The primordial had noticed me, and somehow my oath had resonated with some part of it.

“It’s going to attack!” I announced.

I might as well have said water was wet. The primordial’s presence was palpable, an oppressive pressure sucking the sound out of the air.

“Run.” Lasi took his own advice immediately, sprinting off in a direction perpendicular to the primordial, trying to get out of the oncoming attack.

“Come on, Lily!” Jasmine shouted, beginning to run in the opposite direction. “We need to go!”

“It’s focused on me,” I said, and I knew it was true. There was a resonance there that I couldn’t really explain, my oath recognizing kindred in the primordial.

That didn’t make sense, though. There was no way the primordial who had been so focused on plants and life was one that had developed from a fragment of a god of decay and ruin. Had the god-fragment that had created this primordial been infected by magic from my patron? How could that even happen?

The pressure increased abruptly, and I dropped the line of questioning.

“Lily, hurry up and come with me,” Jasmine pleaded. She hadn’t run yet, nervously bouncing in place just a few steps from me. “You’re not going to survive this.”

“Neither will you,” I said, turning my attention to her. It was a little heartbreaking seeing the panic painted over her pretty face. “Can’t you tell?”

The growing construct above my hands flickered, and both of us flinched back. I hadn’t instructed it to do that.

“Go,” I said.

She stayed put, and then it was too late to say more.

The working I’d been creating had grown larger than anything I’d made before. It was still growing, already half again the size of my torso, and I sensed the flow of the unstructured magic as naturally as I could feel my own arms. It was a frighteningly large amount of oath power coalesced into one place, and though I could feel that it was draining even the deepest reserves I had, I knew that I would be able to keep it stable.

The thing was, even with the vastly expanded power I had gained recently, I was fairly sure I simply did not have the raw magic to keep feeding the sphere. Something was helping me, and while I was grateful for it, it was giving me a bad feeling.

A beat, and the pressure increased again, and now I could almost physically feel the air trying to crush my flesh. It had a desperate edge to it now, like it was a kettle about to reach its peak and pop open.

It was ready to attack.

And Jasmine was still here.

I put in a little extra at that realization, scraping my oath’s power well raw.

I sent the sphere flying. In the same instant, a jagged light brown beam of power shot forth from the top of the tree, wide around as the great tree itself. It hurt to look at. In the eternity that was the moment before the two collided, I turned my gaze to Jasmine. She met my eyes.

Not a bad last sight.

The fabric of reality itself screamed, and then I was no longer there.

I hadn’t expected to be here again so soon. I hadn’t expected to be alive, actually, so this was a more than a bit of a shock.

The paradoxical void that wasn’t was a little lacking, this time, the endless god less active than it had been the last time.

Had it brought me here again? The last time, it had decided to show approval after I had killed a group of oathholders with my own hands. If I was here, I probably wasn’t dead, which meant that somehow my magic had deflected the blast—perhaps it considered blocking a primordial’s magic something that deserved praise. I certainly did, at least—I had more pressing concerns at the moment, but I would absolutely celebrate this later.

Wait. Last time I’d been brought here, I had been unconscious and with Jasmine. Back then, they hadn’t commented on seeing me disappear, which meant that while my mind was here, my body had remained behind. Was the battle still going on back down in Clarsin? Had I survived one attack, just to be left defenseless for the next?

I fucking hated not having control.

“Finally. Greetings, disciple of the murderer-god.”

That was new.

I searched for the voice. Turning around when there was no ground to walk on was a little difficult, but the rules were different here. I’d done my studying, even after my exile, and I knew that no matter what the god, their domains conflated cause with effect. The natural laws of the worlds did not apply.

I concentrated for a moment, and suddenly I found myself facing the speaker. His form was hazy, features blurred like I was viewing his silhouette from behind fogged-up glass, but I could tell he was a man, tall and probably in his early thirties. He burned with power, even inside of Inome’s domain, and what I could sense of it did not feel like mine.

There was a familiarity in the vagueness. The man himself looked like nobody I’d ever seen, but I did remember another figure in this realm, though back then his form had been much farther away and a lot blurrier.

“We’ve met before,” I said. “Right?’

“From afar,” he admitted, nodding his head. “I too can call myself a disciple of this god.”

Disciple? That probably meant oathholder, but that term was archaic. If a relatively young man was saying that, it meant that he either believed himself a historian or he came from somewhere far, far away from Tayan. Either option was equally likely.

