“Alright, have you got a rash or something?”

It was kind of funny, the way the Divinity twitched at Jack's words, pausing in the act of doing… something to Jack’s microbots. Whatever it was, it made for a peculiar sight, as the Divinity sat cross legged in mid air, a storm raging around them, as the rooster plucked translucent strands of grey-ish energy out of the machine’s corporeal form.

To hear him explain it, the cultivator was trying to recreate the kind of ki residue that would be in the air after two divinities clashed – and was using Jack’s microbots as a means of providing a contrasting ki to Yating’s own.

It was clear his microbots weren’t much enjoying the process. They felt positively lethargic in Jack’s mind, despite the fact that their energy reserves still read as ‘full’.

“Gods don’t get rashes,” Yating responded absently, his focus entirely on re-creating the ‘feel’ of a divine clash with just his own reserves.

Jack shrugged. “Could have fooled me with the way you keep scratching your ass like that.”

The miner paused to fire off another batch of pyro-kinetics into the storm.

Though as he turned back, he saw that the rooster had paused in his work, baleful gaze turning in Jack’s direction. “It’s not… I’m not… it’s not my ass you cretin! And it’s… nothing.”

The blonde just watched as the Rooster’s hand once more strayed to, if not his ass, then the small of his back. A move that the being seemed to notice at the last second as he deliberately pulled his hand away.

Still, the Divinity's reaction had served as a sort of confirmation in Jack’s mind. A confirmation of a theory he’d been nursing for a good few months now. Admittedly, it was pretty much all guess-work on his part, but if those guesses held any truth at all, it would answer more than a few of Jack’s questions regarding the god’s mysterious motives.

“Anyway,” he said, changing the topic entirely. “You think they’ll keep to the terms we set after this?”

“Maybe.” Yating shrugged as he returned to his work. “Probably. Beating me and the Red Death would be a pretty impressive showing. Something that would put you, if not on par with the Monkey and Empress, than at least directly beneath them.”

Jack hummed at the thought, smiling at the idea that he was once more bluffing his way up the social totem pole.

He liked that. It fed his ego.

As if sensing his thoughts, the god’s voice took on a warning tone. “Though I’d point out that this will all be for nothing if you’re still hanging around when my ‘siblings’ arrive. I sensed you were devoid of ki immediately. And there’s no reason to think Murm or Bhati would be any different. Hell, Bhati should be better.”

Jack reluctantly nodded in agreement. He was in no hurry to meet the Divine Tiger or the Ox. The Empress’s personal enforcer would be bad enough, but he had a feeling that meeting the Empire’s foremost craftswoman would be somehow worse.

Because if anyone could puzzle out that my tech is tech, it would be her, he thought.

“You don’t think…”

Yating shook his head immediately. “I can sense them. They’re still days away.”

Jack sighed in relief, before pausing. “You know, given how fast you move, I’d have thought they would get here quicker.”

Sure, the Empire was big but, as Yating so often liked to prove, Divinities were a very special brand of bullshit.

“That’s part of why I can sense them even when they’re still days away,” Yating responded. “They could be here in a few hours if they had to be. But they aren’t taking a direct route.”

“They’re dragging their feet?” Sure, Yating had said that immortals tended to be risk averse, but he’d have expected two of the Empire’s top goons to be a little less cowardly than that.

Yating shook his head again. “Hardly. From the feel of things, they’re cleaning up a number of those Instinctive Hordes that slipped through the defenses up North.”

Ah, so they were wiping out a few million Instinctives because they ‘happened to be in the area’? The same Instinctives that had destroyed cities with ease and brought entire provinces to ruin.

The miner shook his head.

Divinities really were scary.

“Don’t worry, once you ‘defeat’ me, I’ll meet them and explain why it would be a bad idea to push on your borders,” Yating said absently.

Jack nodded, before firing off another set of fireworks into the clouds.

“Alright,” Yating said as he ‘stood up’ “I’d say that’s enough. Spray me down and let’s get this over with.”

