Clara had thought she’d known the risks of this going in. She’d been one of Aedi’s Chosen all her life, yes, her bond strengthened ever since that fateful morning decades ago when the god had reached out while she’d been nothing more than a child assembling a toy. It wasn’t much of a stretch to say that Clara had spent the better part of her entire life training for this moment.

And yet somehow she still didn’t feel ready.

She shook her head, her ceremonial braids brushing against each of her robed shoulders as she did so.

This is an honor, she reminded herself. The Church has allowed you and Aedi to become one.

The dais she stood on left her feeling too exposed, she had to admit. Twenty-five years as one of the Church’s foremost enforcers had taught her the value of having a wall at her back, and even though she was amongst friends and allies, it still felt a little wrong.

Maybe part of that was because of the area they were doing it in. Clara would’ve preferred a proper cathedral to hold the ritual in. Dakheng was host to some of the Church’s greatest works, and Clara had made no secret of the fact that she was a massive fan of the way the grace of the gods had been manifested in them.

Oh well. It couldn’t be helped. The nobility had started collapsing in on itself, those ravenous dogs, and Clara had been one of many assenting voices when the Church had chosen to execute its plans early.

The nobility had always been doomed to fail. Whether that was now or in another ten years, Clara and everyone else who hadn’t had their head too far up their ass to understand had known this to be true.

It was a disgusting institution, one that traded the lives of thousands of commoners to better one of their own’s.

The Church would be better. It would replace them, and it would do things over again. It would set Tayan right. The heresy of the oaths the nobles held could be erased and the world purified.

Still, Clara had to admit that there had been some variables they hadn’t counted on. They’d stolen away the oathholders that she and a select group of others had identified as threats to the rightful replacement of the Crown by the Church, but there must have been one or two that had slipped through the cracks.

They hadn’t expected the monster of a girl who’d come and ruined their ritual. Clara didn’t know which noble House that bitch had belonged to, but she swore to herself that she would find the first and tear it down.

Something inside her shivered at that.

It is rather chilly out, she reasoned, but she couldn’t think her way out of the little part of her that had been sent into a terror when that woman had swooped through the place and turned it into cursed ground that carried a dead god’s scent within it.

Clara took a deep breath in and exhaled long and slow.

It didn’t matter. The girl wouldn’t be able to stand up to her when Clara had become more.

She looked around the cavern, taking in the remaining forces that the Church had. They’d lost a fair few over the course of that fight, but enough had remained to withdraw even further underground to prepare for this. It had been a long night preparing to initiate the ritual again, but they had managed it and now it was almost complete.

They’d lost the element of surprise, true, and the threats that they’d captured had been turned loose, but it didn’t matter.

The adventurers called the form she’d achieve primordial. As the chanting of the Chosen around her reached a peak, Clara thought on the meaning of that word.

Primordial mean ‘existing from the beginning’ or ‘progenitor,’ she knew, and she supposed that the definition worked.

It was incomplete, though. The word didn’t encapsulate enough of what she was to become, didn’t paint a picture of the beauty of the fusion between woman and god.

“Clara!” one of the Chosen shouted. Not one she recognized. “Are you ready?”

“Yes,” she replied evenly. “Finish it.”

At once, the chanting resumed, magic flowing into and around her to awaken that which she had always held.

It was a ritual that the Church had held for decades, a secret found shortly after the continental war. Generation after generation had passed without it ever seeing use, and now she would be its first user.

Its progenitor, in a way.

Primordial.

That name still felt wrong to her, she mused. She could feel the threads of divinity expanding into her, drawing out the potential within and deepening her connection to the god.

A critical beat passed, and that potential became reality, forcing the manifestation of a fragment of coal-black substance not larger than the tip of her pinky finger into reality.

Clara didn’t hesitate, grabbing onto the chunk of Aedi’s flesh made material, and divine energy surged into her.

Demigod, she thought, and Clara, protector of the Church, reached out and became more than human.

Ashton had not been having the best few months. It’d started when an otherwise routine battle with a primordial had suddenly received an unexplained powerup and made mincemeat of his team, and it had somehow only gotten worse from there.

