Telos followed Danyil out of what the Sumyrian called The Room of Transformation, but which Telos could not help but think of as a tomb. The contraption which had facilitated his transformation resembled a sarcophagus and he could not get the image out of his head. He was glad to leave it behind, albeit grateful that he wasn’t dead.

  He walked down a series of metallic hallways, his footsteps ringing oddly. Doorways, also of metal, lined the walls. A few times Telos succumbed to his thief’s instincts and tried to open them, but there were no doorhandles, keyholes, or discernible ways of opening them. The ship shuddered.

  “Where are we going?” Telos asked.

  “Do you mean within the sky-ship or more generally?” Danyil answered. Dressed in motley, Danyil seemed to be in a more playful mood than previous times they had met. Telos did not mind a bit of levity—he was a wise-cracker himself at times—but he found the combination of Danyil’s garb and the present surroundings quite unnerving.

  “Both.”

  “We are heading to the Strategy Room. There, we may more easily explain to you our plan. In terms of where our ship is: we are currently underwater, travelling rapidly across the Winedark Sea. We will pass Aurelia in a few hours.”

  Telos’s turned the information over. It was intriguing to note that the sky-ships also possessed the capability of travelling underwater, or at least this one did. Telos suspected that, given Beltanus’s nature as the God of Creativity, his ship was more advanced than those of his kin. But more importantly, it seemed that Danyil and Beltanus were maintaining a low profile. This was a contrast to Nereth, who had blasted off in the middle of a populated wood.

  “Why does Nereth not care about being seen?”

  Danyil laughed.

  “I would have thought that obvious? She is the Fate-shaper. She believes it is all already written.”

  “Is it?”

  Danyil stopped suddenly and turned, regarding Telos with new intensity.

  “Not even the gods can answer that question, Telos.”

  Danyil touched one of the doors. There was no button, yet the brush of his fingers seemed to activate an unseen mechanism, and the door slid open. Danyil stepped through, Telos following.

  They entered a large, circular room that resembled a highly technological version of a general’s war room. A table sat in the centre from which a three-dimensional topographical display arose, but the display seemed to be made of pure light. Forests, buildings, and mountains shimmered, formed from white beams so thin they might have been silk-threads.

  Around the walls, moving images swam, projected from flat slivers of metal that looked as though it had been cooked to the point of white heat. Projections, illusions. This is Sumyrian sorcery, Sumyrian technology. He had read a few books about the wonders of the gods and Sumyr, but he had imagined most of it was fable. Occasionally, as a thief, some magical trinket had passed through his hands, usually to be fenced at the earliest opportunity, but he had never regarded them more as baubles and fancies. Now he saw that technological wizardry applied. The scope of it boggled his mind.

  Much of what was in that room, Telos did not understand. Thin, cordlike wires connected monolithic machines set into the walls, sitting below the projections. Rows of drawers lined another wall, with no discernible way of opening them.

  Beltanus stood in the centre of the room, dominating it with his iron-clad stature the way a black tower rules over a cityscape. He glanced up as Danyil and Telos entered.

  “How do you find your new body, Telos?”

  “It serves well. I thank you again, World-shaper.”

  The reply clearly pleased Beltanus, for the creases at the corner of his organic eye deepened as though he were smiling beneath his mask.

  Telos had earlier examined himself carefully in a mirror Danyil provided, and had been shocked to discover that, at least in terms of his face, he looked pretty much the same as he had always done. All the talk of augmentation had filled Telos with a dread he would not recognise his reflection, but the god had reconstituted his form almost exactly. His silver hand, however, was another matter. He was still not used to it.

  And his face had changed slightly, the lines grown deeper. Somehow his features had acquired more symmetry, which had the paradoxical effect of making him uglier. But these changes were perhaps as much due to the intensity of the last week, the experiences and trials he had undergone, as to the surgery.

  He felt different, however. He had always been agile and dextrous, even as a boy. But now he felt a raw strength he had never known. Swords and heavy weapons had never been his style, but now he felt like he could wield a two-handed maul in a single hand, could don full plate-mail armour and not even feel the weight. He was a tad bulkier, but not much. The strength was somehow internal—at the level of the cell.

  “Come here, Telos,” Danyil said, striding over to the shimmering, three-dimensional map. “And we shall explain our plan.”

  Telos nodded, following the Sumyrian over to the illusion hesitantly. He feared such things a great deal more than any weapon, thug, or natural danger. It was precisely their ephemerality that scared him. Weapons could be deflected or stolen. Ghostly apparitions could not.

  “We are here, approaching the coast of Aurelia,” Danyil said. “We will soon pass the continent.”

  Telos frowned.

  “You said we would be past Aurelia in a few hours. How can you possibly go around such a big continent so quickly?”

