As soon as I saw this Black Goat entity, I knew there was no way I was going to get out of this without changing forms. I really didn’t want to change forms, but I saw no other way we were going to battle some false god without it. And once Matteson noted the usefulness of hellfire in the situation, it was basically confirmed for me. I prayed a bit under my breath that that would not be the case anyway, but when I realized Akshainie was in far too much trouble without it, it just seemed…natural.

I didn’t have time to think about that, though. In the process of the fight and the change and the sudden realization that there was a real chance we were going to die here, or at least one of us might, I lost track of where Matteson was and what he was doing. I sent out a burst to clear the area around me of creatures, and started fighting back against the Black Goat itself. They were still coming, and I could take the occasional swipe or area attack to thin them out, but I was running a real risk of getting overrun and I knew it had to be worse in the hallway. Then I heard Akshainie calling out to get my attention. Then I saw her emerge from the horde.

“Finish this!” she shouted, before using her swords to bring down the rest of the loose stonework in the ceiling and closing off the hallway from the chamber I was in. I screamed. I moved to tear the rubble away, pull her out, do something. But I also knew she meant to do it. I watched her move with intention. I knew she had something planned, but I didn’t know what, until I began to see a little bit of water drip through between the rocks.

She’s a water snake, I thought. Of course. I felt a sudden pain in my shoulder, and spun to find a tendril of the Black Goat, with some kind of mouth on it, biting into me. I grabbed it and burned it off, causing another scream from the beast that had so long marked this place as its own. Then I noticed that what was left of the tendril wasn’t recovering as fast as the previous ones had. I looked over, and saw Matteson. He was being held aloft by the Black Goat, bleeding from the mouth and leg, holding on to the arm that was squeezing him and, it looked like, running his mouth. But with that tendril struggling to repair itself, I knew his plan was working. It was my turn.

I directed all my rage at the amorphous beast in the ceiling and felt the ground around me begin to melt as my fire grew stronger. I screamed and lunged. Two fresh arms shot out at me, and I grabbed them both and threw myself forward off them. I drove my own fist into the center of the mass, fire erupting around my hand as soon as it made contact and boiling away a large section of what passed for skin. My hand dug into the screaming, rolling mass, and I grabbed hold of whatever I could inside it and used my other hand to begin ripping parts off of it. Each piece I removed fell into the pit, burning away to ash before hitting whatever ground lay at the bottom. I lost track of myself and my senses. I just remember ripping, tearing, burning, hitting, screams of rage and agony. I don’t know how long I worked at the beast, or how many times I felt its own teeth and claws tearing at me. I was fully consumed by the moment. Fully given over to the nature of this form. I know now, looking back, that what I became in that moment was what I always feared becoming, what I had spent my whole life running from and hiding behind a mask of mundane humanity. This was what was always waiting, just beneath the surface of my anger and frustration. This was what Babylon desired me to become full-time.

The worst part of the whole ordeal was how much I enjoyed it.

The next thing I can remember clearly was falling. At some point in the tirade, between my heat and the writhing of the beast and the force of blows we were laying on each other, the ceiling broke. As we plummeted toward the pit, I ripped what was left of the Black Goat in half. My wings, knowing themselves better than I did, suddenly shot out and I stopped, hovering above the pit, watching the last vestiges of this dark god burn away and vanish into the darkness.

Matteson hit the ground hard, and the noise of him swearing brought me out of my reverie. I flew over and resumed my human form as soon as I touched the ground, then ran over to check if he was okay. He was groaning and bleeding from a number of new places in his chest and arms, and I was pretty sure one of his legs was broken. He rolled onto his back, pulled out a pack of Newport 100’s, slipped one to his mouth, and cocked his head toward me.

“Hey,” he said, weakly, “you got a light?”

“Those things are going to kill you,” I said, igniting the end of his cigarette and sitting back against the wall.