I had to take him seriously, though. The broken god—Inome, I reminded myself, that was what we had chosen to name it—wasn’t making an attempt to communicate, which meant that something or someone else had brought me here.

Had it been him? I decided to subtly find the answer from of this mysterious oathholder.

“Did you bring me here?” I asked. “And why isn’t the god saying anything?”

“I did,” he admitted. “A bet from a long time ago, paying off. As for the murderer-god, it chooses when to speak, and now is not its chosen time.”

“How did you do it?” I was genuinely curious. Entering a realm like this was no easy feat, and forcibly bringing someone else in was unheard of.

“You just fought a primordial, correct?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied laconically. I had no idea who this was, and revealing too much to anyone was never something I wanted to do. “Am I still fighting it?”

“Fear not. Time passes differently in the domain of the divine,” he said. “When we exit, not long at all will have elapsed.”

That was reassuring.

“As for your first question… once, when I was still a youth, I sought the fragments of the gods in a vain effort to lift myself to their ranks,” he said. “Fortunately for myself, I gained sense before I became a primordial myself, and I discovered how to do unto them as they would have unto me.”

Alright, so he was an oddity whose manner of speech sounded like archaic courtspeak, but if he wasn’t lying he was also an unprecedented genius. “You influenced the god-fragments?”

“I did,” he said. “I left pieces of myself among the fragments I had found, and my self-pieces laid in wait for years, decades, preparing for the day some lost child discovered the fragment.”

I frowned. “And that allowed you to, what, steer a primordial?”

“I see what it sees,” the other oathholder said, and then he paused for a second before continuing. “What it saw. I helped it think, guided its path, and in the end I held sway over the direction of its power.”

He’d been observing, then. Looking for me?

“And you used the power of Inome?” I asked. “This god?”

“Not quite, but close” he said. “I siphoned a portion of the primordial’s power and bolstered the effects of the murderer-god. I believe I saved your life. Thanks may be in order.”

“Thanks, I suppose,” I said. “Murderer-god?”

I was a little more inclined to believe him, though trust was a different issue and one that I was growing increasingly uncertain about. His words gave an explanation for the weird fluctuation of my magic just before I’d fired.

“A god that once murdered,” he said. He didn’t explain further.

“Why did you interfere?” I asked. “And how did you bring me here?”

He stared at me across the infinite void, cold dark eyes boring into mine. “You may yet serve a purpose. No other has become a disciple of the murderer in the twelve years since I gave my oath.”

So he had also become an Inome oathholder somehow, then. It was pretty obvious, given that he had access to this realm somehow, but it was good to get confirmation. Interesting, that we’d received our oaths in the same year.

“And as for my second question?”

“You will learn in time, fellow disciple,” he said. “I have been discovering the paths of the gods for far longer than you have been alive.”

I squinted. There was no way this man was past forty years of age, let alone old enough to have been holding oaths since before I was born. A Ditas effect, perhaps, to make him appear younger?

“To the gods?” I asked. “As in, plural?”

“Time grants understanding,” the other oathholder said, “And knowledge grants power. Entering a domain like this is simple, once you learn enough.”

Interesting, but there was a slightly more important question that I needed the answer to.

“Why am I here?”

“You sparked my interest, and you kept it when I observed you,” he said, his tone implying that this was something that I should be grateful for. “You are unique in your oath, and with the murderer-god on your side, you may be able to assist with a project of mine.”

“A project?”

“An advanced form of slaughter, in a broad sense.”

It always came down to that, huh? People could coat their words with all the honey in the world, but at the end of the day what they wanted out of me was a knife.

“Why?” I asked. “Why should I help you? I don’t even know who you are.”

“Forgive my manners,” he said. “It’s been a decade since I was in civilized land. My name is Nishi.”

“Lily Syashan,” I replied. “Give me a reason why I should collaborate with you.”

“I can teach you,” he said. “No matter what the kingdom, the magic they teach you is basic, a mere shadow of what the gods’ power can truly accomplish. It limits your potential, forces talent into boxes and prevents them from growing.”

That… those words had the ring of truth to them. Much of what we were covering at the University was content I had already known, and I knew all too well the wrongness I felt when I cast the spells that the kingdom had discovered and researched.

“And you’re saying that you’re different?”

“Of course.” The man seemed offended that I had even asked. “I have forgotten more than your kingdom’s disciples will ever learn.”

“Prove it,” I said, crossing my arms. “You can talk all you like, but what have you done? Yes, you dragged me in here, and that’s impressive, but for all I know that’s the only trick you have.”

