"What became of Oudet?" Lu'Rorca asked.

Gíla sighed solemnly. "Milligan, unfortunately, elected to kill him."

"Put him out of his misery," Alden added. "We can't say that Crius would have continued the man's torment now that he was aware once more of who and what he was, but it was the best option at the time."

"How did he get the sword?" Conalath asked. "He needed the sword to kill God, right, and it seems they were willing to...let him? Why were they willing to let him?"

"Yes, he did need it," Gíla nodded. "And consider that by this time, they had suffered years of strife against Crius and the growing complexities of his purpose on this earth. Emotions were high...so, perhaps out of idiocy or exhaustion or something else that cannot be defined at the moment borne from those emotions, they gave it to him."

"What?" everyone around the campfire screamed. "Why?"

Another nod. "It's true. I have long, long questioned them about this. At first, I did so out of judgment toward the hypocrisy they displayed. But now, I question it out of simple curiosity. Though, truth be told, they would have lost it regardless."

"How did they give it to him?" Pinnacle inquired, leaning forward with abject curiosity at this unexpected turn of events. "When?"

"While the three had explored the underbelly of the cathedral, Crius had returned to Holmgan with a force unlike any other and met with them when they returned to the central hall. The horde had been called back by his od and awaited them, along with an increased number of Lambent Knights."

"Ah shit," Milligan cursed as they exited into the central hall, where a host of mad men and women awaited them. "This throws the plan off a little."

"I am surprised," said a voice from the crowd, equal parts benevolent and malicious. A swarm of hundreds quickly parted to allow the passage of their vaunted leader, who traipsed forward with confidence.

Eadward Crius was ever the enigmatic leader that Orlantha had long understood him to be, though there was something new about him. Something that made him greater than he was even in Veoris. He was taller than he was before, standing straighter with less need to rely on his cane, and his face was less wrinkled with more of a fatherly guise to it. He looked warm and comforting as much as he did cold and disquieting. His robes were freshly cleaned, the red dyes on the cloths and silks vibrant in the cathedral's golden candlelight. And his energy, so catastrophically emitted from his mere presence, was as oppressive as it was humane. It terrified Orlantha. It terrified Jira. And it terrified Milligan.

"You still live," he stated with a dramatic slowness to his voice, as if questioning how they could still be alive. "I am impressed and chagrined by this. I did not expect you to survive the journey back, yet we did not come upon your corpses on our own return. And now, here I find you, in the home of my faithful."

"Don't you mean God's faithful?" Milligan snapped.

Crius smiled small, the creases of his face only deepening a centimeter. Somehow, he looked younger for it. "No, child. Not His. Mine, and my kin's. You will learn in time what I mean by this."

Behind him, the slew of faithful either stood stock still with practiced reverence and discipline or crouched like rabid animals frothing at the mouth. Hundreds of them filled every possible space of the central hall, standing atop the corpses of their fallen, their attentions locked onto the trio that had emerged from beneath them. Two sides of the same coin that is the Overseer, Orlantha thought. A leader and a destroyer. Her eyes met the stone-cold gaze of a Lambent Knight armored more thickly than the rest, his stature tall like a Belanorian yet thick like a Dekunian. His eyes were the red of a smith's forge, lit to craft the most brutal of weapons. She could hear a whisper of a growl slither from his hidden lips, the rumble in his chest softly vibrating the air in front of her.

"Sorry, your 'Matriarch' already told me," Milligan informed him. "Overseer."

Crius' smile never left. "I see. Iondai was always one to breach the wall before the rest. Very well, there is no point in shrouding the truth from you anymore. I-"

"We understand your idiocy already, Bishop," Jira interrupted, her voice crackling to life with its true painful acoustics. "And we will have no part in it. Save us your lecture and either kill us or let us go."

Crius' smile widened almost like that of a grandfather who had drank one too many ales and had just been told the stupidest yet funniest joke had ever heard. "You are a card, Jira ne'Jiral of the Black Glass. A true testament to your people. Contradictory by nature, yet so easy to comprehend."

