to sympathize with her situation. Wekesa and Amadeus
had dropped a mess into her lap and then heavily restricted her means to
deal with threats not of her own making. It was unfair, and the private
admission of that had done much to reconcile Warlock with the necessity
of putting his son under house arrest for a few years.

As for the Black Queen, well, Warlock had washed his hands clean of
that. He'd help Alaya deal with the aftermath by making it clear to
Amadeus that Catherine Foundling had been dead for over a year now, but
he wouldn't have the imitation's blood on his hands when his old friend
returned. He could hardly serve as a mediator if he'd taken part in the
matter in need of mediation.

It'd all grown so complicated, hadn't it? This war was so different from
all the others. The civil strife that had seen Alaya rise to the throne,
the Conquest itself -- they'd been of the same mould, in a way. They'd
all been young or in their prime, and still making their mark on
Creation. But now that mark was made, and they were being forced to
defend it. They'd spread out too far, Wekesa often thought. Sabah had
died thousands of mile away from the Wasteland, fighting over some
League shithole they'd never seen before and likely never would again.
Amadeus had been caught in Proceran heartlands while prosecuting a war
that should have been the Black Queen's by right. That there was a Black
Queen at all was a reminder of how badly the Callowan situation had been
blundered over, and for all that Wekesa sympathized with Alaya she'd
hardly handled the Wasteland better. Akua Sahelian should have been
abducted year ago, every bit of knowledge wrung out of her mind before
she was butchered so thoroughly not even devils would be able to get
their due from her. If Malicia had needed a doomsday weapon she should
have asked him, not tried to get clever in house already visibly on
fire.

And the damned fire had only spread since. Wekesa was not pleased he had
to intervene, but who else was left? It'd have to be him. The Ashurans
would be broken here, and afterwards he'd free Alaya's hands to deal
with the rest of the situation. Feelings would get hurts, cities would
burn, but in the end the only people involved who mattered to him were
pragmatists. There would be eternity to get over this little scuffle, as
his friends had all the others before them.

It was a month full of long silences that passed before the Ashuran war
fleet finally arrived. His son and husband remained at odds, though
thankfully neither were the kind of men to trade barbs or seek out
screaming matches. The work proceeded at a faster pace now that
conversation had effectively died out. Wekesa occasionally felt a pang
of regret at turning what was one of the greatest achievements of Praesi
sorcery -- in his own chosen field of study, to boot! -- into what was
effectively a pack of munitions, but he could think of no other way.
Shatha's Maze had been the main sea defence of the city for too long.
There'd been centuries of opportunity for the Thalassocracy to study it,
and though last time they'd struck at Thalassina it had been treachery
that'd been their means of passing it that did not mean the Maze was
unbreakable. That pack of greedy sailors wouldn't be risking an assault
at all, if that were the case, and Alaya was certain that they were
coming. She still had agents in Ashuran ranks, though entire swaths of
her network had been purged before the Thalassocracy declared war.

The ships came under cover of night.

That much had been expected. With scrying being blocked off, it was now
watchtowers that served as the city's first line of defence. Considering
the nature of Ashuran sorcery, sailing at night even in treacherous
waters was hardly difficult and afforded some element of surprise. What
had not been expected was that the fleet moved under illusory cover as
well. Some kind of sea mirage, Warlock found out, closer to natural
phenomenon that Praesi illusions or fae glamour. Much harder to detect
than either, though also likely much more difficult to maintain. That
bought the invaders two days of unseen advance before they were caught
out by a Thalassinan mage attempting to scry the weather ahead of their
fleet and finding it impossible to do so. It alarmed High Lord Idriss
enough that the man ordered a ritual strike at the area, calling down
lightning from the sky, and though the sorcery impacted Ashuran defences
harmlessly it did shatter the mirage. Ashur had stolen the initiative,
and there was barely a day and a half to organize before they were on
the city.

