I was tense and uncertain. I had one more thing to do before I could ascend properly, and my progress had slowed to a crawl.

"It's not that hard, Raymond," Prender said. "You need to embrace it. Accept the essence of it, and it will bend to your will."

"So the student becomes the master," I muttered, dismissing the yurt around us and leaving my domain as a swirling mass of dark smoke.

"That's not it. Look."

Prender held out a hand, and water flowed out of his pores to form a small globe over his palm. The blob danced and shifted, delicate patterns and swirls forming and changing as he demonstrated his control.

"You've got the hang of it."

"It isn't strength or power. Water is impermanent. It doesn't last, and yet it's always there, Mond. You told me to understand the power, but you've not done it yourself."

He refuses to embrace the consequences.

"Shut up, Tezca," I grumbled as I reached inward to still the locus of power next to my heart once again.

Assimilation of the Source of The Cycle: 93% complete

It was a hodgepodge of powers, wrapped up in a ball of life and death, warring against each other. I forced their battle to a stop and held it still. The other energies, war, water, winter, the things I'd thrown in there because I didn't know how to take control of them, fell into formation around the temporary cease-fire I was enforcing.

All my attention was focused on the Source. I tried to manipulate it, moving elements back and forth. If I pushed death to an advantage, life adjusted, and I achieved nothing. I couldn't find a way to break through.

"It's about compromise," Prender said after watching me scowl down at myself for ten minutes. "You can't fight the tides, let alone mortality."

The human is right, though it pains me to say so. There are limits, edges to all things.

The cat was trying to help, I understood that, but he was also a threat. If I succeeded, he would try to consume me. Whatever it was that constituted me would eventually be lost in the ancient being's amalgamated mind.

That's why you're struggling. Prender embraces the change.

How much was I willing to sacrifice? I could walk away, put myself into storage if I had to. Wake up every few hundred years to give my descendants souls. I'd be like a vampire, waking once a century to gather souls rather than blood and hand them out to those I favoured.

How long could I last? I had no idea. The assimilation timer would still tick up, but if I paused it as I went into storage, then the time dilation should further slow the increase. It should be possible to outlast Patricia, although not Jeremy, if I were careful about my instructions on when I should be brought out.

But what kind of life was that? Faye and my unnamed son would be long dead after my second "resurrection". My friends would be ghosts, and so much would change while I was away. Changes I'd have no ability to control, or rather, guide.

More importantly, I would never get my revenge. Holding a grudge isn't healthy, and it's easy to do when you have the neat and tidy solution of simply killing anyone who warrants it as punishment. Was that how I saw myself? Judge, jury and executioner?

No. I had gone where I was sent. I'd never set out to look for people to knock. Good bloke or bad, it had always been someone else who made the decision to hire me. If it got that far, the odds were good the target wasn't a saint.

I hadn't judged. I hadn't made the call. If it was brought to my attention and then I approved of the target, that was the only decision I'd made, beyond how to do the deed. I was the knife, not the hand that wielded it.

You're getting there, Raymond.

"Getting where?" Prender asked in confusion.

I shoved the lurking presence of the ancient god to the corners of my mind and reached toward the Source. Life and Death. Death and life. A hair's breadth between them.

Anything, anyone, could kill. Cold, heat, a blade or a book. Intent was what mattered. No. That was wrong. I could feel Tezca squirming in my mind as I considered the implications.

It didn't matter why. None of it did. Kids died of leukaemia. Women died months before their first grandchild was born, and men stumbled at work and left their pregnant partners alone. There was no intent that made a difference. It wasn't fair; nothing was. Had I been so wrong back in my old life?

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

I'd needed my rules, my code, to let me sleep at night. To help me hide in plain sight among the mundanity of humankind. Simple lives that mattered only to those who loved them. Nothing of weight ever happening beyond their petty concerns.

A million times a million times an incalculable number. When I came for them, they moved on. Whatever they left behind would be unfinished and left to rot like the carcass after the soul had fled.

Close. Not quite there yet.

"Mond, this is getting–"

Silence, Prender. You need to witness this.

An amoeba consuming some bacteria too small to even notice. A wolf taking a deer. A man killing his wife's lover. A grown child poisoning a parent for an inheritance. A husband dying to defend his wife, or killing their attackers. It was all the same.

The Source slowed in my chest, and the shield of bronze I'd formed with Aresk's stolen power began to crack. Spikes shout out, chipping fractions of the wargod's power away to drift through my body. A couple of them pierced my heart and sent a spasm of pain through me. I couldn't drop to my knees; I was floating in a void, but I felt my legs go weak.