"How so, wise Overseer?" she asked with a biting venom in her tone. Orlantha only just noticed that her voice was not painful to hear anymore.

He began pacing the length of the three, looking at the silver knight with a studious glare. "Defiant to your authorities yet loyal to your friends, even if they are devoted to their own leaders. Unafraid of death yet running from it every single moment of your life. A swordswoman of unparalleled skill without the need for bastard origins or divine blessings or the interventions of my family-" his eyes fell on Orlantha, quizzical about her yet giving off the idea that he knew everything there was to know about her. "Yet falling to using it when the troubles became too hard to manage with the blade alone. Trustworthy to the end, yet by your very nature as untrustworthy as a frightened...bear. You will do well in the New Age, Jira ne'Jiral. I know it."

"I care not for your New Age, Bishop," she spat. "I will take no part in it."

"You will, in time," he corrected before turning his attention to Orlantha. "Just as I said that the sword you carry would be mine in time."

He approached her slowly like a snake approaching an unsuspecting mouse. She held herself still, preventing the shivers of fear from appearing across her body. Her hand clenched the hilt of the crystal blade tightly, ready to strike out at him or surrender it to him.

A new grin broke his studious countenance like a family member seeing their loved one after years of distance. "Orlantha Quills...the Chosen of Halkos. Already does my kin prepare for their roles, even in their sleep? Humorous, though not unexpected, that Halkos would be among the first."

"What?" Orlantha stuttered after a moment of silence. "What are you talking about?"

"Your survival in Veoris was more than just willpower and getting over a sickness, child," he informed her, his voice dropping to a cold hush. She felt the tremors of Milligan attempting to move to defend her as Crius drew closer, yet he found himself unable to even step an inch. " You are not that simple in mind. None of you are. It was, how do I say, divine providence. An act that was outside of my weaving, but I cannot be angered for it. It is as they wanted. As Eko wanted when I decided on a world that was to live under our guidance. But, you will learn, in time, what that means."

"Eko?" Jira asked, incredulous. "Who is that?"

"Do not engage the mad fuck," Milligan thundered. "Just take the damn sword and leave us be. Leave us out of your machinations. My father is dead...granted mercy you would not give him. We have no purpose here anymore. You won. Happy?"

Crius lowered his head and breathed shakily before moving in front of Milligan. "No, Milligan Barat. I am not happy. I regret, with all my being, how I had treated the man you called father. Had I known who I truly was, I would have simply killed him or let him go. I would not have done that. I would not have done that. I am sorry."

Milligan hesitated and shared an icy stare with Orlantha. "I don't care for your apologies," he said at last. "Just take the damn sword, do what you're going to do...and leave us."

Crius sighed, and for a moment, Orlantha swore she saw tears in his eyes as he returned to her and held out his hand for the blade. Slowly and painfully, she lifted her arm and held it out to him after confirming nods from Milligan and Jira, but her hand remained clenched around the hilt. He stared at her, waiting for her to open her hand and let him take the blade.

"Why?" she asked him in a low voice. "Why do all of this?"

"Because you are worth saving," he said with a tone of pure honesty. "All of you. You have done enough to show me that the cycle can end."

"What cycle?" Orlantha asked with a shake of her head. "God damn you, speak sense for once."

Crius sighed. "You will know what I mean in time. You will know that you and my kin can coexist with peace and war in perfect harmony. That you can live with true free will as warriors and peacemakers, just as my kin can as guardians and overlords. It is what Eko wanted me to find across endless epochs. And now I have."

"Do you have such hope, Crius?" Orlantha asked. "Do I have free will as a champion of this Halkos?"

"You do."

"Did any of us have free will if everything to this point was destined?"

"You did. And you will continue to do so. Destiny is not so set in stone that it is immutable, Orlantha. Many times could this generation have been ruined and the process repeated. It was not until recently that I was sure that this was where the cycle ends."

