“When I was a child…” Swinging his legs off the stone table, Christoph sat up against the cold bricks of the cell wall with a sigh. “When I was a child, my mother was everything to me. Kind, caring, gentle. She played with me, she looked after me, she kept me safe. The dolls all listened to her, and Daniel did too. She was an artist, just like my father was. Well, I didn’t know him at all but I remember thinking there was no way he could ever have been as good as her.”

Sitting up beside him, Emilia squeezed his leg in silent support. This wasn’t the time for her to be playing around. Christoph needed her.

“I grew quickly,” Christoph continued. “Too quickly, and still not fast enough. With each month, I grew as if a year had passed. When winter came I could run and speak, if only a little. I learned about the fight that Dan and my mother were a part of, the Prayer Game that Liam and Ginger fought through. I knew my father was someone to be feared, and that there were much worse out there, lurking just outside the lab. Mother would talk about one of the others in particular, wondering if ‘he’ would be there.”

“You lived in fear.” Tightening her grip on his thigh, the beast-woman sidled closer still, leaning on his shoulder with a look of understanding.

“No,” Christoph replied with a shake of his head. “I was too young to care about that. I played with the toys my mother made for me and listened to Dan’s stories until she finished her work every day. I was only half a year old when they finally attacked the laboratory.”

“Your father?” Emilia asked.

“Yeah, my father.” Nodding his head, Christoph shook it soon after. “He wasn’t alone, though. The Prayer Game… that was what they called it afterward, Progress’ little power struggle with the other gods. Sixteen people, paired up nice and neat and given a ‘gift’ by Progress or another god. At the end, eight would be left, and the survivors would determine the power that their god wielded over humanity. As a bonus, they would be granted the gifts of their dead rival – I think it was an incentive of sorts. To begin with, some people formed alliances in order to resist the game. Then, they grouped together to finish it.”

“There are other gods?” Emilia blinked at Christoph’s words, and he spared a wry smile at her look of anguished awe. Even learning about the many technologies of Earth couldn’t compare to the realization that your world was not alone in its all-powerful deities.

“Eight more,” Christoph said, leaning back to rest his head against the stones. “They stood against Progress alone, a pantheon still divided even then. You need to understand, the Prayer Game was not designed to force the champions together by which god had appeared to them. Progress’ champions weren’t a team, and neither were the champions of the other eight. Anything was possible as long as they didn’t try to ally with their designated rival, and even that rule wasn’t always set in stone for some. When they came for us, I thought they had come together because they were afraid of her, like villains rising up to challenge a hero in the stories. That wasn’t even close to being why.”

“Did she survive?” The cat-girl seemed timid in the low light of the dwarvish prison, and her ears fluttered slightly as she spoke. The trembling of her voice made Christoph wonder if she was afraid to ask her questions, but he dismissed the thought as quickly as it came. Emilia’s worries didn’t usually past the boundaries of her bedspread most times.

“No,” Christoph replied. “She pushed me into a room with her dolls, and went out to die alone. ‘He’ had already killed Dan, and it was up to her to protect the rest of us herself. More than the love of a parent, I think she really thought I was someone worth sacrificing everything to protect.”

“She loved you-”

“She worshiped me,” Christoph said. “I was her new god, her perfect creation. Designed in a laboratory, born of a virgin surrogate. She murdered and mutilated and raped me into existence, and then she set out on making me a perfect wife, another angel to match her first. Over a hundred women died for her newest form of ‘art’, and my father suffered through a hell worse than anything I could ever hope to imagine, even after all of this. It’s no wonder they all came after her in the end.”

Emilia shrunk back at Christoph’s words, and he stiffened as he realized he had almost been shouting. He was letting his anger bleed into his words, and she had never seen him like this before, not even when he snapped at Lucius in Manitas City. Rubbing the tension from his cheeks, he forced another wry smile and pulled his partner into an embrace. Several long moments passed before he could build up the energy to continue his story.

“After the attack,” he said, “I was locked in the laboratory alone… Think of it like a necromancer’s lair. I lived out my life surrounded by the corpses of my mother’s victims, looking out at the world above. Progress won the game, of course. Most of it, anyway. On my eighteenth birthday, I inherited control of the lab and left to find my father. The world might not have been everything my mother had said it was, but I still wanted to be there. I still had to get revenge for her. I wanted to get out of that god-damned laboratory.”

“The world outside…” Christoph ‘s voice trailed off. “It’s as if I’ve lived in threeseparate worlds, not just two. The people, the places! I’d spent eighteen years learning about it, but now I was living it! I spent some time seeing the world, and the rest of it following leads I’d dug up in the lab. There were more incidents with the gods when they revealed themselves, but I didn’t care about those. I just wanted to know where the survivors had gone, Progress be damned.”

“How did he become so strong?” Emilia asked, leaning over to rest her head against his chest. “He isn’t like the World Serpent, is he?”

“Not at all,” Christoph said. “He’s the youngest of them all, not the oldest. As for his strength… in our world, the gods were long since forgotten. Religions were many and varied, and dying out with every year. Progress, though… technology is his domain, and humanity worshiped at his feet with every move. We might not have known it, but we were more fanatical than any church could have ever been.”

“And Lucius wants to bring him here?” Narrowing her eyes, Emilia tilted her head to the side. “How does he expect to survive in this world then? What will happen to the other one?”

“Who knows?” Christoph replied. “But I wouldn’t count on the lack of technology to keep him away. Lucius is here, and from what I can tell the progression of the human race is sitting somewhere near the top of that kid’s list of priorities.”