The work on the Maze was mostly finished, but not entirely. It would
have to prove sufficient. Mass rituals by High Lord Idriss' mages lent a
finishing touch to the trap while allowing Warlock and his son to remain
at full strength. Masego's perch out in the corals was fully
accommodated with defensive wards and the few creature comforts his son
had requested, and he left for it half a day before the Ashurans
arrived. The solemnity of the parting ease the tensions between them
some, though not as much as Wekesa would have liked.

``I'd still be more comfortable with your father taking the position,''
Tikoloshe admitted, smoothing away nonexistent wrinkles on their son's
robes.

``I see no need to revisit the matter,'' Masego bluntly replied.

Wekesa discretely shook his head while meeting his husband's eyes. Now
was not the time.

``Be careful,'' Warlock said. ``They might be meddlers but there are a
great many of them. If it gets out of hand, I'd rather you retreat and
we fight over the city itself.''

``I've no intention of risking my life for Thalassina, I assure you,''
Masego said.

He nodded in approval. In this, at least, he had his priorities
straight. Wekesa hesitated, then pulled his son into a tight embrace.
Masego stiffened but eventually returned it, their clutch on each other
growing tight. There were no guarantees, in war. They both knew that all
too well.

``Come back to us,'' Warlock whispered.

``I will,'' Masego whispered back, voice little more than croak. ``You
two stay safe as well. I know you'll have walls in between, but
rituals-''

``-are never a toy, always dangerous,'' Wekesa finished softly.

One of the first lessons he'd taught his son. Magic was beautiful and
wondrous, but it should never be taken lightly. Great mages had believed
themselves to have mastered their powers fully, and always paid for that
presumption. There were no exceptions. They released each other and
Tikoloshe kissed both their son's cheeks, fingers lingering on his
shoulder. Masego was so \emph{thin}, now.

``We'll have a family supper tonight,'' `Loshe said. ``Just us. It's
been too long.''

Masego nodded before heading out for the docks, where a ship would await
him. They both watched him leave, standing together.

``He will not be that tender with us again for a very long time,''
Tikoloshe murmured.

Wekesa grimaced, but did not deny it. After today they'd have to bind
his powers and take him into custody. He would not forgive them that for
a very long time.

``Preparations are done,'' Warlock said. ``The rest we can worry about
tomorrow.''

Work mercifully took away his mind from it all, for there was much still
left to do. The set-up was not particular complex -- Petronian sorcery
was a straightforward as the Miezan's who'd created it -- but it was
rather laborious. Two-way scrying panels were set up along the city's
outer battlements so that Wekesa would have good overview of the Maze
and the Ashurans, then anchored in a crescent moon around him as the
last touches were put to the circle of power where he'd direct the
rituals from. That the defence was taking place on a High Lord's dime
meant the very finest materials had been acquired for this, obsidian
from the Grey Eyries and Callowan limestone mixing with half a dozen
other substances that put together could have easily bought a luxurious
mansion in Ater. As Warlock sat at the heart of the array, four more
circles were initiated. Every practitioner in the city had been pressed
into service for the purpose, which was rather simple: they were to
release sorcery into their attributed circle, where Wekesa would be able
to take it and use it for his own purposes.

The recent labour of activating the wards of Shatha's Maze had left too
many mages exhausted and on the edge of burning out, sadly, which meant
that to make up the losses two thousand criminals had to be slain and
their life force provided instead. Wekesa disliked using such primitive
means, but it could not be denied that the power resulting was pure and
plentiful. If they'd had another week it could have been avoided, but as
things stood he'd have to make his peace with it. It was late morning
when the preparations were complete, and from that point forward Warlock
sat with his eyes closed. Keeping mastery of four circles beyond his own
while not actively using the power within required a great deal of
concentration. Tikoloshe sat next to him, idly paging through a rather
lurid Proceran romance, and though his husband remained silent his mere
presence was soothing.

The Ashuran war fleet came into sight halfway past Noon Bell, and so
finally the battle for Thalassina began.