“Not if I keep doing shit like this,” he said. I couldn’t stop myself from letting out a weak chuckle, then winced as my ribs protested. I realized then that I was naked, and covered in cuts and bites and newly-forming bruises. I didn’t realize damage would transfer from one form to another. I didn’t even realize until this moment that I had bones as a demon. I waved my hand.

“I’m sure you’ll be fine. Your dad has always made it through.” Matteson suddenly went quiet, staring up at the ceiling and holding his cigarette away from his face as if deep in thought.

“He’s dying, Benedict,” he finally said, softly.

“What?”

“He has terminal cancer. I don’t know if he tried to tell you or not, but…”

“But I wasn’t available. I wasn’t on this plane of reality.” He nodded. “Well, we can go to him! Maybe Akshainie, or I, maybe we could—”

“No,” he said, firmly. He turned his head to face me. “He said it was too much magic healing that did it. His body apparently had a bad reaction to it. I don’t know the details, but…it won’t help. Not this time.” We sat in silence for a long while, the weight of the news bearing down on me as if the entire chamber had collapsed. Collapsed like…

​“Akshainie!” I cried, jumping up and running to the pile of rubble that used to be a doorway. Or at least what used to be rubble. It seems my fire fused the stones together, and now it was a solid piece of rock that I wasn’t sure I could break in any form. There was no noise coming from the other side. I had no idea what to do. I ran back to Matteson. “We need to help her! Do you have any ideas?” He pointed to a smaller doorway with a stairway in it, tucked away behind a portion of wall, that I hadn’t been able to see before. I lifted him to his one good foot and wrapped his arm around my shoulder, and together we hobbled toward the stairs.

“Any ideas on how to kill it?” I demanded. Akshainie and I turned our focus to the doorway, which we hoped would narrow enough to bottleneck our attackers and help us deal with them.

“I don’t know! I know great-grandma had notes about that, but I never got around to reading them, and I don’t exactly know what we have to work with here!” he answered, pulling out a much older-looking notebook and flipping through it.

“Your great-grandmother was taking notes on how to kill avatars of elder gods?” I threw a fireball into the darkness of the hallway and saw it break up as a host of small, shambling creatures burned or were thrown aside. They were getting close.

“Well, she was actually trying to figure out how to kill gods themselves, but it seems relevant.”

“What the hell is going on with your family?!” Akshainie yelled. A black, amorphous figure leapt out of the hallway at her, sharp paws extended out, and she sliced it in half in the air. “Why are you mortals trying to kill gods?”

“Do you really think we have time for that right now?” he demanded. Akshainie growled as three more creatures entered the doorway and we began attacking. “I mean, shit. Okay. We have, what, swords? A fire mage or something? Is that special fire of some kind?”

“It’s hellfire,” I muttered, throwing another fireball into the hallway and kicking a little creature back.

“Hell—are you fucking kidding me? You’re a priest with hellfire powers? It’s like a goddamn Livejournal story in here.”

“Look, kid, you got any ideas, or what?”

“Is that a thing? Do priests just do that?”

“Matteson!” He knelt down behind us and poked at the flesh of one of the now-dead beings swarming the doorway.

“The Black Goat of the Woods With A Thousand Young,” he said, softly. “Okay! Okay, look, I think she’s made of the same substance these things are, she probably spawned them.”

“Are you going somewhere with this?” Akshainie demanded, pressing forward a bit and cutting down more of the creatures. One managed to get over the pile and bite her arm, and I burned it off and then touched her swords, igniting the blades. She smiled viciously at that and charged into the mob as I continued giving her cover fire.

“Hellfire is pretty impressive stuff. I think it can kill her, but we need to isolate her first.”

“From what? The horde?” I asked. He shook his head and punched a creature, sending it flying back toward Akshainie.

“From Shub-Niggurath. As long as she’s connected to the source, she’ll probably regenerate too fast. We need to sever the connection.”

“How do we do that?” He cracked his knuckles, flicked his cigarette butt aside, and started walking toward the avatar.

​“I think,” he said, slowly, “I just need to will it harder than she wills to be connected.”

