He awoke in the blackness of the sarcophagus, gasping as though deprived of oxygen. Instantly, his senses were overloaded. In this black, lightless space—entombed in machinery—he could detect the slightest oscillations in the air, the fumes and excretions of his flesh, the river of sensations coursing through his body as it registered his surroundings. He felt he was not a single entity, but a world, populated by strange atomies. Overwhelmed, he lay there dizzy and nauseous. How could this confined world be so full of colour, texture, smell, and taste? How could exist like this? How live?

  Something has happened… I’m changed.

  As a thief, he’d always prided himself on strong senses—able to detect movements and sounds most people would miss. But this was too much. This was killing him. He dreaded the lid being lifted, the sheer noise of the world being let in. His breaths were a panicked staccato. His vision swam.

  “Be calm,” a voice said. Despite the fact the voice sounded like coals burning on a fire, there was a strange comfort in it. Telos guessed this was the voice of Beltanus. Telos took deep breaths, closed his eyes, tried to relax.

  “Why is everything so loud?” Telos said, and regretted it, for his own voice was thunder in his ears, reverberating off the inner walls of his sarcophagus, ringing with horrid brightness. “Ah! I can’t take it!”

  “Calm your mind. Retreat within. The world of the senses is illusion. The mind within is the fortress that withstands…”

  Telos drew deep breaths again, tried to withdraw his mind from the outer world. He found it surprisingly easy. His inner world felt more spacious, chasmal even. Dark, cold, earthen, strong. He let out a sigh of relief. The power of my focus is so much greater, he thought. Wherever my focus resides, everything is magnified.

  “What have you done?” Telos said.

  “We have made you as we are, or near enough.”

  Telos’s mind raced.

  “As a god?”

  “Think not in these mortal terms. Godhood is relative. To the ant, man is a god. To man, we are gods. But with the lore of Flesh-shaping, the ant may be increased, to become something more.”

  “I thought Eresh was the Flesh-shaper?”

  “She is. But as my sister and ally, she has imparted some of her lore to me. She has also declared for humanity’s cause.”

  Telos’s mind raced.

  “What of the other gods?”

  There was a long silence.

  “Lileth and Nereth have both openly declared for the erasure of humanity. They believe that the human race has perverted the course of our original plan for Erethia. They wish to begin the cycle again in another three thousand years, when Nilldoran returns to your solar system.”

  Telos’s mind reeled. He understood—or thought he did—the concepts and plots, but the scale of them dwarfed his imagination. The scheming of Aurelian Emperors and Yarulian Kings now seemed mere farce, like children playing at chess, while their parents went to gut and slice soldiers in the trenches. We are just a testing ground for them. A terrarium.

  “Wait, isn’t Lileth the God of Love? Why would she turn against humanity?”

  Beltanus laughed. The sound was like steam rushing through a pipe, scalding the metal until it shrieked. Telos realised he had royally put his foot in it. Lileth had betrayed Beltanus for Talon, the God of War.

  But the god took reference to his adulterous lover in surprisingly good humour: “Love? Yes, to a degree. But does not the farmer love the same sow he butchers for meat?”

  “Erm, no?”

  “You are not human, any longer, Telos. You must abandon human divisions, human dualities, human thoughts. They will drive you mad.” This was spoken by a new, fairer voice, one Telos recognised as Danyil.

  “What of Koronzon and Talon?”

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  “Talon’s location is unknown,” Beltanus answered. Telos heard the bitterness with which the God of Creativity pronounced that name. Clearly, their millennia-old feud had not been forgotten. “And Koronzon, likewise, is unknown. The last report we have of him is that he scours the Deep.”

  “Well, this isn’t so bad,” Telos said. “You outnumber them. And you might have more allies if Koronzon and Talon can be found.”

  “I am but a Sumyrian, Telos,” Danyil reminded him. “And many other Sumyrians have declared for Nereth’s cause. Civil war is imminent. And the resulting fallout could be equally as dangerous as the return of the Daimons.”