"At what cost?" Jira suddenly asked. "What will we lose when it ends?"

He did not answer this. Instead, he watched as Orlantha opened her hand and allowed him to take the blade from her grasp. Silently, he turned away from her and was gone in a half-blink of the eye within the crowd of faithful, the Lambent Knights following after him. By his order, the three were allowed to leave the cathedral, whereafter they returned to the tavern where Mille the Wolf awaited them and listened intently to their plan.

"So this is where Crius ends up going to Heaven?" Thilas the Dwarf asked with glee. "We finally get to see the fight?"

"It was less of a fight and more of an execution, I imagine," Or'Demp commented. "I mean, shit, the guy just turned our three heroes into sheepish weaklings. How the hell do you think the mad god would fare? Especially if he wanted to die."

The Dwarf turned to his teacher and huffed. "Well, Lady Arsinoe...you were there. What happened?"

Gíla breathed deeply and closed her eyes.

"So this is it?" Gíla asked, astonished after his recalling of the journey and awed as Crius' second-in-command held out the blade for her to see. "This is the weapon that will kill God?"

"Yes!" Crius exclaimed, equal parts elated and sorrowful. "It has been so long, my dear friend. So long since in this cycle began. And now...it will end."

Gíla's eyes narrowed as the blade shimmered in the industrial light of the Tower's halls. "I can hardly believe that we have reached this point. I am...I am overwhelmed, terrified, and melancholic. We will kill the last god and change the world forever. It is-"

"Destined by your hand, dear friend. But it is for the good of the world," he declared. "The good of all mortal life and the good of my kin."

"Your kin," she repeated. "You say you are the Overseer, but Aedol said that he...he killed the Overseer long ago."

Crius nodded. "Yes, he did. He slew a physical form of mine during his rampage of fear, something I had never suffered before. Something I did not think possible. It shattered my mind though my spirit remained. I was fractured and lost through countless lives."

"And that is why you could not recall who you were before the Athenaeum," Gíla gasped. "Had you known the whole time-"

"I would have killed Aedol for his crimes long ago and continued my observation of mortal life. By his choices, I have judged that pantheons cannot exist alongside mortals and the Aions. It is unfortunate but necessary. Only the two of us may live."

"Fascinating," she said, breathing heavily as the information rattled around in her brain, trying to make some logical sense of it all. "But...I am once more wondering why so long after the destitution of the world had sunk in. Why now when the world rots?"

"Rots?" he cocked his head. "Gíla Arsinoe, the world does not rot. It merely evolves for they who will rule Khirn and E'aura."

"But why now? Still, why now?"

"Because of you, Gíla Arsinoe," he said with a friendly smile as warm as a winter's fireplace. "You are the key that Eko and I have long awaited. For thousands of years, I watched this generation build the door into the house of final judgment, as every single one has before. And here you are, the key to its lock. The key that no other generation had whenever the winter winds began rolling in. Without you, the anomaly, the accidental development in the weave, this would have all been doomed as everything else has been before. I would have remained lost, your friends would have remained aimless, and the world would have died...and the cycle would have repeated again."

"I am not so special as to be the final seal in the fate of the world," Gíla protested.

Crius held up his hand, stamping his cane with a puff of irritation. "Nonsense does not befit your vocabulary, Gíla Arsinoe. Think. You taught Jira ne'Jiral of the Star Bastion, leading her to those underneath the mountain that would ensure my kin are informed of the truth. You were selected by Aedol to remedy his failures, accident though it was, and from there, you designed the plan to fix his failures. You led us to that which healed my fractured self, which led Jira to Orlantha and Milligan. Which led to this. You now appear here to ensure that the cycle ends. And I have seen your future, Gíla Arsinoe. You will be a magnificent teacher. You will ensure that the truth of these days, these long dark days that led up to this moment, will never die out in memory."