Matteson, it seems, has not only run into the Brood of Nachash, but has been given the idea that he's important to them in some way. I would love to know more about this, but without assurance he would go into more detail than he has I see no way to learn much more from him. I had other matters to address at that point, anyway.

This underground area was far larger than the structure that sat on it, and clearly belonged to the cult. Not only was it theirs, but it must have been vital to their activities, at least when it was still in use. The importance of the site was not apparent simply from its size. The massive red spiral that occupied the entire floor was, here, more of a path. Maybe it's supposed to be a path everywhere else, as well. But here it was explicit, thanks to the idols and shrines that traced along it and the way the floor was much more worn along the spiral than around it. People regularly walked the spiral itself, and did not regularly walk across the arms of it.

The dust on everything, the old electronic systems, and the stale air all pointed to abandonment some years earlier. There was a part of me that wondered why they would abandon such an important site, and then realized that maybe they didn't know it was here. If I really did kill all the leading members who knew the full scope of the cult in the United States back in the 80s, and the few people left in the building upstairs didn't know what happened below, then it could have easily been forgotten. How many other empty Brood sites lay hidden around the world?

I saw that Matteson and Akshainie were walking the spiral, discussing the different shrines and writing down notes about each one, so I decided to focus on the three exits from the room. Once I was far enough away from them, I was able to call fire into my hand to light the way, which raised some questions for me. What little I knew of Anchors so far was that they prevented magic; but the fire should have been as natural to me as breathing. My natural form is constantly aflame. If it were so simple as negating magic, it would be my human guise that got disrupted. Either the details of what he is are just another thing a Matteson is hiding from me, or maybe he simply doesn’t know how his ability works. I determined to find out; but later, after we were done here.

The light from my flame illuminated the hallway, which was far less worked than the room where I began. The walls were rough-hewn, eventually giving way to what seemed a natural cave, completely unmarked by human tools. After about fifteen meters it began to widen, and soon small alcoves were visible, each containing a strange, limbed, inhuman shape about one meter tall, wrapped in bandages like a mummy, with assorted archaic weapons and artifacts scattered among the corpses. There must have been a hundred or more of them in this chamber, which smoothly curved back in, the walls meeting at a massive altar. The stone slab in front of the altar was stained with blood and surrounded by ancient clay jars, each marked with inscriptions that were distinct enough that they must have been a language, but one that resembled no script I had ever seen. The altar rose behind the slab, with a dozen small platforms sticking out from it that were covered in wax and burnt residue, and another dozen scattered around that were covered in long-dried blood. More of the markings covered the altar, presumably telling a story of some sort. The massive script at the top was, I assume, the name of the figure standing above the main body of the altar. I don’t know what they called the figure, as I could not even begin to make out what sounds the symbols would represent, but I recognized him. I had heard his description too many times, spent years seeing his face in my imagination after hearing in detail how it looked in the throes of vengeful murder, how it looked when offering promises.

I was staring at a statue of Buné, the demon who cursed Tadzio. But why would this cult honor him in this way? It was far too ornate to be a minor deity in their practice. Is this where he had vanished to those hundreds of years ago?

I turned and went back to the main chamber, intending to tell the others what I’d found and explore the opposite hall, but just before I emerged into the chamber I heard a loud roar shake the ground, followed by the grinding noise of stone moving against stone. From behind me came the sound of slow movement, and then the sound of metal tapping or dragging across the ground. I ran into the chamber to find Matteson and Akshainie standing at the end of the spiral, in front of a statue of Nachash. We all looked at each other in silence for a moment.

“So, uh…I think this statue does something bad,” Matteson said. I groaned. From the largest hallway, opposite the elevator, came another roar and a wet, heavy, thud. We all turned to focus on the sound, when from the two other hallways came the sound of dragging feet and tapping metal. Akshainie had her swords out in a flash, and I tried to call more fire but found it inaccessible. I turned and glared at Matteson. “What?”

“I need fire!” I growled. He raised a brow and produced a lighter from his pocket. “No! My fire!”