  The Daimons…

  Telos was not sure he could really believe the Daimons had returned. He had spent three months in prison digging through their remains. Bones and blood were all that was left of them. There were always rumours of unhatched eggs, but none had ever been seen in public; certainly, there hadn’t been any in the Royal Vault, which seemed as likely a place as any to find one. Telos recalled there was some debate about whether Daimons even emerged from eggs, so the rumour seemed even more spurious in that light.

  He could not chase those wild thoughts now. With his newfound cognitive powers—a kind of mental magnifying glass—he was in danger of losing himself in deep contemplation. Danyil and Beltanus seemed to understand this, however, giving him time to adjust.

  “I was going to ask why you decided to make me into a… well, one of you. But now I think I know why. It’s to even the odds, isn’t it?”

  “In part,” Beltanus said. “It is also doubtful your life could have been saved any other way. You are not a pure Rynu’nakar. That which was damaged beyond repair has been augmented with the my designs.”

  Telos felt cold all over. Parts of me are machine. No sooner than he had the thought than his intense awareness was able to detect these abnormalities. His legs had metal bone-structures within them. One arm, from the elbow downward, was a kind of mechanical gauntlet beneath the veil of his flesh. He let out a whimpering groan.

  “Be not afeared,” Beltanus said. “In time, the ache of loss shall pass, and you shall come to recognise the strength of god-forged steel. You will despise the thing you were, so fragile as to break with the winds of the seasons, and come to rely upon the strength of the indomitable forge. That is my gift to you, once-mortal.”

  Telos shuddered.

  “A kingly gift, indeed,” he said, not without bitterness. “But I thank you for saving my life. But that brings me onto another question. Why me?”

  There was no answer from the gods. Instead, a mechanism was activated and, with a whining of invisible powers, the sarcophagus lid began to float away, revealing a hideous light that stabbed into Telos’s supersensitive eyes. He cried out, shielding himself with his hands, only realising after he had covered his face that the movement had shattered the iron bonds that’d once held him in place. He looked at his limbs in astonishment. Beltanus truly has made me stronger. Telos could immediately see how he would grow to like this newfound power once he adjusted to the shock of losing parts of his former body.

  Slowly, he sat upright. Danyil stood in his warped motley, face whiter than snow. Beltanus towered, all jagged metal and molten light. He seemed to be regarding Telos with something like pride etched into his only semi-organic features, as though Telos were a particularly fine sculpture.

  “I notice you did not improve my height,” Telos said, drily, for the god and Danyil still towered over him.

  Beltanus let out a deep, ringing laughter.

  “You were right, Danyil. I grow to like this one.”

  “You asked us, Telos, why you were chosen. Well, the matter is simple. Around thirty candidates were identified as having the potential. They were chosen based on one trait in particular: their adaptability. Those that could adapt, both to the physical change and to the new reality that will inevitably arise out of the coming conflict, those promised the greatest chance of success. Of the original thirty, only you remain. We hoped to have more successful candidates, but we must work with what we have.”

  “And presumably Nereth is doing the same thing?” Telos asked.

  Danyil smiled, the grin of a mad jester.

  “Not quite. You see, she believes that humanity must be wiped out, therefore even though raising humans to form allies would aid her cause, she refuses to do so. In that way, we have an advantage over her.”

  “That, and my sister would never reveal the secrets of Flesh-shaping to her,” Beltanus growled. “To shape Fate and Flesh, that is a power none should possess.”

  Telos felt clouds over his soul, reminded of his curse. But suddenly sunlight broke through when he contemplated it might have been removed.

  “My curse...?”

  Danyil sighed.

  “My half-sister’s edicts cannot easily be undone,” Beltanus answered.

  “There is one boon, however,” Danyil said, more brightly. “The rynudom—or ‘curse’, as you call it—a god places on a mortal cannot cause harm to come to another god.”

  “So in other words: it is neutralised while I am here?”

  Danyil nodded. “Precisely.”

  “So I guess I shall be sticking with you two.”

  Beltanus and Danyil exchanged a glance.

  “There is much work to be done,” the god said. “Soon, we must return you to Erethia.”

  “You must seek the Nergal, Telos,” Danyil said. “Now, more than ever.”

  Telos groaned.