Jack couldn’t help but smirk at the divinity's irritation. “Looking forward to it that much?”

Yating just glared as he scratched at his back. “Just do it already.”

Chuckling to himself, Jack opened a portal, liberally dousing the god in a deep brown sludgy fluid. It was actually the same mixture that he used in his flame crawlers. A particularly nasty mix of gasoline and Styrofoam that was near impossible to put out and stuck to just about anything.

It was a mixture he knew by heart.

Yet, for all that, the god didn’t even twitch as he clicked his finger together and lit himself aflame. His clothes likewise seemed utterly unbothered by the flames that lapped around them.

His eyes aren’t even watering, Jack thought.

It was actually a little infuriating to see. To know just how bullshit Divinities were. Sure Jack knew lesser cultivators with a fire affinity accomplish something similar, but that knowledge didn’t make the man floating across from him any less bullshit.

“Alright, see you in a-” The god paused in his words, glancing left and right as his fingers scratched at his back. “Huh.”

“What?”

“I… can you sense something?”

A little alarmed, Jack shook his head. “Nothing worth noting. All our guests are still in their seats.”

With that said, the storm was playing havoc with his sensor equipment. Sure, that didn’t mean much when the operator was literally floating inside of a raging electrical storm.

After a few more seconds of glancing around, Yating shook his head. “It’s probably nothing. Either way, I’ll see you in a minute.”

Then he shot down to earth like a comet.

For his part, Jack continued to glance around for another minute, but he saw nothing but stormy clouds. What scans he could perform likewise brought up nothing.

Sighing, he descended down after his… sort of friend. Though to be honest, ally of convenience was likely the more apt descriptor.

As the miner descended out from under the cloud and got a proper view of the arena below, he couldn’t help but give the demi-god points for nailing the landing.

Like a falling meteor, they’d crashed straight through the arena floor, shattering a dozen pillars before sliding to a stop a few meters outside the arena inside a small crater. A position that just so happened to be in full view of both sides of the audience despite being outside of the ring.

Small tongues of flames were spread across the great furrow the god had made during his landing, giving the illusion that he’d hit at great speed and with great heat.

Jack didn’t hear any gasps as the onlookers below moved their attention from the fallen ‘goddess’ back up to him. He flared his jets a little to slow his descent, before slamming into the marble surface of the arena, cracks radiating out from his impact point.

His suit wasn’t without damage.

They wanted to sell the idea of a solid victory, but for him to be completely unblemished would have been too unbelievable. To that end, Jack had applied a little soot to the outside of his suit, picked off a few of the scales, made a few dents and snapped one of his horns.

“Well fought, Yating the Laughing Goddess.” Jack let his voice boom across the arena as he strode to the lip of the impact point to gaze down at his ‘foes’ vanquished form. “I will admit to being impressed. There is no doubt that you were a foe on par with the Red Death. With that said, it seems you are no more immune to the Divine Thrust Technique than he. Be thankful that I chose to limit myself at the last moment.”

The downed divinity said nothing… mostly because he was feigning unconsciousness.

Some part of him had expected cheers from his followers at this point, but looking at them, it seemed just about everyone in the arena was too stunned to make a noise.

Even An and Huang.

And they knew this whole thing was rigged.

Only a little disappointed at not being congratulated for winning an entirely rigged fight, Jack’s gaze flitted over to Shi, who sat like a statue upon her throne, naked horror writ across her features.

“I assume that satisfies the terms of our agreement.”

It was not a question.

Yet it still took the Inquisitor a good few seconds to marshal a response. “I… how…”

He laughed. “Come now, you knew what I was. Did you honestly not conceive that this outcome was a possibility?”

Shi would have been a fool not to. Sure, she had reasons to doubt his power, certainly, but she also had an equal number of reasons to believe it was equal or superior to Yating’s.

Hell, she was sitting on one of them.

The Inquisitor moved to say something, but Jack’s voice overrode her. “It matters not either way. Ten years of servitude to me and mine. As well as a guarantee of the North’s independence. Those were our terms.”