“There is little that is fast and easy to teach, and I will not give you access to my knowledge until I can be certain that you will not simply take it and flee.”

“Then we’re at an impasse.”

“It may appear so.” The tone of those words… the other oathholder had something up his sleeve. Maybe multiple somethings.

An image appeared in my brain, then another. More of them. I recognized what was happening a few moments in, the images multiplying and compounding on each other.

I blinked in surprise, my heart racing faster as a concept formulated from the images. The only other being that had spoken to me like this had been a god.

[PRIDE], the oathholder communicated to me, and while I couldn’t see his face properly I was sure there was a shit-eating grin on it.

Gods above, this was an opportunity. I’d heard stories of those who could commune like the gods, but they had been just that— stories, tall tales told about the ancient times before the Final Departure. Someone like this, in our time and age? He was sure to be powerful.

Income, notoriety, and connections, that had been what I needed to reinstate my name, and if this man was truly willing to teach me, the fame attached to my name would soar. I could see the potential in it. Yes, he wanted to use me for something, but if my life as a noble had taught me anything it was that this was a universal constant. Everyone would view others as tools, and it was not about whether we could change that but what we could get out of it.

“I accept,” I said. “When can we start?”

“Good,” he said. “We may begin right now.”

He gestured, and suddenly we were standing on ground. We still stood in the center of a domain of paradoxical infinities, but now there was a solid disc of glowing white energy added to the mix.

“Our first lesson,” he said, “Will be on how to speak—“

[SIMILARITY]

The concept forced itself way into my mind, an infinite amount of nuance fit into a single burst. This statement hadn’t been all that complex, though— he’d basically just said “like this”.

Showoff.

“To begin, you must discard the traditional idea that your power relies on the graces of your god,” the man said, his voice growing stronger. “For it does not. Every disciple has a piece of their god inside them, no matter how small, and it is this piece that you will harness in this process.

“Communication, like many other ideas, is but a matter of perspective. Take a man from Tryoria and speak a sentence to him. To the man, your words mean nothing. Less than nothing. They are simply meaningless sounds travelling across the void. Take a man from this side of the Great Ocean, however, and your sentence has meaning.

“It is the same way with this. Your oath already communicates with the godhead inside you. It is simply that you do not understand it. You do not perceive it. Once you begin to see it, you are already halfway on the way to speaking with it.”

That was a lot to take in. There were god-fragments inside us? How were we not just like the primordials, then? We could speak as those fragments? Magic was communication, viewed from different sides? I didn’t know how much of his explanation to accept as fact.

“And how do I perceive it?” I asked.

“It is not a simple task. You must ignore the framework of spells that you have learned to begin,” the man said, “And then you must focus upon your oath, your magic. Day in and day out, sustain your magic and examine its properties. Feel for yourself how your oath seeks to weave the fabric of reality into a different being altogether.”

Meditation, basically. I was a little dubious on that, but it probably wouldn’t hurt me.

“And how long will this take?”

“It took me twenty-one years to discover,” Nishi said frankly. “And two weeks to master it afterwards.”

Two weeks. That was actually… a disappointingly short amount of time to literally gain the power of divine speech. Given the fact that this man apparently had the power to go toe-to-toe with a primordial, I could assume it would take me quite a bit longer. Still, it wasn't the answer of years or decades that I'd been expecting.

Unfortunately, at the moment, there was something a little more pressing on my mind. I didn't have weeks right now.

“There’s a battle still waiting for me,” I said. “Take me out of here, and I’ll eventually verify whether your lesson is true or not for myself.”

“Very well,” my fellow Inome oathholder said. “I will find you again when you master it.”

“And how will you do that?” I asked. “Surely you’re not that close to me.”

“I am carving out a path to you,” he said. “I will meet you in the flesh, not too long from now.”

“But in the meantime? If I figure this out before you arrive at my location?” I didn’t bother asking how he would find me. If he was powerful enough to hijack primordials, searching for me wouldn’t even register as an issue.

“I’ll know,” he said. “As will the murderer-god. When it brings you here again—and it will—I will be here waiting.”

That… I would believe it when I saw it, but it didn’t sound all that unbelievable anymore.

“So you’ll take me out now?”

“You’re already on your way.”

I could feel it, a tugging in the core of my being, urging me out of here and back to our reality.

“Until we meet again, then,” I said, making a small wave.

“Until we meet again,” he replied, and while I still couldn’t see the details of his face, I got the impression that he was smiling.