Before the advent of the Church, there were gods.

They were hateful beings, ruling over their corner of reality with an iron fist. A pantheon of tyrants, each of them capable of bending reality to their whim and transforming the world to their every ideal, and who spent this power in the oppression of their subjects and pointless battles against each other.

While they were once mortal, eons had passed them by, and they had long forgotten the suffering of living, or the needs of those they placed themselves above. And so, from the bloody pits into which their sacrifices were cast, considered useless by those in power, the dreams of rebellion were born, as what was discarded and thought as dead and gone proved itself only one of the two…

-Excerpts of a History of the Fallen Kingdom, written by Bishop Hui Go, Scrivener Of Bone and First Among the Scholarly

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The second punch hits with the force of a runaway train, launching Raika back at Li Shu and Jin. She responds by deploying her prosthetic, turning the obsidian arm into a more slender and skeletal thing that extends into the ground and digs her claws into it. She still ends up dragged through the air by the force of the blow, carving furrows into the marble, but she stops herself a few feet from her companions, the blowback of the impact blasting wind past them.

She doesn't look back at them. Doesn't waste time reassuring herself that they'll do what they said they would, what the plan is. She trusts them.

They have chosen to walk beside her. They didn't have to come to this, but neither one of them so much as hesitated when she asked. She could do this on her own, maybe, but it would take longer, it would cost more, it would be more of a gamble. This is better.

She holds that thought tight. This is better. It's better than being alone. It's better than keeping them safe at any cost. Focus.

A whisper of smoke, hissing with unheard voices, and she senses Jin vanishing from behind her, obscured by his techniques. At the Foundational Realm, he's not exactly going to be an important player in any incoming conflict, but he's never been on the path of turning into a frontline fighter. Li Shu, meanwhile, falls back against one of her puppets, which promptly blooms and then closes back over her into a complex exoskeleton. She takes the brunt of the wind on her feet, her other doll stabbing anchor-points into the marble and beginning to spread, growing like crystals.

And then Seo En-Hyun is there, and she's putting everything she has into fighting him.

Fifteen feet of ghost-flesh, rippling with remembered muscle and the pale glow of Echoes, fills her vision, another fist flying at her. A softer attack, almost a polite introduction- if he wanted to, she knows that he could just vaporize their surroundings.

She pulls her prosthetic into a more compact form again, her right hand slipping past it with a slip of paper from within her robes. A flare of Qi and concept bursts into life as she infuses some of her Death into the wooden slip, a blast of light and heat vaporising the material to manifest a translucent pane of force in front of her.

A titan, surely at or above the equivalent of the Warrior Realm, strikes the shield with enough force to send distant pews flying into the air- and is halted by the shield.

It shatters instantly, but it wasn't meant to last. She can't stand up to them, can't match them on their own territory- so she doesn't bother. The shield vanishes in the time it takes for Seo En-Hyun's fist to retract, his other hand coming forward for a blow- and she has another wooden slip in hand, deploying her preparations freely.

She fights against her instincts, retreating instead of advancing, treating her corpse like the puppet it is and yanking herself through space by the needle-anchors in her. She flies through the air, not needing to bother touching the ground as she flies behind a pillar and pulls out one of her second set of talismans.

The pillar shatters into dust with the undead titan's third blow.

She hears him cackling, the un-voice of Echoed vocal cords booming through the Cathedral as he destroys it freely. He's there, above her, slipping another punch against her guard, this one tinged blue-white-Black of Death, and she has to drop the talisman she's holding in favor of another shield.

Thirty disposable shield tokens. That's all she has, and it took most of what she had to imbue them with the Death required to respond to her. Even after all this time, she can't touch Qi directly, can now only manipulate it through her Death, and the formations have to be altered to accommodate that. The shield holds, but the ground shatters around the blow, some of it slipping past the shattering spell to tear at her robes and throw her backwards.

That's fine. She opens her mouth, as if to scream, and instead begins to vomit tentacles.

The formation carved into her esophagus aches, burning through undead tissue as her old curse fights against the Qi of it, her flesh too saturated to play easily with lesser spells. Still, it works, and Seo En-Hyun's next blow lands squarely in a sea of squirming limbs, rotten flesh turned to something like a paste and implanted with hundreds of steel spikes that ripple with runic script. The blow blasts a chunk of the corpse-mass away, but it muffles the impact, and she's still vomiting, still summoning more from the portal she's turned her throat to.

"That's more like it!" he roars, his un-voice somehow louder than the echo of his blows. "I admire your creativity, young one!"

She's a bit too busy with the tentacles coming out to respond verbally, but as the final chunk of the corpse-mass pushes its way up to her lips, she happily flips another talisman at him.

Rather than stopping a blow, she activates the shield-talisman at the instant that he tries to move forward, neutralizing his momentum just long enough to finish with her summoning. She gags, coughs, vomits up a final piece, and dashes back from the abomination as it emerges at last.