I didn't judge. The wolf had cubs to feed, and the cuckold was filled with rage. The child was hungry for wealth, and the husband and the attacker both had motives that made sense to them. It didn't matter why; all that mattered was what they did. And I was the line between dream and dark reality.

I extended my aura through the cracks in the shell I had built, then tore it apart. Agony spread through my body. I fought it down and forced the swirling energies back to stillness.

We aren't stillness.

The jaguar was right. We were the action. The edge that cut. The blade that ended. Decisive and final.

Yes. The knife.

I began to shape the Source to match my intentions. Life and death mattered. One was better than the other in their own mind. There was a sense of choice. Life was better than death, and vice versa. But it wasn't, and I was the sliver of difference between them.

My world shook around me. Prender wrapped himself in a sphere of ice, then coated that in a film of liquid water. Tezca purred loudly and strode toward my body. His feline form lunged and hurled towards me.

Let me in! he hissed.

No.

I had caught him by the throat, midnight claws thrashing at my flesh but doing no damage.

This is my world.

He began to shrivel up, his limbs dessicating, becoming spindly and frail. The midnight fur fell away. Cats always looked weird without their fur, but this was worse. Emaciated, weak and delicate. Fine bones that were barely padded out with strings of muscle.

I drove the dagger of my mind into the Source and broke it apart. My body rebelled. Life and death duelled across my flesh. Growths expanded and contracted as they rotted when Death's power washed through them.

The pain was intense, but pain was a choice to me in that moment. I lifted Tezca up and stared into his face as he dangled from my fist. Whiskers twitched, some of them falling away with every movement.

We are not one.

You need me.

Not like you think.

I pulled on his essence. The domain jumped as I began to inhale the forgotten god. I sucked his being in through the pores in my skin. They darkened for a moment, then returned to normal. As the true power of the god spread through my body, Life and Death began to butt up against his–my power.

The Source was broken, but with the knowledge I pulled from Tezca, I began to reform it. Rebuilding it in my own image, all the stolen power blurring together and becoming my own.

I held out a hand, and on my palm a new pearl began to form. Obsidian black, mottled with the ripples you see in volcanic stone, it sat against my skin, and the colour began to flow across my skin.

Glancing down, I realised there was a hole in my chest where the original source had been pulled out of my body. It healed with a thought.

"Mond?" Prender said uncertainly.

"It's still me," I grunted. All my focus was on battering two unwilling forces back into what they used to be. My power had been broken up and reforged, like a knife that became a spoon, then was melted down for arrowheads. Life and death didn't belong to me, but I had always decided what separated them. I was the line between them.

The new Source coalesced in my hand, and I closed my fist around it.

"Did you…?"

"Yeah."

"So you're a…?

"Yeah. I'm a god now."

I could feel Tezca in the back of my mind, howling at being caged. And my eyes were different. Faint outlines and delicate brushstrokes separated everything around me. My domain wasn't smoke, it was a tangle of filaments, linking millions of souls to even more intentions. Hundreds flowed out from Prender alone, limited to this domain.

I opened my hand and looked at the new Source. My Source.

Source of the Edge

My body shivered as I let the power run through me. My mind expanded. Prender was just a puppet, a creature with no value beyond my ability to choose its continued existence or how it might serve my goals. Looking back down the Urth, they were all so small. So petty and insignificant. What did any of their lives matter?

I skipped across the world, taking snippets from people's lives as they contemplated murder. Not just humans, although there was little enough difference between them and the wildlife. Everywhere the thought of taking a life was considered, I was there.

So many. None of them mattered. How could anything with that much redundancy matter at all?

An image of Faye flickered before my myriad eyes. Our boy. Jandak teased Kos. Kril spitting to one side when giving me a lecture. What mortal could dare to give me a…

Mune smiled sadly at me. Killed by Gallagher so many months ago. The way Mortimer's mad eyes had rolled back as I tore apart his undead construct to kill him.

Poseidon. Her shining green eyes shimmered like shallow waters. The vision in my mind brought me back to myself. I had a job to do, and now I had the power to do it.

I wasn't the strongest god. I wasn't old or smart or worldly-wise to the ways of deities. But I was a professional.

"Prender."

"Mond?" His voice shook slightly.

"It's time to kill some gods."

Next chapter will be updated first on this website. Come back and continue reading tomorrow, everyone!

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.