Clarity.

Everything snapped into sharp relief. The tiny peaks dimpling the water underfoot, like mountain ranges in miniature. The sighing of the wind as it congested with the heavy aroma of saltwater. The splash of blood swirling off the knife as the water bathed it. The broken leaves of the palm trees swaying in the breeze. The undead armies grappling each oth—

I blinked. The what?

Pale apparitions floated across the water, the specters in various stages of corporeality and decay. Arms reaching, they moaned in tones that bordered exhaustion and ecstasy without being either and stumbled their way into whatever the Paeden horrors were called. They looked like derketo but were severely deformed, their arms, faces, and sides missing chunks of flesh. One was even missing half its skull, revealing glistening gray matter. Whether these absences came from their struggle against Thane’s ghosts or from undevelopment, I couldn’t tell, but the hideous creatures were issuing from under Nanshe’s dress like rats fleeing a sinking ship out the only porthole. They wailed like drowning banshees, mouths hanging open from dislocated jaws and missing ligaments.

Chills ran down my spine. Thane had never unearthed the dead in all his time since taking over from me. Raising an undead army was a risk, since it siphoned power from the summoning god. The derketo abominations, however, exuded a strange aura of life and death. While Nanshe looked like she was directly birthing the fountain of wretches, I sensed no fathering spirit singing in answer to the offspring. What I could feel made my toes curl.

Nanshe was injecting the fatherless spawn with souls stripped from her underworld, siring monsters that were neither dead nor alive, but animated with a bastard form of life. And she wasn’t holding back, either. As she clashed with Thane, flicking his scythe away with bursts of water, she poured her unbridled power into the spawning. The whole of her aura was on display, a baring of her soul that left me feeling embarrassed for how naked and utterly raw it felt. But that wasn’t the worst of it.

Gods never revealed all. Ever. Even when we fought each other, we always held something back. To reveal the extent of our powers was to expose ourselves to an inevitable doom. Without mystery, without the potential for infinity, we became bound creatures, and what could be defined could be limited, contained, and cast down. Only the most desperate or foolish gods unveiled themselves completely. And reckless gods were dangerous, because they had nothing left to lose.

Despite the gravity of the situation, I couldn’t help but breathe a sigh of relief. My mind was clear, now that I wasn’t bogged down by that frail, finite mortal form. I’d resumed my divine body which, to be fair, wasn’t in much better condition, but it wasn’t mired in the fog of hunger and sleep deprivation. I felt good, all the sluggishness from before evaporated. My mind was just catching up to the “why” I felt this way when someone yanked on the front of my robes.

“Can you fight?”

Ah, yes. The priestess who’d stabbed me. Her eyes searched mine as she pressed another dagger against my chest.

I laughed and slapped the dagger away. “That won’t work on me again. Not in this body, anyways.”

“It doesn’t need to.” She released me and stepped back. “Can you fight?”

I squinted at her. She didn’t look familiar, but I couldn’t help feeling like I should at least know her, with how forward she was being and how comfortable she seemed around me. “Azor—?”

“Don’t. Not here.” Eyes flashing, she assumed a fighter’s stance, the knife pointed at my chest. “My cover is still intact, and it needs to stay that way. Thane can explain later. For now—” her brow pinched as she frowned “—please, help him.”

So Azoria had embedded herself in the Paeden priesthood. Not unexpected from the Goddess of Wisdom, and I certainly understood the appeal of leaving her hidden. She could keep an eye on the enemy once this mess was sorted, maybe even take control of the priesthood if she hadn’t already. But the commoners must have seen us talking by now. I couldn’t just let her walk away unharmed if she were to keep her guise.

Well, let’s hope I still got it in me.

With a grunt, I lunged forward, grabbing her wrist and pulling her in towards me. I sidestepped inside her arm and brought my palm up to her forehead and sent a burst of power into her. She gasped and collapsed, letting the dagger splash into the water. I twisted her to the ground, careful to set her on her back so her avatar wouldn’t drown while unconscious.

