A portal opened to the side of us, but it was a pale blue instead of the pink colour I was used to. Instead of the oily film of whatever kind of event horizon my teleportation portals produced, this one was transparent; only a faint cyan tinge distorted the image on the other side.

"When we gods fight, it takes place in different ways, but at the same time," Aresk said. I ignored the bronze man, mesmerised by the image on the other side of the portal.

Waves of purple darkness washed against a green shore. Or it might have been the other way around. Each colour moved and shifted, so neither was static like the land meeting the sea. One would thrust forward and try to expand the salient. Sometimes it worked and territory was gained, sometimes it didn't, and the finger of power would be cut off and dissolve as the opposing force destroyed it.

I was witnessing divine domains in conflict.

"Death and Life?" I asked.

"Of course, Ray. This mirrors the war taking place in your chest, the one that will destroy you if you do not find a way to dominate their influences."

They seemed evenly matched. Death and Life were both vast in scope. I didn't know how my own domain would fare in comparison, but I suspected I would be swallowed immediately by either of them. I wasn't sure how I could affect the outcome of a clash between such titanic concepts. It looked like millions of yin and yang symbols forming at the point of contact and dissolving as the green and the black consumed each other endlessly.

I suspect my power would appear as less than a dot in any one of those skirmishes.

"That's… how can I influence that?" I asked the Wargod quietly.

"A knife in the dark can turn a major battle before it starts, or end a war in progress. You don't need to be a direct match for them when your power comes from stealth and a single deadly strike."

I had always been a plotter before coming to Urth. Since I had been exiled by that scaly bitch, I had been driven from one catastrophe to the next, my hand always forced down a path I had to react and adapt to. But the old instincts and habits were still there in my mind, and hadn't been neglected on my journey.

"Still, knowing when to back off and wait for your moment is a wise move, and I can't do shit to stop that," I muttered, eliciting a dry chuckle from Aresk.

"Of course, you can't stop that. It's one of the driving forces of the universe. The endless struggle been the animate and the inanimate. This is always going on in the background of reality; it's just a bit fiercer than usual at the moment due to the Source you inherited from Amir. There is another way to perceive this battle, one that might seem both more familiar to you and more manageable."

The view shifted, and a smoky battlefield materialised. The army of Life I was familiar with, having witnessed it go to war with Time when Chronos went to serve as Death's emissary and broker a peace. Which I had fucked up by sneak-attacking the avatar of Life with Sun's dagger.

The dinosaurs and ambulatory plants were locked in battle against their diametric opposites. Rotting skeletons of brontosaurus vied against their living counterparts, and grey clouds of decay swirled with green mists of Life's power. For each, there was a counter and an opposite.

"This is just a stalemate, Aresk. Neither of them can win."

"This is still a macro perception of the battle. I cannot show you the most concise form. It's boring as hell anyway. Somewhere, an avatar of each of them is chatting to its counterpart, arguing philosophy and their divine rights. The war takes place across all three, and many more, levels of perception."

"And what is it you want me to do?" I asked.

"Get in there and steal some power from each of them."

"I'm not so sure–"

"Raymond, you will be able to take control of the merged Source if you can learn to absorb both their authorities. Taking from one god puts you at war with their power; taking from two opposed gods at the same time will leave them fighting each other and you, making it a shit load easier to neutralise and absorb them."

"You want me to start a three-way war in my soul, and if I come out the victor, I'll be a step closer to dealing with the Source. How does that help me avoid having to kill the other exiles?"

"That battle is also raging in the Source." Aresk waved a hand at the viewing portal dismissively. "Learn to exist in those energies, to channel and control them, and you may be able to avoid having to take the souls of your fellows from Earth. Raymond, how does one go from being alive to being dead?"

I considered a pointed remark about old age being preferable, but I took his point.

"Forego your mortal form, and go and steal their power. You are the knife's edge between them; you are the arbiter of their dispute. Embrace what you are, Killer."

I glanced at the portal and sighed. My body dissolved away, and my essence drifted through to the physical manifestation of the war of life and death. I did not fancy trying to exist in the metaphorical battle, at least as a ghost among seemingly physical things; my mind would be able to handle what I was perceiving.

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The massed ranks of the two gods stretched away on either side of me as I drifted down to a small skirmish. A series of skeletal rodents was swarming over a verdant treant. The tree's limbs smashed and broke the skeletons apart as they climbed up, teeth gnawing away at wood that regrew as quickly as the chips were spat out.

All around me, different forms mirrored the same endless struggle. This was the purple fingers of energy invading the green and creating an infinite swirl of repetition. More rats came, bones reformed into rodent reinforcements, and at the same time, branches sprouted and regrew. Wounds dripping sap sealed over, and fresh bark covered the injury.

I was intangible, but I sent out a filament of my power to touch both at the same time, brushing against the point at which a rat's teeth dug into the bark of the tree. I was the line between them. As I made contact, both the treant and the swarm froze, and I pulled on both.

My shadowy form swirled as green and purple energy invaded my being. What had started as a conscious effort to take from them became a frantic attempt to stem the tide as the energy flooded into me. I yanked my ghostly limb away and launched myself back towards the portal in the sky.