As much as he regretted the loss of his team, their roles had ultimately been replacable. Though it had been a hassle for him and Aster to comb the lands for a suitable set of adventurers, it hadn’t been terribly difficult.

What was difficult was knowing what they were gathering these people up for. Ashton had long ago made peace with the fact that many adventurers were doomed to an early grave, and he’d made the conscious decision to accept that and continue anyway. He was sure that many of those that he now commanded had made the same decision, but still…

He was supposed to have died a decade ago, and yet he lived and lived and lived while everyone around him perished save for Aster, the only other constant in his life.

At some point, he’d grown numb to the loss of others, but it still stung just a little when the nobles came around to ensure that their investments were still paying off.

Any adventurer that survived longer than a decade in this profession had learned of it. If they hadn’t, they were either dead or actively trying not to learn, which he supposed he could respect.

For Ashton, it’d been eight years in when the Crown had stepped in to inform him and his blue knight Aster that they were to become the leader of one of the foremost adventuring teams and work directly under the Crown Prince himself. It’d seemed like an honor at first, to have their exploits written about in every newspaper across the land, to have their stories immortalized in half the copper store novels, but as his team fought and died and fought and died, he and the blue knight had grown to realize their true purpose.

Their party was amongst the strongest in the land, and that was no coincidence. Every time they lost another adventurer, another powerful oathholder who might prove to be a credible threat to the Crown one day was slotted right in.

This was no honor. It was a holding cell, the lid on the pot barely preventing it from boiling over.

And what could they do about it? Both he and Aster could do all they could to protect those who adventured with them, but the result was always the same. What more could they attempt? Fight the Crown? They were but two, and the circumstances of their group meant that the Crown would know that they were attacking before they did.

Ashton shook his head. He had to focus on the current situation. Moping about his circumstances wasn’t going to help anyone.

That brought him back to the damnable present.

“This fucking war’s been a long time coming,” he muttered, stepping over the charred corpse of someone that might’ve been a Church priest or one of those damned nobles or even a poor innocent dragged into the crossfire of two godsdamned terrible organizations.

“That is indeed true,” Aster said.

He turned to look at them, their trademark blue armor glinting in the morning light even after it had been dirtied by the blood of a dozen traitors to the Crown and the debris of the building they’d collapsed on themselves.

Even with their face hidden behind their helm, Ashton couldn’t help but smile.

My light.

“We need to get moving,” Cal said, the Igni oathholder gesturing towards a geyser of dark magic rising in the distance. “House Alzaq claims they’ve just finished up with something.”

“Are you going to be okay?” Aster asked. “Your healing is fresh.”

“I’ll be fine,” Cal replied, gritting his teeth. “Let’s go.”

The boy was barely in his twenties, Ashton knew. He couldn’t help but feel a tinge of sorrow. The other two that Cal had come in with were nothing more than cooling bodies now, victims of a horde of rampaging Altered unleashed by the Church.

Cal might not be long for this world either.

“Get close to me,” Ashton ordered.

Aster was already next to him, an arm laid across his shoulders. “I’m ready, love.”

Cal was more hesitant, but he made contact with Ashton’s outstretched arm eventually.

Ashton closed his eyes, decades of practice and training flowing through his body as he initiated contact with his god.

Move me, he demanded, and Caël listened.

When he opened his eyes, they were underground, standing in the center of a dimly lit room.

“Where are we?” Cal asked. “Did you miss?”

“This wasn’t the place we agreed upon,” Aster said, worry tinging their voice. They looked at Ashton. “You do not miss.”

“I don’t,” Ashton agreed. “Cal. Listen to me. You need to run. Leave this city. Leave adventuring, perhaps.”

“What?”

“Listen to me,” Ashton begged, and then he sent the boy away.

“That was stupid of you,” a new voice said.

“Perhaps,” Ashton agreed. “But he heard nothing. You must not do anything to him.”

“We are merciful,” the noble agreed amiably. “He will be left alone.”

Good.