It was said that the Thalassocracy had more war ships than the rest of
Calernia put together, and it was easy to believe that while looking
upon their fleet. More than three hundred ships, flying the colours of
the Baalite Hegemony with the masked sun of Ashur set on them. It was
not even the full muster of Ashuran might, Wekesa knew. There were still
ships out raiding, and smaller defense fleet left to anchor in the
Ashuran home isle.

``Around third of those are repurposed merchant ships,'' Tikoloshe
noted, his practiced eye picking up on the signs. ``No ballistas on
them, they'll be serving as troop transports.''

``It won't matter, if they never make shore,'' Warlock replied.

Ashur took the offensive, as was only to be expected. By now they'd have
realized that Shatha's Maze had been activated, though they should still
be unaware of the\ldots{} modifications added to it. Wekesa kept the
four pools of power close at hand. Two of those, he'd already decided,
would be kept in reserve to detonate the Maze. Only one was necessary
strictly, speaking, but best to be prudent. The other two were his to
shape in answer to Ashuran assaults, however. After that he would have
to draw on his own power, which would be difficult. His preferred field
of study was useless on water, and his knowledge of Sabrathan sorcery
was limited. There would be no turning the spells around here as he had
done when duelling the Witch of the Woods. It would have been madness to
attempt the same tactics against an army that he'd used against a single
Named, regardless. One Gifted he could account for, no matter how
talented, but hundreds on hundreds? There were too many variables, even
if they resorted to rituals. The waters ahead of the war fleet rippled
unnaturally, and Wekesa learned forward.

``So it begins,'' the Sovereign of Red Skies murmured.

It was a ritual, that much was obvious. The limitations of their
practitioners were fully displayed as massive amounts of sorcery sunk
into the waves but moved only sluggishly: Ashuran mages were known used
to working in concert.

``Strike?'' Tikoloshe said.

Wekesa studied the sea's surface. The ripples were gaining in strength,
but not \emph{forward.} Splitting to the sides? Ah. He smiled.

``They believe the defence is being directed from the underground
facilities on the shore,'' he said.

``We never took down the wards on them,'' Tikoloshe noted. ``There was
no reason to.''

``Let them waste their first blow, then,'' Warlock said.

It was an interesting working, he had to admit. Tendrils of water rose
from the sea and began spinning like gargantuan drills, impacting the
shore with thunderous crack and going straight through the rock. Quicker
than simple water should, even rotating. A hardening effect, perhaps? He
could see no trace of it, but there was only so much he could find out
at this distance. If there'd been anyone underground, they would be dead
by now. Eventually the Ashurans released their ritual, the water
collapsing. It was either drunk by the earth or remained in large
puddles, save for the parts that trickled back into the sea.

``And now they see there are no issues with the Maze,'' Tikoloshe said.
``Meaning it was either never overseen or they struck at nothing.''

``Even if they'd wiped out our mages most the wards would still be
working,'' Wekesa noted. ``That cannot be their strategy whole.''

His statement proved to be correct when ritual began again. It had
similar effect on the sea as the previous one, though Warlock noticed
the sorcery was going broad instead of sinking deep. Interesting. Not
tendrils this time, then.

``They're going around it,'' his husband suddenly said. ``They don't
need tides if they can make their own wind, `Kesa. They're going to
spread sea over shore and bypass the Maze entirely.''

``They will try,'' he shrugged, and reached for the first pool of power.

If the ritual was allowed to proceed and stretched out the waters on
both sides it would be difficult to deal with -- he'd either have to
split the power and pit himself against the enemy on both sides
simultaneously from a position of weakness or strike twice, which would
waste his entire offensive power. Yet Wekesa still allowed them to pour
sorcery into the sea. He had to make every strike count, to letting them
get to the point of no return would be more efficient. Eventually he had
to make a judgement call, being uncertain of the precise tipping point.
Closing his eyes, Warlock shaped the power and released it. It came out
as pure kinetic force, angled in a loose triangle and impacting the sea
with all the strength he could put out. The dark-skinned man sighed as
he opened his eyes and witnessed his work. It would have worked better
as a Trismegistan formula, he had to admit. Still, even in this manner
the strike was massive enough to begin a tidal wave and send it tumbling
towards the Ashuran fleet. While the wave hid the enemy from his sight
there must have been panic when the enemy mages realized they had to
abandon their ritual after investing so heavily in it.