My chest heaved from the sudden exertion, but my veins were aflame. It felt good to be back. I flexed my fingers, shivering as energy surged down my arms. Oh yeah. Really good.

Less good was the battling duo of gods. The armies of both sides had grown considerably, and while Thane had generations of fallen to call on, Nanshe needed to partially...er, “grow” hers. But she showed no signs of slowing down, her movements becoming more aggressive the longer she clashed with Thane.

I winced as he got in a good blow. His scythe cut through a wave and caught her behind the elbow, nearly taking her lower arm off. Dark ichor poured from the wound, staining her vortex like an ink plume. Thane reversed his scythe and came in for an overhand blow, but she ducked and speared him with a dozen jets of water. With Thane off balance, she surged forward and knocked him to the ground, drowning him under a column of water.

“Hey!” I sprinted across the plaza, putting as much power as I could muster into my muscles. “Fish face!”

“You.” She spun, her eyes alight.

I almost instinctively pulled up. Her voice had taken on an echo from how much divine energy she was leaking, and her aura returned in force. It was far less crushing, now that I had an immortal frame to bear it, but it nearly sucked my breath away. As I stumbled, I also noticed the severed ends of tentacles on the left side of her head. Thane must have gotten in another glancing blow, but she hadn’t even noticed. If she wasn’t giving any thought to regeneration, she had really lost control.

The air crackled as she raised her hands. “You have no idea what consequences your actions have.”

“Well, considering I’m getting a friend out of an unpleasant situation, I think I might.” I slid to a halt just out of arm’s reach. The derketo abominations continued to issue forth around me, but they ignored me to grapple with Thane’s apparitions.

As I squared off against Nanshe, I reinforced my fists with extra essence. I could go for my Sword, but with how she shrugged off several blows from Thane’s Scythe, I didn’t think she’d particularly care about it. Plus, hands on was the best way to tackle this problem. I could channel energy into her if we made prolonged contact, and I could simply pummel her into submission if need be. Thane was taking his sweet time getting out of that water, though, so I had to keep her talking while I waited for an opening to tackle her.

Droplets of ice formed in the air between us and then exploded as lightning arced among them. More sparks danced along her blue skin, which started cycling through bands of pale light and darkness. Her eyes locked onto mine as she hovered just a hair above the water.

“The barrier is gone.” Her voice had adopted a third echo and fallen in pitch, rumbling with a hint of thunder. “We didn’t think it would contain her, but it should have slowed her down enough for us to bind her once again. Should have.” She punctuated those last words with blasts of chunky ice water.

My crossed arms stung as I bore the brunt of the attack. “Right. Which is exactly why you slaughtered our priests and kidnapped and tried to execute one of our own.”

“Would you have an enemy at your back while you struggle against a monster?” The water beneath her feet became agitated, the waves choppy and undisturbed by the bastard merfolk splashing into them. It was unsettling, the dissonance that image created.

I shook my head and tried to focus. I could feel tendrils of her energy snaking through the water, seeking my footing. Shuffling my feet, I edged towards her weak side, the arm that was still leaking ichor.

“All right. Say I believe you.” Another step, a tremor of something beneath the flagstones. “You do realize that’s still an act of war, right? It was hard enough justifying counter moves to your reclaiming ancestral territory, but now…” I shrugged. “We have an open invitation.”

“As do we,” Nanshe snapped. “I didn’t just catch him—” she pointed at Thane, who’d begun thrashing under the surface, “—out for an afternoon stroll. And that priestess who’s working with you.” Her sudden laugh was unsettling and grated on my ears and nerves. “She must have killed our Seers. It’s the only way the barrier could have fallen.” She shook her head, a maniacal grin on her face. “I knew something was special about her, but I never would have guessed that.”

“Life’s full of surprises.” I tested the ground with my toes. Solid, no hints of her energy destabilizing it. I tensed. “Like this.”