That seemed to snap the woman out of her funk, as she realized exactly how poorly this whole thing had just gone for her.

This was not a time where the Empire could afford to lose any more cities, but that was peanuts compared to losing the power of one of their divinities right when they needed it most.

“That is…” The woman swallowed.

Jack could see it. Like a Corpo who’d just been caught double-dipping, she wanted to renege. To wriggle. To complain.

But she couldn’t. Not because of honor or anything like that. But because this was literally the first time in her life that she knew she wasn’t the biggest stick in the room. Indeed, behind her, some of the Imperials looked torn between fleeing and moving to aid their downed ‘god’.

“Do not play games now Shi.” Jack’s voice took on a darker pallor. “The time for that is over. Don’t forget why we had this little showdown. It was not some act of mercy on your part. You didn’t have a choice.”

He swept his arms wide to encompass the entire arena.

“This, all of it, was merely a recreation of what might happen should we truly come to blows.” He speared her with his gaze. “And you thought you could win. You were proven wrong. Fortunately, the cost was light because this was merely a small recreation of what a true war between us would look like. For that reason, you may walk away, back to the true war with only one less aspirant and the loss of a single divinity for ten years – rather than an eternity.”

He summoned a great metal staff, slamming it to the ground with enough force that it sounded like a gunshot going off.

“And your life. Do not forget that. I could have – should have – slain you. I didn’t. Not because I am weak, but because I am strong enough to not need to.”

At those words, the woman laughed – and it sounded just a little hysterical. A move that had many of her followers looking nervously at her. They needn’t have bothered, when she spoke again, she was calmer, even if she was dabbing a tear from her eye.

“One might argue that the loss of a divinity for ten years is not something small at all, nor something the Empire can afford.”

Jack simply shrugged within his suit. “It can afford it more than a dead divinity. Or three dead divinities, a few thousand cultivators and millions of dead imperial soldiers. Because that will be the cost if you even think of dishonouring yourself by backing out now.”

And it needn’t be said that none of the Imperials present would live long enough to see that war start. Or rather, Jack slaughtering them all here and now would be the start of said war.

You know… if he actually could.

Which he couldn’t. Not by a long shot.

Fortunately, he had Yating for that.

…Which would undoubtedly make for a very confusing set of final moments for the Imperials should Shi decide to act unwisely, Jack thought.

“That is a very specific number,” Shi pointed out with genuine curiosity.

The miner simply gestured to the downed divinity. “I believe it accurate. For now I think I have some understanding of you. Can you say the same of me?”

She couldn’t. They both knew it. He was an outside context problem to her. An enigma. From beginning to end. Every attempt she’d made to quantify his abilities or that of his people had come up short.

And for that reason, he could almost see the moment she realized that Jack Johansen really wasn’t worth the trouble.

She sighed. “I hereby call this bout in the name of-”

“Stop.”

It was a word spoken at little more than a conversational tone, but it echoed across the arena like a gunshot.

And then Jack felt something poke him in the chest.

A voice nearby screamed, but he barely heard it.

He glanced down to see a outstretched hand embedded into his chest up to the knuckles, blood running in rivulets from where it had slid through the armor - like a sculptor’s blade through wet clay.

The world seemed sluggish and distant as his eyes moved up from the wound. Moving along outstretched arm that protruded from his chest, he found himself staring into the green eyes of a woman who had not been there a moment before. Standing next to a visibly shocked Shi, she looked almost bored as her tiger-like ears twitched atop a mane of fiery red hair.

Murm, his mind absently supplied.

Yating had told him about her.

The Tiger Divinity.

Who was supposed to be days away from them.

Well, I guess she isn’t, he thought faintly as blood dribbled from the side of his lips.

With almost casual indifference, the woman retracted her hand, crimson arterial blood splattering against the black and white checkerboard arena floor as she casually flicked the fluid away.

“Lady Murm!” Shi shrieked. “What are you-”

“Silence. You have been deceived. This entire event was a farce.”