Fifty feet tall, made entirely of metal spikes and half-liquified corpse, her creation snarls and barks out of a hundred dog-faces, each one emerging at a different angle from a central "core" from where all the other tentacles emerge. They almost seem like tails, long and sinuous and sharpened, growing away from the center of an inverted rat-king.

It buys her three seconds.

The Bishop waves a hand, filling an orb of Death-flame and using it to simply erase everything it touches. Half of the abomination vanishes in a heartbeat, the other half making gagging sounds and whimpers- until he swings a backhand and simply explodes the beast, splattering it across the pews.

His eyes never leave her position, but that's fine. She wants him to see. Her corpse-body writhes with crawling, wriggling things, splitting out from under her skin and splattering across the ground. Her worms, still iridescent, not fat off her decay, squirm freely out from her, spreading across the floor and walls around her.

"Interesting! You have yet to show me your Death, little corpse! This grandfather might be insulted if you fail his test because you were holding back!"

"Perish the thought, old man!" she replies, teeth on display and bleeding from the stress of the throat-portal. "Allow me to show you just how much I can do with only this!"

He laughs, and then she feels the Death of him move.

Each finger on his right hand ignites, extending out like hyper-dense flames, and he waves a backhand. The beams of Death and wraithfire melt the marble before they even touch it, the angle carving a wave of molten stone and screaming, vengeful faces into the world, a wave of debris and violence spraying out towards her.

With a flex of will, she sends a command to the pieces of her inside her worms, and they spasm into formation an instant before the flames reach her.

Runic scriptures for protection, redirection, containment, and even fuel, all formed by the wriggling bodies of her symbiotes, spawn into life against the marble of the Cathedral. Seo En-Hyun's attack splashes against them, pushing against an invisible barrier- and then is redirected, absorbed and bent to flow around her.

The tale has been illicitly lifted; should you spot it on Amazon, report the violation.

Before the flame has finished its journey, she's used her symbiotes to draw the next set of sigils, an internal array behind the first. The bits of wraithfire absorbed by the first layer are redirected, sucked into eight thin pillars at equidistant points of a circle around her-

And then the attack has ended, and Seo En-Hyun has his hand raised again, ready for another casual strike-

"Bishop. This is a sacred place, not a bruiser's sanctuary."

The undead giant pauses, turning to look a bit sheepishly over his shoulder at the golden skeleton approaching.

"Come now, brother! What better place to test the worthiness of a challenger than in such a holy place?" he asks, waving his still-burning claws around at the space. "Surely such is the proper ambiance for a true rebuttal!"

The golden skeleton walks languidly, approaching without regard for momentum, the unevenness of the molten terrain about his feet, or the still-smoldering bits of wraithfire falling like ash. As he moves, the coins of gold that his flow has crystallized into fall again, dripping from the ceiling to land on the damaged sections and blend seamlessly into the missing gaps carved into the floor and pillars.

"That is no excuse for its destruction."

"Good that I have such a trustworthy brother to handle it, then!"

Raika finishes her third formation circle.

The pillars of wraithfire float upwards, shaped by the physics she's programmed rather than Divine Will. Eight spears of the echo of burning and the Black of Death begin to spin, adding velocity to their forms as the momentum makes their points sharpen to tips.

All eight fire off with the full force of Seo En-Hyun's first attack, causing smaller sonic booms of their own.

Three of them miss entirely. Another two simply vanish, golden coins falling at the perfect angle to block their points- and then they simply vanish into the coins, as if thrown into still pools.

The last three, though, all strike their intended target.

With a movement faster than she can track, Seo En-Hyun grabs all three spears out of the air, his ghost flesh sizzling on contact but not truly burning. He admires the spell-forms as the space at the opposite end of the cathedral is hit, shadows cast into stark relief by the detonations of wraithfire striking the far walls.

"Not bad! But not how I expected you to act. How shall you pass my test with such impressively paltry tricks?"

She smiles, biding her time. "Hardly a trick. Barely even an attack! How will I demonstrate my worthiness by showing off simply one skill?"

He raises an eyebrow, a comical expression on a skull with glowing fire for eyes. "Oh? And yet you haven't even asked my criterion. Tsk, tsk, disciple. This granddaddy will be dishonored by a lackluster performance here, you know."

She shrugs, trying not to show how much focus she's using on expanding her worms further and further out into the Cathedral. "You and I are of a type, brother Bishop. We prefer to let our strength do the talking."

He laughs, a booming sound echoed by the crackling of pale and Black flames. "Quite! I am, as my brother accuses, a bruiser. Still, this one won't be called a cheater for bullying the weak or the ignorant!"

He tosses the spears of wraithfire aside, letting them dissipate into the Death that still thunders in the church, one layer away from baseline reality. "My test is simple! If you force me to show my true strength, use a single true technique seriously, or harm any one of my skulls or faces, then I, Seo En-Hyun, Bishop of the Church of the Fallen Kingdom, shall agree to your demands! I at least think you'll do something interesting, and when it kills you…" he shrugs. "Such is fate!"