"Lady Arsinoe, are you saying that you were one of the criteria that decided our fate?" Pinnacle asked in utter disbelief. "I, too, believe that you are a wonderful teacher, but that seems highly improbable for a single person."

"Mind your tongue, child," Alden corrected with a smirk. "You are speaking to your savior."

"Enough," Gíla chuckled. "I am not saying that I believe the man. I am merely relaying what he said. However, he is one of the wisest of the Aions, and I am not entirely within the same sphere of intellect that he is. So who am I to doubt him?"

"Is it really intellect when he can just wave his hands and make all that he says come true? Or stamp his cane and brainwash people?" Or'Demp asked. "That seems rather counter-intuitive to smarts. More so just laziness and megalomania. Come to think of it, that again makes this whole destiny thing seem very wrong."

"Be that as it may, I want to know what happened with Aedol," Thilas pressed.

Aedol's workshop was in ruins. A number of devices, old and new, lay strewn across the floor, some sparking with dying light. The orange glow of a sun hidden behind black clouds peeking through the massive half-moon window at the far end of the room lit up the space with an ominous feeling. The Lambent Knights spread out in organized fashion, reacting with twitches and jerks to the horrific screeches of Aedol's poor victims wandering the dark halls outside their vision. Gíla thought to Alden, wondering where he was and how he was faring - if he was even still alive. In those lowest of levels, she encountered the most dreadful of things. Monsters of rusted metal and patchwork meat, faceless and moaning from gaping toothless holes that should have been their mouths - their entrails and other organs dragging after them, leaking fluids filled with writhing maggots and arachnids. Gíla felt the urge to vomit even thinking of them.

"So, you have come at last, Overseer," a voice said from the dim edges of the orange light. "Come to kill the last god, oh mighty Crius."

"I have, Aedol," Crius said matter-of-factly, standing in the center of the room and motioning for his knights to keep on watch. "I have answered your pleas for the mercy of execution, relayed so gracefully through this medium of Gíla Arsinoe."

"Yes. Gíla Arsinoe...the Drayheller," the voice snorted with grotesque wetness tracing its vowels. "The replacement for the silver one. She did better than I thought she could have."

Gíla looked to Crius, nerves wracking her expression. "I am sorry it took so long, Aedol. Events in the world are chaotic right now."

A figure, hunched and sluggish, emerged from the shadows and took its place behind the long, thick desk of bronze. "Yes. I am aware. A world thrown into chaos because of me. God of humanity, blinder of all mortals. How appropriate."

Another nervous look led to Gíla approaching the desk, flanked by the Lambent Knights. "The world will heal, Aedol. Everything will be as it was before you...did what you did. Before any of the chaos."

"And what will happen after?"

"The Aions will rise, and everything will be good."

"Will it, Gíla Arsinoe?" the figure asked. The bear-maiden drew closer and finally noted the details of this thing. Aedol looked exactly as He had when she had left, only impossibly exhausted. Impossibly worn down. There was no fight in his eyes. No fire in his face. No peace or anger. There was nothing in the man. He was defeated if he had ever been victorious, to begin with. "Will it all be good once I am gone?" he continued with that grotesque voice. "Will my people heal? Will the cycle finally be over?"

"It will, Aedol," Crius answered, appearing next to Gíla with the crystal blade in his hand. Fresh tears were welling in his eyes. "Life will flourish again with your death, morbid and...miserable as it is to say."

"That is good to hear," Aedol replied, a touch of happiness in his voice. "And how many will die before this flourishing?"

"Countless," Crius said bluntly. Gíla stared at him, though she had always known in her heart this was the answer to that question.

"Countless so that endless may live. Might I have one consolation before my death and the deaths of these noble souls, Crius?"

"Name it," Crius said after some thought.

"Please let my name not go down in reverence like all the others I killed. They were forgotten all too soon, their teachings as dead as their bones. Tell the world of my failure. Tell the world of my sin. Let me serve as an example to all of those who would seek to take my place through whatever means available to them. Tell them I, Aedol, was no better than the Devil Below."