Jack might have had something to say about that, were it not for the fact that his attempt to speak had him coughing up another chunk of blood as he fell to one knee. Indeed, a quick glance at his HUD told him he had a few broken ribs and a collapsed lung.

Which went some way to explain why all his attempts to speak or breathe were impeded by the rather large amount of blood in his trachea.

Fortunately, his gene-forged body was quickly rectifying the issue of him choking on his own blood through rapid clotting, even as he spat more of it into the confines of his helmet.

Reinflating the lung and repairing his ribs would take a bit more work, but he’d survive to reach that point – provided nothing else killed him first.

Still the uptake of that was that he was quite literally incapable of speaking as Murm turned to the crowd.

“There has been no duel today. Merely a deception perpetuated by a traitor and her puppet.”

Jack could feel his microbots trying to move through the seams in his armour, but he mentally bid them to stop. As drained as they were, they’d be next to useless.

Though as numb fingers reached for the latches of his helmet, he could only conclude that it would make little difference even if they were primed and ready to go.

The being across from him would likely regard an attack from the machines as roughly as threatening as a particularly vigorous hug.

“Jack Johansen is no cultivator. Nor a magister. None of the world’s energies grace his soul,” Murm continued to the frozen crowd. “The creature you know to be him is little more than a clever puppet, masquerading as a man.”

Glancing up, Jack saw that Yating was now up on stage, no longer feigning weakness.

Only fury.

“How?” The Rooster grunted. “How can I not sense you!?”

The tiger divinity scoffed. “Is it not obvious? The Mark.”

Yating shook his head. “That’s… not possible. It’s a leash… not a blindfold.”

Murm cocked her head in amusement. “And how would you know? Its abilities surprised you and the others once. Why not a second? Or even a third time?”

Yating said nothing, but the hate in his gaze conveyed his opinion perfectly.

Murm just smiled. “Still, even if it is just one of the Mark’s functions, I find myself impressed that you managed to ignore the brand of compulsion. The pain must be… incredible.”

Yating’s hand moved to the small of his back, before he pulled it back. “I think you’ll find Murm, that given enough time, you can get used to anything.”

“Quite.” Murm admitted. “Still, it seems you must be reminded of how much tighter that leash can get.”

“No!” Yating shouted, clear panic in his eyes.

Then he was screaming, light blazing out of his back as he crumpled to the floor. Gasps rippled through the audience, but all remained frozen in place as literal gods quarreled on the stage before them.

For which Jack was eternally grateful.

Nothing he had on hand would even scratch the beings across from them – and attempting to do so would only get his people killed.

Though… given the revelations of the last few minutes, he couldn’t help but wonder if they were still his people.

That… was part of why he’d yet to look in An or Huang’s direction.

Even if they didn’t believe the tiger goddesses words, the seed had been planted now. And it would only grow with time.

His hands ran over the surprisingly clean edges of the hole in his armored chest.

No, this cat’s not going back in the bag, he thought.

Still, that was a problem for later. For now, the current situation was shitty enough to take up all of his concentration.

“Lin,” he breathed within the confines of his suit.

“Yes Jack?” The woman responded instantly, terror written in her words. “Should I-”

“Launch it.” He coughed. “Launch it now.”

“Right.” He heard her scramble into motion, before he cut the comms.

Alright, a little earlier than scheduled, but it should be here. Now, I just have to decide whether I should I just stay quiet until the End-Game gets here? he pondered.

“Ah sibling,” Murm cooed across from him. “Now do you remember? The second application of the Mark. I was certain it hurt before, but that was a mere warning of what might come.”

The woman crouched down before Yating’s writhing form.

“I must admit I’m curious. To know what it feels like. Our Lady’s displeasure concentrated. Pain enough to bring a god to heel, obviously I’ve never had cause to feel it myself. Unlike you, I’ve never faltered in my duty.” She stood up, straightening her robes. “Still, it seems even fear of that kind of pain fades with the passing of centuries. Thus you shall be reminded. In full.”