“Wait. You’re a priest! Do you do magic? Is the Pope cool with that?”

“Can you drop your ability or not?!” He sighed.

“No. But I can let it up a bit.” I felt the block ease, and suddenly my hands were aflame. Akshainie and I both turned toward the side hallways, but Matteson began calmly walking toward the main one.

“What are you doing?” Akshainie hissed. He shrugged.

​“Seems to me whatever’s in there is calling whatever’s over there,” he answered, waving his hand dismissively toward the left hallway. “Why fight the horde when you can kill the boss?” Akshainie and I looked at each other, and then quickly made our way to the main hallway to join the boy.

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They were conducting human experiments.

Matteson explained the local lore, that the place had been owned by the military and seen some form of experimentation, presumably to make more perfect soldiers, until it was handed off as an insane asylum and later a nursing home before finally closing some decades ago. The skeleton we found, and the ghost associated with it, showed that there was probably at least some truth to the legend; part of the jaw was fused shut, there were five holes that looked to be for eyes in the skull, the legs were shrunken to near uselessness but four of the extra arms were certainly long enough to make up the difference in mobility. Assuming they worked, of course; it was impossible to tell from what remained, or at least impossible for all of us. The hands looked like they'd been broken and healed over a few times, likely injuries related to the damage we found to one of the walls. Poor soul didn't even know where it was going--even if it had succeeded in punching through that wall, another cell waited on the other side.

Matteson took notes on the scene as I examined the corpse and Akshainie compared the mad scribblings on the walls against my notes. She didn't see any connections, but it was always unlikely she was going to, anyway. Even if the Brood was behind this, somehow, the deceased probably wouldn't know how to say that unless they had been members themselves. We knew from the Book that an entity somehow connected to the Brood was here; that said nothing about whether it had been here when the place was still in mortal use. Or, for that matter, whether or not the ghost we'd already encountered was all there was.

"Well," Matteson said, closing his notebook, "I could go for some answers. Anyone else?" I turned to him and furrowed my brow.

"And where, exactly, do you expect to get those?" He shrugged.

"Won't know until we look. But I saw an office upstairs, if there's anything left there it may be useful." Akshainie and I looked to each other, and she hesitantly nodded.

"I have no better ideas," she said. I sighed, stood, dusted myself off, and held out my hand toward the door.

"Lead the way, young man." He did exactly that, wandering back to where we had met him before continuing just a little further down the hall to a corner that hid a stairway up. He showed us around, indicating a room with long tables, all but one of which was broken, that he described as a break room before showing us the office.

The office was in complete disarray. If there was anything of value still in it, it would be the work of the night digging it out from the scattered shreds of paper, broken bits of plaster, and assorted junk left lying around by, it seemed, the same people who had spray painted on the walls. I groaned as Matteson held his arms out as if presenting us with some fantastic gift, and he laughed and started walking toward the only desk that hadn't been destroyed or knocked over. Akshainie and I began sifting through the piles of stuff nearish the door, looking for anything that might have been original and still in a legible condition.

"What are you doing over there?" I asked Matteson, who seemed to be checking the drawers on the desk.

"Well, this thing doesn't move, I tried. And it's still locked up. So maybe there's something in it."

"And how are you intending to find out?"

"You know," he said, kneeling down, "desk locks are a lot easier to work with than the door ones downstairs."

"Are you telling me you know how to pick locks?"

"Yeah, dad taught me."

"...I didn't know Henry knew how to pick locks, either."

"Has he not been your friend for decades?" Akshainie asked.

"There's a lot he doesn't tell anyone, it seems," he muttered, before I heard a faint sound and he stood up with a smile. Akshainie and I went over to the desk, and Matteson opened the center drawer to reveal a collection of old pens and pencils. "Oh! Score," he announced, grabbing a couple and shoving them into his bag. I shook my head and opened one of the side drawers, which appeared to be empty. Just as I was about to close it, Akshainie stopped me.