The backlash ought to kill more than a few.

``Something's wrong,'' Tikoloshe murmured.

Warlock's brow rose. It was true the enemy were slow on the answer, but
that could simply be the result of their mages fearing the backlash. And
yet\ldots{} He adjusted one of the scrying panels. Was part of the
Ashuran fleet missing?

``They went into it,'' he realized. ``Underwater.''

Absurd, unless\ldots{} The tidal wave slowed. Stopped to a standstill.
And then it \emph{turned around}.

``Merciless Gods,'' Wekesa murmured. ``Have they been using only half
their mages this whole time?''

If that were true they wouldn't be simple hundreds, they would be
thousands. There shouldn't be that many mages in the whole of Ashur.

``That's a repurpose of structure, Wekesa,'' his husband said. ``Slow
and horribly sloppy -- they brute forced it, I'd wager -- but it is.
Which they shouldn't be able to do.''

Sabrathan sorcery wouldn't be able to handle a ritual that delicate and
abstract, the mages would start losing control halfway through.

``Jaquinite,'' he said. ``That was Jaquinite sorcery. They have
\emph{Procerans} with them.''

Hells and Damnation. The Principate's mages might be backwoods savages,
but they were a lot more flexible than the Ashurans. The scope of
rituals available to the opposition hadn't just doubled, it was\ldots{}
Hard to calculate, and there were more pressing matters.

``They want to tear down the Maze,'' Warlock hissed. ``And get ships
through to assault the remains from both sides.''

Which he could not allow, not when his son was in the middle. The wards
around Masego should allow him to survive the tidal wave, but he'd be
out there alone and surrounded. He reached for the second pool of power
without hesitation. There was no time for subtlety: he made a wall of
force and smashed it into the waters. The backlash had him flinching,
and he felt his nose start bleeding. Fuck. The mages keeping the wave
going weren't powerful, but they were \emph{many.} Slowly, his grip on
the sorcery began to slip. It'd break, and then\ldots{}

``\textbf{Link},'' he croaked out, blood in his mouth.

The relief was almost immediate. Thalassina had old wards anchored
around it, and linking them to his working had taken the pressure off
his will. The city itself groaned, parts of its walls shattering, but
his workaround succeeded. While he no longer had control of the power
he'd released, he did control the connection his aspect had forged. It
was only cut when the tidal wave broke and collapsed back into the sea,
and Warlock let out a long breath.

``My turn,'' the Sovereign of Red Skies hissed.

He took a third pool of power in hand and let another aspect loose.
Ships had been shattered and the Ashuran fleet put in disarray, and that
was close enough for his purposes. \textbf{Imbricate} shivered across
the length of Creation as he matched the sea to the nine-hundredth and
thirty-third hell: the sea of blood. The waters began to turn red,
bubbling and rising to a boil. It would not be long before the acidity
began eating at the hulls. Halos of light bloomed over the ships, one
after another. Tikoloshe shivered.

``Speakers,'' the incubus murmured.

They were not fighting him, Warlock noted. The imbrication was
proceeding without being hindered, and the ships were not unharmed. No,
it felt like something else. A prayer? \emph{A call}, he thought.
Slowly, something answered. He saw it in his mind's eye. It was not a
face, it was too featureless for that. Of what it was made he could not
tell, but the glare was blinding. Flesh smoking, Wekesa bared his teeth.
He would not bow to priestly meddling. If some entity had come to
trouble him, it best be prepared for the consequences. The imbrication
he took in hand, abandoning the fleet, and lashed around the not-face.

``Come on, you wretched thing,'' Warlock grinned nastily. ``Let's see
how you fare on my own grounds.''

