There were eleven of them, I counted. Just yesterday, that might’ve been too much for me. With the power that they wielded, built through decades of practice and prayer, I would’ve been no match for even two or three of them, let alone nearly a dozen.

“Move the nobles if you’d like them to live,” I said. “Or let them die. Either works for me.”

“I’ll evacuate them,” Jasmine said. “Alex, Lukas, with me?”

“On it,” they said as one.

Fleur did not deign to join them, instead watching as I continued drawing from the endless well of power that was my broken god.

Nobles. Well, in this case, one particular noble. Even the others from her House had decided to work with Jasmine, Alex, and Lukas. It was just Fleur who wasn’t doing anything. Were the nobles in this area enemies or something?

“Interesting,” she said. “Quite interesting indeed.”

I didn’t bother warning her to get out of the way. She seemed confident enough that she’d be able to survive the battlefield. If that confidence was misplaced, that was her issue, not mine.

“Hey, assholes!” I shouted. It was kind of unnecessary—the entrance I’d made had already attracted the attention of the enemy, what with the whole “co-opting a god’s power” thing—but it felt like the right thing to do nonetheless.

“You are Chosen!” One of them shouted back. “None other would be able to accomplish such a feat.”

“I’m not,” I replied, not bothering to raise my voice. “I am not Chosen.”

They didn’t hear that. Whatever.

“The important part,” I called out, “is that I’m the one who’s going to kill you. Now, you can take this opportunity to get the fuck out of here, or you can fight. Which will it be?”

“Your talents are wasted on the nobility,” one of them snarled.

“Not as wasted as they would be with you,” I spat. “At least the nobles have a few people I like.”

Not that I planned on letting the nobility survive much longer in its current state anyway.

“Very well, then.” Not a single one of the eleven oathholders arrayed against me had bothere to leave.

“I thought so.” My lips curled into a hard smile. “Have it this way.”

I did a brief check of my surroundings, using my newfound oath-sense to determine where my friends were. Jasmine, Alex, and Lukas were all out of my range, other nobles with them.

Good. The people I actually cared about weren’t here anymore. As to the rest…

Fleur was still standing behind me. I couldn’t have cared less about whether she lived or died, but there was a vague thought poking through the haze of indifference, telling me that Jasmine just might be a little mad at me if I accidentally offed her sibling no matter how separated their childhoods might’ve been.

Fine. I’d put in the extra effort to avoid actively hurting her. Nothing else.

I moved forward, and the Church oathholders blurred, dashing at me in a violent flurry.

A group effect, likely one cast by a single Caël oath. Time slowed down as I focused in on myself, let myself fall partway into the realm of the forgotten god, and I reached out with hands that were not my own.

For a second, I was viewing the scene from above, watching a sea of darkness explode out from my body, and then I saw.

“Found you,” I muttered. My own voice was distant, murky like I was hearing it through a wall of water.

The Caël oath who’d cast the effect was in the center of the group. Their coordination was good—they’d set up a formation around the man to prevent him from being incidentally hurt while their entire group blitzed me with spells and blades—but it wasn’t good enough.

The effect was powerful. To anyone on the outside—to me yesterday, even—they would’ve crossed the distance between them and me within the span of a single eyeblink. To the me of now, though, to the me that had made my way into the realm of a god that was as broken as me, I watched from another plane of reality as they crawled towards me inch by inch.

There were so many colors, sky blue and blood red and night black and colors that I couldn’t even quanitfy with my limited human eyes, and despite the sensory overload, everything made sense.

One of those connections was an oathholders, and it tasted of speed, of movement, of the skies.

Caël, ruler of the skies. A chill ran up my spine, a hatred that was familiar and yet utterly alien blossoming in my gut.

I reached out for that hateful connection, the movement of my hand in baseline reality mirrored by the eldritch grasp of something much larger than my body, and I devoured it, feeding the oath to ruin.

It felt good. Better than it should have. It was a triumph, but it was the triumph of someone—something—that was not Lily Syashan.

Except it was. I was and wasn’t, the distance from the world bringing me closer to something that shouldn’t have been recognizable and yet appeared to me as nothing less than a part of myself.

The threads of thought coursed through me, triumph and hatred and love and hate and a hundred thousand conflicting emotions that fit together like pieces in a puzzle blazing through my mind in a moment, and one crystalline concept remained at the end of it.

I am everything I need to be.

When I opened my eyes, I was in two locations. I’d done this once before and it had nearly split my mind apart, but this was different. It was the same situation, but I felt more equipped to handle it. There was still a load on me, yes, but it was manageable. I couldn’t understand how I’d been so weak as to fall apart under the pressure the last time I’d done this—after all, wasn’t this normal?

As I watched, my mind half in reality and half in my domain, the group of Church oathholders fell apart, their speed catching up to them as the spell that the Caël oathholder had cast dissipated into nothingness.

“I warned you,” I said, and I reached out again.