"What is that?" she asked, pointing to a small bump I'd failed to notice inside the drawer. I reached into the drawer to feel it, and when I pushed against it we learned it was a button. There was a low whine from one of the wall to our right for a few seconds, and then part of the wall began to move. Akshainie had her swords out the moment it clunked into action, and I braced myself for whatever was waiting behind. Matteson, for his part, just seemed to be watching with general disinterest. As the portion of wall moved out of the way, we all stopped and tensed at the sight of a painted red spiral on a set of steel doors.

"Aw, shit, not these assholes again," Matteson grumbled as he pulled his cigarettes from his bag.

There was some back-and-forth before we pieced together that we had a shared connection in Henry. The young, annoyed man standing before us was, in fact, Henry's son. I knew Henry had a son, as the matter had been discussed when I first met him and he was dealing with his divorce and the prospect of being a single father; but Henry, I suddenly realized, was so quiet about his personal life that I didn't even know the boy's name. When he introduced himself only as Matteson, I resisted the temptation to sigh and ask if this was what everyone in his family was like.

The initial concern was something to do with a bet Matteson had with some friends that meant we could not be seen by them, but once that was resolved I asked how Henry was doing. He went quiet for a moment.

"What's the last thing you heard?" he asked. We explained that we hadn't seen or heard from him since December 2004, because we were not exactly near a phone. He grunted. "He recovered fine from that," he said, before turning to the doorway. "What're you doing here?"

"We're on the trail of a cult."

"And you're here because of the presence in this place?" Akshainie and I stopped and looked at each other. I had been so thrown off by Matteson that I hadn't even taken the time to register that there was a presence here with us, and I gathered from her look that she hadn't, either. But it was certainly there, strong and malevolent, weighing down the air like a thick fog. We turned back to him.

"You can feel that?"

"It's a thing of mine. And if you have anything magic you'd like to keep, maybe don't bring it too close." Akshainie's eyes grew wide. She said something in, I presume, the language of Iravati as her hand reached for a sword. Matteson raised a brow curiously and I reached over to stop her.

"What are you doing!?"

"We know of his kind! They unravel the powers of spirits and tear the world apart!" She yelled.

"Huh," he said, softly. "I guess I never thought about how spirits would view it."

"He cannot be allowed to interfere!" She drew her swords and I stepped in front of her.

"Wait! Wait. Henry has always been on our side, maybe give us just a moment," I said. She exhaled, hard, and glared at him for a moment before scowling and giving a quick nod. She did not put the swords away.

"Matteson, what exactly are your intentions here?"

"I was just here to make some money off a bunch of people," he answered, lighting another cigarette. "But, once I noticed there was something off about the place, I thought I'd look around and see what it was."

"Whatever it is you do to spirits, could you promise not to do it to us?"

"Yeah, sure." I turned to Akshainie.

"Can you just give him a chance, see if we can work together?" She growled and put her swords away.

"Do you not know of his kind where you come from?" she asked, bitterly, in Enochian. I sighed.

"I wasn't raised with spirits, Akshainie," I told her. "I only ever heard the Church's view of most of this until very recently." She rolled her eyes.

"The division between the worlds is maintained by his kind. They break down magic, drive spirits out of the physical realm, and destroy anything they touch. They say some can bring ruin to us with just a look." I glanced over to him to find he was halfway out of the room already and looking down the hall.

"We'll keep an eye out, okay? Just give him a chance." She agreed, and I gave her the Book of Shadows. "Please put this somewhere safe." She slipped away toward the broken wall behind her, and came back after a moment without it. With that settled, we went to find Matteson and see what he was getting into.

I was encouraged to take my human form again before climbing the worldtree. The branches can handle the flames of fire giants, Yggdrasil explained, but there was no need to test its resilience to hellfire if we didn't need to. I think it was largely entertaining my own discomfort with having worn no flesh for over a year, but made no indication of my suspicion. I packed the book into my bag, after a reminder that it may not recognize its master in the face of a priest, and walked to the base of the tree. I have never before noticed the way the bark on one side resembled a stairway, but once I looked more closely I couldn't help but see it winding around and around the trunk all the way up, always meeting branches right where one could easily step onto them. Akshainie retained her natural form, slithering up the edge of the tree following a route of minute irregularities I could barely make out as she slipped over them.