…

“My Lord!” Robert kneeled before the dwarven king’s golden throne, bowing his head to the stones below. “The prisoner consumed the flesh of the crystal beasts! I would advise against-”

“I would not advise if I were you,” King Zachariah replied. “You did well to slay the unicorn and deliver me it’s horn, but remember that it was your outbursts which resulted in your transferral to the border outposts, Robert. Groveling along with your words only make them further beneath me.”

“Of course,” Robert said, lowering his shoulders further toward the floor. “My men shall retrieve the prisoner at once.”

“No need,” Zachariah replied, waving his hand in dismissal. “I’ve sent my own. He will be here soon enough. Now, Edward, do you have anything to add to Robert’s report?”

“The beast-woman, my lord.” Lowering his head, Edward remained standing as he spoke. Even so, the king sat high above, light shining off the golden steps to the jewel-studded throne of the dwarves. “She’s Emilia of the Greater Paw, sister to Lord Leila.”

“The marauder?” Narrowing his eyes, the dwarven king shrugged with another wave of his hand. His armor rattled as he moved, and the assembled nobles were showered in a myriad of rainbow lights as the sunlight reflected from the precious stones set upon the plate. “No matter, I had no plans to harm either of our guests today.”

“Guests?” The two dwarven warriors spoke as one, earning the ire of their king for a moment before the doors were pulled open once more.

“Ah,” King Zachariah said with a grin. “Christoph Smith, Emilia of the Greater Paw. You know, I just lost a wager because of the two of you.”

…

A wager? Covering his face, Christoph blinked as his eyes adjusted to the sunlit room. Even then, he was forced to blink again in surprise. The room was… gold and jewels? A central walkway led to the rising stairs and the throne beyond. To the sides, twin chasms separated the King from the nobles’ galleries on the sides. Vast pillars stretched the ceiling high above, and Christoph nearly staggered as he realized that the glass was in fact not glass at all. It was crystal, finely cut and polished like the most sublime of stained glass.

“Is everything in the Chains made of gold?” Christoph spoke before he could catch himself, and the nobles stiffened for a moment before the king’s chuckling rang out.

“Not quite, but gold is everything in the Chains,” Zachariah replied, gesturing for them to be brought further forwards. “But that wasn’t what we were talking about here.”

“I apologize,” Christoph said, lowering his head as he approached the base of the stairs. Noting even Emilia’s deferential pose, he made sure to bow down further still. “I’m afraid I don’t know anything about any bets you might have made.”

“It’s nothing worth worrying about,” the dwarven king replied with a shake of his head. “You may raise your heads. The wager I spoke of was indeed merely a meaningless bet. Charter was sure that the unicorn would be slain within the week, and it seems that his words rang true today.”

“You wager with your god?” Christoph asked. How had he ever thought for a moment that Liam’s knowledge would have contained everything he’d need to know about this world? Surprises lay in every corner of this place, and he shuddered to think of what his travels would have been like without the basic knowledge he had gained.

“Aye,” Zachariah replied. “Wagers bring us closer to god.”

“He means it makes them richer,” Emilia said, tapping softly at her companion’s arm. “Wealth is power in the Chains.”

“That’s right!” Zachariah’s laugh echoed across the chamber, silencing the cries of the offended nobles before they could begin. “Dwarves crave gold as the beast-people crave… more primal things. Isn’t that so, my little miss marauder?”

“I no longer hold that position,” Emilia replied, ignoring the dwarven king’s jab. “I have left the protection of the Greater Paw and even Bastias themselves.”

“A willing exile?” Zachariah’s eyes widened for a moment, quickly flicking over to the human beside the beast-woman. “You must be quite the stallion, to have seduced her away from the pleasures of her clan, boy.”

“Is that so?” Chuckling in return, Christoph shook his head at how his partner’s expression had hardened at the monarch’s words. As always, she was loath to discuss the tendencies of her race with someone from the outside. “I do have to say that between gold and… more primal things, I’m afraid I’m unable to decide which I prefer.”

“So you do wish for wealth then boy?” Cocking his head to the side, King Zachariah drummed his ring-laden fingers on the arm of his golden throne. “Are you here for the hoards, then?”

“Hoards?” Christoph tilted his head in mimicry of the dwarven king. “Do you mean the treasures that the dragons hold?”

“Aye,” Zachariah replied. “Cocky adventurers like yourself like to venture up the Chain and die screaming in the midst of the wyrm holds. Some of them manage to sneak off with a piece or two every now and then but I wouldn’t fancy your odds, laddie.”

“What a coincidence,” Christoph replied. “I was just about to ask for my odds, actually.”

“Do you intend to make a wager?” Leaning forward in his throne, the dwarven king grinned widely down towards the pair. “An interesting human indeed. How much of it do you think you can make off with then? I’ll give you good terms for the bet.”

“You misunderstand me,” Christoph said with a grin of his own. “Making off with? I don’t intend to raid the caves, and I’m certainly no thief. I’d wager instead that I could take down the dragons themselves.”

“What foolishness.”

The regal tone of voice almost confused Christoph into thinking that the words were uttered by the king himself, but Emilia recognized the speaker almost immediately. Spinning around, the cat-girl zeroed in on the source of the comment, her one good ear swiveling around towards a figure seated in the noble’s gallery on the left.

“Hello Leila,” Emilia said with a curt nod. Turning back towards her lover, she gave him another nudge before gesturing up to where her sister was sitting among the dwarves, arms folded tightly beneath her bosom. “See, I told you she might be here, didn’t I?”