It sunk into the depths, the radiance slowly drowned by the sea of
blood, and he laughed. Laughed until it evaporated in a storm of blood
mist, the thing full and untouched. Not a face, he thought again. It was
a mask. Heartbreakingly, impossibly perfect. He looked upon the visage
of a god, and that god spoke.

\textbf{BEGONE.}

His bones creaked, his eyes burned and his teeth shattered. His husband
was speaking but his ears were ringing. Blinding light came again, not
of the creature's making. He'd lost control of the last pool of power
and it had gone wild, raw sorcery devouring all near it and shattering
the ground. The mask's lips opened to speak once more, a great weight
settling on his shoulders.

``Shut up,'' Hierophant said.

The thing rocked back.

``Seven pillars hold up the sky,'' Hierophant sang, thrumming with
power. ``Four cardinals, one meridian.''

The pressure vanished and Warlock came back to himself. Through the
panel he saw a mask of Light in the sky above the Maze, a terrible
radiance surrounding his son. Masego stood alone on his spit of rock,
black robes fluttering as he raised his palms. The warded corals around
him began melting like snow in summer sun.

``The wheel unbroken, spokes are that not,'' Hierophant said, voice
resounding across the waters. ``Thou shall not leave the circle.''

Wekesa closed his eyes just in time. It'd been only the smallest
possible sliver of attention from Above, he realized. It could not be
bound, not truly. But the attempted binding had forced it to retreat,
and it had made its displeasure known beforehand. It had swatted down
his son, shattered the coral and the wards alike. He was in the sea now,
floating. Still alive. Warlock tried to rise but could not.

He was dying, and the Ashuran fleet advanced.

``No,'' he got out. ``Not like this. Not my son.''

Tikoloshe held him up, but his husband could not heal.

``I've paid my dues,'' Warlock hissed. ``A lifetime carrying the banner.
I am owed. I am owed, \emph{do you hear me}?''

It came like a whisper, slithering across his body. Taking away the
pain, leaving dull absence behind.

Below listened.

Below remembered, and paid the debt back in full.

Wekesa stood and knew what he must do. He'd been shown. A gurgled word
had rows of runes appearing in the air, the most sophisticated binding
on Creation, and with fingers like claws he ripped through them.
Scattered the runes, broke the contract beyond repair.

``Wekesa?'' his husband said.

``Go, Tikoloshe,'' he said. ``Run. Return home.''

His husband's face, so handsome and untouched by time even after all
these years, creased in a frown.

``No,'' the incubus said.

``It will kill you,'' Wekesa whispered. ``It can't. I can't let it.
There has never been a devil like you. There may never be again. You are
\emph{unique}.''

``So are you,'' Tikoloshe said. ``So is he.''

``Run,'' Warlock snarled. ``I \emph{order} you.''

He laughed.

``And yet here I am,'' the devil said. ``I have been myself for a very
long time, `Kesa.''

``Don't waste it,'' he implored. ``After you're dispersed\ldots{}''

``What comes back will not be me,'' Tikoloshe softly agreed. ``A blank
slate. Tabula rasa.''

The incubus looked up at the sky.

``I decide this,'' he said, tone full of wonder. ``Of my own free
will.''

His smile was blinding as the sun.

``Isn't that something?'' Tikoloshe murmured.

Wekesa could feel it thinning in his fingers with every passing
heartbeat. It would not be granted to him twice. And yet all he could
look at was his husband's eyes.

``I love you,'' he said.

``I love you too,'' Tikoloshe replied, and threaded their fingers
together.

Wekesa looked up at the sun and breathed out. He thought of the others,
suddenly. \emph{Sorry, old friends. I'll be going on ahead, so it'll be
up to you to snuff the candles on your way out. I'll be waiting with
Sabah.}He reached out for it then, what they'd shown him. The barest
glimpse of the godhead, but oh so gloriously full.

``\textbf{Reflect},'' he whispered.

For a moment, for an eternity, Wekesa was unto a god.

He snapped his fingers and the world broke.

---

Hierophant woke up among a sea of corpses and driftwood.

He screamed, but did not flinch.