I had no idea that the tree could be used to travel within Midgard, but Yggdrasil walked us through how to decide where we emerged on Earth instead of just popping up right outside. We tried to keep the track well, but it took a couple hours to get from the ground to the twig that opened to the world of man, and by then we realized we had forgotten some of the details. We tried to work it out, not desiring to make our way back down and up again, and lightly argued about bits we remembered differently.

"You could just ask," a female-sounding voice said. We both stopped and looked up, our gaze met by two ravens sitting on a branch over us. They were both far larger than normal ravens, almost as large as me; one looked otherwise normal, while the other had shifting blueish runes glowing in and under black feathers.

"I do hope you mean asking you," I said, glancing at Yggdrasil resting far below.

"It's worth a shot," the blue raven replied, connecting the voice we'd already heard to a face. Akshainie slid forward.

"Would you help us find our way? There's a place on the other side of the human world we must find, called Ohio."

"Vienna, Ohio," the raven answered. "An abandoned mental hospital." The black raven nodded silently. I turned to them.

"How do you know that?"

"It is time." She turned and cawed at the twig, and the image through the portal shifted and warped until we saw a dark room, a small amount of pale moonlight shining through the broken and barred window, the walls cracked and crumbling and covered in bits of graffiti, the ground covered in old leaves and broken bits of junk. We looked to the ravens, who nodded. We looked to each other, then Akshainie shrugged, and we walked through.

Once we were fully in the room, we looked back and found no evidence of the opening ever existing. Akshainie had to coil herself low to avoid bumping her head on the ceiling, which was only a foot over my head. It took me a moment to get used to being human-sized again, and as we both looked around and adjusted to the world of man, we heard footsteps crunching through the detritus in the hallway. We braced ourselves and turned, watching, when a young black man entered and pointed a flashlight at us. He looked us each over, with disinterest where I would have expected surprise, and there was silence for a few minutes until he groaned, lowered the flashlight, and lit a cigarette.

"What are you, a naga?" he asked.

"I...yes," Akshainie answered. The young man nodded and exhaled a long string of smoke.

​"Always fucking something," he muttered.

The Book of Shadows is in constant flux, but when the code was broken it largely began to obey the ways I now knew to read it in. It still took us some days to work through it, as even once we knew how to read it we had to figure out what we were even looking for. If there was ever a being named Nachash, it no longer went by such a name, or maybe it originally had no name. We didn't yet know enough of the book to know whether the names used were original or current, or something between.

The point of the book was to track the activities of demonic forces, that much was passed along to me by Tadzio on our way up from Germany. As we worked through, we came to understand that the text would change to show shifting alliances, locations, and even names. There seemed to be ways to use it to see the way things were in the past, but we had no time to dig into that different, and currently unnecessary, mess. What finally gave us a hint was when I began to find connections that lined up with my notes of some of the Brood's network. Some of them were dead ends, other bits were things I knew were being handled, but as I traced the network beyond the strands I knew I found reference to a Mother-in-the-Deep, a being who seemed central to some aspects of the Brood that I hadn't yet uncovered. The locations weren't always perfectly lined up with the human systems of marking them, but we were sure it was a location on the physical plane. It was another day of comparing notes and discussions with Yggdrasil before we were able to track it to a place in North America; when we lined it up with a map in my bag, we found it to be somewhere near the line between Pennsylvania and Ohio, likely on the Ohio side.

"Do you know any paths there?" I asked Akshainie, dreading the odds of her saying she did. But she shook her head.

"I could, through the River Network, probably get there. But without knowing what river we need, or what terms the Network would use for that region, it could take some wandering and guessing." I groaned and leaned back, scratching my chin.