“Our deal holds true, then?” Ashton asked. If it didn’t, he… he didn’t know what he would do. He could run, but they would follow, and the Tayan army’s best Caël oaths were significantly more experienced than he was.

“Of course it does,” the noble said. “Now hurry. We haven’t much time.”

As if to make the noble’s point for him, the building above them shook. The ceiling held, but the impact of magic was unmistakable.

“Now or never, Crown dog,” the noble ordered.

“Ashton, what does he mean?” Aster asked, worried. “There weren’t any orders—“

“None for you, my heart,” he said. “Come. I’ll explain, and then we must part ways.”

“Wh—“

Ashton moved once more, bringing the three of them down nearly half a kilometer.

When he opened his eyes again, they were in a small cavern barely large enough to give the three of them room to walk.

Underneath them, Ashton felt power. True power like he’d never seen before, and in the face of it his own oath felt like a drop in the bucket compared to the ocean rumbling under his feet.

“Your target is beneath us,” the noble said unnecessarily. “When you send us away, you will have five seconds to reach it before our defenses activate.”

“Ashton, what’s happening?” Aster repeated.

Instead of answering immediately, he transported himself to them and kissed the love of his life, removing their helm in a single motion.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “but this is for the best.”

“What is this?” Aster asked, breathless.

“You’ll be free,” Ashton said. “You can take the next group of adventurers and take them on a path that won’t lead them to their deaths. See the world like we always wanted to.”

“That’s wonderful,” Aster said. “But why do you say you? Why not us?”

“This is the price I paid for your future,” Ashton said. “One last adventure for them. It was always going to end like this.”

And with that, they realized.

“No,” Aster said, shaking their head. “No. Not like this.”

“It has to be this way,” Ashton said. “Please. Live well for me.”

Aster didn’t cry. They were stronger than that.

“Then this is goodbye,” they said. “I know you well enough to see there’s no way I’m pushing you on this.”

“There isn’t,” Ashton said. “I love you.”

“I’ll never forgive you for this. I love you.”

Before the noble could interfere with their moment, Ashton sent him out and away, placing him in the agreed upon safe house.

“Five seconds,” he whispered.

“I’ll miss you.” Aster was strong, far stronger than he would’ve been. They’d restored themselves to calmness already, the brightness in their eyes the only sign of any distress. “A lot.”

“Goodbye, my heart.”

“Farewell, my love.”

With that, Ashton hugged his blue knight one last time and sent them away to the same spot.

A moment passed, and then he transported himself into the ground.

The physical manifestation of his god melded into him, and then the man who once was Ashton was everything and everywhere.

In one instance, Clara was. In the next, she… still was, but she was different.

She looked around the room, observed the fleshy bags of water surrounding her. Watched the beads of perspiration trail down their thin, leathery surface.

Her eyes settled on the dyed-purple fabris of one she knew to be the head priest. The dye had been made poorly, she saw, its components cheap and pulpy.

“We were right,” he said, gesturing towards her.

We?

The Church. Right.

[ORDER]

Clara winced, returning to herself. She’d gained the power of a god, and that came with its costs. They’d known about this. Prepared for it.

And yet she still couldn’t stop herself from thinking about how the hard skeletons of the flesh-machines around her could be used to construct instruments of wonder, of horror, of order.

“Remember your instructions,” the priest said. What was his name again? “We offer this sacrifice to you, ascended one. Take him and destroy the Crown.”

A fleshbag was presented to her, conveniently removed of any disorderly fabrics that might interfere with what she needed from it.

It opened its mouth and produced sounds that resonated through the cavern, an organ inside it vibrating to make noise.

Interesting, Clara thought.

[DESIRE]

She disassembled him, and she felt a single pinprick in her mind go dark. Around her, more flesh produced more noise, but she refrained herself from acting on her instincts and taking them apart too.

These are Church members, she reminded herself. My friends.

But there were more important things to manage. The parts she’d just acquired were practically waiting for her to use.

The vast majority of it was, of course, water. Water drenched in minerals, but water nonetheless.