The tableau of the frozen combatant snapped back into motion behind me, as though nothing had happened, but I was boiling with alien influences as I slipped back into Aresk's world.

"It might have been easier to do it at the tidal level of authority, not the physical one, but good job. I think I'll reach out to Hermes. With a divine thief on our side, he'll probably sign up," Aresk said.

My body reformed, and I instantly regretted it. My right arm began to wither and shrink, then grow again. The battle between Life and Death played out on the micro scale in my own flesh.

"Use the aura, boy!" Aresk bellowed happily. I glanced up at the bronze statue, then back at my arm as it shifted with the duelling energies inside it. My invisible daggers swept out through my own body, sliding between the points of contact for the alien powers and driving them apart.

I corralled them into separate areas to stop their fighting and realised I'd made a mistake. Now parts of my arm were turning black with rot, while the areas infested with life bulged and grew.

"Use them against each other, brother," Aresk said eagerly, his metal eyes locked on the war taking place in my limb. "Don't make them fight you, make them fight each other!"

I grimaced, my left hand tightly gripping my right bicep, symbolically keeping the diabolical energies from spreading further into my body, and used my own aura to create an interface between the two pockets of the other god's power. Where I channelled them together, my flesh began to rot and grow at the same time again. I pulled all their power into one area, creating a line of contact between them that ran from my wrist, up my arm and across my chest to the Source by my heart.

A slash of a knife opened a crack in the shield around the source, and I drove the alien power inside, along with some of my own power. It was a delicate process; I left a trail of death and life across my arm and lungs. Flesh died first, then healed as I pushed Life's power along behind it.

I drove the power into the Source, using the Sun's heat to merge them together as I forced it to blend with the power already there in my chest. My own aura stayed in the sphere as well, putting itself alongside the energy I'd stolen from Apollo, fusing with it and the Source as well.

Path of Divinity. Patron: Aresk Foeslayer

Divine Ichor: level 6

Divine Physique: Level 4

Divine Intellect: Level 7

Assimilation of the Source of The Cycle: 65% complete

"You bastard," I gasped. My arm was one long bruise, and something bubbled in my left lung as I drew in a breath.

"I didn't tell you to become mortal while you tried to do this. I assumed that would be obviously stupid. It worked. I felt you force it past my own authority when you merged it with the Source. How do you feel?"

"Like shit, Aresk. And it didn't work, the assimilation just jumped to two-thirds complete!"

"How does it feel in your chest, idiot! In the Source."

I reached out, or rather in. With my own aura thrown into the mix in the Source, I could feel the energies annihilating each other, and… I exerted my will and stopped the endless war. Only for a moment, the Source sent a pulse of pain through my heart that stole my breath, but I had control, if I could stand the pain.

"How does this help me?"

"To avoid becoming like Amir, living and dying at the same time until the energies run wild, you need to be at peace with both of them. You are the metaphysical force that separates all life and death. Others choose the time and the method, perhaps, but it is you whom they invoke in the moment. Raymond, when you can hold them still in the Source, you will be free of its threat. You will be able to choose, and won't need the power that comes with completing the game to ascend."

I sat down, a chair of shadows forming behind me and rubbed my hands through my hair. My right hand ached as it scratched at my scalp.

"I advanced on my path," I muttered, still angry at his less-than-complete instructions.

"You need to get to level ten."

"And then what happens?" I sighed, standing up and dissolving my chair back into the ether.

"We'll find out. Keep practising at stopping the Source. That should be your entire focus from now on."

"I've got other shit to do as well."

"Yes. I'm enjoying your war against Jeremy. Are you sure you want to be allied with Patrica, though? I've never really cared for intellectual types," Aresk replied.

"Is that why Pol Pot did what he did?"

"Hah! Partly. Thoth was so angry about that. We haven't been on good terms since then."

"I doubt that was the only reason you fell out," I muttered, flexing my right arm.

"Oh, not at all. He thinks I'm a brute. Most of them do, and in fairness, they aren't wrong. But I'm much more than just a thug, Raymond, as I hope you can tell." The statue grinned at me.

"Yeah. Crafty as Odysseus."

"He did so little with his power when he got back to Earth. I was a little disappointed in the end."

"He played one of these games as well?" I asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Sure. You don't think he spent decades sailing around a sea as small as the Mediterranean, do you? He wasn't that bad of a navigator. He went to a waterworld, and Fish-Breath had some fun with the local denizens. He didn't have to face enhanced versions of Earth-normal creatures; he got real monsters."

"And when he got home, he reclaimed his life and settled down. Was he your, what's the right word, favourite in the game? Did he swear to you like I did?"

"Aye. He wasn't like you, though. One of the reasons I liked you was that you didn't have anything to live for back there. No wife and sons, no kingly throne and lands. No great reputation."

"Thanks."

"You're welcome. You've become a bit boring since Faye had your boy. I've often thought about doing something to liven you back up a bit."

I glared at the bronze god.

"I was kidding! Blood and fury, Ray, you need to lighten up!"

I opened a portal to the snow-covered tree and stepped back to reality without another word to him. As the first flakes settled on my hair and shoulders, I reached within and stilled the Source, fighting to hold it for as long as I could until the pain overwhelmed me and I fell to my knees in the slush.

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