"If it is passage you seek," Yggdrasil said, standing from the dirt, "you may wish to remember where you begin." We looked at it for a moment, then past it to the worldtree itself.

"I hope you've some skill at climbing," Akshainie whispered, looking at the tree's branches.

"Me, too," I answered.

After a couple months, Benedict and Akshainie stopped keeping track of the time. The day/night cycle was strange in this place anyway, with a sun just orbiting the worldtree and casting light on the realms as it passed, and they had no idea how well it related to the world outside. They would work on translating for as long as they could stand, with Akshainie usually leaving to meditate what felt like a couple hours before Benedict was done. They would sleep when it felt appropriate; sometimes he would find her coiled up next to him when he woke, sometimes she was already up and training, sometimes she was half hidden away under a root. He wasn't even sure if she needed sleep or was just entertaining him. In this form, he mostly did it out of habit, but she was fully spirit and therefore might need even less. It never seemed sensible to ask if naga were a race with something approaching a biological cycle, though, so he never did.

This morning was one in which she was under a root when Benedict rose and went to begin his work, and he absently noticed her when she woke and slipped away toward the river. She returned some time later, still wringing water out of her hair and wrapped in one of the large leaves she had taken to using as towels.

"How's the book today?" she asked, settling down to what passed for sitting in her habit.

"If I was not assured of success," he said, turning a page and comparing to the assorted notes he had next to to, "I would think we were making no progress at all." She sighed.

"I suppose I should get dressed, then."

"I should think that was going to be part of your plan either way."

"Well, yes, of course. But I didn't want to leave you hanging if you were close to something." He nodded but didn't look up, and she waited a moment before rolling her eyes and leaving to gather her outfit. As she was slipping her shirt on, a large shadow began to loom over her.

"I am not equipped to know whether your playful attitude with him is born of amusement or desire," Yggdrasil said. Akshainie gasped and spun around, sword in hand. "But as your time here is nearly finished, I feel it my responsibility to inform you that if it is the latter, he cannot reciprocate."

"I certainly never said it was," she grumbled, putting her sword away. "But what do you mean, cannot?"

"You know how our kind are bound by our vows." She nodded, and it continued. "His priesthood requires some number of vows, one of which includes restraint from romantic or sexual attachments."

"Isn't it a mortal priesthood?" It nodded. "And aren't mortals pretty big on romantic and sexual attachments?"

"Generally. It is considered a sacrifice, in this case."

"Well, thanks for the tip, but don't worry. I'm not about to make any attachments with a joyless fire spirit, anyway." Yggdrasil slowly nodded, then turned away as she began to move toward Benedict. She stopped, suddenly, then turned back. "What do you mean, our time is almost finished." Yggdrasil didn't answer, but did stop and look toward Benedict. She watched it for a moment, then groaned and turned just in time to see Benedict jump up.

"I've got it!" he yelled. A massive smile spread across her face, and she looked to Yggdrasil, who had turned its back to her and continued walking toward its spot at the foot of the worldtree. She turned back and rushed over to see the book.

Akshainie dove over Benedict's arm as his fist drove into the earth, then quickly wound around his ankles and popped up on his other side, delivering a quick pair of punches to his jaw before he was able to bring his hand back around. He stumbled, tripped over her tail, and fell backward into the grass as Akshainie threw herself over him and whipped him in the face with the end of her tail for good measure. He grunted and rolled over, catching his breath with his knees and fists on the ground.

"You're getting faster in this form," she said, slithering over and applying some ointment from a pouch on her side to her fists.

"Doesn't feel much faster," he grumbled. "Besides, I don't exactly plan on using this form once we leave here."

"What a shame, to hide a face like that just because it isn't traditionally human," she said with a smirk. She coiled her lower body  around herself and began applying the ointment to the end of her tail. "But that's not the whole point."

"Oh?" he asked, pushing himself into a seated position. "And what is?"

"You don't know how to be a fighter and a spirit at the same time. You can punch, and you can use your gifts, but you insist on switching between them instead of seeing yourself as one person who has them all available all the time."

