"Jandak says there are a few million of them now," Prender muttered.

"He can barely count past ten," snickered Kril.

"He's exaggerating. But not by as much as I'd like," I muttered absentmindedly.

With the heavy snows, our advance had slowed until the ground froze hard under the drifts. The Huskar could march through snow that was knee-deep on a human without any issue, and the packed lanes they created made for easy roads. Now the ground was solid enough not to turn to mush and mud, and we were starting to make progress towards Jeremy's capital again.

I watched as Faye and a few members of the coven approached a patch of ground to one side of the army that had been cleared by repeatedly casting firewall over an acre or so of ice. Seeds were scattered thoroughly, and then they started using Rapid Growth. A green glow spread across the charred earth, sweeping from one end to the other as green shoots sprang up and ripened to gold as the woman walked. Camp followers moved behind them, gathering the grains and the stalks for animal feed.

"The Mother must love you for bringing life back in the winter," Prender offered.

"Boy, what have I been telling you?" Kril snapped angrily.

"There is a cycle, and one thing lays the foundation for the other?" Prender guessed.

"Yes! Winter and life are in harmony. Why should the Mother care about that?" He waved a hand at our midwinter farming efforts, "When it's at best an aberration. Would Poseidon care if a river flooded into the sea ahead of schedule?"

At the mention of the word cycle, I had looked inside my chest with my aura and grimaced.

Assimilation of the Source of The Cycle: 69% complete

I had been practising controlling the Source, in private, of course. Clutching my chest and falling to my knees all the time would hardly inspire confidence in the troops. The rate of assimilation was slowing; the more I practised, the slower it got. I could hold it for over a minute now before the pain overwhelmed me, and it had only advanced five per cent in the four weeks since I stole power from Life and Death.

While Jandak was shit at counting, he preferred to deal in numbers of enemies directly in front of him than anything else; he wasn't as wrong about our escort as I would have wished.

Cities of a hundred thousand souls were considered a metropolis on the western side of the Worldspine range. The only one I could think of was Urkash, but Kril had told me there were other cities along what would have been the Aegean that could come close to that number. A population of only ten thousand was considered large. But to the east of the mountains that split the continent, it was a very different matter.

Food had been the answer. They cultivated a series of crops that must have been legacies from ages-old Shikrakyn, who dabbled in manipulating plant genes. They were profusely productive, producing more food per acre cultivated than would have historically been possible back home. The fact that those long-dead exiles were figments of the god's imagination, planted to give this temporary world a backstory, wasn't lost on me.

The effect was that cities of many hundreds of thousands were relatively common in the east, and a mere fifty thousand people living together would be considered a modest town. Whatever power Jeremy held over them was absolute. They had marched out of their cities en masse and formed huge columns that surrounded my army on all sides.

The nomads had ridden to attack them at first, slaughtering their way into the swarms of tired and starving humanity, only falling back when their horses were winded and their sword arms too heavy to lift. None of the easterners had fought back. Men, women and children trudged through the snow on our flanks, no food or tents. They were dying by the thousands every night. But every morning, a new city was abandoned, and the population marched to join our grim escorts.

The nomads had given up attacking them. The mob never moved closer to us, keeping my army just on the horizon all the time, and they didn't fight back when the lancers charged. The glass-eyed people just held up their children in front of them and wailed, babbling in their alien language.

"Why not send in the golems?" Kril said, snapping me back to their conversation. Early on, I had enjoyed listening to the religious education the old Dreamer was providing to Prender at my request, but now it bored me, and I only interrupted to offer an occasional insider's point of view so I could correct a rare misapprehension on Kril's part.

"Huh?" I asked.

"Not listening again? See, boy, this is why he always flops about. He should listen to his elders!" Kril nudged Prender, who smiled faintly at the old man lecturing me.

"Why not send in the golems to deal with the lunatics? They won't care about the lack of resistance. It's unseemly for a warrior to fight such cowards, but the machines won't care. Send in Bob to drive them away."

"They don't run, Kril. Jagapan led his elites onto their flank six days ago, and they just stood and stared at him as he cut through them. He killed thousands, and not one of the idiots broke and ran," I grumbled.

"So fly up on Wilson and burn them out. That's a lot of souls you're missing out on," Kril pointed out. He still wanted more power, despite the glowing S's floating over his head. "They won't stand when the sky turns red, Mond."

"I've still got my code, old man. They aren't a physical threat, they're a moral one."

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"What?" Prender asked in confusion.

I sighed. "The nomads, bloodthirsty as they are, won't fight them anymore. After the first few slaughters, the chiefs came to me. Warriors crave a worthy opponent, and murdering defenceless civilians is beneath them. We're surrounded by a sea of enemies my warriors don't want to fight. Kril, how many duels have there been in the ten days?"

"A couple of hundred. The lads are restless," Kril said with a shrug.

"They can see a threat, but they know it's not worth fighting. It's eating at them," I concluded.

"So fireball the hell out of them and either drive them off at last or kill them all!" Kril barked.

"I am not indiscriminate. Or rather, I won't be," I growled.

The harvest was being gathered and put into storage rings to preserve it. Another dozen such farmlands had sprung up along the leading edge of the army, and my troops would file through them, splashes of green among the blue and white of an early winter, until they made camp in the evening.

Long lines of wagons and marching Huskar filled past on my left, wrapped up in furs against the biting wind. With magic, the weather was tolerable for us; for our escorts, it was a steady attrition. Without even fighting, we were leaving trails of bodies in our wake.