"To cultivate is to defy fate, senior brother," Raika replies. Almost ready. Almost done. "This lowly junior gladly accepts your test."

"Good! Now that that's done-"

"Not so fast, brother."

They both turn to regard Lu Karai, who is now only a little ways from the still-smoldering site they're standing on. His hands move for the first time since she arrived, the stillness of a corpse replaced by an unnatural swiftness as he snatches a falling coin out of the air.

"You are a student of three masters. Thus, you should face three tests. Surely you won't protest doing so together?"

She shrugs, smiling wide, not letting anything show on her face. "Of course, senior brother. The faster we get this over with, the faster you all follow me."

The lipless skull smiles. "Very well then. My test is simple- you must complete Bishop Seo En-Hyun's test using only the corpse-crafting I have taught you."

Shit.

The undead giant laughs again, chuckling as he shakes his three-faced main skull. "So cruel, brother! Depriving me so painfully!"

"No need to worry, senior brother," Raika says, coming out of her stance to bow a bit. "But perhaps that would be unfair. Fighting as a crowd against someone singular?"

"That was never involved in the tests. You are free to face my brother with as many or as few entities you can manipulate. If I had to guess-"

"I welcome the challenge!" The giant says. "Though I do believe I shall be sorely disappointed."

"Not at all, seniors," she replies, smiling softer this time, thinking fast. "I asked for a test. The tests are set. I will-"

"Not all of them."

A new voice. One she was kind of dreading.

Looking up, towards the higher arches of the Cathedral, she catches sight of the still and serene corpse of the final third of the Bishops of Godsfall. Trapped behind gold, steel and glass, she looks like a statue, matched to the decorations of the more ornate portions of a city, like a phylactery of a fallen saint, accompanied as always by her loyal shadow, the Witch, to one side of her.

"Surely I am not forgotten," she says, matching the increased potency of her husband's altered voice.

"Never, senior sister!" Raika says, cursing internally. "Though I am sure that whatever test you propose shall only multiply the difficulty of the challenge!"

"Quite. My test, too, is simple, as it would seem a bit foreign to ask for a detailed diatribe on what I have taught you in an academic sense. I shall impose another restriction, in the spirit of my beloved's test: you may not experience any form of harm to yourself, your companions, nor to the Cathedral for the duration of your trial."

And at that, Seo En-Hyun grins wide. Impressive, considering that, again, none of the Bishops have lips- but he's definitely grinning.

Alright. Not the ideal testing conditions.

But…

She turns inwards. Reviews all she has seen, all she has done, all the preparations she's made for this.

She holds firm to what she has chosen. To what her friends have chosen. She doesn't look over at the still-growing thorn garden Li Shu is crafting, protected within an armored nest and waiting for the next part of their plan. She doesn't look for Jin, who she can vaguely sense but can't pinpoint.

They chose to be here.

She's choosing to trust them.

Not like she was going to let them get hurt anyways. Not if she can help it. And if she plays this right…

Doable.

"The test is, as always, accepted. I look forward to impressing my seniors."

No more words are needed. No more words are expended.

Three things happen at once.

Seo En-Hyun ignites his fingers into trailing jets of wraithfire once more, sweeping a hundred-foot strike at her through the pillars, pews and floor in the way.

Lu Karai idly flicks the gold coin he was holding, shooting it with his thumb with such force that the air cracks around it and the Li Shu's thornbush bunker shatters into splinters.

Raika opens her first Gu jar.

A tearing of intestinal string, a shattering of clay and bone, and an emergence. With the screeching of insect wings, the air is blasted away from her, forming a perfect vacuum for an instant before it rushes back in with a thunderclap.

The creature is six inches long from tip to tail, most of that body dedicated to the massive blurs that emerge from its back. Wings like that of a dragonfly glow with a vibrating thrum of force, the sound of them occasionally echoing with the parts of her Death she's fed to it. Two massive, disturbingly human eyes stare out from its mothlike body, glowing with power that's been twisted by the ritual into something unique.

Seo En-Hyun's flames break apart, flowing as wisps of ghost-stuff into the beating of the wings. The pews, Cathedral, all untouched save for the damage already present, the attack dissipating. Lu Karai actually takes a half-step back from the emergence of the Gu, though she's pretty sure that's more surprise than actual force shoving him away.

In the half-second that the emergence buys her, Raika snaps her fingers, awakening the second part of the undead mass she vomited up.

Each of the scattered chunks of it that still has a skull attached comes to life, liquifying nearby tissue to reform into functional bodies of hex-hounds. Dozens of them howl and bay and leap from where they landed, some of them grabbing chunks of Li Shu's broken Sacrifice, some circling around the Bishops, some of them running up to stand behind and beside Raika herself.

As two of them begin to melt and and be absorbed into a singular mass, cloaking itself over Raika, she sees her teachers and would-be allies smiling in amusement, anticipation, and contempt in turn.

That's fine.

Her Gu darts back to her, landing on her shoulder as its twenty-foot wings blur against the air, and she launches herself up and into the trial she's set for herself.

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