How had I ever had issues with reaching for the power I needed? There was so much of it always available at my fingertips, and I’d just let it stagnate there.

When I cast, I substituted the domain for the fuel. I didn’t know what the name of the spell I cast was, but it would do the job.

Before the first oathholder could even hit the ground, darkness surged from me, an infinite reserve of my ruin flowing out from my body. The unfortunate soul in the front lost their balance and stumbled straight into the effect. They didn’t even have time to scream before I annihilated them.

I had to give them credit—they had some grasp on what they were doing. Even as the second and third members of their group died, the roiling darkness around me consuming them where they fell, the Church group reoriented themselves. Someone cast a spell that kept the rest of them on their feet, and another one used a shield to keep the oily blackness away from them.

It wasn’t going to be enough, but I could respect the effort.

“What the hell?”

A vague emotion that might have been irritation spiked through me, and I turned my attention to the one who’d spoken.

“Get out of here,” I said. “I’d rather not explain to Jasmine that I killed her sister.”

“You’re a monster,” the noble—Fleur, that was her name, right—breathed.

“Yep,” I agreed. “Now fuck off.”

She did. The Church took notice of her evacuating, one of their casters stepping out from behind cover to toss out a nasty spell that would’ve incinerated her, but I could feel the connection between the oath and the attack, see the colorful string of attachment, and I materialized part of my domain into reality. Not much—I still wasn’t powerful enough to do a full incursion here—but enough to turn the attack into disparate oath energy and then nothing.

“Stop that,” I said, pointing at the person who’d cast the spell.

A pattern was engraved in my mind, a spell that would allow me to project oath energy directly from the god, but was the pattern really what I needed for this?

I was more than they were.

[DIE], I intoned, and my domain rushed into the space that the Igni oathholder had stepped into to make my statement truth.

“Shouldn’t have gotten out of cover,” I chastised them, and then they were gone without a sound, the hungry darkness destroying even the sound of the spell that they cast with their last breath.

The darkness cleared, having not penetrated the shield, and then there was nothing there.

On some level, I felt the wrongness of the action. The Lily who’d grown to at least attempt nonlethality didn’t quite complain—she’d never quite come to value the lives of random enemies, after all—but her presence was enough to remind me of how far I’d come and how much of that I’d just lost.

That wasn’t important now though, was it? All that mattered was finishing this fight and then ensuring that Jasmine and I got through this hellscape of a situation intact.

There were definitely implications about my current state that should’ve bothered me, but the existence of the enemies arrayed in front of me were bothering me a fair bit more at the moment.

“Chosen!” one of them shouted, his voice magically amplified. “There is hope for you yet! Join us, and together we can—“

Insect.

The thought wasn’t one that I’d arrived at on my own, but I agreed with it nonetheless.

His buzzing irritated me, so I silenced him. A brief application of the domain of ruin was enough to separate him from his voice. I held off on separating him from his life, the spell that I could identify as a Prismatic Shield serving to protect them for the time being. I’d remove that when the time was right. There were still more things to learn about my power.

Another spell came at me, this time with a second one following it a moment behind—then a third, a fourth, and a fifth.

All from two oathholders, it seemed. The first spell came from one and the latter four spells from another, a hole opening in the shield spell to allow it through.

Casting the spell cost the first one their life. The opportunity they granted me with the hole in the shield lasted only a brief instant, fast enough for me to miss if I blinked, but I didn’t need my eyes open to see and I didn’t need more than that heartbeat to act.

We struck, an outstretched finger of my power slithering through the gap in the shield. In the brief moment before the spell fixed the gap, I found the one who’d cast the first spell and broke them, doing them the courtesy of ruining their brain and finishing them off quickly.

I could be that merciful, at least.

Five down.

Materializing that figment of my domain wasn’t free, it turned out. Nothing came without its costs. The time and energy it took to turn the idealization of ruin into magic that could be deployed in the real world took enough out of me to prevent a proper response to the spells flying my way. As it was, my perception was still fast enough, so I could take down some of them, but it wasn’t enough.

The four spells that had been cast after the first one were all the same spell, and they weren’t damaging ones. As I tore one of them apart, I took a brief examination of them with the senses that I should’ve always known I’d had.

Useless spells, but they accomplished their goal. If they’d hit me when I had none of the power I had today, it still only would’ve given me a mild dizzying effect. As I was now, I could’ve shrugged it off entirely, but they did have another, secondary effect.

Protecting the other spell. They encased the spell that the first oathholder had cast, the structure resembling a series of shells around the first, and it stopped me from instantly ruining the magic that might actually present a threat to me.

Combined with the cost of annihilating the caster, I couldn’t get through more than two of the spells before they smashed into me.

The first two, as predicted, were no more effective than a bucket of water poured into the desert. I barely even noticed the impact, reflexively drawing myself deeper into the domain to avoid its effects.

The last spell, though, I couldn’t dodge. Despite the increased reaction speed I’d attained through use of my domain, the time and resources I’d used up meant that my action economy was insufficient to break through the effect or push myself deeper into ruin.