Crius nodded with shaky breaths. "I shall, Aedol the Crafter. Rejoice in these moments, for you will forever be remembered, even in terrible circumstances."

Aedol snorted and slowly stepped around his desk until he was directly in front of Crius and Gíla. "No circumstance is more terrible than the plight I nearly brought onto this world. No circumstance is more terrible than the plight I did bring onto this world."

Crius lifted his hand from his cane, letting it lean against his leg for stability, and brought it to rest against Aedol's cheek. "Aedol, I look upon you with equal parts pity, hatred, respect, and adoration. I regret this day that we find ourselves in. I regret doing this to you, I regret that all pantheons must now remain dead. But I am glad knowing that you understand why it must be."

A smile, rictus wide and stiff, had formed on his face. "I die happy, knowing that my plan worked...that I fixed my mistakes. That I healed this world. That I am not entirely a failure, in secret."

Crius nodded and lowered his hand. "If you have a preference for your death, please let me know."

Aedol's fire began to return in the ice-blue eyes, a laugh erupting from his belly. "I should have my head paraded around like a boar. Show them what it means to be a shit god."

Crius laughed politely, only to make Aedol more at ease. "Very well. Prepare yourself, and I shall make it a clean cut."

Aedol dropped to his knees, inhaling through his nose and sighing with relief. He lowered his head, grunting softly as a knight grabbed his hair and pulled it away from his neck. Gíla heard the screaming of all things in the Tower as Crius swung with the speed of a dragonfly's wings, watching the crystal blade pass effortlessly through the back of God's neck, severing his spine and every vital vein until it passed with ease through the front. There was a flash of light from the separation of head and neck, a blinding thing that filled Gíla's vision with thousand-thousand-thousand possible futures to spawn from this single moment. More than anything that Aedol's capture of her had shown. And from those futures, the unchangeable past replayed to her. Every decision, both made from free thought and weaved fate, was brought before her. A perfect mixture, a perfect stew of outcomes. Everything needed to bring about the end of this 'cycle' had now been met. All that was left was the procession led by the Overseer himself. Thus the final piece on the board was placed, and the final game was set to play for all eternity.

Her vision returned. Aedol's body flopped to the ground, twitching and spewing vile black blood that ate through the copper floor like a cluster of termites before solidifying into a jelly. The knight held his head in place by his hair - that rictus wide grin still on his face. A rumbling filled her belly as the last of the light died down in her eyes, bile filling her throat with an acidic burn. She swallowed it down with a grunt. Stillness permeated the room. No one breathed. No one moved. No one said a word or made a sound. It was utter silence.

"Crius," Gíla said, finally turning her attention to the Overseer as he regained his breath and choked away his sobs. "You did it. We...we did it."

Crius collected himself, standing straight. "We did. We did. Now...we need to finalize this. Let us leave this place. I no longer wish to be here."

Gíla nodded and looked down at the blade in his hands. "What is that sword, Crius? He never told me, only that it was enough to kill him."

Crius swallowed down the last of his sorrow. "Pride of a troubled artist. The one good thing the artist ever made."

Gíla closed her eyes and licked her lips wet, having noticed them gone dry once again. The screeches of damned souls undid her efforts. From the dark shadows at the edges of the room, things shambled into sight. Terrible constructs of the flesh, moaning in endless pain. The Lambent Knights formed a phalanx around Crius and Gíla, their commanding officer shouting orders to defend the Overseer.

Gíla made a sound. It was the beginning of a warning, but it was too late regardless, even if she had finished the words. The things rushed the knights and the overseer, hollering in their ravenous anger. Blood spewed by the gallons as the knights clashed with the horrors, body parts splaying across the room like dioramas of gore. In the frame of thirty minutes with minimal movement, the knights of the Lambency formed an abstract painting in the workshop of Aedol the Crafter. Sinew and ooze drenched the knights, spraying fountains of pictographic art through the air. When it appeared that the horde would not cease their assault, Crius grumbled in exhausted irritation and casually handed the crystal blade to Gíla.