  “There are caves beneath sea-level. They are dangerous to navigate, but the risk is necessary to avoid being seen.”

  Telos blew out air. He had never been a fan of enclosed spaces, despite his profession. But he recognised they were a necessary evil.

  “Very well. So are we heading to Memory?”

  “Affirmative,” Beltanus growled. “The Nergal is there. All our information and yours indicates this.”

  “Wait, just how closely have you been monitoring me?” Telos said.

  Danyil laughed.

  “Very close, if we are being honest. You are an amusing man of contradiction, Telos. But don’t worry, we do not take any of your remarks about the gods personally.”

  Telos felt the colour draining from his face, remembering how he had loudly declaimed to Ylia that the gods were far from benevolent, and certainly not omniscient.

  “In fact,” Danyil went on. “Your remarks, while crudely put, are apt given the situation we are in.”

  Telos breathed a sigh of relief.

  “If you now know where it is, or thereabouts, why do you need me?”

  Danyil and Beltanus exchanged a glance.

  “For two reasons,” Danyil said, speaking slowly, indicating to Telos he was choosing his words very carefully. Telos filed a mental note that the whole truth was likely not on the table. “Firstly, we need all the help we can get. To look for the Nergal, we will have to touch down, to explore Memory on foot. Even with a God’s aid, this is no mean feat. The Hideous Towers, the Shadow Market, sirens… all pose great danger to mortal and god alike, saying nothing of the wild, old dragons.”

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  Beltanus nodded along. Telos found it interesting how Danyil did most of the talking, but then again, he supposed that kings and lords generally sent their vassals to treat with the lower orders—perhaps that is what Danyil was: a kind of emissary.

  “Secondly,” Danyil went on. “The Nergal is not a weapon in the way you imagine it.”

  “I admit, as a child I always thought it was a huge bomb,” Telos said.

  Danyil smiled. Beltanus cackled—a sound like gas hissing.

  “Well, in some ways, you are not far from the truth.”

  The ship lurched. Telos reacted faster than he believed possible, gripping the edge of the map. The ground tilted and a groaning sound reverberated through the walls as though the ship were a living entity crying in agony. A second later, that seemed to be a literal truth, for Beltanus looked upward and spoke to the ship as though it were a person.

  “Ship, reveal threat.”

  The array of moving images along one wall blurred, the screens on which the images played becoming one giant flickering projection, like a cyclopean eye. Telos stared with horror at what it revealed.

  “What in the name of the gods am I looking at?”

  The thing was blacker than the ocean it inhabited, though aquamarine lights blazed from an array of what might have been eyes or mouths, Telos could not tell. As it rose from the gloom it resembled a diadem-studded sceptre, an instrument of power thrust out of the black abyss like a weapon. It was large enough to fully ensnare the ship in its huge, octopean fore-limbs. Spidery legs stroked the water, each large enough to fell a tower. But its full mass was still not visible, the viewport not being wide enough, the darkness of the ocean shrouding its immensity.

  A Daimon, Telos thought. I am looking at a Daimon. Not remains in the ground. Not bones. But a full blown, living Daimon… It was more aquatic than he had imagined, but then he remembered that Daimons were known for their strange variety and diversity.

  “A water Daimon,” Beltanus growled, confirming Telos’s suspicions.

  The god lurched away from the topographical table with its illusory projection. The ship tilted again, but the god seemed immune, retaining his balance as though his feet were soldered to the ground. He lumbered toward a door, touched it, and then stepped through.

  “He’s heading to the cockpit,” Danyil said. “Follow him.”

  Telos did as he was bade, scrambling after the god. He was surer of footing even than he had been in his former life, and he had been catlike then. But the ship was now being twisted around in the water as the humungous limbs of the Daimon battered its supernatural hull.

  Telos was thrown sideways into a wall. Before, the air might have been knocked out of his lungs, but now he was only bruised. Cursing, he continued to scramble along the hallway.

  “It appears your assertion was incorrect, Danyil!” Telos said.

  “Which one?”

  “That I could not bring bad luck to a god!”

  Danyil laughed wildly at that.

  “We have clearly tempted Nereth sorely!”

  They ducked through another doorway standing open from Beltanus’s passage, and entered a small room, this one bearing an array of thrones facing forward, and one central throne that had a strange fixture on its left armrest that looked like a gauntlet half-soldered into the chair. Light shone from within it that made Telos dizzy when he stared for too long.

  Beltanus had taken a seat in this central throne. He inserted his left, humanoid arm into the gauntlet-piece; a sudden convulsion went through his body as though it were charged with lightning. Telos flinched in alarm.

  “A mind-link,” Danyil whispered to Telos. “Gods and Sumyrians steer our ships with thought, not action.”

  Telos stared in wonder as the god relaxed. Hieroglyphs flashed across Beltanus’s eyepiece.