It made contact with me, a multicolored effect that I hadn’t been able to recognize at first, but in the moment before it expended the divine power imbued into it, I knew it for who it was.

Hello, old friend.

Bahu, god of protection. With a start, I realized that that—the knowledge I’d carried for well over half of my entire life—was wrong. No, it wasn’t the god of protection—its domain was containment.

And it’s so obvious, too.

It had to be Inome. There was no other way I could be obtaining information like this, right?

Come to think of it, I’d felt a presence in the Clarsin primordial, something that clearly hadn’t been part of the primordial itself. Something that had facilitated my first proper meeting with Nishi.

Something divine.

I could ruminate more on that after I delt with this latest issue, though. I’d been wrapped up enough in my thoughts that I’d let nearly an entire second pass by before I started reacting.

I was enveloped, a clear, crystalline surface glimmering with all the colors of the rainbow pressing in on me from all sides. If I’d cared about the physical sensations that my vessel in reality had, I would’ve been quite irritated by the pressure that Bahu’s incarnation was applying on it.

This spell wasn’t one that I was familiar with—at my best guess, this was a Church innovation established for their Chosen—but my innate abilities let me make sense of the spell surrounding my body.

It was encasement. The magic had formed close on my body and hardened there. It was unbreakable through conventional means and nigh-impenetrable even with the ridiculous power outputs that many oathholders could manage.

At this point, though, was I really just an oathholder?

That was an interesting question.

[QUERY], I asked.

[AGREEMENT], something that was and wasn’t me replied.

Maybe I wasn’t a god, not yet, but I was enough.

I looked at the oathholders surrounding me, saw the magic trying to squeeze my body into a compromising position, and what I saw was beneath me.

[DESTRUCTION], I ordered, and the broken god executed my command.

Bit by bit, I started to bring my domain into reality. The spell that the Bahu oathholder had thrown his life away for was a piece of work, I’d give them that—even with a god’s strength on my side, activating any magic at all was a chore that I wouldn’t have been able to accomplish when I was only Lily.

“Prepare for breach!” someone shouted, barely concealing their fear.

We should help those in need. Jasmine’s voice lanced through me, a memory from the fight flashing in my mind’s eye. It was gone in a moment, but it left its mark, and I experienced a brief moment of whiplash as I made to send my assistance to the panicked adventurer before realizing that the voice had not come from an ally preparing for the imminent appearance of a primordial.

This time, I was the enemy.

Fuck me. I was going to have to have a long talk with Jasmine after this one, because at this point even I could tell something was wrong and she was the only one I could trust to understand me and—

My domain materialized, and the encasement spell broke.

“Hello there,” I mumbled, not bothering to check if they could hear me. “And goodbye.”

The prismatic shield they’d cast was still there, but it was far, far too late.

Ruin spread from my body, and it consumed all that stood in its path. The ground underneath me dissipated, but I had no need for it. After all, I had a domain that could affix my position. What did I care for such concepts like gravity?

The darkness flooded out from me, and I remembered only too late that I had allies in the area. A brief check revealed that Jasmine had gotten at least a half kilometer from me, and that was enough peace of mind for me to continue.

They realized that the shield wasn’t going to be enough too late. All six of the surviving Church oathholders held their position up until my ruin had expanded to fill the street from one side to the other, just far enough for it to make contact with their shield.

The prismatic shield was an incredible defensive spell. I knew from the history books that the strongest oathholder on what records had survived the continental war—one who’d hit an oathholder class in the triple digits—had still needed a fair few minutes to break through one of them.

My domain hit the shield, and for a brief moment I could feel the struggle of wills as a concert of oathholders fought the raw power of a god.

It was never going to be a contest.

We popped the shield like a soap bubble.

In the next instant, four oathholders died.

“Please!” one of the two surviving ones shouted. “Stop! I promise you—”

I paused the advent of the ruin to make eye contact with them, tilting my head. They shut up, and even from here I could see the fear on their face. To be honest, I didn’t care much if they lived or died, but—

But the love of my life had told me once that excess loss of life was something to be avoided. A tragedy.

“Go,” I said, withdrawing my domain. “Leave this city. Never interfere with us—never interfere here again.”

The one who’d spoken ran immediately, blubbering promises that I couldn’t make heads or tails of as they did.

The other one stood frozen to the ground, paralyzed with fear. Not a trace of the earlier stoicism. Having your entire group die in moments might do that to you.

“Who are you?” he managed to get out. “How can you not be Chosen?”

I sighed, returning myself to baseline reality and fully dematerializing Inome’s domain. A part of me felt missing now, but others felt more complete.

The godly arrogance that had coursed through me earlier wasn’t quite there anymore, but traces of it remained. Enough for me to deign to give an answer.

“I am not Chosen,” I said. “Stupid term, anyway. It’s not what I am, it’s what I do.”

“Then what—“

“I choose.”