"You have a friend who will need this," he said. "It deserves better hands than I. Go to her. Tell her what has happened here and to prepare for Halkos."

"What of you?" she roared over the cacophony of noise filling the room.

Another fatherly smile. "I will be fine. I have my own duties, and the knights will not let harm come to me. Go now, my friend. I will see you again soon at the coronation of the New Age."

"The New Age. How many will die because of this?" she asked years too late. "You said countless, but..."

The smile faltered. "Gíla..."

She shook her mind clear of the worry. "I am sorry. No time for doubts. Too late for doubts."

"You have unlocked the door, my friend," he said as he placed a hand on her shoulder. "Go now and prepare."

In a blink, she appeared in a rustic bedroom populated by four others, the firepit lit comfortably and providing an enjoyable warmth. Her golden eyes met the vibrant amethysts of a bearded man, more wolf than human; the emerald greens of a bloodied raven; the near-black of the shepherd of insanity; and the pressed steel coins of a silver knight.

"You have got to be kidding me," the bloodied raven groaned.

Jira ne'Jiral held the tip of a loaded crossbow bolt to Gíla's throat, her face contorted into a terrifying mask of rage. "You were there? You were standing next to him, and you let him go? Again!?"

"You still fail to understand," Gíla whimpered, shutting her eyes tightly as Orlantha calmly took the crystal sword from her hands. "You still don't get it."

"What do I not get, Gíla?" Jira shouted. "You just let the man accomplish his maddened goals! You let him go free!"

"It was better than the alternative! At least now his kin will know we are to be spared per his decision as Overseer!"

Jira shuddered as she pressed the bolt closer to Gíla's throat. "I will not take part in that madness. I will not stand by while he and his people take charge of this world. I have watched everything I loved die around me for Crius and his plan. What will happen when his people awake? What lives will be taken? What destruction will be wrought if they find even a single thing out of order? You could have stopped him."

"It would not have worked, Jira," Gíla said again, her eyes wide with a mixture of fear and rage. "Gods above, you know that. You have to know that."

"Are you insane?" Milligan roared. "You know what he is going to do now. If we don't manage to kill him, you will have doomed us all."

"She has to be insane to let the man do it. More times than I can count has she been able to stop him, according to you," Mille judged. "I cannot begin comprehending the madness one must suffer to let Crius escape. You could have killed him."

Gíla's eyes flared. "You dare call me insane for letting him live?"

"We did the same," Gíla heard Orlantha mutter. Gíla saw her inspecting the blade, her eyes glazed over with an insurgency of colors, both real and imagined. No one else seemed to notice it. The black blood of Aedol still stained its edges, and a stream of it had run into Orlantha's palm.

Milligan rumbled. "I call you insane for agreeing to be part of this insanity in the first place. Because of you, Crius survived, and now-"

"You dare to tell me what I could or should have done when you were the ones to give him the sword in the first place?"

"She is right," Gíla heard Orlantha whisper.

She examined the four of them, scowling and scoffing. In all of the past decisions that she was shown in this lifetime, all of theirs had been made of their own volition. They were free from the bindings of fate, it seemed - even if they did have a causal effect in leading to this grand moment. Still, the anger at the hypocrisy boiled over inside. "What did you do when you all had your own opportunities to end him? Did you choose to sacrifice your lives to kill him as you expect me to have done with mine? Huh? He told me of his encounters with you in Veoris. In the cathedral. You all had ample time to end him, but you didn't. Why? Fear? Adherence to destiny?"

"Fuck destiny!" Milligan growled. "I will not have that man - those things - decide my fate. I refuse."

"Gíla," Jira muttered, a twitch forming in her brow. Gíla looked into her eyes and saw utter despair and a broken heart. It shattered her own. "I want to believe you, but I cannot follow that man into his New Age. The risk of it all is too much on...what? Promises that a cycle is ending? How will we know that his kin will even listen to him anymore? I'm sorry, but I cannot take that risk."