"What about the kill team?" Kril asked.

"Infiltrating the next field army," I replied, thankful for the change of subject. "Glimpse is with them. This one is just too large for them to make much of a difference. Jandak would be right on his maths for Jeremy's second force."

"So many?" Prender asked.

"It won't matter. We've got a god on our side, and not one of the cuddly ones," Kril chortled before turning to spit to one side.

"I've yet to meet a god that's cuddly. They view us as… like we would view termites. Industrious little things, but not worthy of any attention from the gods unless they threaten the larger structure that forms their power."

"But they interfere in our lives all the time. Every sailor knows to respect Poseidon's capriciousness," Prender objected. His religious education was necessary for his coming role in my plans, but explaining things I only half understood myself was getting challenging.

"Not really. The forces that drive humanity's belief are always present. While those forces are technically the gods, it's about the same as me saying I'm paying attention to my toenails growing. It's our belief and need to explain those forces that gave rise to the gods. My predecessor has slumbered for centuries, as his authority was broken up among other gods, but is now coming back together in me. There have been many gods of the oceans, and there'll be many more after Poseidon falls."

"But first, Mond, you've got the matter of the Shikrakyn," Kril reminded me unnecessarily.

"I know." We turned and began marching toward the path cut through the snow by the Huskar. When we got there, I stamped my bare feet on the ice to clear the white flakes from my trousers.

"I can feel him out there. He isn't moving, but in another month, we should be at his gates, assuming he doesn't try and run. Then there will just be the scholars to deal with," I said, staring to the east and the beacon in my mind that represented Aphrodite's chosen.

"Where can he run to?" asked Prender.

"North, south, across the sea. He might be the most technically useless of us exiles. Amir was a military expert, and Patrica was an academic and historian. I bet even Mortimer knew some shit about construction or something from his life as a slumlord. Gallagher was probably in the same boat as Jezza. A dangerous fighter, but too focused on that to be of much use in technological uplifting."

"You think he'll be strong in a fight?" Kril asked with a raised eyebrow.

"If he gains Souls the way I think he does, he'll be a very high level. But with my aura and other divine tricks, he won't be much of a threat if I just want to kill him. But I don't, which makes it trickier."

"You want to capture a man like that?" Prender wondered.

"I want to seal him up in a storage bead forever so this world doesn't unravel when there's only one Shikrkyn left. They'll grow old and die eventually."

"What about Thoth's pet? Wouldn't she do?"

"I haven't made up my mind about her."

We lapsed into silence. I would rather have two Shikrakyn in storage stones, buried or hidden at opposite ends of the world and forgotten about so they could never be released. It would secure the future for my son and my friends. But Patricia had a lot to offer if she could actively contribute to the world. Technology and knowledge that would propel this world out of the late Bronze Age and towards modernity.

"I just don't know if that would be a mercy or a punishment," I muttered, ignoring the looks the other two gave me.

You brood, Glimpse sent.

Life used to be simple, crow. Do the job, escape the law. Then it was to survive in the wilderness. That became take control of the tribes, then kill Mortimer. There's always another hill to climb, taller and steeper than the last.

Broody indeed. Raymond, you have a certain skillset, true?

Yes.

So use it. Kill your enemies and give me their eyes.

I cracked a smile at his desire for ever more eyeballs. Perhaps… there was some wisdom in his direct and honest perspective. I stopped and closed my eyes, letting my perception shift to the divine one. The intent to kill flooded my senses, bringing light among the darkness of the world. Schemes, plots, and idle daydreams of violence all appeared as places where I had some blurry vision.

"I'm going to see if I can negotiate. He's only going to break the army's morale with this suicidal march of innocents if I don't. Time to go and say hello." I tore open a portal to the east, stepping from snowy wilderness to icy street in a second. I let it snap closed behind me and took in my surroundings.

The street was wide and paved in flat stones, dusted with ice. Skeletal branches hung from trees that had shed their leaves for winter, poking up between the stones every ten metres or so. They weren't regularly spaced; the gaps varied in an organic fashion that made the place seem natural and alive, even with the snow and frost.

Instead of the rectangular functionality of the buildings in the west, or back on the old world, everything was flowing, elegant curves. Murals and paint adorned every surface, the quality of the work so high that what should have looked garish and jumbled seemed to blend together into a symphony of colour.

I pulled my aura around me like a cloak to make myself less noticeable and dragged my hood up over my head. I padded down the street towards the much closer presence of Jeremy's beacon. Everyone had scarlet letters over their heads, and they were all exquisitely beautiful. They almost danced as they moved, gliding along untroubled by the slippery footing.

Refusing to allow myself to be distracted by the spectacle, I kept my head down. This might well be a very bad idea. I had delayed moving alone against Jeremy for good reason, but his insidious indirect attack on my army, gradually driving them to sicken of the war, had finally forced my hand.

I followed the winding streets, and alien music, ethereal and melodious, spilt out from firelit houses to fill the roads with haunting tunes. Some were melancholy, but most were lilting and seductive. The people I passed paid me no mind, their gazes sliding off me like water off a duck's back.

The beacon drew me onwards, and the last street let out onto the edge of a vast orchard. Trees and meadows mixed together and spread away as far as I could see. In the distance, a solitary tree stood towering over the rest, leaves still green.

The frosty grass crunched against my naked feet as I stepped out towards my goal.

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