Finally, Jack’s numb fingers found the final latch and he tore off the helmet and spitting a final glob of partially congealed blood onto the stage.

…No, I think I’ll see if my earlier theory holds any weight first, he thought. The end-game will need a few minutes to get here.

Yet even as he finished that thought, he noticed that his last glob of blood had landed right next to a pair of feet that hadn’t been there a moment before.

“Fascinating.” What could only be the owner of those feet intoned. “A being completely devoid of any manner of ki, mana or other life sustaining energies.”

Ah, Jack looked up, he found himself staring into the almost motherly features of a woman with a great pair of ox-horns.

He said ‘almost’ motherly because of her eyes.

There was no compassion there. No kindness.

Merely curiosity of the most deadly kind.

Like a child about to pull the wings off an insect.

Or a surgeon about to conduct a vivisection, he thought. Which can only mean this is Bhati, the Divine Blacksmith.

A massive hand reached down to grip his jaw like a vice, twisting his head to and fro as the woman inspected him. “Please make sure not to scramble our sibling’s mind too much, Murm. I simply must know how she pulled all this off. The construct. That town over there. These firework-weapons.”

“Don’t admire it, Bhati.” The other woman glanced over in disgust. “She probably received aid from overseas. Like the Traitor.” At that the tiger-kin cocked her head. “Though I suppose we’ll have to call her the ‘First Traitor’ going forward.”

“Aren’t you even a little curious?” Bhati finally released him, letting him sink to the floor, before turning and scooping up his discarded helmet.

Jack said nothing as she did. Ignoring the bruises forming on his jaw, he started limping over to Yating’s downed form.

“Not even a little,” the Tiger Goddess, admitted, utterly relaxed now that Yating was down and out. Indeed, watching the two women talk, it was like no one else was present. Even Shi seemed to have shrunk in on herself. “Mostly I’m just annoyed that our Inquisitor was taken in by the whole charade.”

Ah, that would explain the Imperial Scion’s nervousness.

“There’s lightning energy in this helmet, but I can’t sense any worldly energy. No mana. No ki. No Divine Favor. Nothing.” The voice said curiously from behind him.

He ignored it. He ignored it all as he collapsed next to Yating. Which was admittedly a little melodramatic, but he was down to one lung. He figured he could be forgiven for being a little sluggish after a divine entity poked a hole in him.

A rather large hole.

“It’s a parlour trick,” Murm scoffed.

Jack turned the Rooster’s quaking body over. “I don’t know, I’d like to think I was pretty convincing.”

“Ooh, it can talk even without its master’s input!” Bhati said excitedly, clutching the helmet to her chest. “I can’t imagine she’s still directing it… as indisposed as she is.”

It was almost amusing, how they’d completely dismissed him as a threat. Murm simply eyed him dismissively.

“It’s still likely under her control though. Look how it’s trying to help her.”

Neither made any move to stop him as Jack’s eyes latched onto what he’d been looking for.

A gleaming golden tattoo shaped like a twelve pointed hex on Yating’s back.

“I suppose I am,” he responded – to the Ox’s delight and the Tiger’s disdain. “I need her after all. Because let’s face it, I’m kind of fucked without her.”

He brought his thumb up to his mouth, biting down on it before he continued.

“I mean, I’ve been bluffing since the moment I got here. Not about everything, but a lot of shit. And to be honest, I’ve kind of been waiting for someone to call me on it.”

Neither god said anything. To be honest, he wasn’t even sure they were listening. Murm was glancing around the arena, absently taking in the scenery. Bhati was still fiddling with his discarded helmet.

That was fine. Good even.

“With that said, I’m not completely useless. I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve. Some I plan in advance.” He kept an eye on the horizon. “Some I make up on the fly.”

He glanced at his thumb and blood running down it in small rivulets from where he’d bitten down. Clenching his first, he smeared the red fluid across his palm.

“This is one of the latter.”

Then he slammed his palm down on the glowing brand.

…Which immediately went dark.