"What we did was to buy us time. But you?" Milligan grumbled. "You seem stronger than any of us. You could have taken him."

"Is that fair of us to ask her?" Gíla heard Orlantha ask.

Gíla shook her head and clenched her fists, the flames of the firepit growing larger and hotter. "Damn you to Hell! He was surrounded by knights, and we were surrounded by monstrosities that would make you wet your breeches! I would have died."

Tears fell from Jira's eyes as if the world itself had just been stolen from her. In a way, it had.

"You could have stopped Crius after he killed Aedol," Milligan hissed. "You could have stopped him from awakening his people and destroying our world for something they think is better."

Gíla fumed. "That will not work! They will awaken anyways! You know this."

"What do mean?" Orlantha asked, loud enough for everyone to hear.

Gíla's shoulders slumped. "In time, they will awaken regardless. I do not know how much time we have left before they wake naturally, but they will. And if Crius is dead, they will destroy us then. This is our one chance at salvation."

"Maybe we can cut them off by doing this," Jira suggested. Bargaining, pleading, wishing. "Maybe killing him in this flux of their plans will keep them asleep."

Gíla groaned like a teacher failing to make her students understand basic concepts. "You can't, Jira. It is a cycle. I don't know the specifics, only what Aedol told me during my time in the Tower and what Crius mentioned in passing. It seems to have been built by the Aions-"

"Enough about these Aions!" Milligan spat. "Enough about this cycle. Enough about Aedol. This is about Crius. You could have made it so that we didn't need to kill the fucker. Now we have to do as we planned. Difficult, but achievable."

"We have to kill Crius, Gíla," Jira agreed after a moment. "We can then figure out a way to stop his kin from waking up if that is to happen regardless. You can help us then. At least we'll have time."

Gíla was nearly apoplectic. "How are you still thinking that killing him is the way to go about this? After everything you have seen and learned!"

"We will not have our world destroyed on the whims of these things," Milligan said. "We will not have our fates decided for us."

"You will kill us all if you kill Crius, you stubborn, ignorant fools! Killing him is against the greater good of the world!"

"Who are you to think you know what is best for this world? For us?" Mille asked.

"ENOUGH!" Gíla roared loud enough to shatter the room's window, a wave of kinetic energy erupting from her mouth that knocked everyone off their feet. Gouts of flame billowed from the fireplace, nearly scorching Mille in waves of red and orange. "I will not have you judge me for failures you yourselves have made! I will not have you judge me for not sacrificing my life in a futile effort when you have refused to do the same for your own multiple times! I have not come this far to see us all die now. We will be fine if you just-"

Milligan jumped to his feet and struck at Gíla, only to find his hand caught in her massive paw. She twisted his arm, pulled, and threw him into the wall, where he slid down onto the floor with a groan. He rose again. Gíla charged him, throwing a hard hook into his stomach that dropped him with ease. She turned as Mille approached, swinging a sword at the bear-maiden with frightening speed. Gíla voided the strike and snapped forward with her jaws, crunching through the metal with her teeth and shattering the blade. She spat the shards at the Wolf, who brought her arms up to protect her face. Blood filled Gíla's mouth from a cut tongue and gums. A hard kick to the sternum sent the Wolf flying back into the bed, a loud crunch of metal and bone resounding in the room. Orlantha was on her feet but had yet to move an inch. Instead, she merely looked at her comrades with furrowed brows.

"Maybe we should-" she began to say, cut off by Jira shooting the bolt into Gíla's shoulder. Gíla roared in pain and stumbled back directly into the recovered grasp of Milligan, who wrapped his arms around her neck and began yanking her down to the floor.

"Jira! Orlantha! Go now!" Milligan commanded as he held onto the bear-maiden's neck. "Find him! Kill him!"

Jira stood up and ran out of the room, calling for Orlantha to follow.