With a flick of her fingers, she separated mineral and living tissue from water. They had their own separate uses, and they would serve their purposes through their base forms, not through the shoddy construction they’d been forced into.

[APPROVAL]

The parts swirled around her, and from them she created a machine. A long, hard spine could provide the base structure for it. Water and raw magic for its fuel. Perceptory organs for sight and sound would help it steer itself with the help of a little of her power.

This man had once held an oath himself. One of plague. Voci’s domain.

That had its uses. She borrowed from it, coloring her own magic with the concept of replication, and the parts increased in quantity.

Spine to tail to spine to skull, fused together with tendons and muscles, and it was ready.

Around her, the noises were reaching a fever pitch, and Clara was half tempted to strip the sound itself out of the air, but once again she refrained.

This would serve.

[DESIRE], her mind called again, but she had places to be.

She’d promised to destroy the Crown.

Clara activated one portion of the machine, pushing the pulsing red mass of the filtered blood-material into it, and then she rose, rocketing through earth faster than some of the Caël oaths could manage to move through the air.

As she rose, she gathered more material, absorbing the ground aroudn her. Sand, silt, clay, organic matter of all kinds, coal, raw iron, and so much more.

Perfection.

It took her little time to rise to the surface and even less to make her way to her target.

As she surfaced, more packages of flesh and water and bone came to her, and some of them started taking shots at her, weapons and spells alike.

Nobles.

She froze their effects midair and took them apart before disassembling their owners as well. The magic components would prove useful.

As she sped towards the royal castle, she built. Layer upon layer, machine upon machine, she built. Clara tore up the ground itself, took buildings with her, and through it all she gained material and created.

She needed more. She surrounded herself with toys and weapons and buildings and beauties and horrors and she still needed more and so Clara took herself apart, adding the materials and magic within her own body to the mass that she was.

When she made it to her target, there were dozens of meters of layers of bone and water and metal and flesh and all kinds of her precious machines encasing the core of what had once been a human.

And Clara still needed more.

As she started to tear the beings and buildings apart to fuel more of her growth, however, she felt a crushing presence besides her.

[FAMILIARITY]

She wasn’t alone.

Ashton knew there was something wrong from the moment he made contact with the fist-sized clump of godly flesh.

Well, he’d known there was something wrong for a while. What kind of fucking noble just asked for someone to become a godsdamned primordial? That wasn’t just a death sentence, it was a death sentence that got a bunch of other people killed.

Still, he hadn’t been quite prepared for the weight.

His body didn’t weigh anything anymore. In fact, he wasn’t sure he actually had a body.

But he certainly did have a mind, and the god weighed down on that hard. He was experienced enough with the effects of divinity on the mind—hell, one of his party members had succumbed to another one of these artifacts and become a primordial once, and hadn’t that been something—so he knew enough to realize that his thoughts were being pushed in a different direction by the god riding him.

And yet.

[FREEDOM], it demanded, and he found himself agreeing with it.

Caël was a god of movement and so he moved. He’d been able to tap into its power from time to time beforehand, but now he was movement himself. In one instant, he was inside the dirt underground. In the next, he was there and in the royal castle and at his home and watching over Aster and then he was flying and he was sprinting and he was moving and he was everywhere and he wasn’t just a human anymore.

When he slowed—never stopping, he wouldn’t ever stop again—his body was something more and less than human, strips of himself torn away and replaced with pure divinity. His eyes were gone, but that was fine because he didn’t need them to see and quite possibly never did.

Blood covered him, the bodies of a Church group he’d moved through turning to mist in the face of his speed, and he moved that too, forcing the liquid off the body that was and wasn’t his fast enough that it ripped holes in the ground where it landed.

He had a target in mind. Couldn’t forget that.

Forgive me, Aster, he thought, and his limbs occupied eight different locations throughout the city, tearing down enemies where they stood.

A moment later, he was slowing again, enough that he could almost float in place, his speed expanding his body and divinity so that he took up far more space than a human body should.

There was a problem.

There were others.

“Hello,” Lily Syashan said. “Shall we?”