"I don't exactly have all the benefits of my demonic form when I'm in human form."

​"But you have some, and I bet if you tried to embrace your nature you could have more." He let out a low, slow breath as he rubbed his jaw.

"You want me to, what, just be fine with demonic influence?"

"I want you to accept that you are what you are and make the best of it. I don't care what you think about demons in general. We're going against a force that will use all the powers you refuse to, and better than you can if you don't practice them, and your stories about them sound like they're very good at turning self-loathing to their advantage. If you insist on feeling bad about being imperfect in the eyes of your dad you will lose this fight." Her body slowly uncoiled as her torso lifted into the air, putting her eyes at the same level of his where he sat. She pointed at him as she continued. "And I'm not letting you take me down with you." He stared at her for a second, then groaned as he rested his hand on his knee and pushed himself back up to standing.

"One thing at a time. Ready?"

​"Always," she said, smiling, as she dove forward.

I had been working at the cipher long enough that day that I stopped counting hours. For all I knew it had spanned multiple days. But now I was having trouble seeing the words clearly, and realized I needed a break. I stood, stretched, let my wings twitch a bit to battle the stiffness in them, and then went for a walk.

In this form I couldn't really do much with water and had no desire to; and while I didn't technically need food on a daily basis, I still enjoyed the act and taste, especially of the pure fruits growing on the branches of the worldtree. It took a couple weeks for me to learn how to pick them myself without damaging the tree, which involved Akshainie painfully dousing the flames on my hands with the water she could call on when I did it wrong and nearly caused an issue. Yggdrasil watched these proceedings without comment, but never so relaxed that I thought it wouldn't handle the situation itself if she was just a little too slow. The first time, she picked two beautiful apples herself, taking a bite of the first one before handing me the other. When she slithered away with her prize and I took my first bite, I had heard Yggdrasil snicker.

"Don't they have a story about that among your myths?" it said, bemused. I grunted and it laughed as I walked away with my fruit, and we never spoke of the matter again.

I picked what appeared to be a gourd of some sort, with a crispy outer shell and a moist but chewy center, as I made my way around the tree today. As I made my way around the great roots of the worldtree, I noticed Akshainie sitting next to the well called Mímisbrunnr, quietly meditating with her tail curved around the edges of the water but never quite touching. I paused and watched her for a time, as she quietly hummed and swayed like a cobra enchanting itself, and the well softly humming along. Finally she stopped and, laying down beside the water, glanced over to me. She smiled and waved me over, and I walked closer to sit near her head.

"What do you know of these waters?" she asked, resting her ear on her folded arms and staring into the well's depths.

"I know that Odin, as he's now generally called, gave his eye for a single drink of it because the wisdom it could impart was so valuable."

"Is that how you Europeans think wisdom is gained? By consuming it?"

"It seems to have worked for him, at least once." She laughed.

"Consuming that which you value always seems to work. At least, once."

"Are you a philosopher, as well?"

"All things are connected, Benedict. You, me, this water, even the Barzai, all have their places in the great wheel. Some refuse to honor their place; but knowing this, and learning to recognize one's own place in it, is just the way of life in Iravati. That your people make it a separate discipline, as if such a thing could ever truly be separate from any other discipline, is a strange and probably harmful practice."

"I suppose we have a lot of those." We stared together at the water for a time, before I leaned back and resumed eating my gourd. Her body slid up alongside mine, until her face was next to my face and her eyes turned to me.

"Where do you think wisdom comes from, priest?"

"The One True God, who knows all things, sustains all things, and puts all things in motion. He is the wellspring of all truth and wisdom, and I learn to know the world best when I learn to see it as He does."

"At least it isn't found in consumption."

"Well," I said, "there is some of that. Every time we hold Mass." She laughed and rolled onto her back, and we stared into the endless sky dotted with leaves and branches from which the worlds hung.

"You'll have to show me this Mass one day. I must see this madness." I laughed then, as well, as I broke off part of my gourd and handed it to her.

"I would be glad to have you in attendance."