  “Let us take this horror out of its natural element,” Beltanus growled, and Telos heard the grin shaping his hidden lips.

  With a violent surge, the ship rocketed upward. Telos was nearly thrown to the ground but at the last second gripped a chair and pulled himself into it.

  The ship juddered, vibrated. Something screeched, a sound that had physical presence, perforating his eardrums, making the bones in his body whine as though they were guitar-strings set to shrill humming by the blow of a careless hand. He gritted his teeth. The ship continued its dismal, turbulent ascent. He heard the sound of fire and smelled black oil burning. Telos smiled at that. The ship was fed by Daimonsblood—that must have been a sore wound to the Daimon’s pride. If, indeed, it knew such things. Jubal had said the Daimons were intelligent, perhaps more so than human beings, but Telos could hardly reconcile intelligence with the horrific monstrosity he had seen through the phantasmal screens.

  A roar sounded. The ship slowed to a crawl then rapidly jerked upward as they broke free of the water. Light flashed across Beltanus’s eyepiece and before them a window opened, allowing them a view of the sky. Telos could not see the creature, but he could feel its weight dragging the ship down. They were not free yet.

  An alarm sounded, strident and angry. There was a noise like a metal drum struck by a hand intent on destruction and the ripple of the vibration seemed to pass through the entire sky-ship.

  “It’s trying to get in!” Danyil said.

  “Ship, show me!” Beltanus growled.

  Still they climbed. They had gained cloud cover. Telos’s eyes widened. The dragon had flown high, but it had not reached the atmosphere. A sudden terror gripped him. We’re about to go out—into the Void! That was one place he had always feared to go.

  A transparent image appeared next to Beltanus—another illusion-projection. It showed the monster clinging to the rear of the ship. Except, the monster had changed. Whereas before it’d resembled more squid than anything else, albeit an amalgam of aquatic forms, now it seemed more like a scorpion, its hard, chitin-clad legs clinging to the rear thrusters even as fire blazed from them, scorching its glistening armour plates black. Three humungous tails sprouted chimera-like from its rear, and were darting at the ship’s hull, rebounding off, but leaving hideous dents and scars.

  “It’s mutating already!” Danyil said, and Telos detected a note of fear in his voice, doubly disconcerting considering that he had seen Danyil walk through flame—or perhaps that had merely been a projection.

  “Their capabilities have accelerated,” Beltanus remarked, as though this were all mere scientific enquiry.

  Then Telos gasped.

  With a noise like a mountain splitting, and one final shudder, the ship left atmosphere. They traversed a terrible blackness. Stars glimmered far, far off—although to the right, looming, was the golden disc of Nilldoran. He had never seen the planet so close, nor unobscured by clouds. Here, in the blackness, it seemed less a planet and more a sun formed from liquid gold. His breath caught in his throat. For a moment, fear fell away as he bathed in the pure awe of the Godshome.

  Then shrieking brought him back to reality, back to danger.

  Frost formed on the Daimon’s carapace despite the gushing flames of the sky-ship’s thrusters. It writhed and thrashed in the midst of the elemental cacophony, yet was not shaken from them.

  “Daimons can survive in the Void?” Telos said, his voice reaching a high pitch of terror.

  Beltanus let out a grunting sound more akin to crackling flame.

  “They can,” Danyil said. “And that is why the gods had to destroy them utterly, for they could have colonised Nilldoran, taken over the Godshome…”

  “It won’t let go,” Beltanus thundered. “Someone needs to go outside and cut its limbs.”

  Both Beltanus and Danyil turned to Telos.

  “No. No absolutely not. I just survived one fall, I do not wish to enjoy another.” And the Void fucking terrifies me.

  “You shan’t fall, not with the armour we provide you, and not with the powers you possess now,” Danyil said. “Besides, did you not brag to the Warden you were an acrobat?”

  Telos felt himself redden, but shame transformed as quickly as a Daimon into anger.

  “You were close enough to hear that exchange? Why did you not intervene?”

  “Because we did not wish to reveal ourselves to a dragon, thereby panicking it, nor to your ‘friends’,” Danyil said. “All manner of things might have gone wrong.”

  “Things did go wrong!” Telos roared. “I fell to my death. Well, my almost-death.”

  “Enough talk,” Beltanus thundered.

  There was an earsplitting noise of metal being rent. Beltanus growled. A new type of alarm sounded, this one deep and resonant rather than shrill. Then a voice emanated from the ship itself, distorted as though passing through a metallic grill, speaking a language Telos did not know but which he assumed was Sumyrian.

  “What does that mean?” he asked.

  Beltanus turned and look at him. He felt the full weight—and judgement—of the god’s gaze.

  “It means there is no need for you to go outside, Telos. It is already within.”